Dead if You Don't

by Peter James

  66

  Sunday 13 August

  09.00–10.00

  A burning pain in his neck startled Mungo, his eyes heavy and feeling desperate for sleep, and he cried out, but made only a muffled noise.

  He heard the sound of waves.

  Blinking, he stared around. Shivering with cold, his wrists and his neck hurting, badly. Trying to gather his thoughts. For a moment, he thought he was having a nightmare, but then realized he was awake.

  Remembering now.

  Help. Help. Help me.

  He was shivering from the damp chill and his sodden jeans and shoes, and was perched, precariously, on the concrete ledge. The water had receded and he was no longer immersed from the waist down.

  He felt exhausted. He desperately wanted to shift his position, but remembered the wire noose, and was scared to risk moving too much and hanging himself.

  Shivering, he wished he had on something warmer than his thin hoodie.

  Water was trickling beneath him.

  He looked around, ahead, upwards. Above him was a domed brick ceiling. Like a tomb. A shaft of light came through a slit in the wall, reminding him of ones in medieval castles he had seen in Game of Thrones, where archers would stand and fire arrows through. He heard the roar of what sounded like the sea.

  Aleksander. Where are you?

  He tried to call out his friend’s name, but again his voice stayed trapped in his gullet. He could not open his lips.

  What was his friend’s game? He felt totally bewildered. Had Aleksander double-crossed him in some way? Why? What—?

  He was remembering the men in black, in balaclavas, entering the room in silence. One of them taping his mouth. The other restraining his hands behind him. The two of them carrying him out. Putting him in the boot of a car. The journey. Rolling around. The stink of petrol. He had lost track of time. Then they hauled him out. He could hear the sound of the sea. Breathed in fresh, salty air. He was carried a short distance. Into a partly submerged chamber or tunnel. Down steps. The dank smell of weed and rotting fish.

  The smell in his nostrils now.

  Looking around, he noticed slime covering the walls either side of him. And the ceiling. Tendrils of weed on the walls, all the way up almost to the roof. At high tide, this chamber would be completely flooded, he realized. He looked down at the ground below him, one moment covered in water, then just puddles remaining as it retreated. Saw a small, white, dead crab. Another roar of the sea and a small amount of water sluiced in, then retreated. The crab was moved a few inches.

  Tide going out. Is good. When tide come back in, is not so good.

  Panic-stricken, he wondered what the time was. Daylight. Was the tide going in or out? He tried turning his head to read the time on his watch, but the wire stopped him. He looked up at the ancient-looking brass hoop set into the ceiling above him, and the wire coming down from it, taut, to the noose round his neck. Behind him was the barnacle-encrusted cannon.

  ‘Gmmmh. Hlllpwwwwww!’ he shouted in frustration through the restraint over his mouth.

  Aleksander, you bastard, just what are you bloody doing?

  Thoughts strobed through his mind. Where was he? What was the time? Who had brought him here? Why? What was going on?

  He heard another sluicing sound of water. Heard it running along the floor beneath him. Saw the little dead crab shoot past him and then get beached as the water retreated. The tide must still be going out. Please. Was it low tide now? His mind went into overdrive, thinking about the geography classes at school which never interested him. Tides. There had been a whole class on tides just recently. The pull of the moon. Spring tides, neap tides, the planets’ effect on the tides. New moons and full moons gave the most extreme tides – the highest and lowest.

  The high-water mark was about three feet above him.

  It had been a full moon last night.

  Which meant the tide would be both at its lowest and highest.

  He stared up again at the high-water mark, shaking in terror.

  Then he heard the sound of a metal door opening and closing. Footsteps. Thank God! Aleksander finally coming back!

  A sudden bright beam of light dazzled him. A camera torch.

  The tape was torn from his mouth. But before he could speak a man in a balaclava pushed a water bottle between his lips. He drank greedily. It was jerked away and immediately replaced by a spoonful of muesli. He ate it, hungrily, then another, and another. Then drank more water.

