by Peter James
The car was coasting. Bumping along on the rims.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
He unclipped his belt, opened the door and rolled out onto the road – and hit the hard, wet surface with far more force than he had anticipated. He was flung over, rolling, rolling, rolling. Heard a massive bang. Then as he came to a halt and lay winded, he caught a glance of his Mondeo slewed at an angle, and another car, just ahead of it, almost sideways across the road, its rear end stoved in. The Mondeo’s blue lights were still flashing.
He hauled himself to his feet, and fell over, as if the gyroscope inside his body hadn’t stopped spinning yet. He got up again and staggered across the road, dodging a car then a bus, and reached the pavement on the promenade side. Saw the bright lights of Brighton’s Palace Pier over to his left. A cyclist clattered past, furiously ringing his bell. He turned and looked behind him. A police officer was sprinting towards him.
He turned right and ran.
Ran.
Seized with panic.
The tower of the i360 was right ahead of him. Rising to the heavens, disappearing into the mist. Ahead was a wall of glass with the BRITISH AIRWAYS i360 logo above it.
Two people, a young man and woman in British Airways uniforms, stood at the ticket gate. He ran between them, pushing them both out of the way, yelling, ‘Police!’
He found himself on smart decking. A few groups of people were standing around, under umbrellas. The massive tubular structure rose up in front of him. The huge, illuminated glass pod, like a spaceship, was slowly descending with its load of passengers.
He looked over his shoulder. A police officer was talking to the two uniformed BA staff at the gate.
A round glass fence ringed off the space where the doughnut was about to arrive. Suddenly, a door opened at the bottom of the tower and a workman in a yellow hard hat came out.
Batchelor vaulted the glass fence and fell with an agonizing, jarring thump on the ground fifteen feet below. His left leg hurt but he ignored it, ran stumbling past the workman, ignoring his shouts.
‘Police!’ he yelled back at the man, and ran in through the door.
It felt like he had entered a vertical tunnel.
There was a metal ladder directly in front of him, with cables clipped to the core of the tubular structure on either side. He began to climb up.
‘Oi!’ a voice shouted. ‘Oi! What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Police!’ he shouted back. ‘Police!’
He carried on climbing.
Climbing.
Looking down. Another man in a hard hat was at the bottom, looking up at him.
He climbed on. Shit. He was already starting to feel exhausted. Looked up, and the ladder continued, way up into the shadows and out of sight.
He climbed on, then finally came to a small gridded platform, with railings around it. He stepped onto it, leaned back against the railings, and gulped down hot, oily-smelling air.
What am I doing here?
He looked down again. It must be a good hundred feet. He could just step off the platform and fall. It was high enough.
Then he saw someone run in. A man with fair hair, in a dark suit, looking up at him.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
‘Guy! Guy! What the hell are you doing?’ Roy Grace called up at him.
The Detective Superintendent began to scale the ladder like a creature possessed.
Batchelor started climbing again.
‘Guy!’ Grace shouted. ‘Guy, stop! For Christ’s sake stop!
109
Saturday 30 April
Ignoring him, Batchelor climbed on. His arms were so tired he could barely grip each rung above him. But he kept going. Driven by grim determination. Desperation. He just had to keep climbing. Higher. Higher.
‘Guy!’
The voice was a distant echo below him, but getting louder with every shout.
‘Guy!’
With every rung he climbed, Roy Grace seemed to climb two. He was gaining on him. Rung by rung.
‘Guy. We need to talk.’
In front of his face, Batchelor saw a sign. It read 50 metres.
He was less than halfway up.
‘Screw you, Roy! Leave me alone!’ he yelled.
He climbed higher.
His chest was tight. His heart was hammering. His grip was getting weaker. Weaker.
Roy Grace was less than twenty feet below him now. Still scaling the ladder like a sodding rat up a drainpipe.
There was another platform just above him. And a door, with a handle on it.
Using the last of his strength, he reached the platform and hauled himself onto it. Grace, below him, was still climbing strongly. Batchelor lashed out with his shiny boot, a warning. ‘Don’t try it, Roy. I’ll kick you off, I promise you, I will!’
