Picture You Dead

6

Thursday, 19 September

Norman Potting was the last to arrive, as he usually was at any briefing, lumbering in through the door and shutting it behind him with the sound of a safe dropping from a great height onto concrete. Muttering an apology for being late, although he wasn’t, he was actually on time for once – just – the DS grabbed a chair, joining his colleagues around one end of the oval table in the conference room of the Major Crime suite. ‘Learned something interesting today,’ he announced, his gruff voice more croaky than usual. ‘Herrings communicate by farting.’

‘That’s very helpful to know,’ Grace said, a little tersely.

‘You obviously read a classy newspaper, Norman,’ Velvet Wilde jibed.

After he had recently gone through a period of actually looking quite sharp, shedding some weight, and with his former comb-over long gone in favour of a modern, shaven look, Roy Grace noticed the DS was slipping a bit these days. Some of his shirts, like the purple-striped one today, had frayed collars. He guessed, sadly, that was the real Norman all over, a man becoming increasingly ragged around the edges through the trials of life, some of his own making, some totally undeserved and beyond his control. He felt a deep affection for this old war horse and his abilities as a detective that many others in the force failed to see.

Grace checked his watch, before looking up at his small, hand-picked group. ‘The time is 4 p.m., Thursday, 19 September,’ he announced. ‘This is the first meeting to review Operation Canvas, the unsolved murder of art dealer Charles Stuart Porteous in the early hours of Friday, 16 October 2015.’

In front of him lay a fresh investigator’s notebook and a policy book, both labelled Operation Canvas – Review, as well as his printed notes. He glanced around at his team. DI Glenn Branson, his deputy SIO, wearing an unusually sombre tie and even more unusually sombre expression, was responsible for intelligence. Seated next to him was thirty-four-year-old Luke Stanstead, acting as intel researcher. Then Potting and DC Velvet Wilde, together responsible for reviewing all the witness statements and actions of Detective Superintendent Nick Sloan’s former team and making recommendations. Next along sat twenty-seven-year-old DS Jack Alexander, tall with ramrod posture, smartly suited with shiny black shoes, responsible for heading up the forensic review assisted by CSI Chris Gee from the forensics team.

The final member was Pauline Sweeney – known as Polly. The energetic recent addition to his team had not long ago retired as a DC, then returned to join the force as a civilian investigator. With her fair hair pinned up, dressed in a black top, tight-fitting checked trousers and laced high-heeled sandals, Polly brought a touch of glamour to the team. Grace had known her for many years and liked her, as much for her sunny personality as for her brilliant skills at her job. And she was both a fighter and survivor, having taken two years out in the middle of her career to battle and defeat illness.

‘We’ll continue for now with the name originally given to this enquiry, Operation Canvas,’ Grace announced.

‘And who says computers don’t have a sense of humour, eh chief?’ Potting quipped.

Grace smiled; he was right. The names given to each enquiry were thrown up at random by a computer, but often they were uncannily close to the subject, as was the case here. ‘Won’t be long before we detectives aren’t needed at all, will it, Norman?’

Potting tutted. ‘Hope I’m long retired before that day, chief.’

Already well past his years of service to qualify for his pension, Grace secretly hoped that day would still be a long time off for his colleague. Focusing on his notes he announced, ‘Right, I’d like to stress that this is only an initial assessment to decide whether a full reopening of this case should take place. And it must not interfere with any new and current Major Crime enquiry that comes in. Clear?’

Everyone except for Branson, who was preoccupied with his phone, nodded. Grace shot a glance at his friend, wondering what was wrong. Glenn’s whole body language was odd; he normally radiated confidence but today he seemed decidedly downbeat.

Behind Grace were three whiteboards on easels. On one was a carefully curated selection of the original crime scene photographs, showing Charlie Porteous slumped dead in the driver’s seat of his Bentley, in close-up and wide angle. On another were photographs from the postmortem, several close-ups of which showed his smashed-in skull. On the third was Porteous’s family and association chart.

