by Peter James
This was all he needed: a funeral tomorrow, and with this current investigation perhaps the biggest challenge of his career, in the week he was moving house. He picked up the phone to dial Cleo, taking a deep breath before she picked up.
51
Sunday 14 December
Roy Grace ran a rather stilted Sunday evening briefing of Operation Haywain. He was due to meet Martinson and Pewe straight after, to update them on the potential magnitude of the situation. He was not going to be delivering good news, after his conversation earlier with Van Dam and several more phone calls during the afternoon.
The close-up photograph of Logan Somerville’s face that had been distributed had been picked up by almost all of the Sunday papers, with several carrying it on the front page. A search operation had been ongoing since Thursday evening, with police, specials, PCSOs and volunteer members of the public, as well as the police helicopter, despite its huge operating cost. The search operation was intelligence-led, together with responses to specific information received from the public. The immediate search of the area where Logan had gone missing had been completed with a negative result.
Ashleigh Stanford’s boyfriend seemed a decent young man. He had spent much of the afternoon in the CCTV room at John Street with operator Jon Pumfrey, watching firstly the cameras covering her normal journey home, down West Street and along the seafront. He’d identified the first image of her, pedalling up the pedestrianized Duke Street at 12.52 a.m., then down West Street, and turning right along King’s Road.
Over the next eight minutes, four more cameras had clocked her heading west: one passing the Peace Statue, a second along Hove Lawns, a third where she ran a red light at the bottom of Grand Avenue, and the fourth as she crossed Hove Street. The next camera would have picked her up, if she had continued west, at the start of Shoreham Port. But the fact she hadn’t showed up indicated that she had either been abducted from this road, with her bicycle as well, or on one of the streets off, such as Carlisle Road, a quarter of a mile along, where she lived.
She had literally vanished off the face of the earth.
Except for one thing that had turned, during the course of the afternoon, into a serious lead. A Skoda taxi had been clocked by the same cameras, driving slower than the speed limit, keeping a steady and substantial distance back from the cyclist. The taxi had also not showed up on the fifth camera, at the start of Shoreham Port, which meant it, too, had turned off somewhere.
Nor had it appeared anywhere else on any of the other cameras that had been searched around all the possible routes it could have taken. However, the registration number had been picked up by an ANPR along the seafront, and they’d got the driver’s name, a Mark Tuckwell.
Tuckwell had been found and interviewed. Whilst it was undoubtedly his registration number, he had been at a wedding reception in Lewes with about a hundred potential witnesses there to confirm his alibi, and his taxi had been in the dealer’s garage over the weekend with its engine out.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to clone the vehicle and number plate – and it was not easy to get fake number plates made in the UK these days.
There was a parallel with the Volvo that had been sighted outside Logan Somerville’s flat around the time of her suspected abduction, which was also concerning Roy Grace. ‘There is one possible link,’ he said to his team. ‘The offender who took Ashleigh and the one who took Logan were both in estate-type vehicles around the time of the girls’ disappearance. Neither of them showed up on any further cameras after the alleged abductions. That to me indicates two things.’ He took a sip of water, then went on.
‘Firstly, that the offender has a detailed local knowledge of the city, and an awareness of the camera locations – and clearly extensive knowledge of all the backstreets to avoid them. And secondly, probably lives locally within the city. I’ve studied the camera maps this afternoon, and from each of the two abduction sites, it would have been impossible for either vehicle to have left the city in any direction, other than driving into the sea, without being picked up by a camera – either one of our own CCTV network or ANPR. The area where Ashleigh was last seen has been thoroughly searched, and house-to-house enquiries have also been made, but nothing of significance has been found to date.’
He turned to DS Exton. ‘Jon, what do you have to report about your interview with the psychiatrist, Dr Jacob Van Dam, uncle of Logan Somerville, and his patient, Dr Harrison Hunter?’
