Picture You Dead

35

Wednesday, 2 October

Norman Potting now had everyone’s keen attention. ‘The dark green Audi A6 reported stolen sometime during the night of Tuesday, 13 October 2015, or early morning, Wednesday the 14th, by its owner, Monica Thaesler, was driven straight to an address off Blatchington Road, Hove, where it remained stationary until 11 p.m. on the night of Thursday, 15 October. At 11 p.m. it then moved to Tongdean Avenue, pulling up in the vicinity of the Porteous home. We don’t have its precise location, but it was less than one hundred yards from this house.’

He glanced around, looking very pleased with himself.

‘Possibly waiting for Charlie Porteous to arrive home,’ Grace said.

‘Indeed,’ Potting replied.

‘Which is further indication this was a targeted attack rather than a random street robbery,’ Grace added.

‘Very much so, chief.’ Potting studied his notes for a moment, before reading out, ‘According to the Audi’s onboard navigation system, it left the vicinity of the Porteous home at 12.51 a.m. The car’s system has additionally revealed data about its acceleration and speed. The car accelerated hard from where it was stationary near the Porteous house, covering four hundred metres in 13.1 seconds, the point at which the dog walker and house-sitter, Joe Lee, noticed it.’

‘12.52 a.m.,’ Glenn Branson said, looking down at his notes.

‘What do we know about the location off Blatchington Road where it spent the previous twenty-four hours, Norman?’ Grace asked.

Potting beamed. ‘Well, chief, this is where it gets better still. The navigation system puts the Audi in Raglan Street, just off Blatchington Road. This street is a residents’ parking zone, which means if the car had been parked there all the following day it would have been ticketed. I’ve checked and no ticket was issued either to this car or to the false registration it carried, but...’ He raised a finger in the air. ‘There is a row of five lock-up garages on this street, so it seemed likely to me that the Audi was parked in one of these – it made sense to keep it off the street and out of sight. I did some checking, with Luke’s help, on the registered owners of these lock-ups.’

He paused to take a swig of his brew. ‘Surprise, surprise, they’re owned by someone well known to us – Ricky Sharp.’

Grace frowned. ‘Ricky Sharp? That rogue? He must be older than God – is he still alive?’

‘He was at 12.30 p.m. yesterday, chief,’ Potting said. ‘Drinking a pint of Harvey’s in the Royal Albion on Church Road. He’s all there, cagey as hell. And still got his curly hair, albeit gone very grey now.’

‘Well, he would be cagey, considering all the time he’s spent inside,’ Velvet Wilde quipped.

Ricky Sharp was a fourth-generation member of one of Brighton’s most notorious crime families. At one time the Sharps were major players in protection racketeering and controlled the drugs in a large number of Brighton’s clubs. But in recent years they’d lost out in turf wars to the Chinese and Albanian gangs, and Ricky, an ageing, recidivist drunk, had scarcely troubled the police radar in recent years. He owned a few grotty properties, some occasionally busted for housing low-rent brothels, some for housing illegal immigrants, and always feigning ignorance – and usually, through a cunning brief, getting away with it. The police also knew that Sharp made additional money as a relatively small-time fence.

‘So what did he have to say, Norman?’ Grace asked. ‘Anything helpful?’

‘Well, at first he told me to fuck off, that he wasn’t a grass. Then when I told him there might be some cash from police funds to pay for information, he got interested. Could we find something to bung him, chief?’

‘How much do you think would do it?’

‘I reckon five hundred.’

‘I’d have to run it by the ACC,’ Grace replied, relieved he no longer had to kowtow to Cassian Pewe, who would have taken some persuading to make any speculative payment on a cold case. Hopefully he’d have better luck with Pewe’s replacement, Hannah Robinson. ‘Anything else?’

‘Oh yes!’ Potting beamed, giving the impression this was the moment he had been waiting for. ‘The company that the Collision Investigation Unit took the Audi to, Harper Shaw, have come up with something that could be very helpful. It seems the numbnuts in that Audi were clearly unaware of the technology in the vehicle. One of these cretins had Bluetooth active on his phone.’

‘Or their phone, Norman,’ Wilde jumped in pointedly.

‘Indeed,’ Potting said, with a flash of irritation.

‘Which would confirm one of my long-held views, Norman,’ Grace said. ‘That the majority of villains are crafty but, fortunately for us, not particularly intelligent.’

‘I would agree with that, chief. The Audi’s onboard sucked all the numbers out of this person’s phone,’ he went on, looking pointedly at Wilde as he said it. ‘The phone itself wasn’t registered to any user, clearly a burner, and there were only thirteen numbers. I gave them to Aiden Gilbert at Digital Forensics, and he’s come back with three names he’s matched to the numbers.’ Potting glanced down at his notes. ‘The first, no surprise, is Ricky Sharp. The second is Jorma Mahlanen.’

‘The Slippery Finn?’ Branson said.

‘The very one,’ Potting confirmed.

‘Funny how his name pops up from time to time. He’s well rich,’ Branson added, ‘he could afford to collect art.’

‘Do we know how he’s made his money?’ Jack Alexander asked.

‘Not legitimately, from all I’ve heard about him,’ Polly Sweeney said. ‘Slippery is the right moniker.’

‘We’ve been looking at him for a long time,’ Luke Stanstead said. ‘Polly’s correct, he’s slippery all right. Every time we follow the money we hit a brick wall at the end of a blind alley. He’ll make a mistake one day.’

‘The third name is Stuart Piper,’ the DS said.

‘Stuart Piper?’ Grace said, frowning. ‘Doesn’t ring a bell. Is he a person known to us?’

Potting shook his head. ‘Not to Sussex Police, chief, no. But I’ve discovered he’s on an Interpol watchlist. He lives in Sussex, near Horsham, and is apparently a major art collector – and dealer. He specializes in old masters – into which category the missing Fragonard falls. I understand he’s a very rich man, who has made his fortune by tracking down and trading in lost works of art of historical significance.’

Luke Stanstead raised a hand. ‘I’ve been doing a search on Piper at Norman’s request, sir. The only thing I’ve found on him in police files was back in 1979; he was the victim of a homophobic attack, in which he was badly beaten, leaving him permanently disfigured. Three people were subsequently arrested and convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and served time.’

Grace nodded thoughtfully. ‘Good research, Luke. Have you found anything else?’

Stanstead shook his head.

‘Great.’ Grace grimaced and thanked him. Turning to Potting, he asked, ‘Any ideas why he is of interest to Interpol?’

‘I’ve done my best to find out, chief, but haven’t yet got very far. I talked to a Ludwig Waldinger, who is still a friendly contact in Vienna. He’s getting back to me.’

‘Maybe you should go and have a chat with this Stuart Piper, Norman.’

‘I’ve already made contact, chief. It seems Piper has a second home in the Caribbean, on the island of Barbados, and he’s just gone out there. I could fly out to talk to him, chief, if you like?’

Grace dashed the hope in Potting’s voice. ‘I think maybe we can wait until he returns to England, Norman.’

‘It might not be for a couple of weeks, chief.’

Grace smiled. ‘Much though I’d love to send you off for a holiday in Barbados, courtesy of the British taxpayer, as Porteous has been dead for four years, I think we can afford to wait.’

Potting nodded and mumbled, ‘Just saying. Only a suggestion.’

‘I appreciate your altruism, Norman,’ Grace replied.