by Peter James
‘You mean the way Crisp’s confinement in the Lyon jail was risk assessed?’
‘That was out of our jurisdiction.’
‘Luckily for your career, Roy. What you’re proposing now isn’t. Before you even start to go there you need the Crown Prosecution Service on board. You’re putting an awful lot on a rather shaky assumption, don’t you think?’
‘Shaky? I have a suspect who appears to be using different identities, and targets rich older men. There are three that we know of and there could be more. Her first husband died after being bitten by a venomous snake – and I accept that he was an expert who worked with these creatures, so was at a higher risk than anyone else. Her most recent fiancé skied over a cliff in France.’
‘Yes, Roy,’ Pewe interrupted him. ‘Walter Klein, a fraudster who knew the game was up. All the evidence points to suicide.’
‘With respect, sir, there is no evidence.’
‘Leaving that aside, you’re trying to link the death of a small-time burglar in Brighton with the death of her second husband in India?’
‘Second husband that we know about – I’m trying to get more on that, sir. I’ve already briefed and prepared a plan with the Force Authorizing Officer, Detective Superintendent Nick Sloan, whose job it will be to manage and supervise the operation. I’ve also made contact with Wayne Gumbrell at the Crown Prosecution Service, who’s on board. We all agree that this is the only option available at the moment to prevent this woman targeting and killing another victim. I’ll have the paperwork drawn up for you to sign as it needs y our written authority.’
‘OK, Roy, but screw this one up and I’ll have you writing out parking tickets for the rest of your career. Do I make myself clear?’
Clear as merde, Grace said, under his breath.
82
Wednesday 11 March
As he went back down to his car, Roy Grace played a voicemail from Guy Batchelor on his phone. He was in luck – an expert from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was attending a conference in London and could be with them by midday.
He phoned Guy and told him to delay the briefing further, to 2 p.m., then he phoned Wayne Gumbrell, left a message on his voicemail updating him on his conversation with Pewe, and returned to Sussex House. He wanted to spend a quiet hour alone, reviewing everything, checking for anything he might have overlooked, and writing up his policy book.
Stopping by the tiny kitchenette, he switched on the kettle, then spooned some coffee into a mug with the only available implement, the handle of a bent fork, then carried the coffee through into his office. A while later, Pat Lanigan rang. Grace glanced at his watch. 9.25 a.m. It was 4.25 a.m. in New York. During the past couple of weeks he’d been in regular communication with the New York detective, sharing information.
‘Hey, pal, how you doooin’?’ Lanigan said in his nasally Brooklyn accent.
‘Yep, good. I was going to call you in a bit. You’re up early!’
‘Always! Look, I’ve got something maybe of interest. Remember a while back you had a character name of Tooth visiting your city?’
‘Only too well,’ Grace said, putting his phone on loudspeaker on his desk, along with the mug, then peeling off his jacket. ‘We thought he was dead, but then again, we thought Crisp was dead, too.’ He remembered how Tooth, a professional hitman, had disappeared from Sussex Police’s clutches, presumed drowned in Shoreham Harbour, after a fight with Glenn Branson at the edge of a dock.
‘Yep, so you told me,’ said Lanigan. ‘We got some intel on him from undercover operations. One of his aliases, John Daniels, just got flagged up on our radar. Seems he’s very much alive and might be headed back your way. There’s a link with our friend Jodie.’
‘Tooth still alive, a connection with Jodie, heading back to Brighton? Bloody hell. That’s a bit of a bombshell, Pat. This has suddenly got very, very interesting. Tell me more.’
‘We believe he travelled to the UK, using the name Mike Hinton, to recover a memory stick from Jodie.’
Grace remembered DS Batchelor’s report from Tuesday about the poste-restante and internet café at 23A Western Road, Brighton.
I was told by the manager there that a strange guy turned up on the morning of Sunday March 1st, around eleven o’clock, enquiring about Jodie – an American, who was quite bolshy. He was rude to her, then went away.
‘What more do you have, Pat?’
