He gave a dinky little wave. ‘Bye for now!’
The screen went blank.
100
Sunday 21 December
There was an enormous sense of relief at the second of the day’s briefings, in the conference room of Sussex House, that the female police officer, Louise Masters, and Logan Somerville were safe. But with the knowledge of the terrible suffering Dr Crisp had inflicted on his three former school colleagues, before murdering them, and the fact that he was still at large, the atmosphere was subdued and focused.
Earlier that afternoon both Logan Somerville, accompanied by some of her family, and Louise Masters, had visited the Incident Room at Sussex House to meet the team that had been working on the investigation, and to thank them personally for their efforts. Grace was pleased to see that Logan seemed to be coping well with the trauma of her ordeal.
A new whiteboard had been added to the row behind Roy Grace, on which were two photographs. One was of Logan Somerville imprisoned in the box in Crisp’s cellar, the other showed a close-up of the branded words on her thigh, about two inches across and half an inch high.
U R DEAD
Several new faces were gathered in the crammed conference room, including the senior surveillance officer, Pete Darby, and the diminutive but extremely tough POLSA Sergeant Lorna Dennison-Wilkins, who was in charge of the search of Crisp’s house and the caravan.
‘Into tunnelling passages, is he?’ Norman Potting said. ‘If I get my hands on him first, he’s going to find those words branded up his own back passage.’
There was a titter of laughter and even Roy Grace smiled, glad to see Potting had regained some of his former, if terrible, humour. His watch said 6.30 p.m. but out of habit he checked it against the wall clock, and then against the one on his phone. He stifled a yawn. Earlier in the day, after the morning press conference, he had gone into the Chief Superintendent’s large, empty office, phoned Cleo to update her, then kicked off his shoes, loosened his shirt and tie and slept for two hours on his boss’s sofa.
Although he had showered and freshened up in the Major Incident suite washroom, and used the change of clothing he kept in his locker, he still felt grungy and his eyes were raw, as if they had been rubbed with sandpaper. But he did not care. The adrenaline was pumping again. He felt the scent of the chase – accompanied by a growing darkness of despair.
The Surveillance Team had not seen anyone leave either Crisp’s own residence nor the derelict house next door. Yet Crisp had gone into Brighton, abducted Louise Masters and brought her back. How?
And where the hell was he now? No one had seen him leave either premises. Yet every available search officer in Sussex and Surrey had been drafted in, spending the day going through both properties inch by inch. If Crisp was there, wherever he was hiding, they would have found him.
He looked down at his notes. ‘As you all know from this morning’s briefing, following our rescue of Logan Somerville and PC Louise Masters, we made a number of significant discoveries at the Tongdean Villas residence of Dr Edward Crisp, and the derelict property next door,’ he said. ‘Financial work is being done on Crisp, but we are restricted by it being a weekend. However, paperwork found in a filing cabinet indicates that he owned the derelict property via a Liechtenstein company. We don’t know at this stage whether that was for tax reasons or to ensure he was never connected to the place. We believe at some point during the early evening of yesterday, 20 December, he fled – possibly leaving the country, although we have no intelligence on any other links Crisp may have had abroad. We have requested all UK forces to do searches for any homicides that match the Crisp profile, and, of course, we’ve asked Europol to take a special look at Liechtenstein.’
He sipped his coffee. ‘Tanja Cale and Guy Batchelor went to see Crisp’s wife earlier today, and she is going to be interviewed formally tomorrow. But according to their initial report she had suffered years of bullying abuse at his hands, and had finally left because she couldn’t take it any more.’ He looked at DS Cale. ‘Do you have anything to add at this stage, Tanja?’
‘No, sir. What do we currently have on him?’ she asked.
‘I’ve done a spreadsheet,’ DC Kevin Taylor said, proudly. ‘You might find this interesting, chief.’
Grace signalled him to go ahead.
‘Well, we know as a teenager that Crisp was present at the death of a young woman who bears a similarity to all his subsequent victims – despite the age difference – and to his estranged wife. The detective on that case was convinced Crisp was responsible for killing her but could never prove it. Denise Patterson, possibly his next victim, worked evenings part-time behind the bar in a pub he frequented whilst a student at Sussex University. Katy Westerham was a Sussex University student. All of them had a similar hairstyle. Then he married a young woman with a similar appearance and hairstyle, and the killings appear to have stopped.’
‘Good work, Kevin,’ Grace said. ‘Do your spreadsheets give us any indication where Crisp might be now?’
‘I’m afraid not, no, not so far. I’m working on another, on his credit-card spend. But I can’t predict from that where he might be now.’
Grace nodded. ‘OK, so far the search of his house has discovered three different false passports and large quantities of cash in five different foreign currencies.’
‘So he could be anywhere in the world?’ Jon Exton said.
‘Yes,’ Grace said, despondently.
‘Anywhere in the world, under any name,’ Exton continued.