‘Well, to be honest, sir, something of a conundrum. The man claimed he was referred by a Brighton doctor, general practitioner Dr Edward Crisp, and produced a letter. I managed to obtain Dr Crisp’s home phone number afterwards and rang him to check and he says he has never heard of a Dr Harrison Hunter. Van Dam said Hunter claimed to be an anaesthetist at a London teaching hospital, but Van Dam subsequently checked up on the man and there is no such person listed. He says he was a strange-looking character, in his mid-fifties, wearing tinted glasses and what he was certain was a blond wig – he said the wig reminded him of Boris Johnson. He said he would have been tempted to dismiss him as a nutter except that he claimed Logan had “U R DEAD” tattooed on her.’
Grace nodded. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘Did Dr Van Dam have any idea why this man came to see him, or what he wanted?’
Exton nodded. ‘It was his view that he was seeking help of some kind. Dr Van Dam said he was unsure whether the man wanted someone to tell him that killing people was OK or whether he was a fantasist. Or . . .’ The detective sergeant shrugged, then fell silent for some moments as if deep in thought.
‘Or what, Jon?’ Grace pressed.
Exton looked down at his notes. ‘I’m trying to recall exactly how Dr Van Dam expressed it, sir. It was as if it was a kind of confession – but a very complicated one. As if he needed to tell someone, sort of to share it, unburden himself. Kind of a cry for help.’
‘We could help him,’ Norman Potting said. ‘We could lock him up and throw away the bloody key.’
There were a few smiles.
Grace asked Exton to ensure he recovered the referral letter, then turned to DS Cale. ‘Tanja, you had an outside enquiry team do a house-to-house along Carlisle Road, where Ashleigh Stanford lived – anything from that?’
‘No, sir, not so far. I have four uniform officers still out there. They’ve checked Carlisle Road and the immediate neighbouring streets, but nobody saw or heard anything during the night around that time. They’re expanding the search zone. I’ve also been with DC Seward checking as much of the surrounding area as possible for any sighting of the bike or the taxi, with no luck. It is a fairly distinctive dark blue bicycle, with a sticker embossed with the bike shop, South Downs Bikes, on the frame.’
‘Good work, Tanja. Has anyone heard back from EE about the triangulation of Ashleigh’s phone?’
‘Not good news on that, boss,’ DC Emma-Jane Boutwood said. ‘Just before the briefing started a neighbour a couple of houses down from Ashleigh’s in Carlisle Road called the main switchboard. She’d found a mobile phone in her garden earlier in the day, and it only just occurred to her that it might be connected with all the police activity in the street.’
‘Duh, hello?’ exclaimed Jack Alexander.
‘What kind of bush did she think it was – a phone plant?’ Potting asked.
‘Two houses away, EJ?’ Grace quizzed the DC, pensively.
‘Yes, south of where her flat is.’
‘And it was the other side of a hedge, in a front garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘That sounds to me like she didn’t just drop it while cycling along. Phones don’t bounce over hedges. Did our offender take her as she slowed to dismount, and throw it there? Logan Somerville’s phone was left in her car. Now Ashleigh Stanford’s phone is left behind also. I think we are dealing with someone very smart here. Someone who knows phones can be tracked. Who knows this city. Who knows not to use the same vehicle twice. I assume the phone
has been collected and is currently being examined.’ He turned to DC Alexander.
‘Jack, how are you getting on with locating Martin Horner?’
‘Well, sir, I’ve found an address for the right Martin Horner – the date of birth tallies with what the DVLA have on file – but I don’t think you’re going to be very happy about this.’ The young detective constable glanced down at his notes, then with a slight, awkward grin said, ‘He’s currently residing along the Old Shoreham Road, in Hove Cemetery.’
‘What?’ Guy Batchelor quizzed. ‘What do you mean? He’s sleeping rough?’
‘Not exactly. His full address is Plot 3472, Hove Cemetery, Old Shoreham Road, Hove.’
It took some moments for this to sink in. Then there was a titter of laughter from several of the team, but not from Batchelor, who was having a total sense of humour failure at that moment.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ he said, with a frown. But from the look on several faces around, it seemed that some of the team had got there before him.