‘Key evidence I’ve extrapolated so far from Nick Sloan’s report is that at the time of his death, Porteous might have been in possession of a high-value painting. He had possibly brought it with him down to Brighton, from his London gallery, to show it to a potentially interested collector in Sussex. This person was identified as George Astone – who was subsequently eliminated from Sloan’s enquiries. But at this moment it is only hearsay he had this painting with him, and we don’t have full details of its provenance.’

Glancing down at his notes, Grace said, ‘Paraphrasing from Nick Sloan’s notebook entries, he was the duty SIO on the night the murder happened. He has recorded being called out at 8.10 a.m. on the morning of Friday, 16 October, by the duty inspector at Brighton police station. Earlier that morning a newspaper delivery person called the police, stating she had seen what looked like a body in the driver’s seat of a Bentley at the front gates of Tongdean House, 173 Tongdean Avenue, Hove. The dead man was subsequently identified as Charlie Porteous.’

Grace sipped his mug of tea. ‘Around 3 a.m. of that same morning, Porteous’s wife, Susan, who hadn’t left the house all day, had alerted the police as her husband had failed to arrive home from London and wasn’t answering his phone. That call had been logged, with no action taken at the time. The then duty inspector at Brighton nick understandably took the view it was too soon to involve the police.’

Everyone on the team nodded, their eyes drawn towards the whiteboard with the gruesome blow-up photographs of the dead man, apart from Glenn Branson, who was still focused on his phone, texting.

The majority of murders that happened, year on year, in the counties of Sussex and Surrey were, sadly, Grace thought, domestic-related. Mostly, the law-abiding people of these prosperous so-called home counties were able to sleep easy in their beds, untouched by the violence happening in other less privileged strata of society – and in other more violent parts of the country.

Which was why the image of the portly, balding man, upright and lifeless in the driver’s seat of his silver Bentley Flying Spur, the back of his skull smashed in, and a deep gouge behind his ear, the leather headrest stained by his brains and blood, drew everyone’s attention. It stood out clearly among the very many murder scenes Grace had attended during his career to date. As it evidently did with his team.

The Detective Superintendent was equally well aware that it wasn’t his job to discriminate or decide which murder victims were more important. The life of a rich person was of no more or no less value than that of a street person. At every murder scene he’d ever attended, Roy Grace had looked down at the victim and felt profound sadness. That deceased human being had once been someone’s child, someone’s wife or husband or sibling. There was no unspoken hierarchy in homicide investigation. Whether it was a pillar of society or a particularly nasty criminal, you did your best to find out who had committed the crime, arrest them and bring them to justice.

But, in spite of that, Grace told his team that this particular unsolved murder merited a review. He went on to give his reasons, extrapolated from Sloan’s very detailed notes, explaining that Charlie Porteous was by all accounts a well-liked and respected family man as well as a generous philanthropist, and a highly respected art dealer, with no known enemies. After her retirement his wife had started as a volunteer helper at the city’s treasured Martlets Hospice, and the couple had been for years significant benefactors to many local charities.

Porteous had been struck on the back of his head, three times for good measure, by a heavy, blunt weapon that had never been identified, and he had a deep laceration behind his ear. The car was left tight to the gates of the property and upon examination there had been no obvious interference with the gate mechanism although his wife had mentioned they did occasionally have issues with their function. Nick Sloan’s team had never been able to establish a clear motive for his death.

Charlie Porteous’s rare vintage Rolex, which was insured for £45,000, was missing from his wrist, along with his wallet, in which according to his wife he only kept around £50 in cash, as well as his gold wedding band and his mobile phone. A possible random street robbery was one line of enquiry, and some credence was given to this when his wallet, minus any cash and his credit cards, but still with his driving licence inside, had been found dumped in a bin close to Brighton railway station.

Sloan’s team had checked all the man’s known credit and debit cards and no one had attempted to use any subsequently. With his reputation for being thorough, Sloan had his outside enquiry team check with every second-hand jeweller in the city and in a much wider area beyond, as well as eBay and other online sites, but neither the watch nor the wedding ring had appeared for sale.

Another major line of enquiry, Grace informed them, concerned the artwork. There was no painting found in the Bentley, but the team had come up with considerable evidence that Porteous may have had it with him at the time of his murder.