‘But why would he have left so much money and these passports behind?’ Grace asked. Then suddenly he had a thought. Norman Potting’s crude quip had jogged something in his tired mind. He’d struggled to take it all in at the time, because it was so surreal. Now some of Crisp’s words came back to him.
They called me Mole, because they didn’t like my interest in tunnels and potholing.
He turned to the POLSA. ‘Lorna, has your team checked every drain and manhole on the two properties and the grounds?’
‘Yes, guv. We brought in a sludge sucker. All the drains have been emptied and their contents taken to be analysed. We lowered remote cameras down every manhole, and we checked under the cover of his swimming pool. We also brought in Ground Penetrating Radar and checked both gardens and the cellars of both houses.’
He thanked her and then stood up and turned to the whiteboard on which were pinned the aerial maps taken earlier from the helicopter. The boundaries of both properties had been outlined in thick red marker pen. ‘Somehow, Crisp left one or the other of these properties, abducted PC Masters, brought her back whilst she was unconscious, imprisoned her, then left again – and no one saw him. Maybe we should rename him Harry Houdini.’ He turned, grimly. ‘I can accept that maybe the Surveillance Team missed him exiting or arriving back once – but not three times.’
‘There’s no way we missed him even once, boss,’ Pete Darby assured him.
Grace turned back to the aerial map, and pointed. ‘Both of these properties are accessed from Tongdean Villas. There are twenty properties to the east and the immediate neighbour on that side has four guard dogs – there’s little likelihood Crisp could have used that as an exit. There are two properties to the west and then Tongdean Road. There are further substantial properties to the north of the two homes, directly beyond the perimeter walls, all protected with CCTV, which we understand has shown nothing. Crisp had to have entered and exited via Tongdean Villas. There is no other—’
Then he hesitated, as he noticed something for the first time, and wondered how he hadn’t seen it before. Diagonally north-west of Crisp’s house was an isolated building, a large shed or a double garage. The access to it was from Tongdean Road, a steep hill. There was a driveway to it, bounded on both sides by brick walls.
The garage was about a hundred yards from the derelict house.
Was it possible, he wondered?
Anything with Crisp seemed possible. He tur
ned back to his team. ‘I’m terminating this briefing early.’ He pointed to Glenn Branson, Guy Batchelor, Lorna Dennison-Wilkins, and four others. ‘Come to MIR-1 right away.’
101
Sunday 21 December
An hour and a half later, with the search warrant signed, Grace, Branson and Guy Batchelor went through the tall wooden gates that screened the building off from the street, walked swiftly through light drizzle and up the neglected-looking driveway between the brick walls, following a dog handler and Inspector Anthony Martin, plus seven members of the Local Support Team in body armour and riot helmets. A short distance in front of them, lit by the beam of their torches, was a lichen-covered breeze-block garage with two up-and-over doors that looked in newer condition than the rest of the dilapidated construction itself.
One LST officer held the bosher, another a crowbar. Grace signalled everyone to wait, then telling Branson to take the right-hand side, he ran down the left, looking for a window or another way in – or out. They met around the rear, where there was a discarded, rusted bicycle that clearly had not been used in years, and was almost covered in fallen leaves. But there was no door.
Grace hurried back round to the front and gave a nod to Martin. The Inspector issued an instruction. Instantly one LST officer stepped forward and tried the handle of the right-hand door, but it did not budge. He moved aside and his colleague swung the battering ram. There was a loud metallic clang and the door shook but did not give. Then the officer with the crowbar tried to jam it between the side of the door and the wall, without success.
‘Shit,’ he gasped from the exertion. ‘These things are usually as flimsy as hell.’ Two others grabbed sections of the crowbar and all three of them tried, grunting. Then with a metallic screech it went in behind the edge. They levered the gap wider, inch by inch, for some moments, the door protesting. Then suddenly something gave, with a sound like a shot, and the door partially detached from its mountings and dropped down.
They trooped in through the gap, with Roy Grace right behind them, then stopped. One of them found the light switch and turned it on. Two vehicles sat there, side by side on the concrete screed. The old Volvo and a Skoda estate in the turquoise and white Brighton Streamline taxi livery. Behind them was a Lambretta motor scooter, with a helmet on the pillion.
And now he knew for sure he was in the right place. The old Volvo estate that had been sighted by witnesses the night that Logan Somerville had been abducted. A Skoda taxi had been seen on CCTV following Ashleigh Stanford’s bicycle.
As the LST officers swarmed around the vehicles, opening the doors and boot and bonnet and checking underneath, Grace touched the bonnets of both vehicles. They were stone cold. He gazed around the interior of the building, at the bare walls, looking for any clues. There was a solitary metal shelf on which sat a tyre pump and gauge, a set of jump leads and a trickle charger. Further along the garage was an ancient chest freezer, covered in dust and unplugged.
He knelt down and looked first underneath the Volvo, then the Skoda for himself. Nothing. Then a voice called out, urgently, ‘Sir! Take a look here!’
