Dead if You Don't

by Peter James

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Well, sir, you’re right, it is Albanian. He’s saying, Go fuck yourself.’

  87

  Sunday 13 August

  14.00–15.00

  Mungo was struggling to keep his balance. He had been standing for some minutes now, scared of the rapidly rising tide. Each time he moved, the wire noose again cut into his neck. The water was over the top of the plinth on which he had been sitting, and was now approaching his knees. With each suck on his legs as it withdrew, he had to fight harder to resist being pulled forward and unbalanced.

  He kept working on the bonds that held his wrists behind his back, the ligature rubbing more and more painfully with each attempt.

  Please. Please help me, someone.

  Someone would come soon, surely?

  For a while, bright sunlight had shone in through the slit in the wall, but now it was moving away. He could still just see it if he tilted as far back as he dared.

  Aleksander!

  He was parched, starving.

  There was a sudden deep, booming splash. He felt spots of water on his face. The water level had now gone over his knees for the first time.

  When were they coming back?

  He was shaking. Trying not to cry any more but, instead, to think. What could he do? He tugged again on the restraints round his wrists, trying to pick at the hard material again and again with his fingers, but it didn’t feel as if he was getting anywhere.

  What time was it?

  Mum. Dad.

  He hadn’t seen the dead crab in a long while, now. Just dark, restless water. Rising.

  Somewhere outside he suddenly heard a woman’s voice. It sounded like she was calling her dog.

  ‘HERE! HERE, BOY!’

  He tried to call out to her.

  ‘Mmmnnrrrmmmm.’

  ‘Good boy! GOOD BOY!’

  Then silence.

  It seemed only minutes later that the water reached his thighs.

  Help me.

  Help me.

  He shivered in terror.

  Please someone help me.

  88

  Sunday 13 August

  14.00–15.00

  Stacey looked at Kipp anxiously and expectantly as he came in through the front door. She was holding a small plastic bag in one hand and the dog lead in the other, quaking. The two detectives stood some distance behind her.

  ‘What happened? How did it go? Did you—?’

  He closed the door. ‘I paid the deposit they asked for, two hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of Bitcoins.’

  She closed her eyes in relief. ‘Thank God.’ Then she stared hard back at him. ‘Why – why do – do they want Mungo’s toothbrush and hairbrush?’ She held up the bag. ‘Have they found him? Is he dead? Are you not telling me?’

  ‘They just need to have it on file, darling,’ he said, relieved Branson had evidently not told her about the ear.

  ‘There’s only one reason they’d need it on file,’ she said darkly. ‘That’s to identify his body. You see it all the time on television in cop shows.’ She began crying. ‘They’ve found him, haven’t they? He’s dead, isn’t he, and they’re not telling us?’

  He put his arms round her and held her tight. ‘Darling, Stace, I’ve paid the ransom, the deposit they asked. They’re not going to harm him if they know they’ve got another two million coming.’

  ‘So, did you get the proof he’s alive and OK before you sent the deposit – like Detective Branson told you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What proof?’

  ‘They texted me a photograph, showing the time,’ he fibbed. He had left the envelope with the ear and photograph in the car.

  ‘Let me see.’

  He pulled out his phone and showed her.

  As she looked at the image, she broke into a piercing scream. ‘My God, he’s bleeding, his head, look! Look! What have the bastards done to him?’

  ‘Maybe he put up a fight to get away,’ Kipp replied, fast.

  Her legs suddenly collapsed beneath her. Kipp just caught her in time, dropping his phone in the process. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, opening the drawing-room door and helping her in, then guiding her down onto a sofa.

  ‘Let me see again.’ She was gasping, as if struggling to breathe.

  He retrieved his phone, relieved the screen wasn’t cracked, brought it in and handed it to her.

  She peered at it closely, wiping her tears with the backs of her hands.

  ‘You can see the time on the watch, Stace.’

  ‘What use is that? 11.55 when? Last night? How does this show he’s OK? They should be holding a page of today’s newspaper or something.’

