by Peter James
Business was booming, so much so that he had bought the next-door building and knocked through, creating a second dining area, which was tonight filled with Albanians, celebrating at a party he regularly hosted for his fellow countrymen who lived locally. Their national double-eagle flag hung above a banner sporting the emblem and the words ALBANIANS IN SUSSEX.
Godanci had come a long way since entering the UK twenty years earlier, fleeing the Kosovan war. After a spell working for the prison service and then the social services in the late 1990s, he spent three years in the kitchen of one of Brighton’s Italian restaurants, before having the courage to strike out on his own. Now, through his understanding of what people liked to eat – and the environment in which they felt comfortable and pampered – he had not only expanded this restaurant, but had recently acquired a second premises in nearby Southwick, where business was also booming. As he emerged from the kitchen carrying a massive pizza for a group of youngsters celebrating a birthday, he noticed a familiar figure striding purposefully into the restaurant.
In her late forties, with cropped and gelled fair hair, she was dressed in a short-sleeve black T-shirt and dungarees and had a tattoo on her left arm of an elderly lady’s face ringed with flowers. A round metal badge, on which was the double-headed eagle symbol and the legend ALBANIANS IN SUSSEX, was pinned to her T-shirt.
Godanci delivered the dish then hurried over to the woman, Constable Nikki Denero, who was the liaison officer between the force and the Sussex Albanian community. For many years this community had shunned the police. Coming from a corrupt dictatorship with brutal, equally corrupt police, many Albanians found it impossible to believe that police in any other country could be decent, caring people. Accordingly, they never turned to the local police to handle any issues, preferring to handle disputes directly themselves.
The eye-opener for PC Denero had come five years ago, at 2 a.m. one morning, when an Albanian had been found impaled on railings, having fallen – or more likely been pushed – from his bedsit window five storeys above. First on the scene, she had stayed with the man, who was miraculously still just alive, all the way to hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. She had then been confronted by a wall of silence over his death.
That had been the start of her personal mission to break down the mistrust of the police and the bad name this gave Albanians in the local community, and she had made huge strides with many of them – much of it due to the support and help of Enver Godanci.
‘Përshëndetje!’ she said.
‘Nikki, good to see you! You’ve come for the Albanian evening?’
‘Actually, no, Enver. Could we talk in private?’ the officer said.
‘Sure.’
He led her through the kitchen into the tiny rest room behind it, where there was a table and four chairs, with a wall-mounted television. ‘Drink?’
‘I’m good,’ she said.
‘So?’
Looking worried, the Constable said, ‘We have a very serious situation. A fourteen-year-old boy has been kidnapped today – taken from the Amex during the match. His best friend, apparently, is called Aleksander Dervishi. He’s the son of Jorgji Dervishi.’
Godanci’s cheerful countenance fell away, and she saw the flash of concern.
‘Jorgji Dervishi?’
‘You know him, Enver?’
‘Of course. Everyone in the Albanian community knows him.’
‘A bad man, right?’
He looked around nervously, as if scared they might be overheard. ‘Very.’
‘What do you know about him?’
He shrugged. ‘My friends – we keep well away. He deals in everything – girls, drugs, you name it. He screws around with people’s heads. You arrive to see him early, he tells you that you are late. If you arrive late he tells you you’re too early. He offers money-lending at crazy interest rates. He is not the kind of guy I want to do business with – nor my friends.’
‘I need your help urgently, Enver. Is there any way you could find out very discreetly if any of the Albanians you have here tonight, for the party, have had any dealings – or know anyone who has – with a Brighton IFA called Kipp Brown? But it’s really important this is kept low-key.’
He looked at her. ‘Trust Kipp? That guy from the ads who promises he can get you a cheap mortgage or car finance?’
‘That’s him.’
‘I’ll ask around.’
‘Thanks, Enver. Tell them they’re not going to be in any kind of trouble, I just need to know.’
