Peter James - Dead at First Sight

Ogwang had recently picked up urban street language and had taken to using it. ‘I’m hearing you, bro, got you mega. Mr Toby Seward, OK, right? This dude’s dangerous. We should teach him a lesson.’

‘Like, not to go on radio and shoot off his big fat mouth?’

Ogwang stuck his tongue out, pinched the end of it between his forefinger and thumb, then made a chopping motion with his free hand. He looked at Copeland expectantly.

Copeland turned left away from Hove seafront as the lights changed, without replying. They headed up Grand Avenue, past tall apartment blocks. ‘Lotta rich people in them apartments,’ he said. ‘Lotta older folks, widows, widowers. Looking for love. Rich pickings, here, Eastbourne, Worthing. Rich and lonely, looking for love. This is the place to be.’

He was completely unaware of the small, grey Polo, four cars back, that steadfastly followed them.

‘Where we going, bro?’ Ogwang clicked his cheap lighter and moments later the interior of the car filled with ganja smoke. He glanced at his watch again, admiringly. He’d had it for over two years, but it still gave him a thrill.

‘Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you where we’re not going. Prison.’ Mimicking his friend’s street accent he said, ‘Now put that weed out before we gets our asses busted and we gone have to ’splain what we doing here.’

They were returning to base, their gated mansion on Brighton’s leafy, secluded Withdean Road, from a shopping trip. Ogwang took another drag on the joint, inhaled deeply and removed it from his mouth. He held it in front of his face, staring at it, as if weighing up his options. Copeland closed them off for him. He snatched it and tossed it out of the window.

‘That was good shit, man!’ Ogwang protested.

‘You get good shit by staying out of prison, dumbfuck. I made that bitch in Munich look like a suicide, until you gone crazy and cut her tongue off. Now here we have a suicide, they not gonna prove nothing.’

‘Gotta leave warnings,’ Ogwang said. ‘See? Gotta leave them, bro, else they talk. Gotta stop this Tony Sewage man talking. Dissing our agency.’

‘So we go frighten him, right?’

‘Right.’

‘But that’s all. We don’t hurt him, we don’t want the police coming for us.’

Ogwang slipped his hand inside his parka and closed his fingers around the wooden handle of his sheathed machete. He pulled it out a few inches and felt the cold steel of the blade. He sharpened it every day of his life, keeping the edge like a razor.

‘You hearing me?’ Copeland said. ‘I don’t think you’re hearing me.’

Ogwang tested the sharpness of his blade again and said nothing.

There wasn’t much about being back in Brighton that pleased Tooth, but the heavy rain did. Rain was always good for surveillance — it distracted people, making them less alert to their surroundings, less aware. The rain was obligingly misting up the windows of the little rental Hyundai, four cars in front, further obscuring the rear view of the two men inside it. Although in Tooth’s opinion, what was mostly obscuring the view was their combined lack of intelligence. They ignored speed limits, pinging camera after camera they passed. What were they doing inside that little shitbox ahead of him? Playing a game of pass-the-brain-cell ?

He had the radio tuned in to the local station, BBC Sussex. Over the years he’d learned that local radio gave you stuff that could be useful, and he was curious to hear any news reports about Suzy Driver. And he had been right to tune in. A man, whose name he hadn’t caught, was talking in a mellifluous voice, by sheer coincidence about how his identity had been used in attempted romance frauds on eleven victims. One of whom was Suzy Driver.

Tooth had flown into Shoreham yesterday morning, one of his alias passports at the ready in case he was challenged, but no one from Border Control was around. Then he’d been dropped off, by a driver Steve Barrey had arranged, at a car rental place at Gatwick where he’d hired this Volkswagen, turning down the offer of a free upgrade. He told the surprised Budget reception guy that if he’d wanted a bigger car he’d have rented a bigger car. He wanted small.

And inconspicuous.

Wary of spending too much time in the city itself, he’d checked into a Ramada at Gatwick Airport. Tomorrow, he’d switch to another hotel in the area. For security reasons, he never liked to spend more than one night in the same location. And as yet he didn’t have the firearm Barrey had assured him he was fixing for him. As soon as he got it, he’d do a double-tap on Jules de Copeland and Dunstan Ogwang and be on a plane, back out of Shoreham Airport.

The Hyundai Getz shot an amber light and he pulled up his little Polo for the red. Didn’t matter he wouldn’t lose them. Earlier this morning, after they’d emerged from the gates of their fortress-like residence, he’d followed them into Brighton where they’d parked in a multistorey, giving him plenty of time to place a magnetic tracking bug under the rear of the car.

And at least his employer had finally come to his senses. He no longer had the lame instruction to frighten. He had an updated order from Barrey.

Eliminate.

It was like he’d been walking around for days with a limp dick, and now he’d been given a shot of Viagra. He’d checked the money was in his account.

He was going after them. On it.

Where were the dopeheads going? He looked at the blue dot on his phone. They had turned right, east.

The interview with the man, Toby Seward, ended and the midday news came on.

When the lights turned green, he accelerated hard.

The presence of Haydn Kelly at the noon meeting Roy Grace had convened brought a smile to his face. A wicked one. Kelly, a former Professor of Podiatry at Plymouth University, was the world’s leading authority on Forensic Gait Analysis. And he was, as the Stella Artois lager adverts used to say, ‘reassuringly expensive’.

Expensive enough to give ACC Cassian Pewe some serious pain.

Mid-forties, solidly built, with thinning, close-cropped hair, the Forensic Podiatrist was smartly attired as ever, today in a navy suit, crisp white shirt and striped tie. There was little about shoes he did not know, although, amusingly to the team, his own were usually in need of a clean. Kelly had pioneering software, which Grace had used on previous cases to considerable effect, enabling him to identify suspects from the way they walked, from just a single footprint.

Kelly travelled the world, much of the time in Asia, and was in constant demand by police forces everywhere. Grace needed him on his team for this investigation, and knew he was lucky the podiatrist had a gap in his schedule and was available to come down today.

‘I don’t think Professor Kelly needs much introduction to most of you,’ Grace said. ‘So, Haydn, what can you tell us about our suspect and his apparent liking for red footwear?’

‘Well,’ Kelly said, ‘it’s early doors, but from the very poor CCTV footage I’ve seen from Munich there appears to be a distinctive “ N ” on the shoes. That indicates the brand is New Balance. I’ve established they did produce a shoe in this colour last year. I see from your CSI luminol spray of the area that there are footprints in the front garden of the deceased Mrs Driver’s house which match the tread pattern of New Balance shoes manufactured in this red colour.’ He pointed at the wall-mounted monitor above the conference table, on which was displayed the zigzag tread pattern of a trainer, obtained from the Police National Footwear Database. ‘But as a caveat, this trainer was made in a range of colours. You have no CCTV from the area of your crime scene?’