Dead Man''s Time (Ds Roy Grace 9)

  ‘Warm? You’re the advance guard of the fucking Ice Age. I suggest you stop wasting public money having freebies at football matches, and get back to catching villains.’

  69

  It was 10.15 p.m. by the time Roy Grace drove out through the congested exit of the Amex stadium car park. There was an accident ahead on the A27, which partially blocked the road, and it took him another forty minutes to finally arrive back at Cleo’s house.

  He punched in the entry code to the gate and entered the cobbled courtyard, looking at the house next door, which was in darkness, curious about the new neighbours. Seemed like they went to bed early, which was good news. In a small, gated community like this, the biggest nightmare would be someone who stayed up late playing loud music.

  He let himself in, happily unaware of the figure behind net curtains in a dark, upstairs room next door, cigarette burning in the ashtray beside his tumbler of whisky, who was watching him with hate burning in his eyes.

  All was quiet in Cleo’s house, with a few dimmed lights on downstairs. Humphrey bounded over and he patted and hushed the dog. Then he removed his shoes, tiptoed across the lounge to say hi to Marlon, and went into the kitchen. Cleo had left him a plate of cod, mash and beans wrapped in clingfilm and handwritten instructions on how long to microwave it, followed by a row of kisses.

  He followed the instructions, gave Humphrey a biscuit, poured himself a glass of rosé wine from a bottle in the fridge, gave Humphrey a second biscuit, then carried his meal on a tray back into the living room, and sat on the sofa, which the dog insisted on sharing with him. He promised Humphrey he’d take him out for a walk later, switched on the television, the sound low, to see if there was anything he wanted to watch. Then he noticed the handcuffs.

  They lay on the far right-hand side of the low coffee table, pinning down a handwritten note, which said:

  For sometime soon . . . XXXXXXXXXXX

  He grinned, then channel-surfed through to Sky News, and watched the banner headlines. When he had finished eating he picked up another of the books on the history of the White Hand Gang and turned to the index, looking for one name in particular. There were six different page references against it. He began to read through them; the further he read, the more he became convinced.

  Then he was distracted by Humphrey suddenly sitting up and giving a single bark.

  He turned to see Cleo standing at the bottom of the stairs, holding several silk ties in her hand and wearing nothing but a very horny smile.

  70

  ‘What you smiling about, old timer?’ Glenn Branson asked.

  It was 8.25 a.m. Grace looked up from his desk, holding a half-eaten Trudie’s bacon sarnie in his hand. ‘The report from yesterday’s progress at the trial. It’s looking good for us.’

  Branson swivelled around the chair in front of his desk, and sat astride it, placing his hands on the back. He looked like he had just bitten into a lemon. During the arrest of Carl Venner, Branson had been shot, the bullet, fortunately, missing all of his internal organs. ‘Glad to hear it. Would hate to think it went any other way.’

  ‘How’s you?’

  ‘Full on damage limitation. Ari did a great job of poisoning my kids against me. I’ve got an unexpected ally in her sister, who turns out to be a great Ari fan – not.’

  ‘What about the boyfriend?’

  ‘He had the nerve to come round for some of his possessions – and to give me verbal for changing the locks! Told him if he wanted his stuff, he’d better start looking in the local skips. Can you believe it, the kids wanted to see him?’

  ‘I can believe it, matey. Of course they’re missing him. Remember, their lives have been turned totally upside down. For the past year or so he’s been their father figure. You’re going to have to take it one step at a time. One day your kids will realize what a decent guy you are.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Sure. Give ’em thirty years or so to adjust – you know – to the fact you left their CDs all over the floor and regularly forgot to feed their goldfish.’

  ‘I don’t know why I like you,’ Branson said. ‘You know, sometimes you remind me of that bastard Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.’

  ‘Didn’t he handcuff his girlfriend to his bed?’

  ‘In the opening scene. Or maybe she handcuffed him.’

  Grace smiled.

  ‘That’s a very dirty grin.’

  Grace nodded, memories of last night still vivid in his mind. ‘Yeah. Very!’

  ‘Cleo’s a bit kinky, is she?’

  Grace gave him a shrug. ‘You’re a movie buff. You like Woody Allen, don’t you?’