He looked hard at her. ‘Yeah, OK, I trust you.’
‘Tell any of them they can trust me, too.’
‘What exactly is your interest in Jorgji Dervishi?’ he asked.
‘I can’t tell you exactly – take a guess.’
He shook his head and looked at her quizzically. ‘You want me to tell all my Albanian friends to trust you? But you don’t trust me? How is that right?’
45
Saturday 12 August
20.30–21.30
Adrian Morris was doing a check of the stadium, as the crowds slowly dispersed from the bars. His mobile phone rang. It was the same male voice with the Eastern European accent as before.
‘Mr Morris, you will have learned by now that there was no detonator in the camera device. Please do not think this was an oversight, it was deliberate. I have no intention of killing and maiming hundreds of innocent people – that is a decision I leave to you.’
‘Who the hell are you?’ Morris said, calmly but angrily.
‘Just listen to me very carefully. Now you understand we are capable of making and delivering a viable device to your stadium, perhaps next time you will take me more seriously. I will be back in touch – you have many home games this season. Goodbye, Mr Morris.’
The call ended.
46
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
Kipp Brown liked quoting to his friends something the head of design at Porsche, back in the 1960s, had once said: ‘The essence of a great car is that each time you get in and sit behind the wheel, it must make you feel it is your birthday.’ And, normally, that was just how Kipp Brown felt. Normally. Normally, he loved this car. The driver’s seat that hugged him. The smell of leather. The cockpit, with the red needles on the speedometer and rev counter. The blatter of the expensive, finely tuned engine and the feeling of the precision of its engineering. The adrenaline rush when he pressed the accelerator and felt the surge of the car in the small of his back and the pit of his stomach.
But not now. Not tonight as he drove fast along the narrow, twisting road, the lights of oncoming cars momentarily blinding him, then flashing past. He was feeling numb, enveloped in an aura of evil darkness. His soul was heavy.
Please be OK, Mungo.
Oh God, please.
Tall grass and hedgerows sped past either side of him in the beam of the headlights, the needle of his speedometer jigging between 60 and 90 mph, the engine whining behind him. He braked and slowed as he took the final right turn and accelerated up the hill, cresting it and entering the almost-deserted car park. Several cars were parked outside the red-brick structure of the Devil’s Dyke Hotel.
He pulled into a bay, switched off the ignition and sat, looking around in the darkness, feeling nervous as hell. The door of the hotel opened and a tarty-looking blonde came out, unsteady on her high heels, holding the hand of a thuggish man with a shaven head, wearing cut-off jeans and a wife-beater sleeveless vest. They made their way over to a pickup truck and got in. After a few seconds the engine started and the vehicle drove off.
He opened his door and got out, then stood, listening to the fading roar of the engine. The night air was chilly and dewy. He looked carefully around but could see no sign of anyone else. Slowly, and nervously, he made his way across the wet grass towards the crumbling brick structure he knew so well from his school days. As did almost every kid who grew up in Brighton.
During the Second Worl
d War the British military built a series of strategic machine-gun posts along elevated positions across the whole of the south of England. If they failed to down the German fighter planes and bombers on their way in, they would try again with their ack-ack guns to get them on the way back.
Decades later, with the guns long removed, these brick pillboxes were great places for kids to explore – and for playing Cowboys and Indians or any other kind of game. This one up here on the Dyke, with its dark, dank interior, often littered with cowpats, had always held a sense of excitement and mystery for him – and history.
As he reached it, he looked around again. There was a tinkle of laughter behind him. Four more people had emerged from the hotel, holding glasses and sparking up cigarettes. He heard a shrill cackle of laughter.
Laughing at him?
He watched them. There was another shrill laugh. Then, as he entered through the hole in the wall which passed for a door, he smelled the familiar rank stench of dung, urine and lichen. He pulled out his phone, about to switch on the torch app, when a sharp ping-ping right behind him made him jump.
