by Peter James
37
Saturday 12 August
19.30–20.30
Twenty minutes after Scotland and Roberts departed, taking Mungo’s laptop with them, as well as a clone of Kipp Brown’s phone, the two detectives installed themselves safely out of sight in the windowless basement cinema room of the Browns’ house. They were setting up what, they assured Kipp Brown, was a secure encrypted comms system and intercept on all his phones.
In the kitchen, fighting tears and wondering what he would say to Stacey when she arrived home any moment now, Kipp boiled the kettle to make the two detectives the coffees he’d offered. As he was about to pour, Otto barked.
‘What is it, boy?’
He heard the front door open.
For an instant, his heart jumped and he ran into the hall, desperately hoping it might be Mungo.
It was Stacey.
He followed the dog along the hallway to her.
Her blonde hair, which she used to wear long and flowing, framing her pretty face, had recently been chopped into a severe, razored style, with a sweeping fringe lying to one side. It made her look quite butch, despite the very feminine tennis whites she was wearing.
‘Hi,’ she said robotically. He leaned forward to kiss her on the lips, but as she always did now, she turned her face, offering him only a cheek.
‘How was the tournament?’
‘Fine. Nicky and I won.’
‘Great! Well done.’
There was no reaction back.
He smiled, awkwardly. ‘Remind me who Nicky is?’
‘You’ve met her several times – Nicky Felix – she runs a company called Box2. That green dress I wore to Ladies Day at Ascot came from her.’
‘Ah, right. That was lovely.’
‘She’s doing really well – selling around the globe. Might be a possible client for you.’
‘Yep, good thought.’
‘So, it’s just you and me and Mungo tonight,’ she said. ‘A nice romantic evening on our own,’ she added, with a hint of sarcasm. ‘How was the football – who won?’
He stared at her dumbly.
‘Hello? The football – the big game?’
He didn’t know who had won, he realized. He’d been so preoccupied since leaving the stadium, he hadn’t thought to check.
She waved her hand in front of his face. ‘Hello? Are you OK?’
‘I – I—’ he faltered.
‘Did Brighton win – the Seagulls?’
He stared back in a daze, helpless.
She peered at him more closely. ‘Your eyes are red – have you been crying?’
He looked down at the floor, lost for words. His brain was racing but couldn’t get traction. He didn’t know what to say to her.
The colour began draining from her face. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’ Then, suspiciously, ‘Is it Mungo? Has something happened to him? Where is he?’
It took him a while before he could look her in the eye. ‘I don’t know, Stace,’ he said.
‘What? What do you mean?’ She stared at him, bewildered. ‘What do you mean you don’t know where your son is? Where is he, Kipp, where the hell is he?’
‘When I last saw him, he was at the stadium, talking to a school friend, I think.’
‘You think? Which school friend was he talking to?’
‘Aleksander.’
‘So where is he now?’
‘I—’
‘Where is he?’ She was trembling, her voice quavering. ‘Where is he? He’s all right, please, he’s all right, isn’t he?’
He wasn’t sure what to say. What could he say? ‘I – don’t know, babe.’
‘You don’t know?’
He nodded, lamely.
‘What do you mean? You took him to the football – you’ve lost him?’ She looked totally panic-stricken, her eyes darting around wildly as if she didn’t know which way to look or turn.
‘I bumped into Barry Carden and was chatting to him. I thought Mungo was right by me with his friend. Remember Barry?’
‘That’s just so typical of you. All our time together, whenever you’ve seen someone you might do business with, you forget me, ignore your family, and home in on them. Am I right? So you’ve just left him there – left him at the stadium somewhere and come home?’
Then suddenly Stacey looked past him, startled, as if she had seen a ghost, and he heard Detective Inspector Glenn Branson’s voice.
‘Could you show me where the fuse box is, sir?’
‘Excuse me, who are you?’ Stacey rounded on him, confused. ‘You’re not our normal electrician.’
