by Peter James
'For your good friend Suresh Hossain?'
'I'd hate to think he was missing me. How about some breakfast? A big fry-up - the works?'
'Cholesterol, man, bad for your heart.'
'You know what? Right now everything's bad for my heart.'
82
As Grace entered the large, bustling waiting area for the three courtrooms housed in the handsome Georgian Lewes Crown Court building with plenty of time to spare, he switched his phone to silent. At least Claudine seemed to have got the message and had stopped texting him. He yawned, his body feeling leaden, the massive fry-up he'd just eaten sapping his energy rather than fuelling it. He just wanted to lie down somewhere and have a kip. It was strange, he thought. A week ago this trial had dominated his life, his every waking thought. Now it was secondary; finding Michael Harrison was all that mattered. But this trial did matter a lot, too. It mattered to the widow and children of Raymond Cohen, the man beaten to a pulp with a spiked stick, either by Hossain or by his thugs. It mattered to every ordinary decent person in the City of Brighton and Have, because they had a right to be protected from monsters like him, and it mattered a very great deal to Grace's credibility. He had to shed his tiredness and concentrate. Finding a quiet corner in the room, he sat down and returned a call to Eleanor, who was dealing with his post and email for him.
Then he closed his eyes, grateful for the rest it gave them, and cradled his head in his hands, trying to catnap, trying to block from his ears the swinging of doors opening and closing, the cheery banter of greetings, the clicks of briefcase locks, the murmured voices between lawyers and clients. After a couple of minutes he took two deep breaths, and the oxygen hit gave him an instant small boost. He stood up and looked around. In a moment he might find out whether he would be needed or not today. Hopefully not, and he could get back to Sussex House, he thought, looking around for the person he needed to speak to, Liz Reilly from the Crown Prosecution Service.
There were a good hundred people in the room, including several gowned barristers and assistants, and he spotted Liz at the other end of the room, a smartly dressed, conservative-looking woman in her early thirties, holding a clipboard and deep in conversation with a barrister he did not recognize. He walked across and stood near them, catching her signal that she would be with him in a moment. When she finally broke away. from the barrister, she looked excited. 'We have a possible new witness!' 'Really? Who?' 'A call-girl from Brighton. She rang the GPS last night saying she's been following the trial in the papers, and alleging that Suresh Hossain beat her up during a session with her.
The sex session was on the night of February 10th last year, in Brighton.' February 10 was the night of the murder for which Suresh Hossain was on trial. 'Hossain has a cast-iron alibi that he was at dinner in London with two friends that night. Both have testified,' Grace said. 'Yes he has, but they are both employees of Hossain. This girl isn't. She's terrified of him - the reason she hasn't come forward before is she's been threatened with her life if she does. And there's a problem, which is she doesn't trust the police. That's why she rang us, rather than the police.' 'How credible do you think she is?'
'Very,' she said. 'We'd need some high-level witness protection for her.'
'Whatever she wants. Anything!' Grace wrung his hands in excitement. He wanted to hug Liz Reilly. This was wonderful news. Wonderful! 'But someone's going to have to go and convince her that the police won't bust her for - you know - her trade.' 'Where's she now?' 'At her home.' Grace looked at his watch. 'I could go and see her right away. Is that possible?'
'Go in an unmarked car.'
'Yes, and I'll take a WPC with me who can stay with her. We don't want to give Hossain any chance of getting at her. I want to go and see her and persuade her to come in right away.'
'If you play her carefully, you'll be pushing on an open door.' Suddenly, Grace wasn't tired any more.
83
It was shortly after midday when he arrived back in the Incident Room. The witness, Shelley Sandier, was good, he thought. Mid twenties, intelligent, articulate, vulnerable, she'd be highly credible in court. Just so long as she didn't panic and change her mind at the last minute, as so often happened. But she seemed determined to get back at Hossain. Very, very determined. This was such good news. After a shaky few days last week, it now looked to Grace as if getting the verdict he so badly wanted was going to be achievable. The full team were at the work station, plus two new assistants, a young male constable and a middle-aged female assistant, so he called a briefing meeting, telling them all to stay seated. Keeping his voice low, as the other work stations were occupied also with teams hard at work,
Nick Nicholl spoke first. 'Roy, the receipt we took earlier this morning from Miss Harper's house, two thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven pounds for a scanner?'
