by Peter James
‘How was Germany? How did it go?’
‘Do you know that old Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.’
‘It went badly?’
Grace shrugged. ‘You’ve got a daughter, right?’
‘Anna, yes, great kid.’
‘In part because she’s lucky enough to have great parents.’
The DI smiled. ‘I like to think that’s part of it. But it’s not everything.’
‘But we know, don’t we, Guy, the percentage of offenders who come from broken homes, single-parent families, alcoholic or drugusing families, abusers, you name it. It doesn’t always start that way, but nine times out of ten you can show me a man – or a woman – in a prison cell and I’ll show you the train crash of a family that brought them up.’
‘Is he screwed up, your kid – what’s his name again?’
‘Bruno. I don’t know. He’s complex, that’s for sure, but I think he’s OK. He’s a bright boy, with a lot of curiosity about things. Hell, you’d have to be a bit screwed up with all the shit his mother’s put him through. I think he’s fragile; he’s obviously spent a lot of time on his own, and seen his mother having to deal with a lot of issues, including drugs. On top of all that he’s now been taken away from his homeland and friends. We’ll try to give him all the love and attention we can, and we’re going to have a chat with an expert in the child psychology field to see what’s best. I’m sure he’ll be fine once he’s settled.’ He shrugged and peered again at the computer screen.
Batchelor leaned forward a little. ‘If you don’t mind my saying it, you look whacked. Do you want to take the weekend off? I can handle everything.’
‘Thanks, Guy, but I think it’s better for me to be here for a while. To give Cleo a little time this morning alone with Bruno to try to bond with him.’
‘So what’s he actually like?’
Grace shrugged. ‘What would any of us be like, being told our mother had committed suicide, and that our father, whom we had never met, was going to come and take us to a foreign country where we didn’t know a soul?’
‘Tough call.’
‘Yep. You’ve said it. Tough call. One of our priorities is to get him some friends. Jason Tingley’s kindly taking him to a Crystal Palace game this afternoon, with his son, Stan.’
‘Is that wise? Getting him to fraternize with the opposition on his first day?’
Grace grinned. Since Brighton and Hove Albion’s biggest rival was Crystal Palace, this had long been a friendly bone of contention between Grace and Tingley.
‘If it helps him make a friend here, then what the hell. Anyhow, enough about me, let’s focus. We need to talk to Seymour Darling, PDQ.’
‘Want to take a ride with me over to his house?’
Grace thought for a moment. His plan had been to spend a few hours catching up on all the emails that would have come in for him during the past day and a half that he had been away in Germany. But this development excited him. One thing that he had missed as he had risen through the ranks was what all officers who got promoted away from frontline duties and became increasingly deskbound missed. And that was the adrenaline rush of action.
‘Good suggestion,’ he said.
40
Saturday 23 April
Roy Grace had a fondness for the sprawling, hilly mass of the Hangleton estate, to the northwest of the city. It was where he and Sandy had been the happiest, the first five years of their married life, in a tiny flat, with a view out across the rooftops on the far side of the street towards the hilly pastureland of the South Downs.
The village of Hangleton was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its small, beautiful Norman church, St Helen’s, is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the whole city of Brighton and Hove. And its close neighbour, medieval Hangleton Manor, is the oldest secular building in the city. But not much else in Hangleton is historic. Most of it was developed in the first half of the twentieth century and subsumed into the city at the same time.
Grace sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked car, as Guy Batchelor drove. He felt the same emotions he always did when in this area. So many memories.
They swept down a hill, made a right, up a steep incline, then a sharp right again into a crescent-shaped close. Batchelor slowed to a crawl as they peered out at the house numbers. Grace pointed to the right. ‘Twenty-nine over there.’
Moments later Batchelor halted the car outside a squat little house, with a large bay window, that looked only a few years old. A small, dog-wee-yellow-coloured hatchback was parked on the driveway.
The two detectives climbed out of the car and walked up to the front door. Batchelor rang the bell, which set off loud barking from inside.
Moments later the front door opened a fraction, accompanied by more deep barking, and a coarse female voice shouting out, ‘Shut the fuck up, Shane!’
The door opened wider, and they saw a tiny woman, with a mass of tangled black, wiry hair and almost absurdly large black-rimmed glasses, dressed in a brown velour tracksuit. She was stooping down, struggling to restrain a massive Rhodesian Ridgeback by its collar. Behind her was a small, dingy hallway. The place smelled of damp dog.
Batchelor held up his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Batchelor and Detective Superintendent Grace, Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Branch. We’d like to have a word with Mr Seymour Darling. Is he in?’
‘Not, if I have anything to do with it, for much longer.’
‘Are you Mrs Darling?’ Batchelor asked.
‘So what if I am?’ She turned back to the dog and yelled, ‘Fuck you! Shut the fuck up, Shane! OK? Shut the fuck up!’ Then she turned back to the two detectives. ‘He’s not in, he’s gone to the football.’ Then she turned back to the dog. ‘I’m fucking warning you!’