Jack Alexander stood up and pointed at a large photograph which was fixed to the whiteboard, below the faces of Logan Somerville, Ashleigh Stanford and Emma Johnson. It was a close-up of a small, modest tombstone. The engraving on it was clear and stark.
MARTIN WILLIAM HORNER
OCTOBER 3RD, 1964 – JUNE 12TH, 1965
DEARLY BELOVED SON OF KEVIN AND BEVERLY
‘Looks like some sick bastard’s taken this dead boy’s identity,’ Tanja Cale said.
‘And registered the car in his name?’ Grace confirmed.
‘Yes.’
‘What about the address, sixty-two Blenheim Street?’ Grace asked. ‘Whoever did this must have some connection to it.’
‘I’ve had our outside enquiry team talk to the woman who lives there, Anne Hill,’ Cale continued. ‘She’s now being very cooperative – worried as hell we’re going to have her prosecuted over faking her infirmity. She’s adamant she knows nothing about this vehicle. But she told us one thing that may be significant. Six weeks ago a man turned up, who said he’d been appointed as her carer. He came for a few days running, then vanished. She called her doctor to ask what had happened and he told her that he had no knowledge of any carer having been appointed to her. The timing is significant, I think.’
‘Presumably she’s given a description of him?’ Guy Batchelor asked.
‘Not a very good one,’ Cale said. ‘Middle-aged, quite long hair and dark glasses. But he seemed to have medical knowledge, she said.’
‘We need an e-fit,’ Grace said.
‘Yes,’ Cale said. ‘We’ve got that in hand. Someone from the Imaging department is with her now.’ Then she looked at her notes, briefly, and went on. ‘It was November 2nd that the Volvo was purchased by this Martin Horner. It’s possible the carer had turned up in order to grab the documents when they came through from the DVLA.’
‘Do we have a description of this man who bought the Volvo – our imposter Martin Horner?’ Grace asked.
‘Not much of one, boss,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘We’ve found the previous owner, an antiques dealer called Quentin Moon, but he wasn’t much help, he didn’t see enough of his face to ever recognize him again. The handover was done at night in a poorly lit multi-storey car park in Worthing. When asked, Moon hadn’t kept any of the contact numbers. He remembered Horner was wearing a tweed cap, scarf and dark glasses, and paid in folding – fifteen hundred pounds.’
Jack Alexander asked, ‘Is there any chance he might still have any of those banknotes, which would give us the opportunity for fingerprints or DNA?’
‘Excellent thinking, Jack. Check it out.’
‘Didn’t he wonder about Horner’s appearance?’ DC Davies queried. ‘Dark glasses at night in a dark car park?’
‘All he would have cared about was getting paid for his car, which he was,’ DS Batchelor said. ‘He’s an antiques dealer – probably gets plenty of customers looking a lot dodgier than that.’
Grace smiled. From his team’s recent experience working a major antiques case, he couldn’t disagree. ‘Do they have CCTV in or near that car park, Guy?’
‘Yes, there’s both,’ Batchelor said. ‘But Horner bought the car six weeks ago – very few CCTV systems keep recordings that long.’
Grace nodded. But he felt that with increasing use of digital equipment it was worth checking out. He reflected that everything he had just heard confirmed the conversation he’d had earlier with Glenn Branson about who Martin Horner might be.
Norman Potting, looking as bleak as hell, as might be expected on the eve of his fiancée’s funeral, raised a hand. ‘I’ve been to see Anne Hill’s doctor – a Simon Elkin, who practises at the Portslade Medical Centre – to ask him about the carer who had been appointed for her. He wasn’t too complimentary about Mrs Hill. She’d been demanding a carer, but he’d felt she was quite capable of looking after herself. So I went and spoke to some of her neighbours. None of them seem to like her that much. A young couple next door say they see her out and about regularly, but they avoid her, because if they even so much as nod at her she comes over and tells them how ill she is, and complains that no one cares about her. She sounds like a regular Moaning Minnie. No one seems to have seen this carer, nor the Volvo.’