Kipp Brown took a deep breath, then told her everything.
38
Saturday 12 August
19.30–20.30
On the A23, two miles north of Brighton, Mike Roberts, driving the PORTSLADE DOMESTIC APPLIANCES lorry as fast as he dared safely, saw strobing blue lights in his mirror and heard a siren. He pulled into a lay-by a short distance ahead, putting on his hazard flashers. A police motorcycle pulled up in front of him.
The rider dismounted and hurried up to the passenger door. Iain Scotland passed Mungo Brown’s laptop out of the window. The rider ran back to his machine, put the computer in his pannier and raced off into the distance.
Fifteen minutes later, ignoring the building’s slow lift, the police motorcyclist, holding the boy’s laptop and the clone of his father’s phone, ran up to the second floor of Haywards Heath police station. He passed the hall of fame – or notoriety – of convicted villains, on the wall, and rang the buzzer at the entrance to Digital Forensics – as the High Tech Crime Unit was now named.
Aiden Gilbert, a stocky, energetic civilian with short dark hair turning to grey, and dressed in a blue T-shirt, jeans and trainers, greeted him. He led him in and through to the large, open-plan office, to his desk where he signed a receipt, for chain-of-evidence purposes, for the laptop and the clone. With him were three colleagues, similarly casually dressed, Daniel Salter, Jason Quigley and Shaun Robbins, a retired police officer who had returned as a civilian to this unit.
Quigley immediately plugged a USB into a port on Mungo’s Mac, while Salter set to work on the phone, to identify the source of the text. The motorcyclist left and the unit members waited patiently for the ten minutes that it took for the contents of the computer to upload. They had been instructed to look, urgently, for all communications Mungo Brown had had in the past four weeks, on email and on social media.
When the download was complete, Quigley plugged the USB into his own system and immediately, with the others peering over his shoulder, began studying his large Apple Mac screen.
This unit was one of the very few in Sussex Police to have escaped the current round of budget cuts, and had recently benefitted from extra funding. They had also benefitted from the Proceeds of Crime Act, under which any computer seized from someone convicted of a drugs or pornography offence was ordered by the courts to be confiscated and destroyed – or used for crime-fighting purposes. Digital Forensics had gained several high-powered Macs and large screens from this, including the one he was now using.
Mungo Brown’s mail began to appear. Seconds later they were up to date.
The most recent of them, sent at 2.40 p.m. this afternoon, was addressed to Aleksander Dervishi.
See u at the game. It’s gonna be lit!
39
Saturday 12 August
19.30–20.30
In Roy and Cleo’s isolated cottage close to the village of Henfield, a few miles north of Brighton, Bruno, home from the match having been dropped off by Peter Allen, was upstairs in his room, pounding away on his drums. To Cleo’s relief he had the acoustic pads on and the sound was tolerable.
Noah, now thirteen months old, was sleeping in his cot in his room. Cleo, who ran the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, was on-call this weekend. She was sitting on the sofa with their nanny, Kaitlynn Defilice, watching an episode of Celebrity Point
less, both of them munching their way through a gigantic bag of popcorn. Roy had called, sounding stressed, telling her he didn’t know when he would be home and not to expect him back until very late, if at all tonight. She knew the score when there was any major crime investigation, and even more so when it was the kidnap of a youngster.
She felt for the family of the teenager who had been taken, and one of the many things she admired about Roy was just how much he cared for all the victims and their families. In all probability, he would be working through the night and crash out for a few hours in his office. She was in for a long night, too, as she had been notified by a Coroner’s Officer that body parts had been found at a recycling depot at Shoreham Harbour and a Home Office pathologist was in attendance at the site. At some point during the evening she would be getting a phone call requesting her to attend to recover the parts to the mortuary. But with luck that would be much later, and she’d get to the end of the show, at least.
But just a few minutes later her work mobile phone rang.
‘Cleo Morey,’ she answered, doing a good job of masking her reluctance.
