by Peter James
‘And me! I promise, next week we’ll have showers every night. I’ll massage you all over. I can’t wait. I still fancy you, Roy Grace, I fancy you like crazy. I’m sorry if I’ve been too tired recently to show it.’
‘And right back at you, my lovely.’
He leaned over and kissed her.
Noah stopped suckling and began crying.
59
Thursday, 31 October
Red heard crying. Her eyes sprang open, straight into a dazzling beam of light burning into her retinas like a laser. She closed them. Then opened them again. Saw a face this time.
Bryce.
Staring down at her.
She lay, frozen, staring back up at him. Staring into his eyes. She tried to speak but her voice was muted with fear. She tried again. Then again. Then finally she blurted out a feeble, ‘What do you want?’
The light went out and then, suddenly, she was staring into darkness. Listening. Listening for footsteps. Shaking in terror. Was Bryce in the room?
She heard another cry in the darkness. A wail of pain. A howl. A long, tortured, high-pitched scream. The clank of a dustbin. Two cats fighting. Then the wail of a siren. Police, please! Brief, then it stopped. The rattle of a taxi. The slam of a car door. Shouting. Two drunks, a man and a potty-mouthed woman, arguing. She hurling obscene insults. He slurring back in a broad Scouse accent.
Was Bryce in the room?
More people outside now, two floors below, all of them sounding drunk. One of them started singing ‘Rule Britannia!’ Another began shouting, ‘Seagulls! Seagulls! Seagulls!’
Football supporters.
She looked at the clock beside her bed. The luminous hands showed it was 2.18 a.m.
‘Seagulls!’
‘Screw seagulls!’
‘I never tried!’
More laughter.
Drunks inflicting their hilarity on everyone sleeping around them.
She was close enough to shout for help. Help from a bunch of drunks? Goosebumps pricked her body. Ran up her legs, her midriff, her arms.
Was Bryce in here?
She reached out her arm, careful not to knock over her water, found the lamp, found the switch and pressed it. The small room flooded with weak light.
She was alone.
Her heart was pounding. She picked up her mobile phone from the bedside table, hovered her thumb over the speed-dial button, number 1, for PC Spofford. Then lay still, listening. The arguing couple moved on, but the drunks remained, starting to sing again, their Seagulls supporters chant.
She wanted to get out of bed and check the flat, but she was too afraid of stepping out of her bedroom door into the corridor. So instead she lay still, listening to the drunks singing and ragging each other. Listening for any sound in her flat beyond the bedroom. Until, suddenly, she heard a male voice.
‘One hundred and thirty-four people are feared dead when a railway bridge, one hundred miles north of Calcutta, collapsed in what is reported to be one of India’s worst ever rail disasters.’
Red rolled over and stared at the blinking light on her clock/radio. It was just gone 6.30 a.m.
Memories of the night came back, and relief flooded through her. Bryce shining the torch at her, staring down at her, had been a dream. That was all. She closed her eyes and half dozed, half listened to the news, as she did every weekday morning.
Twenty minutes later, she slipped out of bed, naked, and padded through into her bathroom, pushed open the sliding door that closed off the tiny loo, and peed. Then she went through into the kitchen to brew a cup of tea and prepare her breakfast of chopped-up fruit and porridge.
And instantly stopped in her tracks.
Was her memory playing tricks?
She thought back to last night. Her breakfast stuff from the morning had lain unwashed on the draining board. Additionally, she had left the packaging from the fish pie she’d microwaved on the draining board, ready to throw it away in the morning. Along with the dishes she’d used – the plate, the bowl for the salad, and the empty low-fat fruit yoghurt pot.
They had gone.
All the dishes were now clean and lying on the draining board.
She opened the cupboard with the swing bin. The lid rose to reveal a fresh, unused black bin liner.
Her stomach flipped. Fear washed through her. She turned and ran along the corridor to the front door. Then stared for some moments, ensuring she was focused and not dreaming, at the door. The security chain was securely in place.
Bryce could not have been here last night, could he?