Grace stopped. ‘Guy, come on, whatever it is, we can sort it out. OK?’
‘No fucking way.’
Finding some strength from somewhere inside him, Batchelor threw himself at the ladder and climbed on. On.
Past the 100 METRES sign.
On.
He looked down.
Roy Grace had stopped, some distance below him, for breath; he was having to grip the ladder tightly, his hands dangerously slippery with perspiration.
‘How did you do in the “beep” test, eh, Roy?’ he chided. ‘Not so well?’
He climbed on.
‘Guy! Guy, what’s wrong with you?’
Grace’s strength was sapping as he climbed on up, also passing the 100 METRES sign. He did not dare look down. All his life he had been bad with heights. He just kept staring at the rungs in front of his face. Trying to convince himself that he was only a few feet above the ground. His hands were running out of feeling, out of grip. But he had to keep going. His chest was pounding, his breath rasping and he was feeling giddy.
Batchelor’s feet were just inches above him now. He could have reached up and grabbed one of them. But he had no strength for a struggle. He just had to keep clinging on. Keep climbing. He had no idea what was going to happen, all he knew was to keep going.
Now above him he saw the 150 METRES sign. Batchelor was standing, stooped, gasping, on the platform beside it. A torch beam shot up around him, but he ignored it.
‘Guy!’ he grunted. ‘Guy, just tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘What the hell’s happening?’
‘Leave me alone. Just leave, Roy, it’s too late for me.’
Batchelor began climbing again.
Grace reached the platform and stepped onto it, gripping the rails, gulping down air. He saw his colleague’s boots disappearing above him. Saw the flickering torch beam from below him, and made the mistake of glancing down.
Into the void.
He swayed, vertigo drawing him down.
Shit.
‘Guy!’ he yelled. ‘Guy!’
Jesus.
He felt scared now. Out of his depth. But he had to keep going. Had to reach him, had to find out just what was going on inside this man’s mind.
Then suddenly he saw Batchelor, some rungs above him, push open a flap – an inspection hatch – and haul himself up and out, through it.
‘Guy!’ he yelled. ‘Guy, no, no!’
Frantically he scrambled up more rungs until he was level with the flap. A strong blast of cooling wet wind blew on his face. He was grateful for it. Guy Batchelor, sodden, was standing on some form of platform, outside, misty darkness beyond him, the wind flapping his coat.
‘Stay where you are, Roy,’ he said, his voice threatening. ‘I mean it.’
‘Guy, for God’s sake, man, let’s talk.’
‘You want to talk? Talk!’
Grace was gripping the rung for all he was worth. He was remembering some health and safety advice he’d been given on a training day. Always keep three limbs on a ladder at any time. Right now he had all four. ‘Let me onto the platform with you, Guy, we can talk. I can’t hang on here
, I’m sodding exhausted.’
‘Stay where you are, I’m going to have a fag. A last cigarette. Did you know, some execution chambers don’t let you have that any more? In this ridiculous world they actually have no smoking execution chambers. What do you think about that?’
‘I’ll join you, I’ll have a cigarette too.’
‘Bad for your health, Roy.’ Batchelor raised a leg, as if about to kick him.
‘It’ll be worse for my health if I fall off this bloody ladder,’ he panted.
‘You didn’t have to come up here.’
‘Guy, you’re my friend! Just tell me, what’s happened to you?’
‘I’m finished, Roy. You’re wasting your time – don’t forget I’m a trained suicide negotiator too. I know all the tricks. They’re not going to work on me.’
Grace heard a click, then smelled cigarette smoke.
‘You’re not my friend, Roy, you’re no one’s friend. You’re a copper, you’d nick your best friend if it helped you get a result.’
‘Guy, listen to me.’
‘I’m finished.’
Then Grace heard the voice of Ops-1. ‘Roy, we have the drone approaching the i360 tower, but visibility is bad. What assistance do you need?’
