It wasn’t until close to 5 p.m. that the money finally hit his account.
Despondently, he checked the racing results online. In the 3 p.m. at Brighton, Mungo had come under starters orders, but then refused to leave the gate. The moment a horse came under starters orders, the bet on it was valid. He would have lost the entire amount. In the 4.15 at Doncaster, Kayleigh’s Mother had been three lengths clear when a nutter had sprinted, naked, across its path, freaking out the horse, which threw its jockey.
Relief surged through him. Maybe, he thought, some days you should count your blessings – however few and far between they were.
GLOSSARY
ANPR – Automatic Number Plate Recognition. Roadside or mobile cameras that automatically capture the registration number of all cars that pass. It can be used to historically track which cars went past a certain camera, and can also trigger alerts for cars which are stolen, have no insurance or have an alert attached to them.
CAD – Computer Aided Dispatch. The system where all calls from the public are logged and, if they require police attendance, the live time record of who is attending, how it is developing and what the outcome is.
CID – Criminal Investigation Department. Usually refers to the divisional detectives rather than the specialist squads.
CIM – Critical Incident Manager. A chief inspector who has responsibility for the response and management of all critical incidents within the force area during their tour of duty.
CSI – Was SOCO. Crime Scene Investigators (Scenes of Crime Officers). They are the people who attend crime scenes to search for fingerprints, DNA samples etc.
EOD – Explosives Ordinance Disposal. Specialist Military bomb disposal teams.
FLUM – Flash Unsolicited Message. A direct short message sent between computer screens, mainly in the control room, to alert other controllers or supervisors to either a significant incident or an important update on an ongoing incident. It flashes up, alerting the recipient to its content immediately.
HOLMES – Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. The national computer database used on all murders. It provides a repository of all messages, actions, decisions and statements, allowing the analysis of intelligence and the tracking and auditing of the whole enquiry. Can enable enquiries to be linked across force areas where necessary.
HTCU – High Tech Crime Unit. Now renamed Digital Forensics. The body which examines and investigates computers and other digital advisors. Part of SCC.
IFA – Independent Financial Advisor.
IMEI code – A fifteen-digit number is used by a mobile networks to identify valid devices and therefore can be used for stopping a stolen phone from accessing that network or to trace phones used with any SIM card
LST – Local Support Team. The standing unit of officers who provide public order, search and low-level surveillance tactics on a division.
Match Commander – The senior officer at the football stadium who has operational command of the police working within and in the vicinity of the stadium.
MO – Modus Operandi (method of operation). The manner by which the offender has committed the offence. Often this can reveal unique features which allow crimes to be linked or suspects to be identified.
NaCTSO – National Counter Terrorism Security Office. A national police unit that leads on the fight against terrorism.
NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The US Space Agency.
NPAS 15 – The call sign for the helicopter that provides air support to Sussex Police.
NPT – Neighbourhood Policing Team. A team of officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) who are dedicated to a particular geographical area, primarily to reduce crime and improve people’s feelings of safety.
OSCAR1 – The call sign of the Force Control Duty Inspector, who has oversight and command of all critical incidents in the initial stages.
PM – Postmortem.
QR Code – A form of barcode which, when scanned, diverts the reading device being used to a website.
RPU – Roads Policing Unit. The name for the Traffic Division.
RTC – Road Traffic Collision (commonly known as an ‘accident’ by the public, but this term is not used as it implies no one is at fault when usually someone is).
RV Point – Rendezvous Point. The designated location where emergency services meet prior to deploying to the scene of a crime or major incident. Used when it would be too dangerous or unwieldy for everyone to arrive at the scene at the same time in an uncoordinated way.
SECAMB – South East Coast Ambulance Service.
Section 17 PACE Powers – A power of entry under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 which allows officers to enter premises without a warrant to make an arrest, to save life or limb, or to prevent serious damage to property.
SIO – Senior Investigating Officer. Usually a Detective Chief Inspector who is in overall charge of the investigation of a major crime such as murder, kidnap or rape.