No way could he have let himself out of the front door with that safety chain still in place. It was too high for him to have jumped from a window. She hurried over to each window in turn, and looked down into the faint, breaking light. Not possible. He’d have had to have left something behind if he had gone out of any of the windows. A rope, a cord, a wire. Something.
But if not Bryce, who the hell had done the washing-up then emptied the bin? Had she done it herself? She knew she had drunk far too much last night. Did that explain it? That she had done all of that and forgotten in her drunkenness?
She was so damned sure she had seen Bryce in the middle of the night. But the safety chain was still in place. No one could have come in through the front door. Nor locked it behind them. So how could it have been him?
She had dreamed him, she thought. It was the only possible explanation.
60
Thursday, 31 October
At a few minutes before half past eight in the morning, carrying a mug of coffee, Roy Grace left his office and used his pass card to open the door to the Major Crime Suite. He walked along the corridor, the walls lined on both sides with noticeboards pinned with crime-scene photographs, charts and newspaper headlines from recent solved homicides, and entered Major Incident Room One.
MIR-1 was a spacious, modern, airy room furnished with three large oval workstations, around which his team were settling down. Three whiteboards were fixed to the walls. One was stickered with crime-scene photographs from Haywards Heath golf course, with arrows, and handwriting in red, black and green marker pen. The second displayed a series of portrait photographs of Bryce Laurent. On the third was an association chart of Bryce Laurent, as well as two photographs of Red Westwood. One of these was in Brighton, right in front of the Brighton Oyster & Shellfish Bar. The other was of her on a terrace, overlooking the Mediterranean, with a glass of champagne in her hand.
Someone’s mobile phone was ringing with an old-fashioned bell tone. There was a smell of eggs and bacon – Guy Batchelor hunched over a hot breakfast roll from Trudie’s mobile cafe, a short walk down the road. As Roy Grace sniffed it, he felt a pang of hunger. The bowl of porridge he’d gulped down at 5.30 a.m. before leaving home seemed a long time ago now.
DS Bella Moy was seated, with the ever-present box of Maltesers in front of her, studying the case notes that had been circulated in advance. Norman Potting sauntered in holding a lidded carton of coffee, and Grace clocked the secretive grin between him and Bella. He smiled to himself, happy to see lost soul Bella at last looking happy; he was pleased for Norman, too. The old sweat’s private life had been a series of disasters – particularly the nightmare of his grasping Thai bride of a few months back.
Two young, bright Detective Constables, Alec Davies and Jack Alexander, were present, along with his other stalwarts – DS Jon Exton, recently promoted, DS Guy Batchelor, and Crime Scene Manager David Green. The others in the room included Inspector James Biggs from the Road Policing Unit, HOLMES analyst Keely Scanlan, researcher Becky Davies, Chief Fire Investigation Officer Tony Gurr, and forensic podiatrist Haydn Kelly, whose forensic gait analysis instruments had been invaluable in both of Roy Grace’s most recent cases, DI Gordon Graham, a specialist from the Police Financial Investigation Unit, and Ray Packham.
Grace waited until a further two DCs, Francesca Jamieson and Liz Seward, whom he had requested this morning to help on the outside
enquiry team, had entered, then seated himself at his own workstation with his policy book and briefing notes, prepared by his assistant, in front of him. He glanced at the notes then opened his policy book and made a note of the date and time.
‘Good morning, everyone,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the first briefing of Operation Aardvark, the investigation into the suspected murder of Dr Karl Thomas Murphy, whose charred body was found on Haywards Heath golf course on the morning of last Thursday, 24 October.’
‘Did he count as a movable obstruction, chief, or did the players get a free drop?’ Norman Potting said with a chortle. There were a few other titters of laughter, instantly silenced by Grace’s glare.
‘Thank you, Norman. Save the golfing jokes for another time, okay?’
‘Sorry, chief.’ Potting turned towards Bella, as if for approval, but she studiously ignored him by reaching forward and helping herself to a chocolate.
Distracted for a moment, Roy Grace noticed the large print from the cartoon film The Ant and the Aardvark, with a bright blue, gormless-looking Aardvark standing erect, that some wag had taped to the inside of the door. It had become a Sussex Police tradition for a picture mimicking the title of a major crime operation to be stuck there. This one had appeared faster than usual.