His arms were aching. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on for. Using all his strength, he wrapped first his right arm then his left around the ladder and pulled himself tightly into it. That eased some of the strain and he felt slightly more secure. ‘I’m OK,’ he replied. ‘No assistance at this moment.’
‘There’s nothing worse than a corrupt officer, is there, Roy? One who lets the team down?’
Grace could hear him sobbing.
‘Guy, come on, let’s talk, tell me what is going on. Talk to me, be honest with me, and I’ll tell you what I can do for you.’
‘I didn’t mean to kill her. We just had an argument and it all got out of hand. She hit her head, I panicked. You know the rest. I thought I might get away with it – I nearly did. But he recognized me, that Weatherley, I could see it in his face. That’s why he didn’t want to say anything in front of me. I saw it, Roy. He knew it was me.’
‘If you didn’t mean to kill her, you need to tell your story. A decent barrister might be able to argue self-defence, or whatever. OK, you’ll lose your job, but this doesn’t sound like murder. Maybe manslaughter? You know the evidence, Guy. If you think you can convince a jury to believe you panicked and it was an accident, or worst case, manslaughter, you’ll get a sentence, yes, but maybe not a long one.’
‘How’m I going to explain running the Met guy – the Super Recognizer – off the road, Roy? You and I both know I’m going down for a long time. I’ll lose my family, my career. I’ve just two choices, I give myself up to you or I jump.’
‘Think of your family, Guy. Let’s talk.’
‘What’s there to talk about?’ Batchelor suddenly sounded calm. ‘I’ve betrayed you and I’ve betrayed Sussex Police by trying to cover it up. By attempting to set up a friend and colleague – Jon Exton. I did it pretty well, didn’t I? Well enough so you arrested him. I just tried to kill a cop. I’ve betrayed everything I signed up for.’
‘Look, it’s bad, I’m not going to deny it, Guy. But come down, the Federation will help you. You’ll get a fair trial. You’ll go to jail, but there’s life beyond, try to think about that for a moment. You have a lovely wife, a daughter, you have so much to live for. You’re still a young man. Come down and tell us the truth about everything that’s happened.’
‘No way, that’s not going to happen!’
‘Let me come on the platform with you – I bloody need a cigarette!’
‘There aren’t any ashtrays. This is a no-smoking tower. I would hate to be an accomplice to you committing a crime, too.’
Suddenly, Batchelor moved out of sight.
‘Guy!’ Grace yelled. ‘Guy!’
Silence.
‘GUY!’
Frantically, finding strength from somewhere inside him, he scrambled up the last few rungs and, petrified of looking down, pulled himself through the hatch, onto the narrow, gridded platform.
There was no sign of Batchelor.
‘Guy!’ he yelled, running round the entire circumference of the tower.
He was gone.
He stood in numb silence. Stared at a smouldering cigarette butt. Then he heard the voice of Kim Sherwood through his radio.
‘Roy, the drone is on site now. What is your position?’
For some moments he did not know what to reply. He felt gutted. He’d had Batchelor in his grasp and had let him go.
‘Man down,’ he said finally, flatly.
‘Man down?’ she queried.
He hauled himself inside, onto the ladder, and began the long, long descent.
110
Saturday 30 April
Fifteen minutes later, completely and utterly spent, Grace stepped gratefully down from the last rung, back onto terra firma. There were three police officers as well as two men in yellow hard hats all looking at him.
He wasn’t often lost for words, but he was now. He felt close to collapsing from exhaustion. He staggered forward and stumbled. A sturdy man in a hard hat grabbed him, supporting him.
‘All right, mate?’
‘Where is he?’ Grace gasped.
‘Where’s who?’
It wasn’t going to be a pretty sight, he knew that much. That sort of vertical drop. He’d seen what that did to people. They exploded. Limbs came off, their innards burst out through their stomachs. He was feeling sick at the thought.
The thought that his friend, and colleague, was lying out there in the darkness. His body broken.
‘Is he still up there, sir?’ a uniformed officer whom he did not recognize asked him.
