Dead if You Don't

  ‘Alexander?’

  ‘Yes, but spelled with a “k-s”.’

  ‘Do you know his last name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We’ll ask the college. Go on.’

  ‘Then I bumped into a client and got distracted.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Barry Carden, he’s the managing partner of a substantial firm of accountants and business advisors in Brighton.’

  Grace checked the spelling of Carden’s name with Brown.

  ‘I was chatting to him briefly, then I had to get to my box – where I had a number of clients as guests. I looked around and Mungo had vanished. I wasn’t that bothered – he had his ticket and he’d been a bit pissed off with me, so I figured he’d probably made his own way in, and I went on. But he didn’t appear. Then I got the text.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Your son was angry with you?’

  ‘He lost an iPhone I’d bought him, and to teach him a lesson I got him a cheap replacement. He was angry because he thought I was being mean.’

  ‘Have you tried phoning him?’

  ‘Of course, several times. It rings and goes to voicemail.’

  Grace jotted down some notes on his pad, including Brown’s address and phone numbers, and the boy’s number. ‘How would you describe your relationship with your son?’

  ‘He’s an antsy teenager. I try to instil some values into him, but his mother dotes on him, spoiling him, telling me I’m being too harsh.’ He hesitated. ‘We lost our daughter in a road accident four years ago. I guess we both want to keep Mungo wrapped in cotton wool and struggle to accept that he’s nearly fifteen and growing into a young man – one of us always drops him at school and picks him up. It’s hard –’ he shrugged – ‘I guess – when you’ve lost a child.’

  ‘So, your relationship is – how would you describe it?’

  ‘Most of the time like being in a war zone. On occasions like today an uneasy truce. The truth is I love him to bits – but I’m trying to toughen him up, to face the real world.’

  Grace noted that down, then looked up. ‘Where did you leave your car?’

  ‘In car park A.’

  ‘Can you give me a description of your son?’

  ‘He’s fourteen, about to be fifteen. Five foot seven, fair hair with a topknot.’ He thought for a moment. ‘He’s wearing a checked shirt, jeans and trainers – and a Seagulls scarf.’ Brown showed him a few photographs on his phone and Grace took them immediately onto his own, via AirDrop.

  ‘Do you have any other children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you informed your wife? Are you still living together – you said things were rocky?’

  ‘Yes, we’re together. It’s been tough since our daughter died. Hopefully we’ll eventually get through it.’

  Grace smiled, sympathetically. ‘Wasn’t it Aristotle who said that the gods have no greater torment than for a mother to outlive her child?’

  ‘If he did, he was right. He could have added the father, too.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Kipp nodded, distractedly. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Mungo uses social media?’

  ‘Instagram and Snapchat.’

  ‘With what usernames?’

  Brown gave them to him.

  ‘Any others?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘He has a computer, presumably?’

  ‘Yes, lives on it. He actually doesn’t go out or socialize much, physically, with any of his friends, which my wife encourages. He spends most of his time in his bedroom, gaming with them online.’

  Thinking about Bruno, Grace nodded. ‘I know what you mean. I’ve a son a few years younger, and he’s the same. We’ll need that computer, quickly.’

  ‘Please get him back safely,’ Brown pleaded.

  ‘We will, I’m sure, sir. But I’m going to need you to do exactly what I tell you. What I want you to do is go back out now, and act nonchalantly. Do what you’ve been instructed in the text and go home. I’ll contact you in a short while and I’ll get a trained kidnap negotiator to guide you.’

  ‘Please keep it under wraps.’

  ‘I’m not going to give you any information about our tactics, Mr Brown. You’ve asked the police for help, and if you want us to help you, then you’ll have to accept that we do know what we are doing and we have a lot of experience in this field. The text message about not speaking to the police is loud and clear. I see and hear it. But if you want us involved, you’ll have to trust us. Do we understand each other?’