'Uh huh.'
'I got all the information on it from Century Radio.' He handed a few printed sheets off a web page to Grace. 'The rest of us have seen this.' Grace looked at it.
AR5000 Receiver 'Cyber Scan'. Incredible 10Khz-2600Mhz Frequency Range! The AR5000 advances the frontiers of performance, providing excellent strong signal handling, high sensitivity and wide frequency coverage with microprocessor facilities to match including 5 independent VFOs, 1,000 memory channels, 20 search banks, Cyber Scan fast scan and search including all mobile frequencies. Scanning and search speed is 45 channels or increments per second...
He turned to Branson. 'You're the best techie I know. I think I have already guessed what this thing is - can you confirm?'
'It's a state-of-the-art radio frequency scanner. It's the kind of thing used by Citizens' Band radio nuts to find new friends, to eavesdrop on police radio networks or on mobile calls.' Grace nodded. Then to Emma-Jane Boutwood he said, 'Do we have any evidence that Ashley Harper was ever into Citizens' Band radio either in her current incarnation or any previous one?'
'We don't,' she said. 'No.' He looked at the colour picture of the scanner. A large silver box on its own legs, with a dial on the front, and the same perplexing array of knobs and buttons you'd find on any complex piece of radio kit. 'So, on Tuesday night her fiance disappears. Wednesday afternoon at two-thirty she legs it to London and buys a radio scanner for two and a half thousand quid. Any good theories why? And how the hell did she knew how to use it?' 'Desperation?' volunteered Nick Nicholl. 'I don't buy that,' Grace said.
'She obviously genuinely did not know where he was,' Bella Moy suggested. Grace nodded distractedly. That made sense, but to him it did not fit. 'She might have known that Michael Harrison had a walkietalkie. Perhaps it was to try to communicate with him?' Emma-Jane Boutwood said. 'Or - how about - to listen in to who else he might be communicating with?' Grace was impressed. 'Yes, good thinking.' He looked around. 'Any more theories? OK, let's park this for a moment. Any other progress?'
'Yes,' Nick Nicholl said. 'After you left Ashley Harper's house, Joe Tindall started pulling up floorboards. We discovered an envelope full of receipts behind a chest of drawers we moved - it might have fallen there accidentally or it might have been hidden. Most of the receipts don't seem that interesting to us, but there is one here you should see.' It was for 1,500 pounds from a company with a Maddox Street, London Wl address, called Conquest Escorts. Underneath the name was the legend 'Discreet, charming male and female escorts for every occasion'. Two dates were shown - the previous Saturday, the intended day of Ashley Harper's wedding, and the previous Monday.
'Turn it over, Roy,' Nick Nicholl said. 'Take a look at the other side.'
Grace turned it over and saw written in ballpoint pen the name Bradley Cunningham. His mind shot back to the conversation he had had with Ashley, in her house, on Friday night. He could remember her sitting there so dejectedly, talking about her Canadian uncle, saying, 'We adore each other... he took the whole week off just so he could be at the rehearsal on Monday.' '
She's faked an uncle?' he said, puzzling.
'She's faked a whol
e lot more than just an uncle - E-J will tell you in a minute,' Glenn Branson said. 'Take a look at this first.'
He handed Grace a photocopied sheet of A4 paper. It was a faxed instruction to Bank Hexta, registered on Grand Cayman Island, to transfer the sum of 1,253,712 pounds to a numbered account at Banco Aliado in Panama. The instruction was signed by both Michael Harrison and Mark Warren, and the date and time at the top showed 11.25 p.m., the previous day. Grace read it through twice then frowned at Branson.
'This is about twenty minutes before he went off his balcony.'
'Yes, correct.' Grace thought about the note found in Mark Warren's pocket. 'So he went and transferred the money in order to save his friend's life. Then he goes and tops himself?'