‘Is who still up there?’ he replied, puzzled.
‘DI Batchelor, sir,’ the PC said, looking equally puzzled.
‘He jumped,’ Grace replied. ‘He’s not still up there.’ His voice was choked. ‘I’m sorry but – but – he jumped.’
He turned away, suddenly feeling deeply emotional and close to tears. He should have scrambled up those last few rungs and grabbed him. Held on to him. Knocked him out.
‘No one’s jumped, sir,’ another voice said.
‘He jumped! I saw him! Didn’t you see him? Didn’t anyone find him yet?’
A siren was wailing in the distance, approaching.
Ops-1’s voice came through the radio. ‘Roy, can you give me an update?’
‘Give me a couple of minutes, Kim,’ he said. Then he looked at the group standing around him. ‘He must be somewhere close,’ he said, then ran for the door and outside. Right above him was the illuminated glass observation car.
The first officer he had spoken to followed him. ‘Sir, we have ten officers around the base of the tower – they would have seen anyone falling.’
Grace heard an electronic whirring sound above him. He looked up and saw a drone hovering, a red light blinking beneath it.
He called Ops-1 back. ‘Kim, have the drone do a search around the base of the tower for a body.’
‘Golf 99 at Brighton, Inspector Anakin is controlling it, sir. He’s already carried out a search and there is no sighting of a body.’
‘Kim, he jumped, for God’s sake! The man jumped! He was on a platform outside, right in front of me, then he vanished. Tell him to look again.’
The drone rose into the air and was swallowed by the mist in seconds. Grace looked around at everyone, bewildered. ‘He’s not sodding Superman,’ he said. ‘He didn’t fly off into the night, he jumped, I’m telling you.’
The siren was approaching now. Arriving at the scene.
Then he heard Kim Sherwood again. ‘Roy, Golf 99 has found him. The drone is filming him now.’
‘Finally.’
‘He’s entangled in some kind of netting near the top of the tower.’
‘What?’
One of the maintenanc
e men in a hard hat said, ‘That’s the safety net put up for the inspection and maintenance team.’
Grace could scarcely believe what he was hearing. ‘Safety net?’
‘We put it up for night-time cleaning.’
‘Is he alive? Kim?’
‘He’s moving, Roy – apparently with difficulty. I can patch a live feed through to your phone.’
He turned to the hard hat. ‘How do we get him down?’
‘With difficulty. Not something we’ve yet had to do.’ The man turned to his fellow hard hat, who nodded his concurrence.
‘We’re going to need a helicopter,’ he said. ‘Could be a problem with the visibility.’
Grace called Batchelor’s phone.
After some moments, to his amazement, the detective answered, sounded in a lot of pain.
‘Guy?’ He looked up, but all he could see was misty darkness.
‘Can’t you just leave me alone?’
‘If I didn’t care for you, I probably would. Just sit tight, we’re calling up the coastguard to helicopter you down.’
‘I don’t need a fucking helicopter.’
‘OK, so what do you need?’
‘How strong is this bloody netting?’
‘Strong enough to hold an elephant.’
‘That would be nice – an elephant ride. Just what I need right now.’
‘Just sit tight, we’ll get you down.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, Roy. Jesus, I’m a failure. Couldn’t even fucking kill myself.’
‘One day you’ll be grateful you didn’t.’
‘Yeah? You come and find me on that day and tell me about it.’
‘I will, Guy,’ he promised.
‘You’ll be able to recognize me. I’ll be the man in the prison visiting room with the scars and bruises and his teeth knocked out.’
‘I’ve been told prisons are better at protecting police officers these days.’
He heard a hollow laugh.
111
Sunday 1 May
Nine eggs! Roy Grace stood in the hen coop in his cottage garden at a few minutes before 6 a.m., every muscle in his body aching. Last night’s rain had morphed into a stunning dawn. The air felt pleasantly warm. A red sun was rising and a mist lay across all the fields around the cottage. Humphrey sat patiently outside the hen run door.