  ‘Not everything, but some, yeah.’

  ‘So don’t you remember, in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex?’

  Branson frowned. Then he nodded. ‘Yeah! Someone asked him if sex was dirty. And he replied, “Only if it’s done right!”’

  Grace smiled, then tried to prise a bit of bacon free from between two of his teeth.

  Branson lowered his chin onto his folded arms. ‘Ari and me, we used to do it right, once. It goes; that’s the bummer. You have kids, and it goes.’ He raised a warning finger. ‘Don’t let it go – despite your age!’

  ‘Thanks for the advice!’ Grace looked at his watch. ‘Okay, two minutes,’ he said.

  71

  Grace began the 8.30 a.m. briefing by launching straight into the hypothesis that had been churning in his mind all night. ‘Okay, team, Gavin Daly’s son Lucas went to Marbella and, according to the airline’s passenger list, he was accompanied by a character named Augustine Krasniki. Our Interpol sources tell us Krasniki has a string of convictions for assault back in his native Albania. In one of them, he gouged both eyeballs out of a male victim who had defaulted on a debt, leaving him permanently blind. But thanks to our bleeding heart liberal European laws, we have to let this monster in and give him money and free health treatment. Our same Interpol sources tell us that two people were found dead on Sunday morning – Anthony Macario and Kenneth Barnes.’ He looked at Annalise Vineer. ‘You have some information about them, I believe?’

  The indexer looked down at her notes. ‘Yes, sir. Both of them were employed as yacht crew by Eamonn Pollock, on his boat Contented, which is permanently berthed in Puerto Banus. We know that Pollock has a record for handling stolen watches and clocks. Macario has a string of previous convictions for aggravated burglary, as well as one, seventeen years ago in Manchester, for Class A drug dealing. Ken Barnes is two years free of his licence for ten years for armed robbery on a building society branch in Worthing. He took a hostage – a twenty-year-old woman – who he threatened to kill. I don’t think you could find a nicer couple of guys, sir.’

  There was a titter of laughter.

  ‘So no great loss then,’ Norman Potting said.

  Ignoring the DS, Grace thanked Vineer, then looked down at the notes that his assistant had prepared for this meeting. ‘I think Lucas Daly went to Marbella to attempt to recover his father’s highly valuable Patek Philippe watch. The time of death of these two people found in Puerto Banus harbour coincides with his visit.’

  Norman Potting raised his hand. ‘Chief, if they’d gone to try to recover the watch, and anything else, what would be the gain in killing those two?’

  ‘My thoughts precisely, Norman,’ Grace said. ‘The chance to check the boat out, perhaps? Hopefully you’ll find out more than Interpol have given us so far when you get out there.’

  ‘Why didn’t they just tie the two of them up, in that case?’ Guy Batchelor said.

  ‘Because Krasniki’s a psycho?’ Potting said. ‘We’ve just heard about his past form.’

  Grace was thinking about the bruises he had seen on Sarah Courteney’s chest, when her dressing gown had slipped open, and then again in Dupont’s bedroom. ‘We know that Daly was arrested two years ago for assaulting his wife, Sarah Courteney, and then released when she wouldn’t press charges. He’s a thug. Could b
e that he and Krasniki went too far.’ He held up a sheaf of printed papers. ‘I have the post-mortem report on the two men from the Marbella Coroner. It makes interesting reading.’

  He paused, the bit of bacon stuck in his teeth nagging him, but he couldn’t be seen picking his teeth in front of his team, so did his best to ignore it. ‘Summarizing the report,’ he said, ‘Macario had two broken bones in his foot, and bruising right across it, consistent with it being crushed. He also had severe bruising across the back of his neck, and Barnes had severe bruising around the front of his. Not injuries I would consider consistent with capsizing a small rubber dinghy.’

  ‘So if Daly and Krasniki killed these two, chief,’ Guy Batchelor said, ‘was it because they had got the information they wanted, or because they hadn’t?’

  ‘This kind of killing tends to be done to silence people,’ Grace said.

  ‘Silence them from what, in this instance?’ Batchelor asked.

