You Are Dead

100

Sunday 21 December

There was an enormous sense of relief at the second of the day’s briefings, in the conference room of Sussex House, that the female police officer, Louise Masters, and Logan Somerville were safe. But with the knowledge of the terrible suffering Dr Crisp had inflicted on his three former school colleagues, before murdering them, and the fact that he was still at large, the atmosphere was subdued and focused.

Earlier that afternoon both Logan Somerville, accompanied by some of her family, and Louise Masters, had visited the Incident Room at Sussex House to meet the team that had been working on the investigation, and to thank them personally for their efforts. Grace was pleased to see that Logan seemed to be coping well with the trauma of her ordeal.

A new whiteboard had been added to the row behind Roy Grace, on which were two photographs. One was of Logan Somerville imprisoned in the box in Crisp’s cellar, the other showed a close-up of the branded words on her thigh, about two inches across and half an inch high.

U R DEAD

Several new faces were gathered in the crammed conference room, including the senior surveillance officer, Pete Darby, and the diminutive but extremely tough POLSA Sergeant Lorna Dennison-Wilkins, who was in charge of the search of Crisp’s house and the caravan.

‘Into tunnelling passages, is he?’ Norman Potting said. ‘If I get my hands on him first, he’s going to find those words branded up his own back passage.’

There was a titter of laughter and even Roy Grace smiled, glad to see Potting had regained some of his former, if terrible, humour. His watch said 6.30 p.m. but out of habit he checked it against the wall clock, and then against the one on his phone. He stifled a yawn. Earlier in the day, after the morning press conference, he had gone into the Chief Superintendent’s large, empty office, phoned Cleo to update her, then kicked off his shoes, loosened his shirt and tie and slept for two hours on his boss’s sofa.

Although he had showered and freshened up in the Major Incident suite washroom, and used the change of clothing he kept in his locker, he still felt grungy and his eyes were raw, as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper. But he did not care. The adrenaline was pumping again. He felt the scent of the chase — accompanied by a growing darkness of despair.

The Surveillance Team had not seen anyone leave either Crisp’s own residence nor the derelict house next door. Yet Crisp had gone into Brighton, abducted Louise Masters and brought her back. How?

And where the hell was he now? No one had seen him leave either premises. Yet every available search officer in Sussex and Surrey had been drafted in, spending the day going through both properties inch by inch. If Crisp was there, wherever he was hiding, they would have found him.

He looked down at his notes. ‘As you all know from this morning’s briefing, following our rescue of Logan Somerville and PC Louise Masters, we made a number of significant discoveries at the Tongdean Villas residence of Dr Edward Crisp, and the derelict property next door,’ he said. ‘Financial work is being done on Crisp, but we are restricted by it being a weekend. However, paperwork found in a filing cabinet indicates that he owned the derelict property via a Liechtenstein company. We don’t know at this stage whether that was for tax reasons or to ensure he was never connected to the place. We believe at some point during the early evening of yesterday, 20 December, he fled — possibly leaving the country, although we have no intelligence on any other links Crisp may have had abroad. We have requested all UK forces to do searches for any homicides that match the Crisp profile, and, of course, we’ve asked Europol to take a special look at Liechtenstein.’

He sipped his coffee. ‘Tanja Cale and Guy Batchelor went to see Crisp’s wife earlier today, and she is going to be interviewed formally tomorrow. But according to their initial report she had suffered years of bullying abuse at his hands, and had finally left because she couldn’t take it any more.’ He looked at DS Cale. ‘Do you have anything to add at this stage, Tanja?’

‘No, sir. What do we currently have on him?’ she asked.

‘I’ve done a spreadsheet,’ DC Kevin Taylor said, proudly. ‘You might find this interesting, chief.’

Grace signalled him to go ahead.

‘Well, we know as a teenager that Crisp was present at the death of a young woman who bears a similarity to all his subsequent victims — despite the age difference — and to his estranged wife. The detective on that case was convinced Crisp was responsible for killing her but could never prove it. Denise Patterson, possibly his next victim, worked evenings part-time behind the bar in a pub he frequented whilst a student at Sussex University. Katy Westerham was a Sussex University student. All of them had a similar hairstyle. Then he married a young woman with a similar appearance and hairstyle, and the killings appear to have stopped.’

‘Good work, Kevin,’ Grace said. ‘Do your spreadsheets give us any indication where Crisp might be now?’

‘I’m afraid not, no, not so far. I’m working on another, on his credit-card spend. But I can’t predict from that where he might be now.’

Grace nodded. ‘OK, so far the search of his house has discovered three different false passports and large quantities of cash in five different foreign currencies.’

‘So he could be anywhere in the world?’ Jon Exton said.

‘Yes,’ Grace said, despondently.

‘Anywhere in the world, under any name,’ Exton continued.

‘But why would he have left so much money and these passports behind?’ Grace asked. Then suddenly he had a thought. Norman Potting’s crude quip had jogged something in his tired mind. He’d struggled to take it all in at the time, because it was so surreal. Now some of Crisp’s words came back to him.

They called me Mole, because they didn’t like my interest in tunnels and potholing.

He turned to the POLSA. ‘Lorna, has your team checked every drain and manhole on the two properties and the grounds?’

‘Yes, guv. We brought in a sludge sucker. All the drains have been emptied and their contents taken to be analysed. We lowered remote cameras down every manhole, and we checked under the cover of his swimming pool. We also brought in Ground Penetrating Radar and checked both gardens and the cellars of both houses.’

He thanked her and then stood up and turned to the whiteboard on which were pinned the aerial maps taken earlier from the helicopter. The boundaries of both properties had been outlined in thick red marker pen. ‘Somehow, Crisp left one or the other of these properties, abducted PC Masters, brought her back whilst she was unconscious, imprisoned her, then left again — and no one saw him. Maybe we should rename him Harry Houdini.’ He turned, grimly. ‘I can accept that maybe the Surveillance Team missed him exiting or arriving back once — but not three times.’

‘There’s no way we missed him even once, boss,’ Pete Darby assured him.

Grace turned back to the aerial map, and pointed. ‘Both of these properties are accessed from Tongdean Villas. There are twenty properties to the east and the immediate neighbour on that side has four guard dogs — there’s little likelihood Crisp could have used that as an exit. There are two properties to the west and then Tongdean Road. There are further substantial properties to the north of the two homes, directly beyond the perimeter walls, all protected with CCTV, which we understand has shown nothing. Crisp had to have entered and exited via Tongdean Villas. There is no other—’

Then he hesitated, as he noticed something for the first time, and wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. Diagonally north-west of Crisp’s house was an isolated building, a large shed or a double garage. The access to it was from Tongdean Road, a steep hill. There was a driveway to it, bounded on both sides by brick walls.

The garage was about a hundred yards from the derelict house.

Was it possible, he wondered?

Anything with Crisp seemed possible. He turned back to his team. ‘I’m terminating this briefing early.’ He pointed to Glenn Branson, Guy Batchelor, Lorna Dennison-Wilkins, and four others. ‘Come to MIR-1 right away.’