Earlier that night, the victim had been with his god-daughter, Carrie Hepworth, at a restaurant in London, although there was no evidence, certainly at the time, to implicate her in his murder. And from the information she had given in several interviews, Porteous, very excited about his bargain purchase, had showed her the painting at dinner, telling her he had broken his rule about paying cash. When he left the restaurant he carried the painting concealed beneath his raincoat over his arm.

Grace informed his team that CCTV at Brighton station had picked up Charlie Porteous alighting from the train from London’s Victoria station at 12.17 a.m. The last sighting on the station’s cameras had been of him entering the car park two minutes later, again with his raincoat over his arm.

Working in conjunction with the London Metropolitan Police Arts and Antiquities Unit, corroborating that story, Sloan’s team learned that prior to his death, Charlie Porteous had made an acquisition that he was very excited about. A painting he’d bought from an unidentified Frenchman, for the sum of £50,000, which Porteous believed – backed up by an expert he had apparently mentioned or shown it to, who had subsequently been identified and interviewed – was the work of the eighteenth-century French master Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

The price Porteous had apparently paid, just a fraction of the true worth of the painting – if it was genuine – had been a major factor in the original enquiry, raising many questions. Why had a respected dealer, who must have known the true worth of the painting, bought it from someone unknown to the art world for such little money? And without a receipt or any financial record?

Neither the French police nor Interpol had been able to trace the seller, and Sloan’s team concluded whoever this person was had given a false name. The team had been told it was possible the picture had been stolen to order by a collector in a country beyond Interpol’s reach, but there were no reports of the theft of this painting. Equally, they had learned, from the outside enquiry team’s conversations with dealers in the art world, assisted by Met detectives, that there were wealthy individuals who got a kick out of having a private gallery of paintings that no one else in the world could see. To date, the provenance of the painting remained unresolved.

ANPR cameras in and around Brighton had provided no leads, nor had any CCTV cameras in Porteous’s residential neighbourhood.

Grace took a breath and then continued. ‘The offender – or offenders – left no forensic evidence at the crime scene. However, a partial fingerprint was recovered from a restaurant bill inside the victim’s wallet that was discovered in the bin. All members of staff at the restaurant in London where the receipt was from were printed, but no match was found. It is possible, therefore, that the print is from one of the offenders, at the time he or she rummaged through the wallet for cash.’

Norman Potting raised a hand. ‘What about tapings, chief?’

‘I was just coming to that, Norman. Good thinking, though. The forensics officers took tapings off Porteous’s outside garments, and with the advances in forensics that have occurred during these past four years these should be sent for analysis to see if any potential fibres from the attacker’s clothing might be identified. We should also see if anything new, such as blood from the attacker, might be present, which we could obtain DNA from.’ He turned to Alexander. ‘Jack, I’m giving you this action as part of your forensic review.’ Then he looked up. ‘Any comments at this stage?’

Alexander raised his hand. ‘Sir, what is puzzling me is why Porteous was bludgeoned to death. If it was just a straightforward street robbery, the offender would have surely threatened him with a knife or maybe a gun and he would have handed over his valuables. It indicates something else going on, to me.’

‘Such as, Jack?’ Grace asked.

‘If this was a targeted robbery and the offenders were primarily after the painting, maybe they didn’t want Porteous reporting its theft. I’ve read that famous paintings are hard to sell in some territories, because they are instantly recognizable. Perhaps whoever the offender was knew this and reckoned it would be easier to sell if it wasn’t reported.’

Grace thought about this for some moments. ‘That makes sense, Jack, good point.’ He made a note then looked up at Branson.

‘Any thoughts, Glenn?’ Grace asked him, deliberately to get his attention focused.

The DI looked up with a bewildered expression. ‘I’m sorry, boss, I was elsewhere. Thoughts, boss?’

Not wanting to disrespect his deputy SIO, Grace said to his team, ‘We’ll take a five-minute break.’ Then to Branson with a sideways nod of his head, ‘Quick chat in private, something I need to ask you.’

‘Sure, boss.’