‘You really should go home, Norman. Get some rest,’ Grace said.
‘I’d prefer to keep working, chief, if it’s all right with you.’
Grace smiled at him. ‘You’re doing a good job. We all need some rest before tomorrow.’
‘Go tell that to the missing girls,’ Potting said.
52
Sunday 14 December
With the Chief Constable living in Brighton, and Cassian Pewe in temporary rented accommodation in Hove, it was decided the three of them would meet in Roy’s office at Sussex House, rather than make the twenty-five-minute drive, each way, to Police Headquarters in Lewes where Pewe and Martinson were based.
It was shortly after 7.30 p.m. that the two men entered Grace’s modest office, the Chief Constable in jeans and a baggy, cable-knit sweater, Pewe in cavalry twills, suede brogues, a thin roll-neck, and one of those natty tweed jackets with epaulettes and leather patches on the sleeves that, Grace thought, Pewe imagined gave the impression of a country squire, but which made him look more like a spiv bookmaker.
Grace made coffee, then joined them at his small round conference table. He thanked them both for coming out on a Sunday evening, and then launched straight into his reason for wanting to see them so urgently. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that all the evidence indicates we have an active serial killer in our city.’
Martinson’s face visibly stiffened. Pewe looked like a man who had just swallowed a wasp.
‘You realize the implications of this, Roy?’ Martinson said.
‘Brighton doesn’t have serial killers, Roy,’ Pewe said. ‘I mean – not since the Trunk Murders of the early 1930s. How sure are you?’
Grace brought them up to date with both his own and Glenn Branson’s investigations into Operation Mona Lisa and Operation Haywain. When he had finished both the Chiefs were silent. They agreed that there needed to be a Gold group set up, and that Pewe would take on the responsibility for organizing this.
‘In advance of meeting both of you,’ Roy continued, ‘I spoke to Jonathan Atkins at the National Crime Agency Operational Support Unit today, telling him my views, and he’s given me detailed guidelines on how to proceed with the investigations from this point and how to manage the impact on the community. His advice is to go very public and get the press and media on board from the start. I’m also waiting for a call back from an SIO who’s currently instructing at the National Police College, who has had past experience on two serial killers.’
‘The impact on the community is going to be enormous, Roy,’ the Chief Constable said.
‘I know,’ Grace replied. ‘I’m putting together a Prevention Strategy which will include measures we can tak
e to help lessen the risk of future victims.’
‘We’ve had some experience in the Met,’ Pewe added, pensively.
‘You need to understand Brighton isn’t Metropolitan London,’ Grace said. ‘You have more than an eight million population there. We have just over a quarter of a million. This is much more of a tight-knit community. People are less used to murder here – our strategy needs to reflect that to avoid panicking the city.’
‘We’ve finally lost the very unwelcome title of Injecting Drug Death Capital of the UK after almost eleven years,’ Tom Martinson said. ‘Now we have this.’
‘I agree, sir. And the impact’s going to remain until we’ve got the offender charged and locked up,’ Grace said grimly.
‘You realize what the consequences will be if you’ve got this wrong, Roy?’ Cassian Pewe asked, the familiar whine, unpleasantly close to a sneer, returning to his voice, as if the wasp was now confidently digested.
‘I can imagine there being a short-term impact on the tourist trade, sir,’ Grace said, ‘as well as a lot of very nervous citizens. But the consequences of not warning the public could result in another death. Maybe more than one.’
‘How much detail have you been advised to release to the public?’ Martinson asked.
‘Well, I’ve also spoken at length to Detective Investigator Jordan Finucci at the FBI’s homicide bureau at Quantico – I met him on a course I attended four years ago. He’s had experience with two of the USA’s worst serial killers, Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader – BTK. He’s given me some advice based on how they caught BTK.’