  Brown held up his encrypted phone. ‘You’ll only use this number, won’t you?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like the other’s much use at the moment,’ Grace said, glancing down at the iPhone on the toilet seat with its SIM card and battery next to it.

  Brown gave him a thin, tearful smile. ‘You’ll get him back, you will, won’t you? You’ll find him and bring him back? I love him. He can be a right little sod sometimes, but I love him so much.’

  ‘We’ll do everything we possibly can to ensure he comes back to you safely and quickly. We’ll be getting an undercover team into your house to help you as soon as possible. If the kidnappers contact you again before that’s happened, stall them as best you can.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You’re a successful businessman. I’m sure you’ve stalled people before. Think of something plausible. Tell them you have a client with you and ask them to call you back in an hour. Anything. OK?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  31

  Saturday 12 August

  17.30–18.30

  Grace waited in the toilets for some minutes after Kipp Brown had reassembled his phone and left. A number of thoughts raced through his mind, the first being if someone was going to kidnap a teenage boy, why on earth do it here, where there were more security officers and CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the city. But if, as Brown said, his mother kept him wrapped up in cotton wool, and they always took him to school and picked him up themselves, perhaps there weren’t many opportunities for the kidnappers. And there was an old police maxim, that if you wanted to hide something, the best place was in plain sight. This stadium could not be more in plain sight.

  He dictated some notes to himself, then made a series of phone calls to the small, tight number of his team members he would need.

  This was the so-called ‘Golden Hour’ – the immediate period following a crime, and particularly a crime-in-action, when the trail of evidence would still be fresh. Mungo Brown disappeared possibly up to two hours ago. How far away could he be now?

  Oscar-1 had informed the Force Gold, Superintendent Jason Tingley. The Superintendent, like Grace, had considerable previous kidnap and abduction experience, the highest profile of which was a school teacher who had run off to France with an under-age pupil. In response to Tingley’s questions, Grace assured the Superintendent that in his view this was not a hoax. As Gold, it was Tingley’s role to set the strategy. Crucially, he supported Grace’s decision to stay covert.

  In conjunction with Gold, Grace decided against sealing off an area with road blocks, because not only could that alert the kidnappers that the police were involved, but in two hours they could be many miles away in any direction – even, God forbid, out of the country by now. The photographs of Mungo Brown Grace had taken from his father’s phone were immediately circulated to Sussex Police and the neighbouring counties of Surrey, Hampshire, Kent as well as British Transport Police, and to all officers and border control staff at airports and harbours, on an all-ports alert. It was on a sightings-only basis and no media were to be told.

  Roy Grace left the toilets and hurried round the deserted concourse. Clear the ground under your feet, was one of the first rules for any major crime investigation. Flashing his warrant card at stewards, he made his way up to the Security Control Room.

  Morris, Kundert,
Balkham and Branson were all in the command centre. At this moment, they were looking at one of the CCTV monitors, at the close-up of the camera in the long grass. As soon as they saw Grace, they gave him a round of applause.

  ‘You are fucking nuts, boss!’ Glenn Branson said.

  ‘Thank you for what you did, Roy.’ Adrian Morris smiled at him.

  ‘I had my son with me,’ Grace said. ‘I didn’t see any option.’

  ‘My son’s here, too, with my father,’ Morris replied. ‘The other supporters will never know how close to disaster they were. Thank you, again. You’ll be a bloody hero in the Argus on Monday!’

  ‘You are, like, going to get such a bollocking from ACC Pewe,’ Branson said.

  ‘Bring it on!’ Grace replied, feistily. ‘We have another major problem on our hands right now.’ He nodded to the police officers and to Morris. ‘Let’s go next door and I’ll update you.’

  He led the way into the small private room adjoining the Control Room, then informed the team, and explained it was critical that the enquiry into Mungo Brown’s kidnap remain covert at this stage.

  The game on the pitch below them was on a knife edge but none of the team in the Control Room was watching.