‘Hinton flew to England the weekend before last. I don’t have any more information at this stage, but I can get you the flight number. I thought you’d want to do some checking.’
‘Right away, Pat. Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it, pal. We gonna see you and your bride over here anytime soon? Francene and I’ll take you to dinner.’
‘Cleo’s keen to see New York at Christmas.’
‘My favourite time of year in this city! Come over, we’ll go to the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. Then we’ll take you to dinner at the best Italian in the world. OK, buddy?’
‘If we can, it’s a date!’
Grace hung up then sat, thinking, for some moments. Tooth. So he had survived? And was back here? Under the name of Mike Hinton?
Tooth was suspected of the revenge killing of a lorry driver who had been in a fatal road accident. He was also suspected of murdering the van driver involved. And he had come close to murdering the young son of another person also in that same accident. Shoreham Harbour had been searched by trained divers who knew the waters, the tides and the currents. Nothing had been found. It was concluded at the time that it was possible, however unlikely, that Tooth might have survived. And now he was back?
Grace phoned Guy Batchelor and asked him to come and see him, urgently.
Five minutes later, DS Batchelor eased into the chair in front of Roy Grace’s desk with an amiable smile. ‘Yes, boss?’
‘Guy, top priority, use whatever resources you need to see if an American national, under the name of John Daniels or Mike Hinton, has checked into any hotel or boarding house in the city of Brighton and Hove, or surrounding area. Start with the city and work outwards to as far as Gatwick Airport for starters. And have all car rental companies checked, too.’
‘Do we have a current description of him?’
Grace nodded. ‘The one the woman in the internet café at 23A Western Road gave. A small, bolshy weasel with an American accent. There’s also a very poor quality CCTV image of him that Jack got. We think that man is the professional killer, Tooth, from Operation Violin, and may be armed. Call me instantly if you find anything, and we’ll decide on a course of action. I’ve intelligence that he could lead us to our target lady – and I want to get to her before he does, because I’d like to have her alive. And I’d quite like to keep you alive, too.’
‘I remember him, boss, I’ll look after myself.’
Grace shook his head. ‘Don’t underestimate him, Guy. He’s not your average Brighton villain. He’s smart and seriously dangerous. I mean it. Find him and keep your distance. I don’t want to have to go knocking on Lena’s door telling her you’ve died a hero, OK?’
‘Understood.’
‘Good man.’
83
Wednesday 11 March
The expert from Liverpool, Dr James West, was already seated in the tiny reception room at the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, gowned up and with a mug of tea, when Cleo showed Grace through at a few minutes past midday.
A tall, thin man in his late forties, with a gaunt, rugged face framed with a shock of curly ginger hair and the kind of beard someone who had been several weeks in the jungle might sport, West rose and greeted him with a strong, bony handshake.
‘Apologies for keeping you waiting,’ Grace said.
‘Not at all, I was early.’ His voice had a trace of a South African accent. ‘It’s an honour to meet the famous detective.’
‘Famous?’ Grace grinned. ‘I don’t know about that!’
‘I googled you. You see
m to have solved most major crimes in your county over the past decade or so.’
‘Very flattering of you. Let’s see if we can solve this one.’
‘Cup of tea or coffee, Detective Superintendent?’ Cleo, also gowned up, asked him, cheekily.
‘I’m good, thank you. I’ll go and get dressed.’
Cleo led him through into the changing room, put her arms round his neck and kissed him, before pointing to a set of scrubs and a pair of white rubber boots. ‘I’ll go and get Mr Carmichael out for you – I’m afraid we’ve had a hectic morning.’
‘But not Rowley Carmichael – he’s just chilling, right?’
‘Naughty!’ She wagged a finger at him and disappeared.
A couple of minutes later Roy led Dr West through into the suite of two post-mortem rooms separated by a wide archway. To their right, three naked cadavers were laid out in the main room, two elderly men and an elderly woman, over whom Mark Howard, the youngest of the city’s team of pathologists, was bent, taking stomach fluid samples, attended by Cleo’s senior assistant, Darren Wallace, and his colleague, Julie Bartlett. All three greeted Roy.