One of the female LST officers stood by the freezer, holding its lid up. He hurried round, along the side of the Volvo and looked inside.
And felt a surge of excitement.
102
Sunday 21 December
The exterior of the freezer was just a shell. All the baskets had been removed, and there was just a sheet of rusty tin covering the base. Roy Grace leaned over into the freezer and eased his fingers under one edge of the rusty tin, then prised it up, instantly feeling a blast of dank, cold air.
It rose from a deep shaft the freezer was concealing.
He switched on his torch and pointed the beam down; but all it revealed, flaring into the darkness, was the raw earth shaft and metal rungs disappearing into the void of darkness. He couldn’t see the bottom, or guess how deep it was.
He stood back to enable Glenn Branson and Guy Batchelor to take a look, warning them to be careful. They both stepped forward.
‘Bloody hell!’ Batchelor said. ‘Bloody hell! The man’s a total lunatic.’
‘Unfortunately a very clever one,’ Grace replied.
‘What is it?’ Branson said.
‘Crisp’s escape route. No surprise the Surveillance Team missed him.’
‘We’ll go down and check it, sir,’ the LST inspector said.
Grace shook his head and, swallowing his fear of heights, said, ‘I’m going first, this is personal.’ He gripped his torch between his teeth, climbed into the freezer and lowered his right foot to the first rung.
‘Keep three limbs on the rungs at all times, sir,’ the inspector cautioned. ‘We’ll follow you.’
Grace began to descend, followed by an LST officer, Gregory Martis, then Glenn Branson. The others remained at the top, waiting for instructions. He descended as fast as he dared, doing what the inspector advised – which was what he had learned himself some years ago on a training course in working at heights. He kept on going for what seemed an eternity, his arms getting increasingly tired.
‘Any sign of the bottom, boss?’ Guy Batchelor called down.
‘Not yet.’
‘Ever see that movie, Journey to the Centre of the Earth?’ shouted Glenn Branson.
‘I think we’re going to come out in sodding Australia!’ Grace retorted. As he did so his right foot touched something solid. The bottom. He lowered his left foot, checking, warily, with the torch. He was standing on a concrete floor in a confined space. He turned, shining the beam around, and saw that directly behind him was a tunnel, with primitive timber supports the size and thickness of railway sleepers, lower than the one that ran from the wine cellar in Crisp’s house to where the three limbless men had been kept. But instead of hessian matting, the floor of this one was concrete.
Grace called up to the others at the top. ‘We’re on the bottom and entering a small tunnel.’
He knelt and began crawling along it, followed by the other two. After several moments he saw faint streaks of light ahead. They grew slightly brighter the further along he went. He looked dubiously at the railway sleeper struts supporting the tunnel. One on the left had a big split, and another on the right was a good six inches shorter. Some of the cross-beams looked like several wooden planks nailed together. These beams, every few yards, were all that was holding up the roof. The whole damned tunnel, like the last one, did not look professionally made, and it very definitely did not inspire confidence.
This was crazy, he should not be down here, he knew. And he should not have let anyone follow him. But if there was a chance of finding Crisp down here, however remote, that was all he cared about at this moment.
A short distance along the tunnel, he came to a trapdoor in the floor, with light shining faintly around the edges. Perspiring heavily, he turned and signalled the two officers to be quiet. Then he began raising the wooden trapdoor, inch by inch, peering down.
And felt an adrenaline rush.
Just below him, at the bottom of a free-standing steel ladder, was a small, well-lit room, hollowed out of the earth. It looked cosily furnished with cushions, a television, fridge, microwave oven and a sink. Reclining on the cushions, with a glass tumbler in his hand, dressed in a shirt, cardigan, jeans and loafers, and wearing a set of large headphones, was Dr Edward Crisp. He was nodding cheerfully, waving his free hand as if conducting the orchestra, and looking oblivious to all else. He was clearly not expecting visitors.
Grace’s nerves were jangling. He could scarcely believe his eyes, or his luck. Got you! he thought. Got you, you bastard, you murdering little shit. He lowered the door silently, with shaking hands. Was this Crisp’s cunning plan, to make them believe he had escaped, but meanwhile to lie doggo, waiting until the heat was over, before quietly slipping away?
Years back, when he had been a probationary uniformed constable before joining the CID, he attended break-ins frequently. He learned it was a common
ploy of burglars, who had fled from premises they had just targeted, to then stroll nonchalantly back towards them, thinking that the police would be looking for someone running in the opposite direction. Was that why Crisp was still here, he wondered, thinking the police would never suspect, having searched the properties thoroughly, that he was holed up beneath their very noses?
Was there an entrance to another tunnel he might try to escape along the moment they descended the ladder? Let him try, he thought, he wouldn’t have a hope in hell against his trained team.
Talking urgently, as quietly as he could, he informed Glenn Branson and Gregory Martis what he had seen.
‘I’ll go down first, sir,’ Martis said.
Grace shook his head. ‘No, I want that pleasure.’
‘I’ve got body armour – he may be armed.’