  ‘Yep, well I can’t communicate with them, all I can do is get messages and instructions from them. I’m sure he’s OK, I really believe it.’ He sat beside her and squeezed her hand, feeling utterly helpless and impotent. He’d done what had been asked of him. Were they going to hurt Mungo further or, God forbid, kill him, despite his paying the money over?

  Sensing their distress, Otto padded up to them suddenly, and sighed. He sat down and leaned against his master’s legs. Kipp stroked him with one hand, absently, as Stacey sobbed uncontrollably.

  A shadow loomed over them. It was Branson. The room was stifling, airless, all the windows shut despite the glorious summer’s day. It was often the same, from the detective’s past experience of bereaved households. It was as if no one wanted to let fresh air or the outside world in to intrude on their thoughts.

  ‘Kipp,’ he whispered. ‘It would be good if you could get going, we’re time critical.’

  Kipp nodded, carefully disentangling himself from Stacey. ‘Babes, I’ll be back in half an hour.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ Stacey said. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just to walk Otto.’

  ‘It’s better if you stay here, Stacey,’ Branson said. ‘In case Mungo suddenly turns up.’

  ‘Please – please get my boy back. Please, I – I can’t stand it.’ She buried her face in her hands and shook with wracking sobs.

  Glenn Branson looked at her, thoughts spinning through his head. He knew how he would feel if this had happened to his own son or daughter. He would want to tear the bastards’ heads off with his bare hands.

  But equally, he knew – although not wanting to say anything inappropriate – what had made the Browns’ son a target: the family’s conspicuous wealth. Not that it meant if you were rich that you should go into a life of hiding.

  As they walked to the front door, followed by Otto, Kipp asked the detective, ‘What do you guys know about Aleksander Dervishi’s father?’

  ‘Very little, sir, other than rumour,’ Branson replied.

  ‘Rumour?’

  ‘I can’t say too much.’

  ‘Detective Branson – Glenn – our son’s life is at stake and you can’t say too much? What kind of bullshit is that?’ Stacey said. ‘Isn’t Jorgji Dervishi reputed to be part of the Albanian mafia? Is he known to you – to you lot – to Sussex Police? Is he what you call a Person of Interest?’

  ‘Stacey, I’m not able to discuss that.’

  ‘Really? Come on, you’re a father, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Imagine this was your son,’ Kipp interjected. ‘Just tell me the truth – I know someone who has power, who might be able to help.’

  The truth. Glenn Branson wanted to be as honest as he could with the Browns, but equally he did not want to cause them needless distress or send them spiralling into worse panic than Stacey, in particular, was already suffering.

  The truth?

  How on earth could he tell them it was possible that the only three people who knew where Mungo was, and who might have been able to save him from drowning, were all dead?

  89

  Sunday 13 August

  14.00–15.00

  There was a view south across the city and the English Channel, and the distant wind far
m off the coast, from the fourth-floor kitchen window at Boden Court. Grace stared across at the single chimney stack rising high above Shoreham Power Station and the large residential colony of Shoreham, to the west. Somewhere there, close to the sea, close enough to be affected by the tide, Mungo Brown was imprisoned, a ligature round his neck and the water level rising.

  Who had killed these three men and why? Greed? Was it perhaps a fourth partner who knew where Mungo was and stood to get all the money?

  His phone rang – Glenn. ‘How are you doing, boss?’

  ‘Not great.’

  ‘We have a development.’

  ‘We do?’

  Branson talked him through the latest texts, the Polaroid photograph and the severed ear, then sent him the images.

  ‘Do you know for certain it’s the boy’s, Glenn?’ Grace asked.

  ‘It has to be, boss.’

  ‘Has to be?’

  ‘Mungo has a bloodstained bandage over his right ear. Now we have a right ear.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Ear you?’

  ‘I’m not in any mood for humour. I’m standing in a flat with three dead bodies, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry.’

  Grace ended the call and refocused. A young lad, frightened out of his wits, with one of his ears hacked off, probably without any painkillers. He’d like to get his hands on the other people who were behind this, alone, just him and them in a dark room. But that wasn’t for now. At this moment, there was one desperate priority and that was to save Mungo’s life.

