He was about to dial Ari when a voice behind him startled him. It was Tom Bryce, and the man looked in bad shape, his face pale, his eyes spooked.
‘Could I have a quiet word with you, Sergeant Branson?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
They climbed into Branson’s pool Mondeo and closed the doors.
‘What I want to ask you is if you think we’re in danger – whether I should take my children somewhere? Go into hiding?’
The detective wasn’t sure how to respond. He was quiet for some moments, thinking about Janie Stretton’s vicious murder and the warning that Bryce said he had received on his email. Then his missing wife. He could not answer because he just did not have enough information yet. But what if this had happened to him and Ari had vanished? Could he honestly look Tom Bryce in the eye and tell him to stay put?
But what were the alternatives? A round-the-clock police guard? He doubted that could be swung unless there was much stronger evidence to persuade Alison Vosper to stand the cost. Move them to a safe house? Roy Grace had rung him half an hour ago to tell him about Reggie D’Eath. So much for safe houses.
‘I think we need to consider the possibility that your wife has been abducted, Mr Bryce.’
This was what Tom had feared, although there was just one small nagging doubt in his mind. The words of Jessica came back to him repeatedly.
She’ll probably just want to drink vodka. I saw her. I promised I wouldn’t tell.
‘I’ve arranged for a detective from the Family Liaison Unit,’ the detective was saying. ‘She’s very competent – she’ll move in here, if you agree. She’ll organize a roster of herself and a colleague to give you and your children round-the-clock protection.’
‘Is that what you would do in my situation, DS Branson?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, hesitantly. ‘Yeah. For the moment anyhow. Let’s see what we learn today.’
Glenn Branson looked down, not able to look the man in the eye for more than a second. And as he said the words he was thinking to himself, If this was me, would I want to have Sammy and Remi remain in the house?
And he simply did not know the answer.
52
‘Potatoes,’ Norman Potting said suddenly.
The three police officers were in the car, Nick Nicholl driving, heading back from the pub in Rottingdean towards Sussex House. The pint of beer on top of the paracetamol and his late night was making Grace drowsy.
‘Potatoes?’ Nicholl echoed.
‘I was brought up on a farm,’ Potting said. ‘My dad used to spray the potato crop with sulphuric acid. Dilute, mind you. Never did me any harm.’
‘Sulphuric acid on potatoes? You’re not serious?’
The words ‘sulphuric acid’ caught Grace’s attention.
‘My friend, I’m always serious,’ Potting replied. ‘The acid kills off the shoots and makes harvesting much easier.’
‘And it kills anyone who eats the potatoes?’ Grace questioned.
‘It’s all bollocks,’ Potting said. ‘All this organic crap. Nothing wrong with a few honest-to-goodness pesticides. Look at me!’
‘I’m looking at you,’ Nicholl said, glancing in the mirror.
‘Never had a day’s sickness in my life!’
You’re just permanently sick, Grace thought.
‘Harmless stuff in the right hands,’ Potting continued.
‘I don’t think Reggie D’Eath would agree with you,’ Grace retorted.
‘Would you give your kids potatoes that had been sprayed with sulphuric acid?’ Nicholl asked Potting.
‘Wouldn’t have a problem with it,’ he said.
‘Well, I would,’ the young DC said.
After a moment’s silence, Potting asked him, ‘How many kids have you got?’
‘First one on its way – any day now,’ the DC said. ‘How about you?’
‘Two by my first marriage. One by my second. Two more by my third. The second by her, Suzie, has Down’s syndrome. Not that I ever see much of the little buggers,’ he said wistfully.
Nicholl was clearly affected by Potting’s response. ‘Down’s?’
Potting nodded.
‘I’m sorry,’ Nicholl said.
Potting shrugged. ‘That’s the way it goes,’ he said sadly. ‘She’s a good kid, always happy.’ He shrugged again. ‘Every family has something, don’t they?’
‘Are you still married? To your third?’