  It was a good question. The bacon in his teeth was really distracting him now, and Grace desperately wanted a toothpick. He tried to dislodge it with his tongue, for the twentieth time, without success. ‘Possibly to stop them from telling their paymaster who was on his trail. Possibly because, as Norman so succinctly put it, they’re both a couple of psychos and Daly lost his temper with them over his aunt’s death.’

  ‘Should we bring old man Daly in for questioning?’ Glenn Branson asked.

  Grace shook his head. ‘I think Daly could be ahead of us. We should put surveillance on his son. I’ve a feeling he’ll lead us to the watch. If we find the watch, I suspect we’ll find who’s really behind this.’

  ‘Eamonn Pollock?’ Branson quizzed.

  ‘I’d put him as our prime suspect,’ Roy Grace replied. ‘We have Gareth Dupont in custody and we’ll have to try to make him talk. In his early interviews he gave his first account, and we developed a strategy for the interviews this morning. His detention has been extended. It’s a shame we’re not allowed to offer murder suspects a deal on sentence. But I think our interview strategy might be to offer him another kind of deal.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’ Potting said.

  ‘Let’s recap on what we know about Lucas Daly. This is just my hypothesis – nothing proven yet. The knocker-boy, Ricky Moore, who Lucas Daly considers responsible for his aunt’s robbery and murder, ends up in Intensive Care with severe burns. Lucas Daly goes to Marbella, and lo and behold, Macario and Barnes end up as floaters.’ He gave Norman Potting a quizzical stare.

  ‘I’m on your bus, chief.’

  ‘Now, with Lucas Daly’s record for vengeance, if I was shagging his wife, I think I’d want to keep it quiet. In particular, I wouldn’t like hubby to find out. Would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Murder suspects don’t get bail. If we can bang Dupont up in the remand wing, and let him know we’re going to tell Lucas Daly about him and his wife, I think he’d talk. You don’t have many places to hide in prison. But we have one problem to overcome. We haven’t got enough to charge Dupont yet; we need something that puts him at the house. He lied to us when we went to see him at his office, and we asked him what car he drove. He told us he owned a Golf GTI. There was a black Porsche parked outside his block of flats. The registration plate gave the owner as a leasing company in London.’ He turned to Bella Moy. ‘Which is why your search did not reveal anything. I’ve been in touch with the company, and they tell me it’s leased to one Gareth Dupont. At his address. But that still doesn’t put Dupont in Aileen McWhirter’s house.’ He looked around at his team.

  ‘We have his dab on a bronze statuette and the call made from his mobile phone, and now we know he drives a black Porsche, similar to one spotted at the scene exactly a week before the attack,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  Grace shook his head. ‘The triangulation report on his mobile phone isn’t helpful enough. He could have been anywhere within a quarter-of-a-mile radius of the house at the time of his call. It’s too circumstantial. On the fingerprint, his brief would argue that he might have handled the statuette at Lester Stork’s house. It’s not going to fly – we need something more.’

  ‘Sir,’ asked researcher Jacqueline Twamley, ‘do we know any more about Lester Stork’s death?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard from one of the Coroner’s Officers, Philip Keay, that it was natural causes – a heart attack.’

  ‘Probably the excitement of handling all that stolen loot!’ Norman Potting said.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit too cosy that Dupont was shagging Lucas Daly’s wife, chief?’ Potting said. ‘Doesn’t that smack of collusion?’

  ‘I can’t rule out that she’s involved and we need to talk to her. I’m pretty sure Daly beats her, so she’d have a motive. But when Guy and I talked to her, I got the feeling she was genuinely fond of the old woman.’ He looked at the DS.

  Batchelor nodded. ‘I agree, chief. I’d say it’s more likely she was unwittingly targeted by Dupont.’ He shrugged. ‘Unhappy marriage. Dupont’s a fit guy, a charmer. More likely they met somewhere and he pulled. I’m going to talk to her and see what she says.’

  The youngest and newest member of his team, DC Jack Alexander, raised his hand. ‘I’ve found out something regarding that Porsche, sir.’

  ‘What’s that, Jack?’

  The young DC told him. When he had finished, the whole atmosphere in the room had changed.

  ‘That, young man,’ Roy Grace said, ‘is pure bloody genius!’