  He made the decision to ditch all pretence of a covert investigation, and after a quick chat with the Critical Incident Manager, he instructed Oscar-1 to put a full-scale manhunt into operation. Two helicopters, if available, would be scrambled, one from the Solent Coastguard, the other, NPAS-15. Mungo Brown’s photograph was to be circulated to all officers and to the media, very urgently.

  Next, he contacted DCI Sam Davies, from the Major Crime Team, informed her what had happened and asked her to attend at the flat to pick up the job as SIO. He then requested Oscar-1 to get a team from Digital Forensics blue-lighted here immediately by a Roads Policing Unit driver in a fast car, to see if there were any immediate clues from any phones or computers in the flat. He was tempted to try looking himself, but did not want to risk making a mistake that could lose or mask anything crucial. That team could be here in less than thirty minutes. He also asked the Inspector to summon a Coroner’s Officer, a CSI team and a Crime Scene Manager.

  Where the hell are you, Mungo?

  He looked at the two bodies in the room with him. They were like a waxwork tableau. Dummies. Unreal. Carrying the secret of Mungo’s whereabouts to the grave.

  Go fuck yourself.

  He looked at the man lying on his back, his blood-drenched chest, the bullet graze on the top of his forehead, his glassy, sightless stare.

  Tell you what, mate, he thought, irreverently. You look pretty fucked yourself.

  He had another thought. One of the bits of technology he did know about was from a lecture he’d attended at the Homicide conference in Las Vegas two years ago. If you left the software activated, and most people did, iPhones kept a record of all your movements. He took a pair of protective gloves from his pocket and pulled them on, then, for the second time in this investigation breaking all the rules of crime scene management, rummaged in the pockets of the man slumped at the table and pulled out a cheap-looking Nokia, a burner.

  Kneeling beside his new best friend on the floor, he searched first in his windcheater pockets, pulling out another cheap-looking throwaway phone. Then, exerting himself to move the man a little, he reached round into the back pocket of his jeans and felt, with hope rising, a familiar, slim rectangular shape.

  He pulled out a recent model iPhone. But when he pressed the power button, the numerical keypad appeared along with the words, Enter Passcode or Touch ID.

  It had been too much, he knew, to expect it not to be password-protected. In desperation, he grabbed the dead man’s hand and pressed his forefinger against the power button. Nothing happened. He tried again, but still nothing. He knew the forensics team had been working on software to enable a dead person’s fingers to activate a touchpad. Had whatever electrical impulses were needed already left this man? He tried with the dead man’s thumb, middle fingers, then with the fingers and thumb of his left hand, but no success. He was wasting critical minutes, he realized, glancing at his watch.

  Less than three hours left.

  He thought about the tide chart he had memorized. How the hell were they going to find Mungo in time? He stared around the room. What could he do that he was overlooking?

  His eyes alighted on a set of Range Rover keys on the kitchen table. Yes! He photographed them and pocketed them, knelt back down and went through the anorak, then jeans pockets, of the man on the floor and found a set of Audi car keys. He pocketed them, too. He found a third set of keys, the Golf’s, in the zipped hoodie of the dead man in the hallway, grabbed them, and ran out of the flat, past Inspector Allchild, and down the steps, radioing Kevin Hall to meet him in the underground car park.

  As he burst through the door, he saw Hall running down the ramp. He thrust the Audi keys at him. ‘Kevin, check the Audi’s satnav. See what the last destination was!’

  He went to the Range Rover, clicked the door lock to let himself in, sat in the driver’s seat, looked around for the key, then realized the ignition had been switched on by keyless-go.

  He pushed the button on the vehicle’s display for satnav. The system opened and he studied it, then tapped RECENT DESTINATIONS.

  Shoreham Beach came up.

  Underneath was Boden Court.

  Bugger.

  He went to the Golf and repeated the process.

  Shoreham Beach.

  Boden Court.

  Shit, shit, shit. He was no closer. He went over to Hall. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Zilch,’ Hall replied. ‘Gatwick Airport is the last entry.’