  But as he said, ‘Pleesh – shwat shi—?’ fresh gaffer tape was stretched across his mouth.

  He yammered, desperate to get some response from the men. Pleading with his eyes. But there was nothing.

  He heard the footsteps fading away. The sound of a metal door opening then closing.

  Clang.

  A brief silence.

  Then the sound of a breaking wave.

  67

  Sunday 13 August

  10.00–11.00

  Kipp Brown sat in his den at his computer. He entered the codes for his client account and checked the balance. It was over £15 million. £15,758,002, precisely.

  The consequences of moving any of this to his own personal account were dire. Regardless of the moral justification, this was money entrusted to him by clients for investment purposes. Taking even one penny of it would be fraud. If discovered, he would be stripped of his licence and face a prison sentence. The idea of taking two and a half million was unthinkable.

  As was the idea of doing nothing to save his son.

  So long as he concealed the transactions, making it look like he was placing the money in securities of some kind, and then replaced it before anyone asked any questions, it would be OK, he’d get away with it. If any of his colleagues questioned the transactions he’d be able to explain them away. Just so long as he replaced the money quickly.

  And he could! He could replace that money easily, of course he could. All he would need would be a good week on the casino tables, on the horses and online. He could replace it and no one would be any the wiser.

  He logged out, feeling a bit more hopeful.

  68

  Sunday 13 August

  10.00–11.00

  At 10.15 a.m., Grace was back in the Intel suite and in a fractious mood after his face-off with Cassian Pewe. He dutifully checked on his terminal everything else that was going on in Surrey and Sussex, the counties for which he was responsible. Two other Major Crime investigations were in progress. One was the bomb at the Amex, being run by DCI Fitzherbert; the other was the death of a young woman who had died in the passport queue at Gatwick Airport, which was being run by DI Roissetter.

  Wanting an update on the Amex, he rang the incident room. Fitzherbert wasn’t available and he was put through to the deputy SIO running the bomb enquiry, Detective Inspector Jim Waldock. ‘What’s the latest, Jim?’ he asked.

  Waldock, who was in his early fifties, had recently surprised everyone in Major Crime by having a gastric band operation, dropping from a whopping twenty-four stone to just fourteen stone, seemingly overnight. Perhaps in panic over failing his annual ‘beep’ fitness test. With it, his energy levels had increased massively.

  ‘I’ve just had a call from the Explosive Ordnance Division, Roy,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘The camera – a Sony FS7 – was a viable bomb in every aspect except one.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘How technical do you want to get?’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘The innards of the camera had been scooped out and replaced with a plastic explosive known as PETN – pentaerythritol tetranitrate – structurally very similar to nitroglycerin. Along with RDX, it’s apparently the main ingredient of Semtex. There was a kilo of the stuff inside the camera, packed with nails and ball bearings. It’s one of the most powerful explosives known. It detonates at 8,000 metres a second. If it had gone off it would have killed two or three hundred people in the immediate surrounding area, and wounded countless more.’


  ‘Shit,’ Grace said.

  ‘And you were heroic enough to run out with it!’

  ‘I might not have done if I’d known what was in it! So why didn’t it go off?’

  ‘Because, they say, there was a timer on it but no detonator to set it off.’

  ‘No detonator?’

  ‘None. A totally viable device, made by someone who clearly knew what they were doing, but no detonator.’

  ‘What’s that about?’

  ‘Good question, Roy,’ Waldock said.

  ‘They made an extortion demand, then planted a bomb that would not explode. Why?’

  ‘Perhaps to show they could, if they wanted, plant a viable device?’

  ‘Meaning we could expect another bomb threat in the future – and this one for real?’

  ‘Very possibly.’

  ‘What clues do we have about the caller’s ID, Jim?’

  ‘Other than speaking in heavily accented English and using different burners for each call, nothing so far, Roy. We’ve sent voice samples for analysis.’

