Need You Dead

83 Thursday 28 April

Ray Packham sat down opposite Grace and placed a tiny blue and black memory card, sealed inside a clear evidence bag, in front of him. Tapping the bag, he said, ‘That’s from a GoPro camera. I think it might well have images of Lorna Belling’s killer.’

With almost every homicide case Grace had ever worked on, there would be hours, days, weeks, months even, of solid plodding graft. Then sometimes out of thin air, and when you were least expecting it, a eureka moment happened, which could lead to everything being unlocked. It might be a phone call out of the blue, an unexpected fingerprint or DNA match, a dog walker stumbling across a body. These were the moments that lifted him out of his seat, punching the air with his fist, that sent adrenaline surging through his veins, that made all the slog that had gone before it suddenly seem worthwhile.

‘You do, Ray? Images of her killer?’

‘I think so.’

Grace raised a hand, signalling Packham to wait, then picked up his phone and called Batchelor. ‘Guy,’ he said, ‘can you come into my office right away?’

With Batchelor’s office only two doors along the corridor, the DI was with them in moments, looking expectant.

‘Have a seat, Guy, Ray’s got something for us.’

Batchelor glanced down at the evidence bag, then looked at the civilian from Digital Forensics.

‘As agreed earlier this week, I’ve been carrying out enquiries with DC Alexander, NotMuch and the house-to-house team,’ Packham said.

‘I think you mean Detective Crown from the FBI, Ray,’ Grace corrected him with a smile.

‘Sorry, chief — Arnie Crown — nice man,’ Packham said. ‘We’ve worked along the streets bordering Vallance Mansions, checking for occupants of houses, flats, offices and B&Bs who might have enterprise grade routers.’ Looking at both detectives, he said, ‘I explained previously that these high-level routers might have picked up people walking past in the street, through their phone Wi-Fi trying to communicate with these routers. It’s been harder than I thought because a lot of the buildings are divided into flats, and it’s taken us two days to cover every property — waiting for people to return from work, or who have been away. Anyhow, I think last night we may have got lucky.’ He tapped the plastic bag on the table.

‘What is it, Ray?’ Grace asked, looking down at it.

‘Well, it came from an address in Vallance Street, directly opposite the side entrance to Vallance Mansions. Now it may of course be nothing. But...’ He tugged a smartphone from his pocket, tapped it and squinted at the display.

Grace waited patiently.

‘Flat 4, 38 Vallance Street. A young man by the name of Chris Diplock, who has a website management business, has one of these routers. It logged a mobile phone passing five times between 6 p.m. and 10.30 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.’

‘The night Lorna Belling died.’

‘Exactly!’ Packham had a triumphant smile.

‘Do you have the phone number?’ Batchelor asked.

He gave it to him and both detectives wrote it down. Then he continued. ‘I’ve checked with the service provider, Vodafone, and it’s unfortunately a pay-as-you-go job. But we were able to look back and Mr Diplock’s router has picked up a signal from this phone on several occasions, mostly daytime and early evening. I requested a triangulation plot of the phone’s movements and — I’m not sure how helpful these might be.’ He laid his phone down and turned it so that Grace and Batchelor could see the screen.

Mostly there were random locations in the vicinity of Vallance Mansions and around Brighton and Hove, but one in particular caught Grace’s attention. A Lewes location, very close to Malling House, the Police HQ, where they were now.

His thoughts immediately went to Jon Exton. He dialled the Detective Sergeant.

Before he could speak, Exton, panting and sounding out of breath, blurted, ‘I’m just on my way, boss, be with you in a tick.’

‘What’s the number of your private phone?’ Grace asked.

Exton gave it to him and Grace wrote it down. It was different from the number Packham had found on the router log.

‘Fine.’ He hung up and focused back on Packham’s report, and the triangulation details. ‘Interesting to see this person has been in the vicinity both of Vallance Mansions and the Police HQ.’

‘Yes, but I don’t think we should read too much into it, boss — they could have been almost anywhere in Lewes,’ Batchelor said.

‘True, but — if this is another phone involved he’s not telling us about, it could be significant.’

Batchelor nodded pensively, then drummed his fingers on the desk surface, looking down intently at the evidence bag.

Grace turned to Packham. ‘Ray, could you give us a moment?’

He stood up. ‘Sure, boss.’

‘Don’t go too far, Ray.’

‘I’ll wait outside.’

After he had closed the door, Grace turned to Batchelor and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on with Jon, but there are a number of things I’m not happy about. In strict confidence, we are very close to a formal interview, but there’s no way I’d want to do that to him — not unless we were a lot more certain, and we’re a long way from that.’

The two detectives discussed the new information, and then asked Ray Packham to rejoin them.

‘So, Ray,’ Batchelor said as he sat back down. ‘We have someone walking repeatedly past Lorna Belling’s flat on the evening or night she died. But no way of tracing who it was?’

