Ds Roy Grace 11 - You Are Dead

  Current regulations restricted the breaking of speed limits to emergencies only. In his view this was an emergency. He bullied his way out into the traffic, and drove as fast as he could towards Gilbart’s home.

  82

  Friday 19 December

  Logan Somerville was hyperventilating. ‘Help me, someone! Help me! Help me!’ she shouted, her voice becoming increasingly hoarse. She had been shouting since she had woken, some while earlier, in a terrible panic. She’d not heard a sound in hours – or maybe even days. She had totally lost track of time, and was ravenously hungry, and desperate for water. Her sugar levels were dropping and with that sensation came the shakes and paranoia.

  What if?

  So many bad possibilities sparked in her mind.

  What if her captor had died?

  Or been arrested?

  Or he had just decided to let her rot and die?

  She began working again on her bonds. On her arm restraints, on her leg restraints. But with no success, other than to feel the pain where her flesh had rubbed.

  She was not going to get out of here unless someone came to free her. And she did not want to die here, all alone.

  ‘Police. POLICE! Hello! HELP ME!’

  Oh, God, please someone help me.

  She saw a faint green glow.

  ‘Hello?’ she said, weakly. ‘Please, I need water, sugar. Please.’

  Then she heard his muffled voice. ‘I nearly had you out of here today! But it went a bit wrong. Don’t worry, I have someone else in mind. As soon as I bring her here, you’ll be free! Free as a bird.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she gasped.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  83

  Friday 19 December

  Ten minutes after leaving the Church Street car park, Roy Grace turned left up a steep hill opposite the Nuffield Hospital, and drove a short distance looking at the house numbers. It was 3.30 p.m. and already it was starting to get dark. Christmas lights sparkled in most of the downstairs windows, and two adjacent houses had garish light displays in their gardens. He pulled up outside No. 82. A small people carrier with a blue Disabled badge was parked on the driveway.

  He stepped up to the porch and rang the bell. Moments later he was ushered inside by Gilbart’s wife, Hilary, who was a tiny, sprightly lady nudging eighty, with a twinkling face and neat white hair. ‘I’m afraid he has trouble hearing as well as speaking, Detective Superintendent,’ she forewarned him.

  The house felt like a sauna, and there was a faint smell of roasting meat. Much of the tiny hall was taken up by a trophy cabinet filled with silver cups, and a team photograph of rugby players standing in their midst. ‘Ron’s rugby and golf trophies!’ she said proudly. ‘He played for the police rugby and golf teams for years – right up until his stroke, really.’

  A male voice called out, slurred and slightly aggressive. The words were just about decipherable. ‘Schlooo ish it? Warrer they want? Make shure they show shere identity.’

  ‘It’s the police officer, darling, the one who phoned a little while ago. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. The friend of David Rowland.’

  ‘Urr.’

  A few moments later, seated on a sofa in front of a blazing gas fire, feeling himself beginning to perspire, Grace was almost deafened by the television. On the wall behind it hung a framed Sussex Police Commendation. He watched the former Detective Inspector, in his recliner armchair, Zimmer frame beside it, grapple with the remote, struggling to mute the television which was showing a cricket match somewhere overseas. Gilbart was a large man, with massive shoulders and thinning grey hair on his liver-spotted head. He gave Grace an expression that could have been a smile or a leer. ‘Yurnknowd-d-d-david-rowla?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve known David for years,’ Grace said. ‘I was just admiring your trophies out in the hall – I’m President of the Sussex Police Rugby Team.’

  ‘I carplaynymore,’ he said, and looked so sad.

  Hilary Gilbart came back into the room with a cup of tea for Grace and a piece of shortbread in the saucer, then she sat on the sofa. ‘I’ll help translate,’ she said.

  Grace thanked her, then turned to the retired detective. ‘Ron,’ he said, ‘do the names Mandy White or Edward Denning ring a bell at all? Mandy’s body was found in Hove Lagoon in December 1976, when you were the Duty Inspector.’

  Staring straight ahead at the silent television, watching a bowler begin his run, Gilbart said, ‘Lord Denning. Bloodyyud j-j-judge.’

