One of Us Is Dead

29 Sunday 2 October 2022

Roy Grace had just asked himself exactly that question. It was 9.45 p.m., and he would have loved to have been downstairs right now, curled up on the sofa with Cleo, watching some of the latest season of Succession with her. But Operation Meadow had become central to his thinking and his mind was focused, as always, on how the investigation was going.

He used to go fishing off Brighton beach with his father in a small rowing boat. Then, when Jack Grace retired from the police force, he’d bought a deep-sea fishing smack that was capable of venturing much further out into the Channel. Roy had loved his days on that boat, during those few precious years his father had after retirement, before his early death from cancer. And he had loved talking to other fishermen they berthed alongside in Shoreham Harbour and seeing their catches. He was constantly amazed by the rubbish they — and he and his father — frequently pulled up: plastic waste, discarded tyres and balloons, rusted car parts, as well as bags and items of clothing. It seemed like the oceans were the world’s rubbish dumps.

No one on the inquiry into Rufus Rorke’s death had raised a flag over the odds on this Barbadian fisherman recovering part of his jacket. It simply appeared to be just one of those coincidences that happen from time to time. Part of the quirks — or magic — of being a fisherman.

But if Rufus Rorke was still alive then all bets were off. The recovery of that jacket became a game-changer.

Was it a plant? The fisherman possibly in cahoots with Rorke?

As ever the age-old detective mantra was in his mind. Check the ground under your feet. Maybe if ACC Downing would sanction it, he could send someone out to interview the fisher-man — he doubted there would be any shortage of volunteers for this.

He had been through all the reports and witness statements. From the captain, Richard Le Quesne, who had a long, unblemished record. The crew member, Lance Sharpus-Jones. The Barbados police Inspector, Terry Stephens, in charge of the case. The fisherman who’d found the jacket, John Baker. The marine biologist and the bite-mark expert’s opinion on the jacket remnant. The Coroner’s findings.

Perhaps most significantly of all, Rufus Rorke’s widow, Fiona, who stated that her husband had been stressed and drinking heavily on the night he disappeared. Norman and Glenn had interviewed her together at the time, and he remembered her clearly, having watched the interview. A beautiful but aloof lady, who clearly inhabited a world to which he would never aspire — a parallel universe whose inhabitants spent their summer days at polo at Cowdray Park, at Ascot and Wimbledon Centre Court, the Henley Regatta, Cowes Week, in between jetting off to hotspots in private jets — when her husband wasn’t flying her in his multimillion-pound helicopter. A parallel and alternative universe to the one in which he lived. And he did not envy her any of it, one bit.

But, unless she was a brilliant liar, one thing he was reasonably sure of after watching her interview for almost three hours was that she was totally unaware of the criminal activity that Sussex Police suspected her husband was involved in. And it felt like she had told him the truth.

Maybe Grace would find out more when he interviewed the crew member, Sharpus-Jones, in the morning.

In the meantime, he sat in his den, viewing the compilation of recordings from the city’s own CCTV, the various shopfront cameras located along either side of Western Road close to the Organica supermarket, as well as dashcam recordings from taxis and buses and, following a public appeal, footage from the GoPros of two cyclists. He had narrowed the times he was studying to twenty minutes either side of 3.25 p.m., Saturday 3 September.

For the past hour he had scanned the content of the CCTV back and forth repeatedly. Incredibly frustratingly, there was nothing captured at all of the Organica shopfront from across the street. The store itself had two cameras located above the front door, but the lenses of both had been shattered sometime prior, and not replaced. Forensics had reported that both cameras looked like they had been shot at with airgun pellets, or possibly stones fired from a catapult. Whatever, he thought — this all indicated possible prior planning.

By Rufus Rorke?

As he moved through the footage yet again, something was niggling him. Something his eyes were seeing but he had not yet connected the dots. He couldn’t explain, if asked, how he knew, it was just instinct. Something was wrong. An anomaly.

He played the footage very slowly backwards, singling out one member of the crowd. A blind man, in a white jacket, wearing large dark glasses and the kind of peaked caps that only old men wear. He was holding his guide dog by its harness, some yards away from the Organica shopfront, and heading away.

He stopped the recording and played it forward again. The blind man, limping a little, one of several people ambling along. He was now heading east, approaching Organica, white stick in one hand, black Labrador leading him. Two young women walked a short distance in front, a gangly youth right behind.

But, as the footage went on, it showed the two young women and the gangly youth continuing their journey.

But no blind man.

He must have gone into Organica. Or stopped outside.

Fifteen minutes later, on the digital time clock on the screen, the blind man and his dog came back into sight. This time he held what looked like an Organica hessian sack in the same hand as his white stick. The bag didn’t look heavy. Just a carton of mushrooms inside, he wondered?

Next he opened the assembly of Organica’s six internal CCTV cameras, selected the one covering the inside of the front entrance, clicked to the same start time as the blind man had disappeared from view in front of the store and then hit the play symbol.

No blind man entered.

He moved the assembly on slowly. A minute, two minutes. Other people were coming in, including their suspect, the hooded man in dark glasses and scarf. No blind man.

But the hooded man was wearing dark glasses. The same as the blind man’s? Had he tethered the dog outside? Reversed his white jacket so the black side was showing. Both men wore jeans and trainers.

He felt a growing beat of excitement as he looked at the other footage of the blind man on the street and went in as close as he could on his face. But the resolution was too poor to be able to see if these were the same sunglasses or not. They looked quite a bit larger than the ones the man in the store had been wearing.

But, if it was the same person, why go through the elaborate process of switching identities? There could only be one reason. Deception.

And there were two places he could think of to go, as a starting point, where he might be able to get an opinion whether the blind man and the hooded man were the same person. The first was the SuperRecognizer department at Scotland Yard. The second was the forensic gait analyst Haydn Kelly.

He yawned and looked at the time on his computer. It was 11.20. How did it get so late?

He heard the door open behind him and turned. Cleo stood there, in her white robe dressing gown, giving him a wan smile. ‘Are you going to work all night, darling, or come to bed?’

‘I’m sorry. How was Succession?’

‘One of the best episodes ever — you missed a treat!’

‘I’ll try to watch it tomorrow.’

She shook her head. ‘You won’t, will you? Because tomorrow night you’ll be up here again. I know you too well.’

‘Maybe if people were considerate enough to stop killing each other, I might not need to be.’

‘But then you’d find something else, wouldn’t you? It’s in your nature.’

He gave a defeated smile, shut down his laptop and followed her to bed.