  72

  Like most interview rooms used by Sussex Police, the one at the Custody Suite immediately behind Sussex House had a fitted CCTV camera, perched high up on a wall. By watching and filming arrested suspects, police officers were able to study their body language and generally assess their credibility.

  It was a square, featureless room containing a fixed metal table and hard chairs; its internal window overlooked the central area, dominated by a futuristic-looking circular pod made of a dark-green marble-like material that always made Roy Grace think must have been designed by a Star Trek fan.

  The suspect, unshaven, his shirt crumpled, was seated on one side of the table next to his solicitor, Leighton Lloyd, even more sharply dressed than when he was at the football. A wiry man with close-cropped hair, he had a formidable track record at getting Brighton’s villains off the hook.

  Grace had chosen his team carefully. Bella Moy and Guy Batchelor were both trained cognitive suspect interviewers. Batchelor, he hoped, would put Gareth Dupont on edge, from having previously visited him at his office. Bella would seem softer, perhaps Dupont’s friend, and he clearly had an eye for the ladies.

  A narrow, windowless viewing room, where Grace sat in front of a monitor, adjoined the interview room. It comprised two mismatched chairs, which were pulled up against a work surface, and on which sat the squat metal housing of the video recording machinery and the colour monitor in front of him, giving a dreary colour picture of the proceedings.

  Grace wrinkled his nose. It permanently smelled in here as if someone with rancid feet had been eating a kebab. He checked the bin beneath the work surface, but it was empty. The interview started. Guy Batchelor asked Gareth Dupont to recount his movements on the night of Tuesday, 21 August.

  ‘Yeah, right, I was at home, working.’

  ‘Working?’

  ‘Doing my telesales.’

  ‘You do that over the phone or in person?’

  ‘By phone.’

  ‘But you drove to Withdean Road, to speak to Mrs Aileen McWhirter, right?’

  Dupont shook his head. ‘Nah, I was at home in the Marina.’

  ‘Have you heard of mobile phone triangulation, Mr Dupont?’

  Leighton Lloyd raised a hand. ‘Excuse me, what does this have to do with my client?’

  ‘Give me a moment and you’ll understand, sir,’ Batchelor said. Then he addressed Dupont. ‘Does it mean anything?’

  Dupont shook his head.

  ‘I’ll
explain. All mobile phones, whether switched on or on standby, communicate with base stations. These are sited on masts all over the country. They’re programmed to check in every fifteen minutes. You know, a bit like E.T. phoning home. From the base station receiving the signal, we can tell which are the two other nearest, and triangulate from there. You are on the O2 network, right?’

  Dupont nodded reluctantly.

  ‘There are two O2 base stations along Dyke Road Avenue, a short distance from Withdean Road,’ the DS continued. ‘There is a third close to the A23, a quarter of a mile to the north of Withdean Road. The report from O2 shows that you were in the vicinity of Withdean Road around 7 to 7.30 p.m. on the night of Tuesday, August the 21st. So you weren’t at home. Would you like to explain that?’

  Dupont thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘Ah, yeah, I’d gone round to see a lady friend. Quite close to Withdean Road.’

  ‘So she could vouch for you?’

  He looked awkward suddenly, and Grace realized why. He was referring to Sarah Courteney. He made a note to check later whether she had been on air that evening.

  The solicitor was busy looking at a map on his phone. ‘I have the area in front of me,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t cover only Withdean Road – it’s a dense residential area, a whole network of streets.’

  ‘Gareth,’ Bella Moy said, with a pleasant smile. ‘One thing that we don’t quite understand is how your fingerprint came to be on a bronze statuette owned by Mrs McWhirter?’

  Dupont reddened. ‘I dabble a bit in antiques,’ he said. ‘One of my sidelines. It’s hard to make a living out of telesales, these days.’ His body language, thought Grace, looked increasingly flustered. Then he frowned. ‘Like – where was the – the bronze?’

  ‘You tell us,’ Guy Batchelor said.

  Leighton Lloyd placed a hand on his client’s arm. ‘No comment,’ he instructed him.

  ‘Yeah, no comment,’ Dupont said. Then he turned and whispered something to his solicitor that none of them could hear. Leighton Lloyd shook his head firmly.