  ‘I don’t think Detective Superintendent Grace was referring to Lord Denning, my love,’ Hilary said. ‘It was Edward Denning he asked you about.’ She turned to Grace. ‘If you give me a few moments, I will get Ron’s scrapbook – I am sure there’s some information on that case in it.’

  Gilbart again stared at the screen. The ball was returned to the bowler by a fielder, and he walked away from the crease, pacing out his next run. After several moments, Grace was beginning to wonder if the old man had fallen asleep, when suddenly he spoke, quite vehemently, his voice raised.

  ‘Lil shit!’

  ‘Little shit?’ Grace prompted. ‘Edward Denning?’

  ‘Lil shit.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Couldvsave – couldvsave – her – gl– gl– gl–’

  ‘Could have saved the girl?’ his wife checked, coming back into the room. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say, my love?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Why didn’t he, Ron? Why didn’t he save her?’ Grace asked.

  Gilbart’s mouth dropped open, and he stared again at the cricket match, his head nodding for some moments. ‘Becar – becarl – becarl ye lilled her.’

  84

  Friday 19 December

  Roy Grace arrived back at Sussex House moments before the start of the 6.30 p.m. briefing. It was the day of their house move. Cleo and Noah would be in their new home by now; he so wished he was with them but he had no idea what time he would get there tonight. Not until very late for sure. He took his place in the conference room, made a quick note about his meeting with Ron Gilbart and what he had read in the scrapbook in his policy book, then looked through the minutes that his assistant had prepared.

  The door flew open and Norman Potting, looking a lot more animated than he had seen him in a while, rushed in. He stopped for an instant, staring around at the entire assembled team as if assessing whether it was appropriate for him to interrupt or not, then clearly decided it was.

  ‘Chief,’ he said. ‘I think I have something of interest!’

  ‘Well, we haven’t actually started yet, but go ahead, Norman,’ he said.

  ‘I went to see Dr Edward Crisp again this morning, as you requested. He’s a slippery bastard. Interviewing him is like trying to write on a wet egg. We know he appeared walking his dog at Hove Lagoon on the evening that the body of Denise Patterson was discovered by the workmen. I wasn’t happy with the explanation Dr Crisp gave me as to why he was there. He said this was his regular evening constitutional after work. He also told me that his daily routine was to walk his dog in the same area during his break, stopping at the Hove Deep Sea Anglers Club or the Big Beach Café for lunch.’

  Potting paused and pulled a crumpled sheet of paper from his inside pocket and glanced at it for some moments. Then he held it up, waving it around. ‘This is a triangulation report from his mobile phone company. Dr Crisp is quite correct when he talks about his lunchtime routine, because this backs it up. But he has lied about his evening routine. Every evening, regular as clockwork, he normally walks home from his office in Wilbury Road to Tongdean Villas, via Hove Park, according to this. On the night of Thursday, 11th December – the night Denise’s body was discovered – he suddenly varied his routine and went down to Hove Lagoon. I think we need to know why. One of the reasons you asked me to go and talk to him again was that he seemed overly interested in the progress of the investigation. He has contacted me seven times.’

  DS Jon Exton raised his ha
nd. ‘Could it be that on his lunchtime constitutional he saw the workmen drilling up the path, and returned out of simple curiosity?’

  ‘I don’t think any normal person would be curious about workmen digging up an old path, would they?’ Potting said. ‘But it might be a different matter if they saw their deposition site being excavated.’

  ‘So far we’ve had no useful information from any of the workmen we’ve located who laid that original path?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Norman spoke to the one who’s now living in Perth, Australia,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘He was on the original crew and claims he saw nothing.’

  ‘What’s his name?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Tony Scudder. I had a long chat with him over the phone. I don’t think he saw anything suspicious.’

  ‘Do we know anything about Scudder’s background?’

  ‘We’ve checked for any criminal record, but there’s nothing.’