Potting’s face fell. ‘I gave up.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I’m a bachelor, footloose and fancy-free, like DS Grace here. Take it from me, lad, it’s the best way.’
Nick Nicholl said, ‘Actually, I’m very happily married.’
‘You’re a lucky man,’ Potting replied.
‘So if we’re looking for someone who has enough sulphuric acid to fill a bath, we should be looking for a potato farmer?’ Grace asked, turning his head.
‘Or someone who supplies potato farmers,’ Potting said. ‘Or drugs companies. Or manufacturers of citric and lactic acids, and edible oils. Adhesives, explosives, synthetic rubber. Water and effluent treatment. Wood pulping. Leather tanning. Car batteries.’
‘You should go on Mastermind,’ Nicholl said, ‘with sulphuric acid as your specialist subject.’
‘I got involved in a case a few years ago. A chap in Croydon threw some in his girlfriend’s face when she dumped him. Apparently it’s common practice in one of the countries in Africa.’
‘Nice guy,’ Nicholl responded.
‘A regular charmer. That’s what you get with darkies.’
Now Grace was livid. ‘Norman, in case you haven’t noticed we have a black member on our team. If you make one more racist or homophobic remark I’m going to have you suspended. Any part of that you don’t understand?’
After a few seconds’ silence Potting said, ‘I’m sorry, Roy. I apologize. Not very tactful of me. He’s a good man, that DS Branson.’
Even though he’s black? Grace was tempted to fire back. Instead he said, ‘You’d have needed a few gallons of the stuff to fill that tub. The neighbours must have seen something. All those bloody Neighbourhood Watch stickers. Two tasks for you, Norman. First find out from the house-to-house team if any unfamiliar vehicles have been in the street in the past few days. Second, find out if there are any suppliers – or users – of bulk sulphuric acid in the area.’
‘Before or after I finish working my way through the books of Barry and Claire Escorts Twenty-Four Seven, chief?’
‘You’ll have to multi-task like the rest of us, Norman.’
Two sharp beeps told Grace he had an incoming text. He looked down and saw it was from Cleo. Instantly his spirits lifted. Then, when he read it, they dropped. Or rather plummeted.
53
The video viewing room in the Major Incident Suite was a tiny, windowless cubicle, a few yards down the corridor from MIR One. With just Glenn Branson and Tom Bryce in there it felt crowded and claustrophobic. Yet another example, in Branson’s view – and he was only an occasional visitor – of how poorly thought-out the conversion of the building had been.
Tom Bryce sat at the desk, with a monitor in front of him, and to his left a video and CD stack. The machine was loaded with CCTV footage from two cameras at Preston Park railway station, the first stop north from Brighton, regularly used by commuters both for its convenient location towards the outskirts and for the free parking in the streets all around. It was the station where the dickhead seated next to him on the train last Tuesday night, who had left behind the CD, had got off.
Constable Bunting had come up trumps. Within two hours of Glenn’s call to British Transport Police, the officer had produced footage of the southbound platform of Preston Park at the time of the arrival of the train Tom had been on.
Tom forced himself to concentrate, but it was hard because he was beside himself with worry about Kellie. He had the shakes from having eaten nothing all day and drunk far too much caffeine. His stomach felt as if it wa
s full of barbed wire. Suddenly his mobile phone rang.
He looked at the display but did not recognize the number. ‘I’d better answer it,’ he said. Branson nodded his encouragement.
It was Lynn Cottesloe, Kellie’s best friend who also lived in Brighton, wondering if there was any news or anything she and her husband could do to help. Could they bring some food over? Help out with the children? Tom thanked her and said that a rota of family liaison officers had been organized. She told him to call the instant he had any news, and he promised he would. Then he returned to his task.
The first camera showed the length of the platform, from a high vantage point. A train was just pulling out of the station. A counter in the top right-hand corner read 19.09.
‘That’s the Thameslink, the London Bridge service,’ Glenn Branson informed him. ‘Yours is coming in a couple of minutes.’