  Grace thanked him, then focused back on the latest briefing he was holding for his exhausted team, several of whom, like him, had been there all night. They had been joined by Forensic Podiatrist Haydn Kelly and by a PC from the Scotland Yard Super Recognizer Unit, Jonathan Jackson. On the monitor behind him was the ransom demand text.

  The price for your son has just gone up. We will now require £2.5 million value in Bitcoins. We will be in touch with details where to pay this. Don’t be stupid and go looking for Mungo. If you succeed in finding him without having paid, all you will have is a corpse. Sorry to text so late. You will soon receive payment instrucions. Have a nice rest of night!

  ‘Someone ought to give whoever sent that a spelling lesson,’ Norman Potting said, then mimicked a lisp. ‘Instrucions? Hello?’

  There were a few grins.

  ‘Maybe there’s a clue in that, Norman,’ Grace said, in no mood for humour.

  ‘A dyslexic?’ ventured DS Kevin Taylor.

  ‘Or someone for whom English is not their first language?’ countered Kevin Hall.

  ‘Perhaps Albanian?’ DS Exton suggested.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Grace replied. Then he said, ‘OK, I have two hypotheses.’ He pointed at the screen behind him. ‘The first is that this is a pile of shit. The second is that it’s real.’

  DS Scarlett Riley, his replacement for Tanja Cale who had transferred to Professional Standards, said, ‘Boss, do you really think it’s a hoax – something about the Albanian community, from our past experience, makes me think not.’

  Despite his tiredness, Grace was thinking very clearly. Events had taken a turn that made him believe that whilst they had established earlier it had been some kind of a stupid prank between kids, the kidnap had suddenly become real. His first task now was to motivate his team, get them out of the hoax mindset and get them refocused.

  ‘I’m with you, Scarlett,’ he replied. ‘I think this is now real and we are going to treat it as such. I don’t know what’s going on, nor who is behind this, whether Dervishi or someone else completely, but my further hypothesis is that at some point during the night the situation changed dramatically – perhaps someone seeing an opportunity here. Possibly Jorgji Dervishi himself. Or a former employee of his.’ He turned to DC Hall. ‘Kevin, I’m giving you the action of ring-fencing Dervishi’s house – I want round-the-clock surveillance on him and I’ve put in a request for a tap on his phones.’

  He next addressed DCs Emma-Jane Boutwood and Velvet Wilde. ‘EJ and Velvet, I want you to revisit all the CCTV footage from the Amex and see if you can pick out Mungo Brown. He has to be on it somewhere. Haydn and Jonathan will join you. Make sure you include the footage from the body-worn cameras of all police officers at the match.’

  Then he addressed his two analysts, Giles Powell and Louise Soper. ‘Because of Dervishi and the IMEI code on the phone Kipp Brown picked up being linked to an Albanian, I’m making a further hypothesis that this demand has come from someone, or some group, within the Albanian community. We know the Albanian criminal gangs are highly organized and professional – in addition to being ruthless. This is a massive ransom demand. From what I’ve been able to ascertain so far – and from Surrey and Sussex’s past experience in professional kidnaps – the gangs would never use just one vehicle, but use a second as back-up. They wouldn’t want to risk blowing everything with a puncture or a breakdown. I want you to do convoy analysis. We have a good starting point, the house between Beddingham and Newhaven where Aleksander took us. I’m giving you the action of checking all ANPR cameras in that vicinity, then using the onion-ring principle, starting from the middle and working out, spreading your search. See if you can identify a pair of cars moving together through different locations.’

  The recent direct-entry recruit DI Donald Dull – who had already gained the nickname of Spreadsheet Man – raised a hand. ‘Sir, I could perhaps help with the analysis and preparation of a spreadsheet.’

  ‘That would be very helpful, Donald,’ Grace said. He stared up at the enlarged photograph of the boy that Mungo’s father had given him. A cheerful, good-looking young man with a mop of fair hair and a cheeky grin.

  I don’t know what mess you’ve got yourself into, Mungo, but I’ll get you out of it, somehow, he promised.

  Somehow.