  ‘We need to get back to HQ,’ Grace said. ‘Fast.’

  90

  Sunday 13 August

  15.00–16.00

  As Hall drove, Grace updated Sam Davies on what he had done at Boden Court. He then called Oscar-1 to check on the ETA of the Digital Forensics team at the flat, and was reassured they would be at the scene within ten minutes. Next, he asked Glenn Branson for an update from the Browns’ house.

  As soon as they arrived back at HQ, Roy Grace held an emergency briefing of his team. Behind him on a whiteboard was a blow-up of the latest photograph of Mungo, together with the tide chart, with 17.40 p.m. highlighted in red.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘If we are to believe this chart and the latest photograph, then in about two and a half hours the water will have risen above Mungo’s head, and it’s game over. The persons we believe were our three prime suspects, who might have been able to tell us his location, are dead. At this moment, we don’t know who killed them or the motive. Unfortunately, the Boden Court CCTV system has been down for the past twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Unfortunate or coincidental, boss?’ Norman Potting asked, suspiciously.

  ‘I don’t have any information on that yet, Norman,’ Grace replied. ‘We are reasonably certain Mungo is being held in a location somewhere in or close to Shoreham.’ He turned to the whiteboard and pointed. ‘Here.’ Then looked at DS Exton. ‘Jon, I want you to get on to Shoreham Port Authority immediately – speak to Keith Wadey, the Chief Engineer, if you can get hold of him, show him a copy of this photograph and see if he can identify any possible location.’

  ‘Yes, boss, but we need to bear in mind that it’s Sunday.’

  ‘Are you planning to go to church?’ Grace gave him a quizzical look.

  Exton looked unsure, for a moment, if Roy was joking.

  ‘The port runs twenty-four-seven, Jon,’ Grace said. ‘If you can’t contact anyone by phone, get down there immediately and find someone – the lock gates a
re manned round the clock, there’ll be people there. Go immediately and use the blues – take someone with you—’ He looked around and his eye fell on DC Davies. ‘Alec, go with DS Exton.’

  As the pair left the room, Grace went on. ‘Right, we have a boy kidnapped at the Amex. Our information leads us to believe a criminal gang within the local Albanian community may be responsible. If we are correct, we are dealing with a particularly brutal group of people who do not give a toss about committing their crimes openly in public – in fact they embrace that as a warning to others. Surely, someone must have seen something? In the past twenty-four hours, there’s been a bomb threat at the Amex. Human remains discovered at a crusher site in Shoreham. The crusher operator dead hours later – in possibly suspicious circumstances. And now three people dead in a flat in the city. Oh, and an unfortunate young drugs mule, dead at Gatwick Airport, with links to one of Jorgji Dervishi’s businesses.’

  There was a reflective silence from his team. ‘Someone has to be able to connect the dots. OK? Someone, somewhere, must have seen something. A boy disappears in broad daylight from a football stadium that has one of the world’s most sophisticated security systems – not a tiny infant, a big, bolshy teenager. Someone has seen him. This boy is being held somewhere below the high-water level, where the sea is going to cover him – drown him. Someone out there knows how to save his life.’

  Potting raised his hand.

  ‘Yes, Norman?’

  ‘Have Digital Forensics not been able to enhance any of the photographs, chief?’

  ‘Not enough to reveal anything helpful, Norman, no.’

  ‘In case it’s significant, chief,’ Potting went on, ‘while DC Wilde and I were at Dervishi’s house during the night, I went for a pee.’

  ‘Good for you, Norman!’ EJ Boutwood said with a grin. ‘Hope you put the seat back down afterwards.’

  Ignoring the jibe, Potting continued. ‘He’s got one of those photo boards in the downstairs loo. You know the kind of thing – him and his wife and son on a yacht. Pictures of them all at a big party. Pictures at a barbecue. Another at their wedding anniversary. I took a photo of it on my phone, to check it out afterwards. I thought my findings might interest you. There’s one character who pops up in many of them, repeatedly – Edi Konstandin.’