Tom fast-forwarded, then slowed when a new train appeared on the track. His nerves tightened. The train came to a halt. Doors opened and about thirty people climbed down onto the platform. He pressed the freeze-frame button, and looked at each character carefully.
No sign of the dickhead.
‘This is the right train?’ he asked.
‘Definitely. The 6.10 fast service from Victoria – the one you told me you took,’ Branson replied. ‘Run it on a bit; might be that not everyone’s off yet.’
Tom pressed the play button and all the people sprang back into life. He scanned the open doors of the train, many of which were being shut again, trying to work out the carriage where he had been sitting. It was about four back from the front – he estimated he was looking at it now.
And then he saw him.
The big-framed, baby-faced man, dressed in a safari-style shirt over shapeless slacks and clutching a small holdall, was stepping down onto the platform now, and looking carefully around almost as if to ensure the coast was clear before he got off.
Clear of what? Tom wondered, stabbing the freeze button.
The man stopped in mid-step, his left, trainer-clad foot in the air, his face angled slightly towards the camera but showing no awareness of it. Although the look of deep consternation on his face was clearly visible.
Tom pressed the play button again, and within moments the man’s concerns seemed to be over, and he began walking, almost jauntily, towards the exit barrier. He froze the tape again, and said, ‘This is him.’
Branson stared at the man in shock. ‘Zoom in, will you, on his face.’
Tom fumbled with the controls, then zoomed in, a little jerkily, until he was tight on the dickhead’s face.
‘You’re absolutely sure?’
Tom nodded. ‘Yes. That’s him. Absolutely.’
‘You couldn’t be mistaken?’
‘No.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ the Detective Sergeant said.
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘Yes,’ Branson said, his voice turning grim. ‘We do.’
54
Shortly before five o’clock, Sergeant Jon Rye was sitting at his desk in the High Tech Crime Unit, still working on Tom Bryce’s computer, when his direct line rang. He picked up the receiver. ‘Jon Rye,’ he said.
‘Hello. It’s Tom Bryce. I’m actually in your building, up in the CCTV room . . . Just wondered if – if my computer was ready. I – could pop down . . . collect. I – I need to do some work tonight. I – I have – have to prepare for a very big meeting tomorrow. How are you doing?’
You sound terrible. You need to do some work, and I need to go home and salvage my marriage, Jon Rye thought. There was only himself and Andy Gidney, a short distance across the room from him, still there in the department late on this Sunday afternoon. Were the two of them sad or what?
Gidney, his iPod plugged as ever into his ears, was hunched over his keyboard, his desk littered with empty Coke cans and plastic coffee cups from the vending machines, clicking relentlessly away, working on cracking the code he had been trying to crack all week.
Rye worried about the geek – he seemed a lost soul. At least when Rye left the building, he had a home to go to. Maybe Nadine was sour sometimes, but there would be a meal on the table, the kids to talk to. Some kind of normality. What was Gidney’s normality?
Mind you, he wondered, what was anyone’s normality in here? Including his own? Most of their working weeks consisted of looking at porn on seized computers. And the vast majority of it was not your average titillating-but-cosy Playboy centrefold stuff; it was middle-aged men with children as young as two years old. Something he would never, not in a trillion years, really comprehend. How did that stuff turn people on? How could people do that with innocent children? How could a forty-year-old man sodomize a small child? And then live with the knowledge of what he had done?
The answer, sadly, was too easily and too often.
He knew exactly what he would have done if he’d caught someone meddling with his children when they had been young. It would have involved a razor blade and a blowtorch.
There was a sudden jangle of weird electronic noises which was becoming irritatingly familiar to Rye. Gidney’s mobile phone. The geek removed an iPod earpiece and answered the phone in a flat tone, devoid of any emotion. ‘Oh hi,’ he said.