He spun round in shock, expecting to see someone. Instead, he saw a ghostly green light, at eye-level. The light was emitted by a small mobile phone taped to the wall. On the display was a poorly lit close-up photograph of Mungo. Grey duct tape was wound round his face, below his nostrils. His eyes were wide open in fear. Darkness surrounded him, but Kipp could just make out a shape of what looked like his topknot. He could have been in a cave, a cellar, a closet.
A sudden ping from the phone startled him.
A text.
Good man. You are being sensible coming alone. Take this phone home. We will use it for the next instruxxion on how to save Mungo’s life. Do not text back. Do not speak to the police, unless you want directions to Mungo’s corpse.
With shaking hands, Kipp removed the phone and the tape and, ignoring what he was told, tapped out a text back.
I will pay whatever money you want, I promise. Just tell me how and where to send it. Please do not hurt my son.
He tried to send it, but nothing happened. It was blocked.
He tried again. Then again.
It would not send.
He waited for several minutes, then pocketed the tape and the phone, and stepped back out of the structure, looking around fearfully into the darkness. Was someone out there, watching him?
Where?
He studied the few vehicles in the car park. No sign of a figure or movement in any of them. Was someone out in the darkness with night-vision binoculars?
He walked slowly back to the car park, his shoes sodden from the long, wet grass, then stood beside his Porsche, looking around before unlocking it. When he finally climbed in, he sat and waited. Five minutes. Ten. He tried sending the text again, without success.
He drove home slowly, thinking. Thinking. Again, a spelling error. The next instruxxion.
Who had sent it? Who had taken his son?
Had he made a big mistake contacting the police? Were they watching his house, not fooled by the fridge delivery? He put the phone down on the passenger seat, glancing at it repeatedly as he drove home, waiting for it to light up and ping with another text. But it stayed dark and silent.
Stacey opened the front door before he had even reached it. Her eyes were red and hollow, her face gaunt, as if she had lost several stone in weight in the past hour. Her breath reeked of booze. ‘What? What news?’
He showed her the phone, with the text and the photograph of Mungo. When she saw that she collapsed, sobbing, into his arms.
‘We’ll get him back safely, babes, I promise you.’
She continued sobbing uncontrollably.
He steered her through into the living room. The television was on, showing a recording of The Crown from earlier that evening. On the coffee table in front of the sofa was a wine glass, and a nearly empty bottle of white wine. He sat her down and put the glass in her hand, then went off in search of the two detectives, down in the basement.
Branson studied the photograph of Mungo. His younger colleague, Jack, produced an elaborate scanner, which he placed right against the phone. Then he tapped some keys on the device. ‘Sending the image for enhancement to Digital Forensics,’ he said. ‘Let’s see if we get any clues from it.’
Within half an hour, another text came in.
47
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
It was almost dark now outside the windows of the Digital Forensics suite. But neither Jason Quigley, Dan Salter, Shaun Robbins nor Aiden Gilbert noticed. They were all focused on the image that the Acting Detective Sergeant had just sent through.
The image of a teenage boy with terror in his eyes and grey duct tape across his mouth. Surrounded by darkness.
The team dressed casually in here. Despite the endless shocks from the frequently grim and often brutal images of child pornography that they all had to look at regularly in this job, they did their best to keep the atmosphere as cheerful as they could. Quigley, in a polo shirt, jeans and sneakers, tapped his keyboard, starting the process of enhancing the image, whilst trying to stop it turning grainy. He was using a development of software created originally by NASA for the first moon landing in 1969.
The four men watched as the background slowly lightened. Mungo Brown was seated on the floor, leaning against a bare, flint wall. Quigley tapped more keys and suddenly the image zoomed in. First on the boy’s frightened eyes. Then the duct tape across his mouth. Down his torso, his hands out of sight behind his back. Restrained by something.
Then there was a close-up of a wall socket.
‘This could be of interest,’ Quigley said. ‘Anyone spot it?’