Although married to Roy Grace for nearly a year now, she had retained her maiden name, to avoid confusion at work.
‘Hi, Cleo.’ It was another Coroner’s Officer she had worked with on a number of occasions, Michelle Websdale, in mid-Sussex. ‘I wonder if you could help us out? They’re in the middle of a refurb at Crawley Mortuary, with half the fridges out of action and workmen in tomorrow, and we’ve a suspicious sudden death on our hands – a young woman who collapsed in the passport queue at Gatwick – both Coroners have agreed for the body to come to Brighton. The police have requested a Home Office pathologist to do the PM. Dr Theobald is the on-call one and he’s available tomorrow morning.’
Shit – actually, double-shit, Cleo thought. Ordinarily the victim of a sudden death at a weekend would be recovered to the mortuary and placed in a fridge to await a routine postmortem on Monday morning. But when it was suspicious, a Home Office PM would have to be carried out as soon as possible – as was the case now. A Home Office postmortem was a lengthy and more detailed process than a basic one, and Dr Frazer Theobald was the slowest and most pedantic of all of the pathologists – although to be fair to the man, the most thorough. It meant that she would be at the mortuary from 8 a.m. tomorrow and would be lucky to get home by mid-afternoon.
With Roy at work all tomorrow on the kidnap case, Noah and Bruno would be at home on their own with the nanny, when Cleo had planned to spend precious time with both of them. Because they were currently short-staffed at the mortuary, there was no one else she could call in. And she had no option but to agree, because Websdale had always been helpful to her.
‘Where is she, Michelle – in the medical centre?’
‘Yes – as she was brought there before she died, Dr Theobald doesn’t think there’s any forensic evidence to be taken from the scene, so he’s happy for her to be moved.’
Neither ambulance crews nor police officers would normally transport a dead body – their hands were full, round the clock, with the living. The onus of collecting the dead fell to the mortuary teams. Cleo, as the Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician for Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, was responsible for recovering bodies within the Brighton and Hove area – and occasionally beyond.
Sometimes, she found it a sad task. Entering a flat or a house where an elderly person had lived alone and lain dead for days – or even weeks – before the neighbours noticed something wrong. The post piling up. A horrible smell. Sometimes, the job could be gross and stomach-churning. Bodies washed up on the beach that had been partially eaten by fish and crustaceans. And on occasions, especially when it was young victims of road traffic collisions, it was heartbreaking. The one thing she always tried to do was to give every corpse some dignity. She treated all of them with respect, and when there was to be a viewing, took pride in doing their hair, applying make-up and trying to make them look as presentable as she could.
At least a sudden death at passport control would not be too stinky or visceral, she thought. Picking up the phone, she pressed the speed-dial button for her on-call colleague, Darren Wallace.
Despite the grim environment of the Brighton and Hove Mortuary, processing up to eight postmortems a day, Wallace, who had begun his working life as a butcher’s assistant, had retained an infectious enthusiasm for his job. ‘Hi, Cleo!’ he answered eagerly, as if he had been looking forward to her call. ‘What have we got?’
She told him and they arranged to meet at the mortuary in thirty minutes’ time, to drive the Coroner’s van to Gatwick for the recovery.
Cleo asked Kaitlynn to prepare a salad and take a lasagne from the freezer for Bruno, then got ready and hurried out to her car.
40
Saturday 12 August
20.30–21.30
With tears streaming down her face, her hands shaking, Stacey cut open a packet of digestive biscuits and tipped them onto a plate. Kipp checked through the freezer drawers to see what they had. The two detectives had told them they would remain in the house with them until Mungo had been safely returned, and they would appreciate some food.
Stacey, who knew the contents of the freezer better than her husband, who could never find anything either in there or the fridge, told him to move out of the way and unearthed a stack of pizzas, several fish pies and frozen vegetables, and four loaves of bread, dropping most of them on the floor in her distress. Along with the eggs they had in the kitchen, there was at least enough for a couple of days, although the tall guy looked like he needed to eat twice as much as anyone else.