Rye knew roughly where Gidney lived – up off The Level, somewhere towards the racecourse, in a bedsit. It was an area of densely packed Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, originally built as artisan dwellings, now largely monopolized by students and young singles. What did the geek go home to – if and when he ever did go home? A tin of beans on a single hob? Another computer screen? The Guardian newspaper – which he always carried under his arm into work but never seemed to read – and a pile of techie magazines?
‘I need about another half-hour,’ Rye said to Tom Bryce. ‘You could wait, or would you like me to drop it back to you on my way home?’
‘Yes. I – I have the children – I need to get back. Thank you,’ Bryce said. ‘If you could drop it back I’d appreciate that.’
‘OK, I have your address. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ He checked his watch, wanting to make sure he left enough time to get home for the one television programme of the week he was addicted to, the motoring programme, Top Gear. Although it was some years since he had been a traffic cop he was still an unreconstructed petrol-head.
As he replaced the receiver, he saw Gidney, wearing his anorak and carrying his small rucksack, heading out of the door. No goodbye. God, he was always the same – no social graces at all!
It took Rye longer than he had planned to finish his examination, and he realized, just a little guiltily, that it was now over an hour and a half since he had spoken to Tom Bryce. He finally closed the man’s laptop and was about to stand up when the phone rang.
It was an operator from the call handling centre in a building at Malling House, the police headquarters, where non-emergency calls from the general public were handled. ‘Is that the High Tech Crime Unit?’ the operator said.
Rye took a deep breath, resisting the temptation to tell the man he had the wrong number. ‘Sergeant Rye speaking.’
‘I have a caller who’s complaining that someone is using his wireless internet connection without his permission.’
‘Oh perrrlease?’ Rye said, nearly exploding – he really didn’t have the time for this. ‘If he has a wireless internet connection, all he has to do is activate the encryption to protect it!’
‘Would you mind talking to him, sir?’ the operator said. ‘It’s the third call we’ve logged from him in the past month. He’s a bit agitated.’
Join the club, Rye thought. Reluctantly he said, ‘Put him on.’
Moments later he heard an elderly-sounding male voice, with a guttural Germanic accent. ‘Oh yes. Hello there, my name is Andreas Seiler. I am an engineer; I am retired now but I was building bridges.’ Then there was just the hiss of static. Rye waited a while.
Then to break the silence – and to see if the
man was still on the line – he said, ‘You are speaking to Sergeant Rye in the High Tech Crime Unit. How can I help you?’ I’m not hugely in need of a bridge, he was tempted to add.
‘Yes, thank you. Someone is stealing my internet.’
Rye looked at the clock on his computer screen. Twenty-five to seven. He just wanted to end this call and go home. And the operator might have mentioned the bloody man sounded as if he barely spoke English. ‘Stealing your internet. I’m not quite sure what you mean. Sir?’
‘I am downloading a blueprint from a colleague from my old company, for a bridge they are designing in Kuala Lumpur Harbour. Then my internet slows down so much that the blueprint does not download. This is happening before.’
‘I think you have a problem either with your internet service provider or with your computer, sir,’ Rye said. ‘You should start by contacting your ISP’s technical support.’
‘Well, I’ve done this, of course. And checked my computer. There are no problems. It is outside. I am thinking it is a man in a white van.’
Now Rye was just a little bit puzzled. And increasingly irritated by this bozo wasting his time. ‘A man in a white van slowing down your internet connection?’
‘Yah, that is right.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr . . .’ Rye glanced down at his notes. ‘Mr Seiler. I’m a little confused. Where exactly are you?’
‘I’m from Switzerland, but I am here working in Brighton.’
‘Whereabouts in Brighton, sir?’
‘Freshfield Road.’
‘OK.’ Rye knew that area well. An exceptionally wide street, on a hill, with two- and three-storey red-brick houses, many of the larger ones converted into flats. ‘Your internet connection – you’re on broadband?’
‘Broadband, yes.’
‘Do you have a wireless connection?’
‘You are meaning Airport? Wi-Fi?’