‘Before I start,’ Roy Grace said. ‘I should let you all know that I will be absent from this Saturday until next Friday morning, 8 November, for my marriage to Cleo and our brief honeymoon. DI Branson will deputize for me during this period.’
Glenn, two seats away from him, raised his hand in acknowledgement.
The Detective Superintendent pointed at the whiteboard on which there were a series of photographs of Bryce Laurent. In one he wore a striped T-shirt and shorts; in another he was dressed in a felt graduation cap and ermine gown; another was a US penitentiary photograph of him against a height ruler, with an ID number tag around his neck. ‘This man is our prime suspect and we need to find him urgently. We are also linking him to a number of suspected arson attacks in the city during the past week. We believe his real name to be Thomas William Cheviot. This was the name under which he spent three years in a Philadelphia State Penitentiary for an assault on his girlfriend. According to the detective I spoke to, he beat her up pretty badly. We’re not exactly dealing with Mr Nice Guy here, okay?’
Then he looked back down at his notes. ‘Thomas Cheviot has any number of possible aliases. His last known one is Bryce Laurent. Previous ones include Pat Tolley, Derek Jordan, Michael Andrews and Paul Riley. Thanks to the cooperation of the Philadelphia police we have his fingerprints and DNA. He’s smart, he dresses well, speaks with a classy voice, and is a regular charmer in every sense. He could be anywhere in the world right now. But for reasons that will become self-evident, I believe he is staying local and ready to strike at any moment.’
He looked at his notes again. ‘What we do know about Bryce Laurent – we’ll refer to him by this name to avoid confusion – is that he has worked as a close magician, he has extensive knowledge of pyrotechnics, and he is a total fantasist. He’s passed himself off in the US separately as an American Airlines captain and an investment banker, and in the UK as an Air Traffic Controller at Gatwick Airport. Under one of his aliases, Pat Tolley, he was granted a fireworks manufacturing licence here in the UK. But we’ve checked out the address, an industrial site on farmland in Suffolk, and he’s long gone from there. We also know he is a talented cartoonist.’
He sipped some water. ‘I’ve again engaged the services of a forensic behavioural psychologist, Dr Julius Proudfoot – some of you will remember he worked with us very effectively on Operation Houdini, the Shoeman case. He’ll be joining future briefings. It is Dr Proudfoot’s view that Laurent has an immensely high opinion of himself; that he is displaying all the qualities of a classic narcissist. I wrote down this from him: “Narcissism is a highly dangerous trait, which stems often from people who have been unloved in childhood compensating in later life with grandiose self-belief, arrogance, a tendency to make unreasonable demands, unstable temper and violent mood swings, and, very significantly and dangerously, that familiar attribute of the psychopath – a lack of empathy.”’
Grace then brought his team up to speed on Bryce Laurent’s relationship with Red Westwood, and what was known so far about the fires. When he had finished, he began to detail the lines of enquiry for his team. First up, he delegated DCs Jack Alexander and Alec Davies to work on the outside enquiry team, interviewing all members of Haywards Heath Golf Club who were present either the afternoon or evening of 23 October, or the morning of 24 October.
Next, he said, ‘I need a list of all the non-members who were at Haywards Heath Golf Club that day. Anyone from the general public who paid a green fee, or maybe bought something in the pro shop. All the staff who were there that day. What tradesmen made deliveries. And, this is a big task, we need to find out what mobile phone company masts are in the vicinity – speak to the telecom unit and arrange to secure phone dumps for the relevant time. It’s possible the offender phoned someone to say, job done. If so, who?’
Norman Potting raised his hand, and Grace nodded at him.
‘Are you going to try Crimewatch, chief?’
‘Yes, we have contacted them, and they’re interested. But they are not on air again for two weeks. We are also planning to issue a reward.’ He turned to DS Exton. ‘Jon, I’m tasking you with managing the intelligence, which should include what we might get from our covert human intelligence sources.’ Next he looked at Potting. ‘Norman, we have Bryce Laurent’s last known mobile phone number, which was with O2. Go through the Telecoms Unit and see if you can get a plot of his movements, and also find out, crucially, whether the number is still active.’