‘May we confirm your name, please, madam?’
‘You know it, don’t you, you just said it.’
‘And your first name?’
‘It’s Trish. Trish Darling. And I don’t want any funny comments about it, had enough of them.’
‘What time are you expecting your husband home, Mrs Darling?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
‘Beautiful dog,’ Batchelor said.
‘Yeah? You want him? Take him, he’s yours! Seymour can’t handle him, I can’t handle him, he’s a fucking nightmare. And my husband goes to the footy, leaves me to walk him. I can’t walk him, I ain’t got the strength.’
Batchelor handed her a card. ‘We’d like to have a word with your husband. Could you call me – or ask him to call me – when he gets home?’
She took the card in her hand, dubiously, without glancing at it, as if she had been handed a leaflet by a street peddler. ‘I’ll be the one having a word with him when he gets home.’ Then, darkly, she added, ‘If he gets home.’
Picking up on this, Batchelor pressed her. ‘Does he sometimes not return home?’
Staring back at them, as if realizing, albeit late in the day, that they might actually be allies, she replied, ‘Lately he’s become very strange. I don’t know what’s got into him. If you want to know the truth.’
‘We very much want to know the truth,’ Grace replied. ‘What can you tell us?’
‘I think he’s having an affair.’ As the dog barked again she yanked hard on his collar. ‘That’s what I think.’ Then as she leaned closer, Grace smelled alcohol on her breath and saw the blaze of anger in her eyes. ‘Whoever she is, she’s welcome to him. Good luck to her. She clearly sees something in him I don’t – and you want to know something? It can’t be the size of his weeny, that’s for sure.’ She raised her free hand in the air and made a curling motion with her index finger.
41
Saturday 23 April
‘I think I’d have an affair, too, if I was married to that witch,’ Roy Grace said as they climbed back into the car.
‘Or shag the dog, which is prettier,’ Batchelor said.
‘You’re
a happily married man, Guy, right?’
‘Yes.’ Batchelor gave him an odd look.
‘How much would you spend on a birthday present for your wife?’
‘I dunno. I usually buy Lena a few things, you know – one big present, a piece of jewellery or something, and some smaller bits and pieces. A hundred quid, maybe a bit more. Hundred and fifty. Why?’
‘Me too – that’s sort of what I would spend. Maybe a bit more if it was a significant birthday. Seymour Darling bought a car – or thought he had – as a surprise for his wife. Two thousand eight hundred pounds – seems a lot, don’t you think? Especially when you look at their very modest house – and the state of their relationship.’
‘Are you saying it’s dodgy money? Is he drug dealing?’
‘How about guilt money?’
‘Guilt money?’
‘A man who’s been unfaithful will often buy an expensive present for his wife, out of guilt.’
Batchelor gave him a strange look. ‘I trust you’re not talking from experience, boss? Tut tut tut, and you a newlywed!’
Grace smiled. ‘Thanks for your faith in my integrity!’
The DI raised a placatory hand, also grinning. ‘No offence meant.’
‘None taken. Affairs have never been my thing – unlike, it seems, my late ex-wife.’
‘She had affairs? Sandy? You’re serious?’
‘She was kind enough to tell me in her suicide note. Not information I particularly wanted or needed to know.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry.’
Grace shrugged. ‘Maybe I was more of a rubbish husband than I ever realized.’
Batchelor was silent for some moments, then he said, ‘Don’t ever think that. If that’s what she did, then she was the one in the wrong.’
‘You’re lucky – I don’t know you two well, but it seems to me that you and Lena are very solid. She’s a lovely lady.’
‘She is, I’m very lucky.’
‘You are. I’ve been a reluctant confidant to quite a few officers over the years, who’ve told me about their tangled love lives. That’s how I know about the gifts.’
‘I see where you’re coming from with Darling.’
Grace nodded. ‘Wracked with guilt over his affair, perhaps he decided to buy his wife her dream car, to compensate. He paid the money over – money he could barely afford – and either Lorna Belling stole it, tucking him up, or as seems more likely to be the case, he’s been the victim of online fraud. Either way, he’s angry at her, blames her, wants his money back. So he calls her forty-seven times and makes ten visits to her flat. What does that sound like to you?’
‘Someone’s anger escalating to danger point.’
‘Precisely. The report you have on the cell site puts Darling outside Lorna Belling’s flat on ten separate occasions in the past week, as well as on the night of her death. The most recent was last night – two days after her death. We know that killers have a habit of returning to their crime scene and observing.’
‘Yes.’
‘One hypothesis I have is that he went into the flat, had a confrontation with her, raped and killed her. If there’s a DNA match with him and the semen found in her that would be pretty strong evidence.’
‘I like your hypothesis, boss.’
‘So, Plan B?’
‘Plan B?’
Grace explained it to him.
As soon as he had finished, the DI punched a series of numbers into his phone before going hands-free. Moments later, as they drove away, it was answered.
‘Julian Raven, Digital Forensics.’
