Picture You Dead

69

Monday, 4 November

Because, at the time, Roy and Cleo had wanted the sex of their new baby to be a surprise, after Cleo’s first ultrasound scan, several months ago, the obstetrician had kept the secret. But she had given them a sealed envelope containing the answer written on a note, should they ever decide to change their mind. Last night they had finally opened it. The small sheet of paper inside had just one scrawled word on it, in the barely decipherable handwriting doctors seemed to favour: Girl!

They were having a sister for Noah! Roy Grace, normally reserved about all aspects of his private life, was so excited he wanted to shout it out to the world. But as he sat at the oval table in the conference room at 8.30 a.m. on Monday morning, the only person he’d shared the news with, so far, was a genuinely delighted Glenn Branson. And he’d had to stop Glenn from telling everyone else in the room. They weren’t here to celebrate his joyous news. They were here to find who had killed Archie Goff.

And the more he’d thought about Goff during a restless night, the more he wondered about the connection with Hegarty. Someone had paid his hefty bail of £50,000 to get him released from prison. Within days, the Kiplings, who had appeared on Antiques Roadshow with a potentially genuine Fragonard worth millions, had their house broken into – but nothing taken. Possibly the burglar had been surprised and legged it. Then Goff was tortured and his body dumped outside the home of the well-known art forger. Just what the hell was that all about?

On his notepad in front of him Grace had written, Fragonard – fake or original? Goff bailed in order to burgle Kiplings and steal Fragonard? Punished for failing? Dies. Had his torturers planned to kill him or was death a surprise? Deposition site of his body – random or Hegarty targeted? If so why? Message? For who? And about what?

He addressed his team. ‘This is the first briefing of Operation Porcupine, the investigation into the death of Archibald – Archie – Goff, who was found on the pavement outside a house at 20 Saltdean Close, Saltdean, at approximately 7.15 a.m. yesterday, Sunday, 3 November, and subsequently confirmed as deceased by paramedic Kirsty Nelson, who attended the scene.’

Grace had added to the Operation Canvas team Chris Gee as Crime Scene Manager, DS Exton and DC Boutwood.

‘Operation Porcupine, did you say, chief?’ Norman Potting asked, his voice still croaky.

‘Yes, Norman. Come on, give us what you’ve got!’

‘Well, seeing as you ask, I read a good line about porcupines once in a Len Deighton thriller.’ He looked around. ‘Don’t suppose many of you are old enough to remember him. He wrote a brilliant novel about confidence tricksters, with this great line, something like: “Don’t the spines on your back hurt?” said the dog to the porcupine. “No,” replied the porcupine, “only when I laugh.” ’

‘Do you find that happens to you a lot, Norman?’ Velvet Wilde asked teasingly in her Belfast accent.

Grace looked at him. ‘Is that your best, Norman?’

The DS shrugged. ‘Just saying, chief.’

‘Thank you, Norman,’ he replied and moved on swiftly. ‘Before I go into the full details of what we have so far, there is a likely link between this case and Operation Canvas: a very similar wound behind Charlie Porteous’s right ear and Archie Goff’s right ear that might have been made by the same object. I would stress at this stage it is not evidentially confirmed, but I’ve requested the services of Dr Colin Duncton at Liverpool University Hospital, who is a leading authority in the field of wound comparisons.’

‘He was very helpful on the Jodie Bentley case,’ Jack Alexander said. ‘On snake bites.’

‘Yes, he was, Jack,’ Grace replied. ‘A second, possibly more tenuous link – at this stage – is the deposition site itself. Goff was dumped on the pavement outside 20 Saltdean Close. The owner of that house – the person who discovered the body – is art forger Daniel Hegarty, who has a quality criminal pedigree.’

‘Like his dad before him,’ Potting interjected.

‘And his granddad, Norman?’ Velvet Wilde suggested. ‘You must have nicked him, too, at some point, surely?’

Potting harrumphed.

‘Can we focus, please.’ Roy Grace looked at them both sternly. ‘Archie Goff is – or rather was – a career burglar, as some of you know, specializing in large, isolated country houses. At the time of his death, he was out on bail awaiting trial on a new burglary charge. The Crown Court, to which magistrates on the bench had referred him, set bail at fifty thousand pounds. I’m frankly surprised, considering his past record and that the occupants of the house were in residence at the time of his burglary, that bail was granted at all. I’m guessing we have to thank the overcrowding of our prisons for that.’

‘Do we know anything about who put up the bail – did Goff himself know?’ Polly Sweeney asked.

Grace shook his head. ‘No, he was in prison for a bit before bail was paid. It was arranged through his solicitor, Paul Donnelley.’

