You Are Dead

94

Saturday 20 December

Shortly before 10 p.m. Roy Grace, accompanied by Glenn Branson, pulled his unmarked Ford up close to the front gates of Crisp’s house, and called the Ops-1 Controller to tell him they were in position.

‘NPAS 15 ETA five minutes to overhead, Roy,’ Andy Kille replied.

‘Five minutes. Thanks, Andy. Tell them to hold their lights until I give the signal.’

‘Hold the lights, yes, yes.’

Grace waited with increasing butterflies, going over in his mind the dynamic entrance plans for Crisp’s house, and hoping desperately for a result. The exclusive, tree-lined avenue was quiet. This wasn’t the kind of neighbourhood where curtains twitched every time a vehicle pulled up. A short distance along, on the other side of the road, several cars were parked either side of swanky gates from which hung a cluster of balloons. Unobtrusive among the cars was a small grey van with K. T. Electrics Ltd emblazoned on the side panel.

As he climbed out into the frosty night, he could hear the distant pounding beat of party music. A solitary male some way in the distance stopped beneath a lamp post to let his golden retriever sniff around it. Brighton had a few streets that could lay claim to being millionaires’ row, but in Roy Grace’s opinion, this was the one that took the crown. It was quiet and secluded, with little traffic, and all of the grand houses, set well back from the road behind fortress walls, tall hedges or fences, had panoramic views to the south, across the entire city and down to the English Channel.

He double-checked that the search warrant was tucked in his inside pocket, along with photocopies of the floor plans of the house then, followed by Glenn Branson, he walked a short distance along the street, as plain and marked police cars and vans moved into their pre-determined positions, and stopped in front of the gates of the derelict neighbouring property to Crisp. He pulled a small torch from his pocket, switched it on and studied the gates for a moment. They were wooden and looked badly in need of varnish. But looking closer he saw they were electrically operated. The mechanism did not look old — or rusty.

‘Someone uses these regularly,’ Branson said.

‘Probably a security firm keeping a regular check.’ He shone the beam down the long driveway, which was bounded by unkempt laurel hedges. It was paved, but little of it was visible beneath the weeds and grasses that had pushed through. In the beam he saw some of the vegetation on either side had been flattened, probably by the tyres of a vehicle.

The two detectives hurried across the road to the electrician’s van, and immediately the passenger-door window lowered. Inside were two surveillance officers.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said the blunt northern voice of Pete Darby, whom Grace knew well. He did not recognize the other man in the van.

‘Evening, Pete.’ Grace pointed at the wooden gates. ‘Has anything driven in or out of there recently?’

‘Not since we’ve been here, Roy. We started at 7 p.m. on our shift change. At handover we were told that no person or vehicle had either entered or left the premises. I’ll check about next door.’

Across the road he saw the figure of Anthony Martin, now in full body armour and wearing a riot helmet with a full-face visor, towering a good six inches above the next tallest of his team of eight LST officers, all of whom were similarly attired. One officer was putting masking tape over the gate camera on the entryphone panel, another wielded the heavy yellow battering ram, and another the hydraulic. Next to them a dog handler held a German Shepherd on a tight leash. Four officers from the Tactical Firearms Unit were parked a short distance away on standby.

They crossed the road. Several more officers were emerging from vehicles and he directed two of them to stand guard outside the wooden gates of the derelict house. He glanced at his watch again, and moments later heard the faint thwock-thwock-thwock of the helicopter. It was growing rapidly louder.

Andy Kille informed the CIM, ‘The helicopter will be overhead in one minute, Jason.’

‘Remind them to hold the floodlights until I give the signal.’

‘Hold the lights, understood.’

Then Tingley, standing beside Roy Grace, instructed Martin to proceed.

The LST officers piled into the van and approached the gates. Moments later the burly officer in front of the gates swung the bosher hard against their centre. It bounced back with a loud, metallic clang. He swung it again, then again, the gates juddering each time, until finally, on the fourth swing, they parted.

Then, keeping well back, Roy Grace and Glenn Branson followed the LST van on foot, along with the dog handler, up the steep, curved driveway. As they rounded the first bend, the mansion came into view, higher still above them, one hundred yards ahead. Within moments, the sound of the helicopter growing louder, the entire property suddenly burst into brilliant white light.

The first two Local Support Team officers, one with the battering ram and the other with the hydraulic ram, closely followed by Inspector Martin, entered the grand porch.

‘GO, GO, GO!’ screamed Martin.

With all eight LST officers bellowing, ‘POLICE! POLICE! POLICE!’ one used the hydraulic ram to push apart the door frame, and another slammed the battering ram against the door. On the second swing, the door opened with a splintering crunch and, torch beams streaking the interior, all eight of them piled in, still shouting, ‘POLICE! POLICE! POLICE!’ at the tops of their voices.

Regulations dictated that Grace and Branson stayed back until the scene was declared safe, but as the rest of the officers dispersed throughout the house, and the main lights came on, Grace could not hold back. Followed by Branson, he stepped inside then stopped, staring around momentarily in awe. It was like entering a small stately home.

