One of Us Is Dead

49 Wednesday 5 October 2022

Roy Grace was trying to remember who it was who said, ‘Guests are like fish. After three days they begin to smell.’

Sitting in his office at 6.45 a.m., after leaving home extra early to avoid being trapped by Eileen for a second morning, he googled the quote and saw it was attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Well, that Founding Father was wrong, Maurice and Eileen had begun to stink after just two days — but then, he reasoned mischievously, they hadn’t arrived in the freshest of condition.

But hey, as his mum used to say: There’s nowt so queer as folk.

Relieved that the unwelcome invasion was coming to an end today and that he and Cleo would have their home back, he applied himself to the follow-ups on the lines of enquiry he’d set for Op Meadow.

He was impressed that, overnight, an attachment had come in from Charlotte Mckee in Digital Forensics, accompanied by a note:

Grace opened the file. Charlotte’s note about the geotagging was good news. If Barnie Wallace had switched it off, they could not have got the precise geographic location to within a few feet. It was a truism that criminals were rarely as smart as they thought. And it was another — not one to boast about — that many crimes were solved not by the brilliance of the detectives but because of the stupidity — or carelessness — of the criminals.

As he looked at the photographs, he immediately recognized the subject, from his shape and clothing, as the man he’d seen behind Barnie Wallace in the Organica supermarket. There were dozens of photographs of him, all seemingly taken by a zoom lens, which had the effect of blurring the background, making it difficult to identify precisely the locations. But they all appeared to have been taken in and around the city of Brighton and Hove, and all dated within the last few weeks.

And in all of them the subject was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, and either a Covid mask or a scarf obscuring their chin. One was a close-up of the driver’s window of a car, appearing to be emerging from an underground car park, with the subject’s face visible through the glass, heavily masked. Grace sent the images to JJ Jackson at the Met’s Central Image Investigation Unit.

Next he turned his attention to the photograph showing the car window. It was too tight on the window to reveal much of the car itself and the background was out of focus. But he could see the door handle. Someone who really knew their cars should have enough clues to figure it out, he thought. He forwarded it to Luke Stanstead, suggesting someone either in Roads Policing or in the Forensic Collision Investigation Unit would be able to help.

Next, he copied into a file all the ones of the subject walking, and sent them to Haydn Kelly for analysis. It had been some while since he’d had a series of photographs as a line of enquiry, and he knew with the speed technology moved, that he was probably out of date with what could currently be obtained by forensic interrogation of cameras or photographs. He searched the Sussex Police database for the number of CSI photographer James Gartrell and dialled it. Moments later, it was answered by the man’s familiar, very precise voice.

‘This is James Gartrell.’

Grace had always liked the dependable, tall silver-bearded Crime Scene Investigator. He explained what he needed.

After some moments of silence, Gartrell replied, ‘Can you ping me the photos over, sir?’

‘Right away. I’ll send them by WeTransfer.’

‘I’m under pressure at the moment, sir, how quickly do you need my analysis back?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘I’ll be honest with you, sir, I won’t be able to start looking at them until the weekend, I’m backed up with urgent work — and I’m actually on my way to a crime scene as we speak. If you need this done sooner, you’ll have to speak to ACC Downing, and get him to pull rank.’

‘The weekend will be fine,’ Grace assured him.

Ending the call, Grace then scanned through all the photographs again. The one common denominator was that the subject was making sure, every time he ventured out, that he would be hard to recognize.

Barnie Wallace’s obsessive interest in photographing him was obviously for a good reason. None of the photographs appeared to show anything particularly interesting, nor remotely compromising. They were just of a man walking around Brighton — and once, driving. They were boringly innocent, dull.

But Barnie, the secret photographer, had died after taking them. Poisoned, possibly, by a switch of mushrooms by the man he had been photographing, who had turned the tables on him? Why?

There was one glaringly obvious reason.

And it was the only one he could come up with at this moment.

He was acutely aware it was four weeks since Wallace’s death, and it was normal when an investigation was progressing slowly for another Major Crime Detective to carry out a review. While part of him knew that another pair of eyes on a case could be helpful, there was always, too, the issue of one-upmanship and professional jealousy. Over the next couple of days, one of his colleagues, Detective Superintendent Andy Wolstenholme, was due to carry out such a review. Grace wanted to ensure he had covered every possible base before that happened, having recently taken over the role of SIO.

He turned to his policy book and looked at the lines of enquiry and actions he had noted. It was a long list, beginning with the surveillance on Rorke’s widow, Fiona Davies, which had started last night. She’d stayed home, no visitors. Hopefully the analysis of the photos Barnie Wallace had taken would give them at least the location where Rorke was now based. And would the team be able to find Professor Llewellyn’s EpiPen to see if it had been tampered with?

And where the hell had Rorke — if he was the blind man with dog — disappeared to?

Financial investigator Emily Denyer had come back, showing there were no unusual deposits in the bank accounts of either the yacht captain, Richard Le Quesne, or the young crew member, Lance Sharpus-Jones.

Then Grace frowned. There was something in Rufus Rorke’s disappearance overboard from Eloise III, other than Rorke, that was missing. Something no one had mentioned. His phone had been in his stateroom with his wife — and had revealed nothing of interest. But how come no one had mentioned his computer? Surely he would have had a laptop with him on board? Particularly as he clearly did his financial transactions in Bitcoins — and perhaps other cybercurrencies.

He felt a beat of excitement. Had no one thought of this?

And, significantly, where was it?