  What worried him was dealing with the Albanian criminals, who used brutality to send messages to the community. In recent years there had been plenty of very public displays of violence by Albanian gangsters. Killing a teenage boy, if they did not get what they wanted, would be their way of sending just such a message about being taken seriously.

  He looked up again at Mungo Brown’s photograph.

  We will now require £2.5 million.

  He looked back down at his notes. Checking he was missing nothing.

  Most kidnaps were resolved within hours. But the longer they went on, he knew from grim experience, although he shared this with no one, the less chance they would have of finding the victim still alive.

  69

  Sunday 13 August

  10.00–11.00

  Shortly after 10 a.m., Sharon Sampson shouted goodbye to her husband, who was somewhere upstairs, and stepped out of the front door of their house on Shoreham Beach to take two of their dogs, working cocker spaniels Cider and Becks, for a walk – or, more accurately, for the dogs to take her. The boisterous Becks, still a puppy, yanked hard on the lead, ignoring his owner’s shrill commands – ‘Heel! Heel, Becks, heel!’ – while Cider was better behaved, and proud of it.

  Struggling to keep upright in the blustery wind, and to hang on to Becks until she reached the place where it was safe to let them free without any risk of them running out onto a road, she hung on to the leads, yanking Becks’s and shouting, futilely. They traversed the grass verge above the pebble beach until they reached the end of the street at the parking area for the Shoreham Redoubt, more colloquially known to locals as Shoreham Fort.

  Constructed in the 1850s to defend the harbour against an anticipated invasion by Napoleon III, it had been capable of housing a garrison of thirty-eight soldiers. The intention was to provide a rota manning the six massive cannon and the rifle stations sited behind a long, low brick wall behind a ditch. There was a network of tunnels beneath, along which soldiers could move, unseen and protected from enemy fire, giving a clear line of sight across the pebbles to the sea and to any vessel attempting to enter the port.

  The invasion never happened, the fort was abandoned and for nearly a century and a half Mother Nature steadily reclaimed the remote, windswept and desolate site, until 2003, when it became the passion of local historian Gary Baines to restore it, with a grant from English Heritage, and the support of volunteers.

  Sharon Sampson knelt to unclip the leads. To her left beyond a row of picnic benches was the River Adur, and the picturesque shore-front of Shoreham Village on the far side. To her right was a long, crumbling, b
uttressed flint and brick wall, with dunes and a shingle beach beyond running down to the English Channel. A green, corrugated-iron structure, erected during the Second World War, housed a small museum of the fort’s history, which was manned sporadically, when funds allowed. And equally, when time allowed, the volunteers attempted to shore up the fort walls against the constant battering from the salty winds fresh off the English Channel only yards away, and from regular vandalism by local youths well aware that the police rarely came along here on their patrols.

  As she walked on, the dogs racing happily ahead now, Becks bouncing around, Sharon’s pulse suddenly began to race, also. Ahead of her was the café, an attractive white clapboard hut with the sign FOOD FOR FORT and a mural that always made her smile of two seated Victorian police constables. When it was open it sold ice creams, sandwiches and soft drinks.

  But today something was different about it. Something wrong. She quickened her pace and as she grew closer she could see spray-paint graffiti above the mural. In large writing were the words Pigs = Filth and Mick Likes Big Tits.

  Sharon considered it her civic duty to phone in every fresh incident of vandalism she encountered here. It angered her that such an important part of Sussex’s history was so poorly protected. Glancing around to see if there was any other graffiti that had appeared since yesterday, something quite different caught her eagle eye.

  She frowned at the steel door at the entrance to one of the six brick chambers that housed the cannon. She had been taken down there once, by Gary Baines, but you could only go at low tide as much of the chamber was now below sea level. It was on the schedule of restoration projects, but this particular gun emplacement was a very long way down the list of priorities.

  Something was odd about the door. Different. Definitely. She took a step towards it. Before retiring to spend more time showing her dogs, she had worked as a continuity expert on film and television sets. Her brain was programmed – she had no idea how or why – to register anomalies, and it was definitely registering one now. But what?