They all shook their heads.
He went in closer, and now the socket became very clearly visible. It looked old-fashioned, yellowed, with three round pinholes, one smaller than the other two. ‘Who’s the eldest here?’
‘Probably me,’ Aiden Gilbert said. ‘I’m fifty-two.’
‘When did you last plug anything into a round-pin socket, Aiden?’
‘Never.’
Jason Quigley nodded, with a self-satisfied grin. ‘My point exactly! You aren’t going to see one in any house in the UK that’s been modernized in the last forty years.’
‘So, this socket predates that, Jason?’ Dan Salter quizzed.
‘It sodding predates Noah’s Ark! There’s got to be a clue here.’
‘That we’re looking for a derelict property?’ Gilbert said.
‘Smack on the money, boss!’
Daniel Salter’s phone rang. It was his contact at the phone company EE.
‘Hi, Joe,’ he said. ‘You have? Brilliant!’ He wrote down the details. ‘Well done, mate!’
48
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
Shortly before 10 p.m. Roy Grace, shirtsleeves rolled up and a mug of coffee beside him, was sitting at his workstation in the Intel suite, updating his Policy Book and looking once more at the latest information that had come in from Digital Forensics. He had already given the action to two analysts, following the information, to search for derelict properties within a twenty-mile radius, although he felt that was a slender hope.
The mood in the room was purposeful but sombre. Everyone was concerned for the missing boy, and on top of this was the sense of disappointment that Brighton and Hove Albion had lost, 2–0, in the football. Not that there would have been any noticeable jubilation in this room had they won. The intensity of concentration was so strong that the outside world, unless it materially affected their investigation, was for now irrelevant.
A key person they needed to speak to was Mungo Brown’s school friend, Aleksander Dervishi, the friend his father had seen him talking to shortly before he had disappeared. They had spoken to Aleksander’s mother, Mirlinda, a couple of times. The first time she told them he hadn’t returned from the football yet, but she wasn’t worried. He’d tol
d her he was going to another school friend’s house in Brighton after the game, to work on a video for a YouTube project for school, and their chauffeur would collect him when he was ready. The second time she was spoken to, by DC Boutwood, she was sounding anxious, saying he wasn’t answering his phone.
As he made notes, Grace went through a mental checklist, trying to ensure he was not missing anything, as well as checking online through the National Crime Agency’s kidnap protocols. He repeatedly looked down at his phone, at the two texts Glenn Branson had forwarded to him, the first an hour ago, the second just moments ago.
Drive to the Devil’s Dyke, alone. Three hundred yards south of the Devil’s Dyke Hotel is a derelick Second World War pillbox. Instructions await you there. Go alone if you want to see your son again. We will be watching.
Good man. You are being sensible coming alone. Take this phone home. We will use it for the next instruxxion on how to save Mungo’s life. Do not text back. Do not speak to the police, unless you want directions to Mungo’s corpse.
Roy Grace stared also at the photograph of Mungo, in the darkness, with grey duct tape over his mouth. He could see the terror in his eyes. Poor kid. One of the worst nightmares for a child. Something from which the boy would never fully recover, because kidnap victims rarely did. After they – hopefully – found him, Mungo would be haunted by nightmares for the rest of his life and very possibly end up dependent on medication and in therapy. Let alone the traumatic impact on his family. That was one of the consequences of this ugly act that the perpetrators probably did not think or, more likely, care about. With most major crimes, it was rarely just the victim who suffered a life sentence of fear and instability.
He read through the texts again, once more clocking the two spelling errors, ‘instruxxion’ and ‘derelick’, and thinking about them. Someone dyslexic? He turned to DC Kevin Hall, sitting close to him. ‘Any word from Digital Forensics?’
‘Not so far, guv. But they’re looped in and on it with all the phone companies, and they’re carrying out cell-site analysis to try to locate the device that sent this, as well as checking if it had geo-mapping, which would give us the location where it was taken.’