'Maybe they had some big debt to pay. Panama could be tied up with Colombia - the Colombian mafia - maybe they got themselves into shit on a loan? They pay it off, and Mark Warren then tops himself?' 'It's a reasonable theory/ Grace said. 'But these two guys have been doing pretty well. They have this huge development at Ash down - twenty houses - that could make them several million. Why top himself for - what would his share be - a few hundred thousand pounds?' 'So he makes the transfer and then is killed.'
'That's a more elegant theory,' Grace said. 'I spoke to Cleo Morey at the mortuary just now. There's a Home Office pathologist on his way down. We might have a bit more information later today.' DS Bella Moy then told Grace she had some information from the phone company. Vodafone had logged activity from Michael Harrison's mobile between 10.22 p.m. and 11 p.m. the previous night, and there had been several 999 emergency calls made from Michael Harrison's phone, but on each occasion the operator could not hear anyone at the other end and got no response to her questions. 'What about the cell mast?' 'I was just coming to that, Roy. Vodafone have been very helpful this morning, and we already have from them the location of the closest cell radio mast to Michael Harrison's phone,' she said. 'Where is it?'
Her face fell a little. 'This is not such good news - it's in the town centre of Newhaven, and the one mast covers the entire town.' 'Well, it's some help,' Grace said. 'Any coincidence that Newhaven is a Channel seaport?' 'I've already put out an all-ports alert,' she said. 'For what?' 'For Ashley Harper and for Alexandra Huron - that's the name she was using in Canada four years ago.' She clearly had more to say, so Grace let her go on. 'I checked on her Audi TT car. It was leased by her, in her own name, from a dealer in Hammersmith a year ago. All payments are up to date and kosher. Same with her house, leased, but the lease expires at the end of this month.' 'To coincide with her wedding?' Branson suggested.
'Quite possible,' Emma-Jane said. 'Then on a hunch I had our new recruits do a trawl of all the car and van rental firms in the area, and gave them all of Ashley Harper's previous names in addition to her own. Nothing showed up under the name Ashley Harper,' she said. 'But at ten past midnight - this morning - a woman called Alexandra Huron rented a Mercedes saloon from a local Avis at Gatwick Airport, using a Toronto Dominion Bank of Canada credit card. The assistant who dealt with the customer has now positively identified her from photographs as Ashley Harper.'
'CCTV cameras,' Grace said. 'What I--' Glenn Branson raised a hand. 'We're already on the case. We're already having every camera checked between Gatwick and Newhaven from the time she picked up the car.' 'She left her house about an hour before you went there, Nick,' Grace said to DC Nicholl. 'Yes.' 'Do we know how she got to the airport?'
'No.' Grace fell silent. For a few moments no one had anything to say. He was busy thinking through all the timings last night - when he had been to see Mark Warren, when he and Glenn Branson had visited Ashley. Mark Warren being taken out to the forest to help locate the grave. The money being transferred. Mark Warren's death. Ashley renting the car under a different name. Now he knew what her game was; that was clear enough. And he knew that they needed to find her. Absolutely nothing else mattered at this moment than to do that. And quickly. If it wasn't already too late.
84
'Strewth, woman, four fucking suitcases - what's the matter with you, Alex?'
'What do you mean?' 'I'm not helping you lug four fucking suitcases, that's what I mean.'
'So we'll get a porter.' 'And what about theexcess baggage charge?' 'We're travelling Club, Vic; they have a big baggage allowance. Relax.'
'Fucking relax? Why can't you just leave all this shit behind, buy new stuff in Sydney - they have shops there, you know!'
Ashley, in a Prada denim trouser suit and high heels, standing between her suitcases in the living room of the small detached house in Newhaven, placed her hands defiantly on her hips and stared out of the window. The view from the rented house's remote hilltop position took in almost the whole of the town, and much of the port that was part of it. She watched the Seacat cross-Channel ferry slipping past the harbour mole, heading out to sea. It was a flat, grey day, and humid; she was perspiring, which added to her bad mood, and her period was about to start, which made it even worse. She turned on him, her voice rising in acidity.
'Really? They have shops in Sydney? You mean shops you can walk into and buy things from?'
'Oh, fuck off, you stupid cow - don't speak to me like I'm some fucking servant.'
'You fuck off. Why should I leave all this stuff behind? This is my life.'