  ‘Boss,’ DI Branson said, ‘if someone was planning to kidnap Mungo Brown, why here? It doesn’t make sense to have taken him here – to have gone to such an elaborate plan right under the noses of all the security guards and cameras.’

  ‘I don’t completely agree with you,’ Grace said. ‘There are reasons why it might make sense. And I’m not making any assumptions, but one hypothesis is that the bomb scare and the kidnap are related.’

  He knew from long experience that the simplest and most obvious was usually the right answer.

  Was it the case here?

  The simplest and most obvious explanation was that the bomb scare was a smokescreen for the kidnap of Mungo Brown. But Glenn Branson’s point that it didn’t make sense to kidnap someone in a place where there were more CCTV cameras than anywhere else in the city, or the whole county, was well made – except he wouldn’t have known how protected the boy was by his parents.

  The DI shook his head, repeating himself. ‘Boss, there must be plenty of opportunities for someone planning to kidnap the kid that are better than this.’

  ‘Maybe, and I’m going to task someone with finding that out, Glenn. I’m going to set some parameters and policy. Ade, I need all CCTV footage in the thirty minutes before kick-off, and since, checked. If Mungo Brown did enter the stadium, you’ll have it logged somewhere?’

  ‘Every turnstile has a barcode scanner, Roy, and all the season tickets are barcoded. Juveniles flash a different colour. If the lad went into the stadium, we’ll be able to find out which entrance.’

  ‘If you can do that quickly. And if it showed he entered the stadium, I want it searched top to bottom in case he’s being held here, somewhere.’

  ‘Right.’

  Grace looked at Branson. ‘Glenn, I know this is a day off for you, but not any more, I’m going to need you as my principal negotiator – you’ve done the course, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have, boss.’

  ‘I’m setting up my team in the Silver Command Intel suite at HQ and you’ll keep in contact with me there.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘We know that Mungo Brown and his father arrived here just under two hours before kick-off. Both of them must be captured on CCTV. The immediate priority is to locate the images, and then see what we get from there. If he has been taken from the grounds, it has to show up on a camera,’ Grace said. Then he turned to Morris.

  ‘Ade, take control from the club’s standpoint. All the time we’ve got people here, we have potential witnesses – and maybe the perpetrators. At the end of the game can we make an announcement saying if Mungo Brown is in the stadium, can he go to Reception to meet his father.’

  He toyed with having the exits managed, but realized that with the number of people here that would be an impossible task.

  The Control Room door opened and a tubby steward in a hi-viz tabard came in, puffing with exertion, holding up a mobile phone. He went straight across to Morris.

  ‘Sir, we just found this lying near the entrance to the car park.’

  32

  Saturday 12 August

  17.30–18.30

  Adrian Morris took the phone, then immediately passed it to Grace.

  ‘One of my colleagues spotted it being thrown out of the window of a green BMW that left the car park at high speed about fifty minutes ago,’ the steward said to Morris.

  ‘Did he get a description of the car or its index number?’ Roy Grace asked him.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ the attendant said, proudly fishing out a scrap of paper from his pocket and handing it to him. ‘It was a 2013 BMW 5 Series. And he got part of the plate.’

  ‘E 13 DU,’ the Detective Superintendent read out. Fishing a pair of gloves from his pocket, he tugged them on and took the phone. It was a basic Samsung. He was aware of the correct procedure that a mobile phone should be handed immediately to the Digital Forensics Unit, but there was no time for that. Later, he would write up his decisions in his Policy Book.

  He pressed the button to pull up the address book. Scrolling through the few names, he came to ‘Aleksander’, and remembered his conversation with Kipp Brown.

  He scrolled down through the address list and came to another name, ‘Dad’. There were two numbers. He recognized the second as the number for Kipp Brown’s encrypted phone, and pressed to dial it.

  Moments later he heard Kipp Brown’s voice, sounding overjoyed with relief.

  ‘Mungo! Where are you? Are you OK? I’ve been worried out of my wits. Where are you? Are you safe?’