‘Julian, it’s Guy Batchelor. That phone number you gave me earlier, for Seymour Darling?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I need the current triangulation on it. Can you get on to your O2 phone company contacts and find its current whereabouts?’
‘I’ll do what I can, sir. It may take a while, because it’s the weekend.’
‘Fine. Call me when you have it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
42
Saturday 23 April
A few hours later, shortly before 7 p.m., Roy Grace sat in the passenger seat, as Guy Batchelor drove down Hove Street towards the seafront. They stopped at the red traffic lights, Batchelor indicating left. When the lights went green he turned, past the front of Vallance Mansions. Across the road from them was a cyclist heading west, a jogger heading east, towards Brighton, and a small man standing still in the shadows close to a street light.
‘That might be him,’ Batchelor said, making another left into Vallance Gardens, an upmarket street of elegant red-brick Victorian villas and one white art deco house. They looked for anyone else standing still, but saw only a man striding along with a small dog on a lead. At the top, Batchelor made a left, taking them back to Hove Street, and another left back down to the traffic lights at the seafront junction.
The man they had both clocked previously, diagonally across Kingsway, was still standing motionless, barely visible.
Then Grace hit the dial button on his phone, calling the number he had entered earlier.
Both detectives, holding their breath, watched the man suddenly bring the phone to his ear.
‘Seymour Darling?’ Grace asked.
‘Who is this?’
He ended the call, slipped out of the car and, dodging through Kingsway traffic, crossed the road, trying to look unobtrusive. As he reached the pavement on the far side he saw the man, still holding his phone to his ear.
Grace walked towards him, trying to look casual, like any Hove resident out for an evening stroll. He saw the man hold up his phone, looking at the display.
Showing his warrant card, Roy Grace said, ‘Seymour Darling?’
The man grunted. ‘No.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Freddie Man.’
‘Freddie Man? OK, what’s your date of birth?’
‘Er – erm – it’s – March 2nd – 1966.’
‘So, Freddie Man, what’s your star sign?’
‘Star sign?’
‘Yes, what’s your star sign?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m curious – I’m interested in people’s star signs.’
For a moment he looked bewildered, then he said, ‘It – it’s Taurus – I think.’
‘You think?’
Early on, when Grace had been a probationer on the beat, at the start of his career, and frequently had to stop suspicious people on the streets, he had memorized all the star sign dates. Everyone knew their star sign. It was always a reliable, quick test to find out if someone was lying to him by giving a false identity and date of birth.
‘Really, Freddie? March 2nd would make you a Pisces. I don’t think you’re Freddie Man, at all, are you?’
‘What of it?’
‘Are you Seymour Darling, of 29 Hangleton Rise?’
‘What if I am? Who the fuck are you?’
‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering Lorna Jane Belling. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Seconds later Guy Batchelor joined them, proffering a pair of handcuffs.
‘Yeah?’ Seymour Darling said. ‘Well tell this to the court. Tell the fucking bitch’s heirs to give me my money back.’
43
Saturday 23 April
Saturday night, Grace had learned many years back, was not a good time to book someone into custody. But as the arresting officer, he had to stay with his suspect throughout the whole procedure, to avoid the possibility further down the line, when the case came to court, of a smart defence brief picking holes in the chain of evidence.
On every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night a massive police presence, Operation Marble, did its best to prevent central Brighton from becoming a war zone of drink- an
d drug-fuelled fights. He was lucky to have arrested Darling relatively early in the evening, and he’d had to wait for little over ninety minutes before the man was processed and banged up. A couple of hours later and he could well have been there, waiting his turn among the drunks, until dawn.
As he headed home, just after 10 p.m., having conducted with Batchelor a brief interview of Darling, during which he had gone no-comment on them, he was thinking hard. The clock was ticking. Thirty-six hours was the maximum time the police could keep a suspect in custody without applying to the magistrates’ court for an extension to detention.
Darling had made numerous threats to Lorna Belling. He was standing outside her flat the night of her murder, and on a number of occasions prior to then. The police had cast-iron grounds to arrest him. The man had a grievance over the money he had paid for her car and, as was usual, requested an on-call legal aid solicitor. By giving him a chance to talk to the lawyer and having had an overnight breather, hopefully the facts would be clearer in the morning. And with luck sometime tomorrow they’d get the DNA results from the semen back from the lab.
In his mind he ran through the possible scenarios, creating other hypotheses. Darling had raped her but had not murdered her. Darling had not raped her but had murdered her. Or Darling was an innocent – if angry – bystander.
What about Lorna Belling? The victim of domestic abuse. With a cheap rental apartment. Had her husband known about it for some time, or just discovered it? What bit of equipment had the printed circuit board with his fingerprints on come from and why was it lying there, seemingly discarded?
So many questions, so many things that didn’t add up.
Did Lorna have this place just to escape from her husband, or was there another reason? A shag pad for her and a boyfriend? Her sister in Australia had confirmed she had hopes of moving out there. Was she trying to earn enough money to give her sufficient cash to flee? Could hairdressing have been her cover, and she made her real money from her activities in the flat?