SLANG AND PHRASES
All-ports alert – A nationwide alert for all air and seaports to be on the lookout for a particular person, vehicle etc.
Bosher – The heavy metal handheld ram used to force open doors and allow officers to enter a locked premises or room swiftly and with the advantage of surprise.
Burner phone – Slang for a pay-as-you-go mobile phone, which is used once then disposed of to avoid the user being traced.
Golden hour – The first hour after a crime has been committed or reported, when the best chances of seizing evidence and/or identifying witnesses exist.
HOT Principle – An acronym to assist in assessing whether a suspect package is likely to be an explosive device:
Hidden: Is it obviously hidden? Has someone deliberately tried to conceal it?
Obvious: Is it obviously out of place and out of context for its environment? Are there any wires, switches, batteries or components visible?
Typical: Is it typical of an item usually seen in the environment?
Q word/Q day – Short for ‘quiet’. Emergency services personnel never say the word ‘quiet’, as it invariably is a bad omen, causing chaos to reign!
CHART OF POLICE RANKS
Police ranks are consistent across all disciplines and the addition of prefixes such as ‘detective’ (e.g. detective constable) does not affect seniority relative to others of the same rank (e.g. police constable).
Police Constable
Police Sergeant
Inspector
Chief Inspector
Superintendent
Chief Superintendent
Assistant Chief Constable
Deputy Chief Constable
Chief Constable
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As ever I owe an enormous debt to so many people who have generously helped me with the authenticity of what I have written, by checking facts and often making brilliant suggestions which have enhanced this story in so many ways.
My first thanks are to many officers and support staff of Surrey and Sussex Police, the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police: Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne; Chief Constable Giles York QPM; Assistant Chief Constable, BTP, Robin Smith; Detective Chief Superintendent Nick Sloan; Detective Chief Superintendent Jason Tingley; Chief Superintendent Lisa Bell; Detective Superintendent Jason Taylor; Detective Chief Inspector Mike Ashcroft; Chief Inspector Steve Boniface; DCI Stuart Hale; DI Richard Haycock; DI Bill Warner; Inspector James Biggs; Inspector Jason Cummings; Inspector Chris Smith; DS Phil Taylor; DS Grant Webberley; PC Jon Bennion-Jones; PC Darren Balkham; PC Pip Edwards; PC Jonathan Jackson; PC Richard Trundle; Dog Handler PC Sian Weston-Smith.
One police officer I need to single out for the introductions she made and the help she gave me in understanding the world of the Albanian communities in the UK, is PC Nikki Denero.
Maria O’Brien, James Stather, Chris Gee, James Gartrell from Forensic Services. Annabel Galsworthy, Comms. Aiden Gilbert,
Joseph Langford, Graham Lewendon, Shaun Robbins and Daniel Salter from the Digital Forensics Unit.
Also to the following retired officers: Chief Superintendent Graham Bartlett, Detective Chief Inspector Trevor Bowles, Inspector Keith Ellis, Inspector Andy Kille, PC David Rowlands.
Katie Perkin, Jill Pedersen, Oliver Lacey and Suzanne Heard from Sussex Police Corporate Communications.
Further key research help came from: Gary Baines of Shoreham Fort; Paul Barber; Ben Bennett; William Blanch; Alan Bowles; Ashley Carr; Chris Cohen; Chris Diplock; Dr Peter Dean; Sean Didcott; Ross Duncton; Enver Godanc; Gillian Griffin; Claire Horne; Haydn Kelly; Rachel Kenchington; Iain and Georgie Maclean; Adrian Morris; Miriman and Svetlana Nela; Phil Nunn; Nick and Emma Oliver-Taylor; Ray Packham; Mike Sansom of BrightFire Pyrotechnics; Denis Sazonov; Richard Skerritt; Michelle Websdale; Sam Windridge, CEO Brighton Racecourse; Amy Woodard.