  Grace stood up. ‘OK, now I have something potentially significant to report, myself.’ He relayed his findings in the library and his subsequent meeting with Ron Gilbart. ‘It wasn’t an easy session because the poor bugger struggles to speak. But we managed with the help of his wife. He told me about a case back in December 1976, when he was the duty DI at Hove. A teenage girl was found drowned in the Hove Lagoon. She’d been on a date that evening with the son of her mother’s employer, called Edward Denning. Her mother worked as a cleaning lady. According to the newspaper report, she’d fallen through the ice while trying to skate on the lagoon, which was frozen over during a freak cold spell. The Coroner’s verdict was accidental death, but Gilbart had not been happy with this, and had done some investigation of his own. He told me the couple, who were both under age, had been drinking heavily for much of the evening – rum and Cokes – at a pub close by, just off the seafront. Gilbart’s convinced Denning murdered the young girl. But he was never able to prove it.’

  ‘So Denning walked free?’ Jon Exton said.

  ‘He claimed she’d fallen in, and that he’d tried to save her. He’d flagged down a passing motorist yelling for help. There were no witnesses.’

  ‘What makes Gilbart feel that Denning murdered her?’ Guy Batchelor asked.

  Grace shrugged. ‘Copper’s nose. But there is something very significant for us.’ He smiled. ‘I found some cuttings on the case in an old scrapbook of Gilbart’s. Two years after the death of this girl, who was called Mandy White, Edward Denning’s parents divorced. No prizes for guessing the name of his mother’s second husband.’

  ‘Crisp?’ ventured Jack Alexander.

  ‘Bingo!’ Grace said.

  ‘Edward Denning – Edward Crisp?’ DS Exton said. ‘Shit!’

  ‘I’m not making any assumptions. But the more I learn about this doctor, the less comfortable I feel about him,’ Grace said. Looking first at Norman Potting then at Jon Exton, he said, ‘I’m giving you both an action. I want to know everything about Edward Crisp. His whole background, right back into his childhood. I want to know about all his relationships, his school friends, his teachers, everyone he’s ever dated, his wife, his kids and all his relatives, and anyone he’s known to associate with, professionally or socially. And, crucially, I want a list of every patient on his current list – and every patient he has ever had. OK?’

  Both detectives nodded.

  ‘Oh, and sir, it may be a long shot,’ Potting said, ‘but I’d like to send the piece of paper on which Crisp wrote down his phone number for fingerprint and DNA analysis.’

  ‘Good idea, Norman, send it off.’

  Then Tanja Cale raised her hand. ‘I don’t know if this is significant or not, sir,’ she said. ‘But I took part in the witness interview with Freya Northrop today. It came out that one week ago she registered as a patient with Dr Edward Crisp.’

  Grace felt like he’d been hit by a bolt of lightning. ‘What?’

  ‘She said she found him charming, but a bit weird.’

  There was a long silence, while Grace thought hard.

  ‘That could be highly significant,’ Batchelor said.

  Grace nodded, still thinking.

  Emma-Jane Boutwood raised a hand.

  ‘Yes, EJ?’ Grace said.

  ‘Sir, the outside enquiry team interviewed a lady who lives opposite Freya Northrop’s home. Apparently she’s the Neighbourhood Watch coordinator for her street. She called the Incident Room today after reading about the case in the Argus, to say she’d seen a man in a hi-viz jacket, carrying a clipboard, approaching Freya’s home around 11 a.m. last Sunday. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but she realized now, having read about the incident, it might be significant.’

  ‘Was she able to describe him?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Not in detail, unfortunately. She said his face was partly covered by a scarf and tweed cap. Then she got distracted by her young grandchild.’

  ‘Did she describe his build?’

  ‘He was quite slim, she said. Middle-aged, she estimated. She said he was white, clean-shaven and wearing glasses.’

  Which fitted Dr Crisp, Grace thought. He turned to the forensic podiatrist, Haydn Kelly, who was dressed as usual in a smart suit and flamboyant tie. It was expensive to keep him on the team on a daily basis, but right now costs were not an issue.

  ‘Haydn, have you made any progress with the footprint in the underground car park?’

  ‘Well, I got excited because I found one footprint in the garden of Freya Northrop’s house that looked at first to be an exact match, from the same brand of trainer. But without going into technical details, there are sufficient minor differences for me to have to discount it. I understand there have been a number of workmen at the house over the past weeks, so it could be any of a number of different people who left the print there.’