Over to the left, Cleo had opened a door in the wall of fridges and was sliding out a tray on which lay a body encased in white plastic sheeting. ‘Do you need him on a PM table, Roy?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘The tray’s fine, thanks.’
As she began to unwrap Rowley Carmichael, Grace lifted his face mask up to cover his nose and mouth, and the professor did the same, as a normal precaution.
‘You do know he’s been embalmed?’ Cleo said.
‘Yes,’ Grace replied. ‘Unfortunately.’
The process of embalming involved replacing all blood in the body with a number of preservative chemicals, as well as dyes, to slow down the decomposition process and make the body look more lifelike.
Grace had already been through the detailed Goan toxicology report, and the cause of death, from the venom of a saw-scaled viper, was not in question. But from his earlier trawl of the internet, he had a couple of big questions that could help very substantially with this investigation – depending on what Dr West had to say.
Both of them looked down at the elderly naked man. The embalming had done its stuff and his flabby flesh had a pink hue, more that of someone sleeping than the usual alabaster colour of a person recently deceased.
‘So, OK?’ West said, turning to Grace. ‘You want my views on the bite?’
Cleo pointed to the man’s right ankle. There was a small blue oval, drawn with a chinagraph pencil. Inside it was one barely visible mark, the size of a pinprick.
As if he had stepped straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, West produced a fold-out magnifying glass and peered at the mark for some moments in silence. ‘Hmmmnnn,’ he said. Then he said, ‘Hmmmnnn,’ again, sounding more dubious. ‘Interesting.’
‘Is that a bite?’ Grace asked.
‘Hmmmnnn,’ the expert said for the third time, looking deeply pensive. ‘You know, detective, you are quite right to query this. Yes, it is a snake bite, just a single fang, uncommon but it does happen.’ He continued studying the mark, putting the magnifying glass even closer. ‘You see, what is bothering me is the lack of any sign of ecchymosis.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, in layman’s terms, local discolouration of tissue. Your toxicology report identifies all the symptoms of death by Echis venom. But post-mortem, I would expect to see signs of inflammation, swelling and ecchymosis around the bite mark from the fang. The puncture here is in character with a snake bite. But without the ecchymosis I’d expect.’ He turned and looked up at Grace. ‘To be honest, in my opinion, I doubt strongly that the venom entered the body through this bite mark. Where exactly was this unfortunate chap when he was bitten?’
‘That’s the second thing I wanted to ask you,’ Roy Grace said. ‘He was in the swampy area of the crocodile park in Borivali East, outside Mumbai.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
West shook his head, his beard moving like the tendrils of an underwater sea anemone. ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there, I know that place well. The Echis lives in open, dry, sandy and rocky terrain. Under rocks, in the base of thorny plants. This snake would not go near that swamp area.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Detective Grace, I’ve studied these creatures for much of my life. I could stand up in court and testify under oath that you would not find a saw-scaled viper in that particular area of that crocodile park.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Anything else you need to know?’
Grace smiled. ‘Not at this stage, no, that’s more than enough.’
‘Then I’ll head up to London, I ought to get back as quickly as possible,’ James West said.
‘Sure, I’ll drop you at the station.’
84
Wednesday 11 March
Reflexes in the animal kingdom are the key to survival. An instant decision has to be made. Friend, foe or food. Every creature develops the senses it needs for survival through natural selection. Saw-scaled vipers, like most snakes, have poor eyesight, and their hearing is pretty rubbish too. In common with all snakes they have forked tongues which are chemosensory, picking up minute scents on wet surfaces and taking them back into the roof of their mouths, the olfactory Jacobson’s organ. It is smell and taste combined; in effect that’s the survival armoury of this genus of reptile. The more anxious a saw-scaled viper becomes, the more its tongue flicks, and it makes its defensive sawing sound by coiling and uncoiling, rubbing its scales together. It can see only movement, in shades of grey, and cannot discern shape, unlike raptors, such as eagles, hawks and falcons, which can see eight times more clearly than the sharpest human eye. A golden eagle can identify a hare from a mile away and a peregrine falcon can dive on its prey at 200 mph.