There are numerous people in the background working on the editing, sales and marketing of the book, each playing a vital role: My wonderful agents, Isobel Dixon, Julian Friedmann, Conrad Williams, James Pusey, Emanuela Anechoum, Hattie Grunewald and all the team at Blake Friedmann. My incredibly patient and supportive editor Wayne Brookes, my wonderful mentor and mate, Geoff Duffield, and all at Pan Macmillan, in particular: Sarah Arratoon, Jonathan Atkins, Anna Bond, Jeremy Trevathan, Stuart Dwyer, Claire Evans, Lucy Hines, Daniel Jenkins, Neil Lang, Sara Lloyd, Natalie McCourt, Alex Saunders, Jade Tolley, and Charlotte Williams. My editor Susan Opie. My publicists, Tony Mulliken, Sophie Ransom and Alice Geary. Brooke O’Donnell and all at Trafalgar House in the USA. Elena Stokes, Tanya Farrell and Taylan Salvati of Wunderkind and all the rest of Team James Stateside.
I’m fortunate to have an incredible support team who help me to hone the manuscript into shape long before it reaches my agent and publishers. My brilliant PA, Linda Buckley, who manages calmly to keep my head above water! My book-keeper Sarah Middle, Danielle Brown who helps us around the clock on social media, and my crucial first-look editorial team who give me so much guidance: Anna Hancock, Susan Ansell, Helen Shenston, Martin and Jane Diplock.
Much of the shape of the book and the fact that I delivered it almost on time (!) is due to the constant vigilance, hard slog and input of my taskmaster, former Detective Chief Superintendent David Gaylor, my inspiration for Roy Grace. I’m immensely grateful to him in so many ways.
My penultimate and biggest thanks are to my wife, Lara. For her endless patience, wisdom, energy and enthusiasm – and always keeping my spirits up.
And my final thanks to our adorable dogs, Oscar, Spooky and Wally. Walking them, in any weather, always clears my mind and puts a smile on my face.
A huge thank you to my readers! Your emails, Tweets, Facebook, Instagram, blog posts and YouTube comments give me such constant joy. Keep them coming, I love to hear from you!
Peter James
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COMING OCTOBER 2018
ABSOLUTE PROOF
KILL TO GET IT. DIE TO KEEP IT.
A breathless race against time to solve the greatest mystery of all. Turn the page to read an extract from this international thriller by Peter James . . .
8 Years Later
Wednesday, 1 February 2017
The old man was trembling as he made his way slowly up the steep Somerset hillside in the darkness, weighed down by the burden he carried in his heart. The weight of all human history. The eternal struggle of good versus evil. The love and wrath of God. The mockery of Satan.
Unaware of the night-vision binoculars trained on him, he trod carefully on the slippery grass, guided only by the weak beam of his small torch, the GPS coordinates on his phone and the sense of mission in his heart.
Destiny.
His feet were wet inside his sodden brogues and a bitter wind blew through his thin overcoat; a chill clung to his back like a compress of cold leaves. He carried a heavy spade and a metal detector.
It was 3 a.m.
A skein of clouds raced across the sky above him, pierced for fleeting moments by shafts of stone-cold light from the full moon. Whenever that happened he could see the dark shadow of the ruined tower on the hilltop, a short distance to his right. There was a preternatural feeling to the night. The clouds felt like the travelling matte in one of those old Hollywood films. Like a scene he remembered where Cary Grant and Grace Kelly were driving along in a convertible, apparently at high speed, with the scenery passing behind them, but their hair remained immaculately in place.
But tonight, old movies should be a long way from his mind, and his thoughts on just one thing.
Destiny.
Tonight, here, was the start of the journey. He was frail and he did not know how much time he had left on this earth. He had been waiting for the Call for so long he had begun to doubt it would ever come. And when it finally did, it was in His mysterious way.
There was someone whom he had been told could help him, but he was not able to find this person, not yet. And because time was running out on him, he had decided to go it alone.
The air was alive, electric; he could feel the prickle on his skin, like goosebumps. The wind was full of whispers he could not decipher.