  ‘I don’t think we should exclude any footprints found in the garden, Haydn,’ Grace said. ‘We’ve no certainty the footprint found in the oil in the underground car park belongs to the offender – it’s pure speculation.’

  ‘Understood,’ Kelly said.

  ‘The shoe prints will become more interesting when we have a suspect in custody,’ Dave Green, the Crime Scene Manager added.

  Grace thanked him then turned to Branson. ‘Glenn, have you got a list of all the people who have been working there?’

  ‘I have, boss. The outside enquiry team has interviewed them all.’ He looked down at his notebook, and turned back a couple of pages. ‘Seven in total. Electricians, plumbers, painters, a plasterer and a carpenter. We’ve eliminated all of them.’

  ‘What about arresting Crisp and bringing him in for questioning, boss?’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘We’ve got enough on him, surely?’

  ‘No,’ Grace said. ‘He’s only just become a potential suspect and we need to do a lot more work, urgently, to ascertain whether he might be our killer.’ He took a moment to make a note in his policy book, then looked up. ‘There is a lot of circumstantial evidence against Crisp, Guy. But that’s all it is at the moment. Whoever the offender is, Crisp, Harrison Hunter, who’s not been traced, or someone else, he’s obviously a clever individual who’s evaded capture for many years. We need to be in a stronger position than we are now if and when we do decide to arrest Crisp. I also think we run a risk of moving in on him too quickly, because if we find nothing and have to release him, and he actually is our offender, it might scare him into going to ground – going dormant again – and then we could lose him for years, maybe perhaps forever. I think he’s more use to us free at the moment. Don’t forget, Logan is out there somewhere, hopefully alive. It needs to remain our top priority to find her.’

  Grace sipped his coffee, paused for a moment, then went on, ‘My hunch is this person doesn’t go in for anything spontaneous. He plans meticulously – Tony Balazs, who is not able to be here tonight, has the same view. I suspect the Brander watches his victims for weeks, if not months, before taking them. Balazs feels he has already chosen his next victim and is going to strik
e again soon, to make up for being foiled yesterday. He’s without question a potential danger to members of the public, and I’m going to request immediate twenty-four-hour surveillance on Crisp, predominantly because of his link to Freya Northrop.’

  Suddenly, the advice of the forensic psychologist, Tony Balazs, was ringing in his ears. Find ways to rile him. Goad him into making mistakes!

  He smiled as a totally unorthodox thought suddenly entered his mind. Could it work?

  Could it?

  It was dangerous as it could backfire, and he knew he had to clear it with the Crown Prosecution Service to cover his backside. If, as he desperately ?????, Logan Somerville was still alive – and they had very little time left to find her. Every single minute was precious.

  He turned to the Crime Scene Manager. ‘Dave, I urgently need footage of Dr Edward Crisp walking and a close-up photograph of him. Can you position a photographer near his home tomorrow morning? He normally walks the dog between 7 and 8 a.m. Make sure he’s not seen by Crisp. And make sure you get the necessary authorizations.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Roy Grace left the meeting and hurried back to his office, feeling a surge of hope for almost the first time since this enquiry had started. He had that tingling sensation he sometimes got when he felt a case turning in his favour, and they were starting to close in on a suspect. Tightening the net.

  Crisp.

  Dr Edward Crisp.

  But he was well aware that he mustn’t put all his eggs in one basket and forget Harrison Hunter. It was worrying him a lot that Hunter had still not been traced.

  He then thought back to last Thursday night at Hove Lagoon. Most members of the public reacted to dead bodies with shock. Crisp had seemed jolly about it and quite unaffected. But then again, doctors were different, and he had been a police surgeon. They were like coppers in having their coping mechanisms which gave them an indifference to death, and an ability to laugh at it, sometimes. The escape valve of all those who had to deal with death on a regular basis. Emergency service workers, medics. They all shared a gallows humour. Grace remembered attending a road traffic accident just outside Brighton, where a car had rolled into a field of sheep, and the driver lay dead in the wreckage, impaled by a fence post. A Traffic officer standing beside him had said, ‘Poor bugger, his wife only sent him out for a steak.’