‘Well, not quite, Guy,’ he replied, and tapped the evidence bag again. ‘This man, Chris Diplock, owns a rather flash motor — a BMW M4. He’s had it vandalized twice when parked on this street in front of his home — all the body panels keyed, once, and on another occasion the tyres slashed. So he installed a GoPro camera concealed in a dummy headrest he made. He has it set on a time-lapse and runs it continually overnight every night, then checks the footage in the morning. He said that he arrived back from a client at around 7 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20th, and that on the morning of Thursday, April 21st, when he checked the camera footage he noticed someone behaving strangely, and furtively, who walked past his car several times.’

‘Did he describe him, Ray?’ Batchelor asked.

‘Yes, he said it’s not a good image — it was raining on and off so the windscreen was blurred. The man was wearing a baseball cap tugged low, and in the darkness he could only see part of the lower half of his face — part of his nose and chin. He said he was tall.’

Exton was tall, Grace thought. So was Kipp Brown. So were a lot of people.

‘From the position of the camera,’ Packham continued, ‘he was able to see the man enter Vallance Mansions’ side entrance, and exit some time later. It was a while before he returned. Diplock said the times correlated to when the MAC address of the phone was logged on his router.’

‘That’s interesting indeed,’ Grace said.

Batchelor nodded his concurrence.

Grace picked up the evidence bag. ‘Guy, get someone to rush this over to Maria O’Brien at the Forensics Unit at Guildford. They’ve got video-enhancing capabilities there. Call her or Chris Gargan and alert them this is top priority. Can you do that right away?’

‘Yes, boss.’

At that moment there was a knock on the door. Exton entered and handed over his private phone and laptop.

Looking hard at him, Grace asked, ‘Jon, is this your only phone?’

‘Do you mean apart from my police one, boss?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is the only one.’

Grace thanked him, then shooting nervous glances at both men, Exton hurried back to the door.

‘Jon!’ Batchelor said, suddenly.

‘Yes, boss?’

‘Are you busy at the moment?’

‘Well — er — not — nothing that can’t wait.’

‘Good, I’ll come and see you in a moment.’

As Exton left, Grace handed the detective’s phone to Packham. ‘You might as well take this with you, Ray. Can you clone it and return the original to Jon so he’s not stuck without a phone? I need you to do this in strictest confidence and report to no one but me, OK?’

‘Yes, right away.’ Then he continued. ‘Something that may be worth considering, Roy, if we get a good resolution back from Forensics — have you ever worked with the Scotland Yard Super Recognizer team?’

‘No, but we’re on the same page, Ray — I was thinking about them.’

A few weeks earlier, Grace had attended a seminar on the very new field of Super Recognizers at New Scotland Yard. The DI giving the talk explained that the average human being can recognize 23 per cent of faces that they’ve seen previously. The average police officer, despite the heightened awareness that comes with the territory, can only manage 24 per cent. But a tiny percentage of the population, now known as Super Recognizers, can achieve up to 90 per cent.

The phenomenon had been discovered during the aftermath of the London Riots, in 2014, when many of the violent rioters and looters had concealed their faces with caps, glasses and scarves. Detectives in London had discovered there were some colleagues who were capable of identifying people, with consistent accuracy, from just one single feature. An earlobe. A nose. A chin.

One of the champion Super Recognizers was a custody officer called Idris, whose abilities had led to over one hundred and fifty arrests to date. Under an initiative set up by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Super Recognizer team was formed — many of whom were civilians. Some of the unit worked out of Charing Cross police station, but the majority from New Scotland Yard.

‘I’ve got a contact with them, an old friend who used to be a PC in Brighton,’ Packham said. ‘Jonathan Jackson.’

‘I remember him well — good guy. OK, let’s wait to see what we get back,’ Grace said.

‘I’ll ping you Jonathan’s contact details,’ Packham said.

After Batchelor and Packham left, Grace sat thinking again.

Momentarily distracted by an email that had come in about next week’s venue for the Thursday-night poker game he tried — and mostly failed — to attend regularly, he was checking his diary when the phone rang.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ he answered.

‘Roy, do you want to tell me just what on earth is going on with DS Exton?’ It was Cassian Pewe, sounding his usual friendly self — not. ‘I’ve just had a conversation with Superintendent Darke — why did you not inform me right away about the misuse of his phone?’

‘Because, sir, Superintendent Darke asked me to speak to DS Exton as a matter of urgency — to see what I could find out.’

‘I trust you’ve asked PSD to suspend him?’

‘Well, actually, sir, I think he’s in a pretty bad way, mentally. He’s had a relationship breakdown and he’s not coping, in my view. I had a talk with him and he’s agreed to see the force doctor. He’s a highly trusted member of my team and I feel I need to support him, not hang him out to dry — which will just make things worse.’

‘Let’s hope you’re making the right decision, Roy. On your head be it.’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘Good.’

‘Oh — one thing I wanted to ask you, sir,’ Grace went on. ‘I didn’t know you spoke German.’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You were talking quite a bit to my son, Bruno, in German.’

‘And your point is, Roy?’

‘It was very kind of you, sir, to take the time and trouble.’

The ACC made a strange grunting sound and hung up. Grace was curious. Why had Pewe sounded so defensive about speaking German?

But he had bigger issues on his mind right now.