Villains depend on heightened senses for their survival, too. Just the same way that the best cops develop a sixth sense for spotting them.
Out on the streets, one of the first things villains see is a police car. It’s like a magnetic force, drawing their eyes to it, and then to the cops inside. A good crim can spot an unmarked car from a distance just as easily as one in full Battenburg livery, decked out in blue lights. Cops sit in a certain way, look around in a certain way.
Roy Grace remembered, eighteen years ago, as a young detective constable, soon after his move from uniform to CID, travelling across lush Sussex countryside on a fine August day to a murder scene, turning to the highly experienced detective inspector who was driving, and asking him if he viewed the world differently from most people.
The DI replied, ‘Roy, you’re looking through the windscreen at a beautiful summer’s day. I’m looking at a man who’s standing in the wrong place.’
Grace had never forgotten that. As he drove away from Brighton Station having dropped off Dr West, he pulled up at the junction with New England Road, waiting for the lights to turn green. A Streamline taxi passed in front of him heading up the hill. And as if drawn by a magnet his eyes locked with those of the passenger slouched in the rear of it, wearing a baseball cap.
For just one fleeting instant.
Then an articulated lorry halted in front of him, straddling the junction and blocking his view of the taxi’s licence plate.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
He had a near photographic memory for faces, and he was sure the one he had seen in the rear of the taxi was the American hitman Tooth, although he was aware his mind might be playing tricks, as he’d spent most of the morning talking about him.
He pulled back the plastic cover on the dash that concealed the buttons for the lights and sirens, and hit the one for the pursuit blue lights, but not the siren, not wanting to alert his quarry. The lorry was still stuck in front of him, completely blocking his path.
‘Get out the bloody way!’ Grace yelled in frustration. But still the lorry didn’t move.
His b
rain raced. He knew every road in this city. The taxi heading up the hill could either go straight on or fork right in a few hundred yards. At the top of the hill was the Seven Dials roundabout, giving six different options – as well as a left turn-off shortly before.
The lorry moved on up the hill and a van behind it stopped to let him through. Grace pulled out to try to overtake the lorry, but there was a bus in the oncoming lane and he pulled back in to let it pass, then pulled out again. The lorry indicated it was pulling over, and he shot past, squeezing into a narrow gap left by an oncoming car that had halted. But the road ahead was blocked by another lorry, waiting to turn right under the viaduct.
He radioed an urgent request for the Ops-1 Inspector, gave him the information and asked for any units in the area to look for a Streamline Skoda taxi heading up New England Road, with a passenger in the rear wearing a baseball cap. He told them to follow if they spotted it and inform him immediately, but not to stop it. He also asked his colleague to contact Streamline to see if they could get a carefully worded message to the driver. As soon as the lights changed, and the lorry moved on, turning right, he saw a whole line of buses coming down the hill, completely blocking the opposite lane.
He followed the lorry, then pulled out to overtake, thinking he would try to get ahead of the taxi this way and cut it off at the Seven Dials. He screamed past the lorry, crested the hill and eased left through a red light at the junction with Dyke Road, then driving on the wrong side of the road, hitting the alternate wail and honk sirens, bullied his way through the oncoming traffic all the way to the roundabout.
But there was no sign of the taxi.
It could have gone in any damned direction.
He did a full circle of the roundabout, thinking hard. The taxi was heading up New England Road. That was a route people took coming into the city. Was it then going to head down to the seafront? Or the town centre? Those were the most likely options.
He made a left turn off the roundabout into Montpelier Road, again driving as fast as he dared, weaving through the oncoming traffic and peering left and right down each side turning. Then he saw a Skoda taxi in Streamline livery heading west. He raced past it, pulled in front, switched on the red flashing STOP lights, and braked sharply to a halt. In his mirror he saw the taxi pull up behind him. As he was debating what to do next, the rear door opened and a young woman got out, reached in and lifted out a small child.