He sipped some coffee and studied his notes again for a moment. Then he pointed at the two photographs of Red Westwood. ‘I’ve had these analysed. They were taken with a Motorola digital camera. We are able to extrapolate the exact location, the time of the photograph, and the distance the photographer was from his – or her – subject. Ms Westwood told me that Bryce Laurent is a keen photographer. She has dozens taken by him, not just of her, but of landscapes around Sussex and elsewhere. Have her albums looked at and see if you can establish a favoured geographical location for him.’
Potting nodded compliantly.
Grace next looked at DS Moy. ‘Bella, if Bryce Laurent has been responsible for these fires, it’s possible he might have burned himself in the process. I’m tasking you with checking all hospitals in the surrounding area to see what burns admissions they’ve had in their A&E departments and whether the dates coincide with what we know about him.’
Then he turned to the forensic podiatrist, Haydn Kelly, who was standing a few metres away facing the room, waiting patiently. ‘Haydn, thanks for joining us at such short notice. The night Dr Murphy died was a clear sky, but there had been heavy rain in the previous forty-eight hours. I’m told there are some good footprints.’
‘That is correct, yes,’ Kelly said. ‘But so far I’m unable to obtain a match on any of the databases.’
‘But you can still pick out the person who left that footprint, in a crowd, from his gait?’ Roy Grace quizzed.
‘If there is video footage of the person, then yes, with a high percentage of accuracy.’
Grace turned to the financial investigator, DI Gordon Graham. Suspects were commonly traceable through their finances. Most people today had credit and debit cards. All money movements located and dated them, and, as additional help for the police, fewer establishments still took cash. DI Graham outlined what enquiries he would be getting his star financial investigator, Emily Gaylor, to undertake.
Suddenly, Grace’s phone, which he had switched to silent, vibrated. The caller’s identity did not show on the display. Ordinarily during a briefing meeting he would take no calls as a matter of principle. But something told him this call was urgent.
He was right. It was Constable Rob Spofford and s
omething had happened. His voice sounded tight with anxiety.
He signalled to Glenn Branson to take over the meeting and stepped away, holding his phone to his ear.
61
Thursday, 31 October
Out in the corridor, Roy Grace closed the door to MIR-1 and said to Rob Spofford, ‘Tell me.’
‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I need to email you something that Red Westwood has just received. There’s quite a large attachment with it.’
Grace sometimes had problems reading attachments on his phone. ‘I’ll go to my office and look on my screen there. Call me back in two minutes on this number.’
He hurried back along the corridor, dismissing his secretary, who wanted a word with him, with a wave of his hand, sat at his desk, and opened his email. Moments later one appeared from Spofford. He clicked on the attachment.
A childlike but elaborate cartoon appeared, part black and white and part in colour. It was a jaunty sketch of a yacht, with two figures in the cockpit, a male and a female, on a choppy sea. Circling around the hull were shark fins. And right in the centre of the boat, rising up, enveloping the mainsail and foresail, were flames. Written in the centre of them was the single word, BOOM!
Moments later his phone rang. ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.
‘Did you get it, sir?’
‘Yes, what’s this all about?’
‘I don’t know if Ms Westwood told you, Bryce Laurent is something of a cartoonist?’
‘She did, yes.’
‘He has a pathological hatred of her parents, in particular her mother. He believes it was her who poisoned their relationship.’
‘Because she hired a private detective who found out the truth about him, right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So what’s the significance of this weird cartoon? Some sick joke?’
‘I believe it’s more than that. Her parents could be in immediate danger. They have a thirty-two-foot yacht, and they’re sailing it today from Chichester to Brighton Marina, where they keep it during the winter. This might just be a joke, but in my view he may have placed some form of incendiary device, or even an explosive, on board. We know he has extensive knowledge of bomb-making techniques from his time in the Territorial Army, and he has access to explosives through his firework licence.’