They were in a wide, oak-panelled hall, dominated by a large, gilded chandelier. There was fine antique furniture and the walls were hung with ancestral oil paintings. In front of them was an ornately carved, sweeping staircase. To either side and above them they heard the tramping of boots and the continuing shouts, ‘POLICE! POLICE! POLICE!’ Somewhere nearby in the house a dog was yapping.

Grace and Branson waited in the hall.

‘Seems a bloody grand pad for a GP!’

‘He’s in private practice. And from what I understand had inherited a family fortune.’

‘I inherited a family fortune, too, when my dad died,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Five thousand, seven hundred quid.’

Grace smiled, looking around him and up the stairs. All the doors to the rooms on the ground floor were open, and the lights on. A couple of minutes later, Anthony Martin came down the stairs, talking into his radio. Then he clocked the two detectives.

‘All clear, sir,’ he said to Grace. ‘No sign of anyone.’

Instantly, Grace’s heart sank with an intense feeling of anti-climax. ‘Are you certain, Anthony?’ His eyes darted all over the place as he wondered, wondered, wondered. Had they missed something? There would be a million hiding places in a property this size. Crisp had to be here. And hopefully — please God — Logan Somerville.

‘We’ve checked all floors, boss. We’ll start searching again more thoroughly. But I don’t think there’s anyone here.’

Grace’s mind was whirring. He was thinking about the tyre tracks from the derelict property next door. Had Crisp fled during the surveillance watch changeover? Or had Martin’s team — which he doubted — missed something? He called the surveillance officer in the van out on the street.

‘Pete, did you get any info from the previous watch on the house to the west?’

‘Just in, boss. They didn’t see anything enter or leave all day, but it’s been raining heavily down here for much of the day and visibility’s been poor.’

Grace pulled on a pair of gloves, then, followed by Branson and Martin, walked through an open door into a tidy, sizeable room, furnished with a large antique roll-top desk, the lid closed, a leather sofa and a glass coffee table with several medical journals laid out on it. On the mantelpiece above a grandiose marble fireplace stood a row of cylindrical glass display cases, of varying sizes, each containing a stuffed animal. One was a grey squirrel, its paws around a piece of wood. Next to it was a duck, and next was a gerbil. A frog was in the next one along, in a fluid that he suspected was formalin.

The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves. Grace ran his eye along them. He noted several shelves of books on forensic psychology. Then a whole row of books on the Second World War. One was titled, Escape From Germany: The Methods of Escape Used by RAF Airmen During the Second World War. Another was called Barbed Wire and Bamboo: Stories of Captivity and Escape from the First and Second World Wars. Further along he saw The Great Escape. Then, Escape From Colditz.

Grace always believed you could tell a lot about a person by looking at their bookshelves — or lack of them. He got confirmation moments later when he came to the next section. Shelf upon shelf of books on serial killers, many of whose names he recognized. Ian Brady, Myra Hindley, Dennis Nilsen, Dennis Rader, Jeffrey Dahmer, John George Haigh of the Acid Bath Murders, Ed Kemper, Fred and Rose West, Peter Sutcliffe, Richard Ramirez, David Berkowitz — Son of Sam, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono — the Hillside Stranglers, Peter Manuel, Andrei Chikatilo — the Butcher of Rostov, Gary Ridgway, Harold Shipman, and California’s notorious Zodiac Killer, whose identity was, to this day, unknown.

Dr Edward Crisp would one day be added to that vile hall of fame, he thought, grimly. And, with luck, very soon.

Below them were several books on taxidermy.

‘Psycho!’ Glenn Branson said.

‘Psycho? You said that about Freya Northrop’s house,’ Grace replied.

Branson nodded. ‘Yeah, but this is the real deal. That’s what Norman Bates was into, taxidermy. Remember his mother?’

‘As I recall, he hadn’t done such a great job on her. She was pretty much skeletal.’ He could hear the noise of the helicopter above them. Through the leaded-light windows he could see part of the garden brightly illuminated by the NPAS-15 floodlights. Topiaried hedges and a swimming pool with its winter cover secured.

He stared at a silver-framed studio photographic portrait of a happy family. A younger, smiling Crisp, in a cardigan over a blue shirt and grey slacks, his arm around an attractive woman of about forty. Two girls, in their teens, neatly dressed and smiling, stood beside her against a pale blue background. All three had long, shiny brown hair.

The wife who had recently left Crisp, he assumed, from Potting’s report. He raised the lid of the desk. Inside was a neat leather-topped surface on which sat a pen-holder and a large, hard-covered notebook. He opened it. The front page listed, in neat handwriting, tradespeople and their phone numbers. Plumber, electrician, cleaning lady, building contractor, pool maintenance company, burglar alarm company, electric gates maintenance, garage door company, television repair man, gardener, lawn-cutting service, vet, Ocado groceries delivery, newsagent.

He turned the next page, which was blank. He turned several more pages, then stopped and stared. There, neatly held in place by photographic corners, was a photograph he recognized instantly. It was Denise Patterson.

On the next page, also neatly held in place, was Katie Westerham. On the following page was Emma Johnson. And on the next, Logan Somerville, then Ashleigh Stanford, then Freya Northrop.

These were the missing photographs, he realized, from the mobile home at the Roundstone Caravan Park.