Need You Dead

92 Saturday 30 April

Just before midday Chris Gargan emailed Roy Grace, telling him they’d done their best with the GoPro images, but they were hampered by the rain on the windscreen. He was sending them over by WeTransfer and they should be with him in minutes.

Grace called Guy Batchelor, updated him and asked him to come to his office and view them with him.

The DS came in a few minutes later, clutching a cup of coffee. He was still smarting after the bollocking he’d been given by Roy for entrusting Exton, clearly in an unreliable state, with a crucial piece of evidence to take to Guildford. He’d already apologized to Roy, telling him he just hadn’t thought it through, it was time critical and Exton was available.

‘Any updates, Guy?’ Grace asked, as he waited for the files to load.

‘Exton’s on his way to Portsmouth. Glenn Branson and Kevin Hall are accompanying him and will do the interview, as you suggested, boss. He’s got a solicitor on the way from Eastbourne.’

‘Who’s that?’ Grace asked.

‘Nadine Ashford, from Lawson Lewis Blakers.’

Grace had selected the two trained suspect interviewers carefully. Glenn was good at reading body language — something he’d taught him himself; Hall had a beguiling warmth about him that masked a chip of ice in his heart. Grace had done a number of suspect interviews with him in the past, and no one played the role of good cop better.

The downloads were complete, and Grace opened the first one. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what this gives us.’

The image wasn’t great, but it was, to Grace’s surprise, clearer than Gargan had warned. They could see the residential road, and the flare of the street lights. Orientating himself, he could see that the view through the windscreen of the BMW was north, up Vallance Street, with the seafront directly behind. To the left, across the quiet residential road, was the eastern facade of Vallance Mansions and the side entrance.

After some moments, in a series of staggered, jump-frame time-lapse images, a young female jogger jerked past, the images making her look almost comically fast. Then a male figure emerged from the side door of Vallance Mansions.

The time display showed 9.01 p.m.

Tall, wearing a raincoat, the top half of his face was totally obscured by a plain, long-peaked baseball cap, of the kind favoured by golfers. The features of the lower half of his face were impossible to see clearly. He seemed to be clutching something concealed inside the coat. He was also carrying two bin bags and some flowers.

‘What’s inside his coat?’ Grace said.

‘The laptop?’ Batchelor replied.

‘Could be.’

In the next frame he appeared a yard further on down the pavement. Then another yard. Then he was gone from view.

Grace stopped the video, wound it back to where the man first appeared, then magnified the image. The larger it became, the more blurry it was.

‘Exton’s height,’ Batchelor said.

Grace nodded, uncertainly. ‘Exton’s height, yes, but not his build — although that could be the quality of the image, distorting through the wet glass.’

‘They say television adds pounds to anyone’s face — and features,’ Batchelor said, staring intently at the screen.

Diplock had done a good editing job; the two detectives observed the time display jump to 10.22 p.m. This time the same man appeared striding up the pavement on the other side of the road now. One hand held an umbrella and he carried a bag in the other. He was visible for three frames, looking carefully around, then went out of shot.

‘Hello!’ Batchelor said. ‘Nice to see you again!’

‘Laptop’s gone?’ Grace suggested.

‘Looks like it. He’d have had plenty of time to go to Shoreham Harbour and ditch it.’

‘It would have been a round trip of ten minutes in a car.’

‘A good half an hour walk each way on foot though,’ Batchelor said, thoughtfully.

After another time jump they saw the man again, walking back down the street, on the opposite side of the road, still using what appeared to be a busted umbrella.

‘Aha, looks like he’s the local Good Samaritan,’ Grace said. ‘Carrying out everyone’s rubbish for them in the middle of the night.’

They looked back at the footage of the man’s return to the flat.

When the man reached the side door to Vallance Mansions he stopped, pulled out what both detectives presumed must be a key, opened the door and went in.

‘Reminds me of that old Marx Brothers joke,’ Grace said.

‘Which one, boss?’

‘“Hey, Charlie, the garbage man’s here!” “Yeah? Go tell him we don’t need any today.”’

Batchelor smiled wanly.

‘So what’s our Exton doing at half ten at night carrying a garbage bag into Lorna Belling’s apartment building?’

Batchelor stared intently at the screen for some moments. His face looked pale and Grace noticed a faint nervous tic around his jaw. He felt for the man. There was nothing harder than having to arrest and bring evidence against a colleague, particularly one who had been a friend as well.

‘Groceries?’ he said, finally.

‘Not in a bin bag,’ Grace said. ‘Groceries come in carrier bags, so do cans of booze. Is he planting something, perhaps? Or got some tools in there — is he planning at this stage to chop her up?’

‘Of course we don’t even know for sure this is Exton, or that this man has any connection to Lorna Belling.’

‘Correct, Guy. We need to get him either positively identified, or establish that it’s not him.’

‘That wouldn’t necessarily prove anything either way, would it, boss? What I’m saying is that if this character is Exton, that puts him in Lorna Belling’s apartment building, but if it’s someone else — a complete stranger — he’s not necessarily going to Lorna’s flat — he’s just behaving very oddly.’

‘Very.’

Grace picked up his phone and dialled Jonathan Jackson’s number. When he answered, he explained what they had on video, which didn’t faze the Met officer, and asked him how soon he could get a member of the Super Recognizer team down to Sussex.

‘I should be able to get someone to you within a few hours, Roy. I’ll call you back.’

Grace thanked him and ended the call. Then he looked again at the video on the screen. At the man with the bin bag.

His shape looked wrong. Wrong for Exton. Exton was slight — and in recent weeks had become even slighter. This man was quite a different build, quite a bit bulkier. But, on the other hand, the image was pretty crap.

Grace gave Batchelor a quizzical look. ‘Spot anything of significance, Guy?’

‘No, you?’

‘My best guess is he’s clearing any evidence. He did a pretty thorough job, as the CSIs weren’t able to find anything of real value.’

His colleague nodded, thoughtfully. ‘OK, I’ll bell you as soon as I have anything more,’ Batchelor said.

‘I’ll go and chase Ray, see what he can find from the laptop.’

Moments after Batchelor left Grace’s office, the phone rang. It was Jackson.

‘Roy, there’s a DS from our Super Recognizer team who’s not far from you at the moment. His name’s Tim Weatherley. He’s familiar with Sussex CID and has been working with one of your colleagues, Superintendent Sloan, on the Crime and Ops team. He’s currently at the Surrey Police HQ, working on a development on the multiple homicide of a British family and an unconnected cyclist, at Annecy in France — back in 2012. Apparently there’s some new footage come to light.’

‘Yes, I remember it,’ Grace said. An Iraqi-born British tourist, his wife and his mother-in-law, as well as a French cyclist, had been shot dead in a forest clearing. The family’s two young daughters had miraculously survived but had been unable to provide much evidence. It remained one of the darkest unsolved crimes of recent years.

‘He could be with you between 4 and 5 p.m. I’ve given him your number and he’ll call you when he has an ETA.’

‘Brilliant, thanks JJ.’

‘Anytime, Roy. We should have a drink and catch-up sometime.’

‘Are you still living in Saltdean?’

‘Yep — let me know when’s good.’

‘I will.’

As he ended the call, Grace wondered, in view of the sensitive nature of their prime suspect, whether he should view the footage with just the Super Recognizer and Guy Batchelor without involving the rest of the team.

But then he had a better idea.