'What do you mean this is your life?' At five foot, seven inches, Vic stood barely half an inch taller than Ashley, but he had always seemed to her to be much taller. He had the wiry, muscular build and the persona of a fighting man, with tattooed arms, crew-cut hair and a rough-hewn, handsome face. His clothes added to his military persona; at this moment he was dressed in a combat jacket over a black T-shirt, baggy khaki chinos and what could have been black marching boots. 'Do you mean Michael is your life? Mark? These two gits have been your life, is that what you mean? Have I got something wrong here -1 thought I was your life, you stupid bitch.' 'I thought you were too,' she said tightly, holding back tears. 'So what the fuck does that mean?' 'Nothing,' she said. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her round to face him.
'Alex, relax, OK. We're nearly there, home free; let's just calm right down.' 'I'm perfectly calm/ she said. 'You're the one who's all wired.' He pulled her towards him. Stared into her green eyes. Then tenderly pushed some stray strands of her hair back up her forehead.
'I love you,' he said. 'I love you so much, Alex.'
She put her arms around his neck, pulled his lips up against hers and kissed him passionately for some moments. "I love you too, Vic. I always have.'
'And yet you happily went off and screwed Mark, then Michael. And a whole bunch of guys before them.'
She stepped back angrily and almost fell over a suitcase. 'Jesus Christ, what's got into you?'
'What's got into me? We've fucked up this time, that's what. OK?'
'We haven't fucked up, Vic; we have a result.'
'A lousy one-point-two million quid? Half a year of our lives for that?'
'Neither of us could have foreseen what was going to happen the crash.'
'We should have played it differently. You could have got Michael out, gone through with the wedding, and then we'd have had half his money, and his partner's.'
'And that would have taken months, Vic - maybe years. They still have some planning issues on their big development. As it is, we got a quick result. And if you hadn't gambled away half our goddamn money, we wouldn't have even needed to be here at all in the first place, OK?' Sheepishly, he looked at his watch. 'We have to get going if we're going to make the flight.'
'I'm ready.'
'You don't have any idea how fucking painful this stuff is for me, Alex, do you? What we do? My sitting on the sidelines, knowing this year you're screwing Michael and Mark, before that you were screwing that jerk Richard in Cheshire, not to mention Joe Kerwin and Julian Warner.'
'I can't believe I'm hearing this, Vic. I did what I did because that was my part of our bargain, OK?'
'No, not OK.'
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'You've always had your sweet revenge on them in the end - so what's your problem? And this way, I get to spare you and me from a honeymoon with Michael.' He looked at his watch again, anxiously.
'We'll talk in the car -I have one more thing to do before we leave.' He lugged her suitcases out into the hall, then went back into the sitting room and moved the sofa right across the room. Then he knelt down and peeled back a corner of the carpet.
'Vic,' she said. He looked up. 'What?' 'Can't we just leave him?'
'Leave him?'
'He's not going anywhere, is he? He's not going to get out - he can't even speak, you said.'
'I'm going to finish him off, put him out of his misery.'
'Why not just leave him? No one's ever going to find him.'
'Take me ten seconds to crush his neck.'
'But why?' He glared at her. 'You are sweet on him, bitch, aren't you?'
Blushing she said, 'I am absolutely not sweet on him.'
'You were never worried about me getting rid of any of the others. What's so special about Mikey boy?'
'Nothing's special about him.' He let the carpet fall back in place, stood up, and rolled the sofa back to where it had been. Then he repositioned the coffee table. 'You've got a point, Alex, about him not getting out. Why show any mercy on the little bastard by putting him out of his misery? We'll just let him starve to death all on his own in the darkness. Happy with that?'
She nodded. 'Have you checked today's papers?'
'No, I've been cleaning the place out. Got all yesterday's - nothing to worry about. We'll check today's at the airport.' He grinned. 'Then after that, no worries, right?' Five minutes later the Mercedes was packed with Ashley's four suitcases and Vic's large holdall. He locked the front door and pocketed the keys. 'Do you think we should drop them back in to the agency?'
'We have five more months to run on the lease, woman! You want people going in there and sniffing around? Because I tell you one thing, it ain't going to smell too good in there in a week or two.'