  ‘Apple,’ Grace said. Then went on, ‘Mr Brown, I’m afraid this is not your son, this is Detective Superintendent Grace.’

  Kipp Brown’s voice sounded like he had fallen off a cliff. ‘Oh God. Don’t, please don’t say—’

  ‘Sir, I’m calling from a Samsung mobile phone that was found in the car park at the Amex a short while ago.’

  ‘What? How did it get there?’

  ‘Could your son have dropped it?’ Grace said, tactfully, remembering Brown had told him Mungo had lost his previous phone.

  ‘Knowing him, very possibly.’

  ‘Right, sir. As I said, go straight home and we’ll be back in touch.’

  ‘I’m in my car, on my way there now. Don’t you have any CCTV?’

  ‘That’s being checked now, sir.’

  ‘Shit,’ Brown said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  Grace waited for his outburst to finish. Then he said, ‘We’re going to find your son.’

  ‘You know what?’ Kipp Brown said. ‘It would be nice if I had some confidence in you people – but the way I’ve been treated by you in the past doesn’t give me much.’

  A bit rich, Grace thought privately, considering that on their previous encounter Brown had lied to him and his team. ‘I’m going to do all I can to restore your confidence, sir.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Immediately he ended the call, Grace phoned through to Keith Ellis, asking him to have checks done on all ANPR – Automatic Number Plate Recognition Cameras – that the BMW might have pinged, giving him the part of the registration number he had: Echo One-Three Delta Uniform.

  Then he began to study the phone more carefully.

  Being careful not to delete or change anything, first he looked for text messages. But there were none. Strange, he thought, but remembered that his own son, Bruno, only really used Instagram and Snapchat to communicate. There wasn’t much functionality on the phone at all. Certainly, Kipp Brown was teaching his son an effective lesson about losing his expensive iPhone. Except that this cheap device, with apparently little data on it, was not helpful to them now.

  He checked for voice messages. There was one.

  ‘Where are you, tosspot?’

  It was from
a well-spoken boy. Roy guessed him to be around Mungo Brown’s age. The phone’s voice announcement timed it at 3.32 p.m. today. The caller’s number was withheld.

  Was it Aleksander – the youngster his father had seen him talking to before he vanished? He remembered Kipp Brown’s words, a short while ago:

  About five minutes after we arrived – we were late because of the traffic . . . he saw a friend and started chatting.

  Except that didn’t chime with the message.

  ‘Where are you, tosspot?’ That indicated this boy was waiting for him, expecting him. Then again, maybe Mungo hadn’t bothered telling his father his friend was going to be there – it didn’t sound as if son and father were getting on too well at the moment.

  A few minutes later, Keith Ellis called Grace back. ‘Guv, vehicle index Echo One-Three Delta Uniform?’ the Oscar-1 repeated back to him.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘The information I have is that a 2013-registered BMW, identical green colour and model, was reported stolen in Crawley sometime between 2.30 a.m. and 11 a.m. this morning. And this is interesting, Roy, another identical BMW with the index Echo X-ray One-Three Bravo Delta Uniform – which is a match – was written off last month following an accident.’

  ‘Sounds like this stolen BMW might have the false plates that match the totalled one,’ Grace said. It was a frequent trick when cars were stolen.

  ‘It does, guv.’

  ‘Nice work, Keith, let me know when you have any updates.’

  As Grace ended the call, the CCTV operator turned to him and said, ‘I’ve just pulled off the full number plate of that BMW you had a partial for, from a camera in car park A.’ He read it out to him.

  33

  Saturday 12 August

  18.30–19.30

  BA flight 2731 had finally taken off nearly two hours late from Tenerife. It now touched down at London Gatwick Airport just after 6.30 p.m. local time. Martin and Jane Diplock were upset that, even allowing for a speedy passage through passport control and baggage reclaim, after going home to freshen up and change, they were unlikely to arrive at Christopher’s birthday dinner much before 8.30 p.m.