Kipp carried a tray with two mugs of coffee and the plate of biscuits down to the basement, feeling even more gloomy than before. On top of everything else, he’d lost his large bet at the football, and Sandown Park had been a catastrophe, also. He’d got the first five winners, but the sixth had been soundly beaten, and the seventh had refused to leave the starting gate. He was down over twenty thousand pounds on the day. Twenty thousand he did not have.
He needed to win that, and much more, back urgently. A dark thought had been occurring to him for some time now, and it was becoming more tempting. All gamblers went through streaks. Just as surely as you knew a winning streak would turn into a losing one sooner or later, you also knew that a losing streak, so long as you could stay in the game, would turn back into a winning streak. He had sole control of his clients’ money. Currently, because of uncertainty in the stock markets, he kept several million pounds liquid, waiting for signs of an upturn or good opportunities. That’s what his highly paid team of analysts were there to do. Advise him when and where to place funds.
But only he could give the instructions to the bank to move those funds.
If he put any into his own account he would be breaking the law. But so long as he paid the money back and quickly, no one would ever have reason to notice. He could do it, he argued with himself, if he really had to. But the thought made him very nervous.
Back upstairs, Stacey had a large wine glass in her hand, already half empty. ‘I just can’t believe you let Mungo out of your sight. Talking to a bloody client. Do your clients mean more to you than your family?’
‘Stace, the Amex Stadium is one of the safest places on earth. Police everywhere, a million CCTV cameras. And no, my clients don’t mean more to me than my family. All through our marriage I’ve worked my butt off to give us a good lifestyle. Where do you think this house came from? Where did the Mercedes you always wanted come from?’
‘One of your rare gambling wins,’ she retorted, the barb striking home, painfully. And a bit too truthfully.
So much that she said these days stung him. He stared at the photograph of the two of them, next to the one of Mungo and Kayleigh, on the antique dresser behind her. They were leaning back against the terrace railing of a mountain café in Zermatt, Switzerland, with the Matterhorn rising out of a crystal-blue sky behind them. Both had their fancy sk
i jackets unzipped and were wearing dark glasses. Stacey, with her wild blonde curls, was grinning at the camera, her hand behind his neck, teasing his hair as she loved to do. No woman he’d ever met had turned him on like she did. And until Kayleigh’s death, he’d never had such a close mate as Stacey.
God, they had been so happy. Back then.
While Kayleigh was alive.
Until that dreadful morning of her birthday. She’d been so pleased with that hoverboard. He remembered the moment of panic on his daughter’s face as she had suddenly shot forward out of the park. Out into the road. The screech of brakes. The scream.
The silence.
Stacey had sought solace in booze ever since. She was high-maintenance. She’d told him her secret one day, soon after they’d married, that she’d been sexually abused by her father. The monster had abused not only her but all three of her sisters – and her brother. And her weak mother had been in denial throughout their childhood, desperately trying to cover everything up in an attempt to hold her train crash of a family together.
It had left Stacey deeply insecure. In need of proving something to herself – a sense of self-worth. At nineteen, she’d been a Mayfair Magazine nude centrefold, in an attempt at shocking her family and getting attention. She went from that to horses, taking up eventing; then to starting an escort business; and then she’d designed a range of handbags.
Kipp first met her soon after he had started to make serious money as an Independent Financial Advisor, when she’d set herself up in yet another business venture, this one finding homes in the Brighton area for the upwardly mobile. He’d registered as a client. She found him a house on the smart Barrowfield Estate – and by the time he’d exchanged contracts, they’d fallen in love and she’d agreed to move in with him.
But after their kids were born he realized, too late, where he had gone wrong. He’d thrown himself into expanding his business, at first failing to recognize Stacey’s postnatal depression after Kayleigh’s birth, and her need for attention. And boozing.