‘I thought Donnelley had been struck off?’ Potting said.

‘Appears not, Norman.’ He turned to Polly. ‘Can you follow that up, see where it takes us?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What we do know,’ Grace continued, ‘is that Goff had an accelerant, believed to be petrol – which the lab will verify – poured over him, but it wasn’t ignited, which indicates it was done to frighten him. He was badly beaten up and had electrical burns on his body, according to the pathologist, as well as a cigarette burn on his chest. At some point during the torture process, he suffered a fatal heart attack.’ He took another sip of coffee.

Velvet Wilde raised a hand. ‘Boss, wouldn’t the cigarette have ignited the petrol?’

Grace shook his head. ‘That burn might have been done before the petrol was poured on him. But even if the petrol was already on him, it only ignites at a certain temperature – unlike what we see in movies when someone drops a cigarette into the petrol tank of a car. All that would happen then is that it gets extinguished.’

‘So who said smoking is bad for your health?’ quipped Potting.

Several of the team laughed. Grace glanced at him sympathetically. That was some show of bravado, he thought, considering Potting was awaiting a possible diagnosis of cancer related to his pipe smoking. Then he continued.

‘Some of you are experienced enough to know that as and when we track down Goff’s assailants, a smart defence brief will have a field day with his pre-existing medical condition, but we don’t need to concern ourselves with that now. We have four significant lines of enquiry. The first is to find out more about who put up Goff’s substantial bail. Second is tracing Goff’s exact movements from the morning of his release from Lewes Prison to his death. The third is why he was tortured and by who. Finally, who deposited his body outside 20 Saltdean Close – and why there? Is that location relevant? Is it too coincidental not to be relevant?’

EJ Boutwood raised a hand. ‘Sir, does Goff have any history of stealing art? Could that be a link to the occupant of 20 Saltdean Close – Daniel Hegarty?’

‘I think it’s a possibility, EJ. We’ll need to interview Hegarty and see if he has anything useful to tell us. Norman and Velvet, can you pick that up?’

He turned to Alexander. ‘Jack, I asked you yesterday to organize an outside enquiry team to do a house-to-house in the vicinity of 20 Saltdean Close. Any luck with anyone who might have seen anything suspicious the evening before, or any CCTV footage?’

‘We talked to one lady a few doors up, who’s obsessed with people who let their dogs foul pavements, sir,’ the DS said. ‘She’s a little eccentric in my opinion.’ He glanced at Polly Sweeney who nodded in confirmation and Alexander continued. ‘She has an outward-facing CCTV camera covering the pavement in front of her house and the road beyond, which is there mainly to spy on a neighbour, who she’s convinced deliberately gets his German Shepherd to dump outside her house every evening around 7 p.m. We spoke to her at approximately 8 p.m. last night. She said she’d been reviewing the footage and a white van she didn’t recognize drove past at approximately 6.45 p.m. She claims to know every car and van in her neighbourhood, and this one struck her as odd, especially at that time on a Saturday evening.’

Sweeney took over. ‘She invited us in, to view the footage. The vehicle was a white Ford Transit with no markings. The number plate was recorded but in poor lighting, with a couple of options on one of its numbers and one of its letters. Jack and I ran both through the PNC and came up with two possible vehicles, one belonging to an electrician in Brighton, the other to a funeral director in Eastbourne. We’ve managed to speak to the owners of both, and we’re pretty confident that neither were in Saltdean Saturday evening.’

‘The van was on cloned plates?’ Grace asked.

‘Looks like it, sir,’ Sweeney replied.

‘Good work, Polly and Jack,’ he said, then reflected on this development.

Nadiuska had estimated, very roughly, that Goff’s body had been dumped sometime between 6 and 9 p.m. yesterday evening. And during that time a van, on possibly cloned plates, drove in the direction of the deposition site. ‘Do you have anything more on this van?’ he asked them.

‘No, sir,’ Alexander said. ‘But we’ve been checking the serials for any similar vans that might have been stolen in the Sussex area during the past week, and we’ve been on to – and are still working through – all the local and regional car rental companies that might have rented out a vehicle of this description. We have one so far, from SIXT.’

Grace had long thought that Jack Alexander had a big future as a detective and this latest initiative reinforced that even more. He always acted on his initiatives. ‘Have SIXT got any CCTV, Jack?’

‘They have, sir. They record every customer. Polly and I are hoping to get the CCTV of the one who rented their Transit two days ago, later this morning.’

‘Great stuff. I’m going to see the ACC and suggest it’s about time we merged the investigations. I’m pretty confident she’ll agree.’