He smelled the sweet grass. Somewhere close by he heard a terrible squealing. A fox taking a rabbit, he thought. The squealing became increasingly pitiful and finally stopped.
He checked the constantly changing coordinates on his phone against the ones on the slip of paper he had in his breast pocket. Closer. Closer.
Nearly there.
He stopped, drawing breath, perspiring heavily despite the bitter cold. It had been a tiring two-and-a-half-hour drive to get here, followed by a long walk round the perimeter, in search of a place where he could scale the fence. He’d forgotten his gloves, but it was too long a walk back to the car to fetch them.
Pulling out the scrap of paper, he studied the coordinates in his meticulous handwriting once more.
51°08’40”N 2°41’55”W
He was close.
He felt a burst of energy. Took several paces to the left, then a few more, further up the hill.
Closer!
An instant later, the digits on his phone’s compass app matched.
51°08’40”N 2°41’55”W
He was here. On the spot. And at that moment the clouds above him moved away from the moon and a beam of light shone down from above. Someone up there was showing him. This was the sign.
His destiny!
Feverishly he began to dig, gripping the spade as hard as he could with his frozen, arthritic fingers. He dashed it into the ground, stood on it and pushed it down, then levered up the first clump of earth. Several worms squirmed. He moved the spade back a short distance, and dashed it in again.
As he did so, a bright light from out of nowhere danced all around him. Not the moon, now, but the beam of a powerful torch. Two torches. And he heard a voice. An angry male voice.
‘Hey! You!’
He turned round. For a moment he was dazzled by the beams directly in his face. Blinking hard, he directed his own more feeble torch beam back. The light fell first on a young, uniformed police officer and next on the middle-aged man, in a parka, standing beside him.
‘It’s here,’ he replied. ‘Right where I’m digging. It’s right under my feet!’
‘What do you think you’re doing? Are you crazy?’
‘I’m saving the world.’
‘You’re defacing private property.’
‘Listen, please listen.’
‘No, you listen,’ the man in the parka said. ‘You are trespassing. Who the hell gave you permission to start digging up sacred ground in the middle of the night?’
The old man replied, simpl
y, ‘God.’
Thursday, 16 February 2017
Ross Hunter nearly didn’t answer the call. The display on his landline read NUMBER WITHHELD. Probably yet another of the automated nuisance calls that were one of the banes of everyone’s lives these days. He was on a deadline with his editor, Natalie McCourt, at the Sunday Times Insight section, who needed his piece exposing six Premier League footballers involved in a film production tax evasion scheme by 4 p.m. – exactly twenty minutes away.
Montmorency, their dark grey labradoodle, lying on the floor close to his desk, seemed focused on two deadlines at this moment. Would he finish that bone, which he was crunching noisily and irritatingly, before his master took him out for a walk? And would they go out for a walk before it was dark?
In the days that followed Ross often wondered just what it was exactly that had made him pick up the phone. But he figured even if he hadn’t, the caller would have almost certainly rung back. And then rung back again. Ross was pretty high profile these days, and knew better than to ever dismiss any call he received. His first big break, twelve years ago as a fledgling reporter on Brighton’s Argus newspaper, was just such a call out of the blue. That had led him to the story of a sex scandal, which had ended with a local MP having to resign his seat.
‘Ross Hunter,’ he said, staring down at the darkening Patcham street from his den in the former loft of the house he and his wife, Imogen, had moved into, trying to start over, soon after that terrible afternoon when he had arrived home from Afghanistan to find her in bed with another man.
She’d begged forgiveness. Told him she’d been dreading being informed by the Foreign Office that he was missing presumed killed, and that she’d sought comfort with an old friend. Desperate to regain normality back then, he’d accepted her explanation and forgiven her. Subsequently he discovered she had not told him the truth and the affair had been going on for far longer. Their relationship had never been quite the same again. It was like gluing together the pieces of a broken glass. It was intact but the joins were ever present. They’d tried to paper over the cracks by moving home. Now she was pregnant, but he still felt doubt.