Peter James - Dead at First Sight

One of the assailants still at large.

Who was the next victim going to be?

Where did they start looking?

‘Arnie, who’s with you in the Incident Room tonight?’

‘DS Snape, Norman, EJ, Alec and Velvet.’

Grace debated whether to go in, but decided there was little he could accomplish that he couldn’t do over the phone. And, as Cleo rightly observed, he was knackered, and would be a lot more use to the investigation after a night’s sleep. They had thirty-six hours to keep the man in custody before they needed to formally charge him. He didn’t know how secretive Lithuanian banks might be, but they had enough time, hopefully, to establish his real identity. What he now needed was two trained advanced suspect interviewers. ‘Nice work, Arnie. I want you to make sure that the suspect has a lawyer — if he doesn’t have one of his own, arrange a legal aid solicitor. We’re going to interview him at 9 a.m.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Put Norman on, will you?’

Grace briefed Potting, then called Glenn Branson. ‘Sorry to disturb your love nest.’

‘Very funny.’

In the background he could hear the television. ‘What are you watching? A replay of Love Island ?’

‘ The news, actually.’

‘Getting your rocks off to the latest on Brexit?’

‘Sometimes, Roy, you are really sad.’

Grace told him the recent development. ‘I want you and Norman to interview the suspect at 9 a.m. I’ll watch from the observation room.’

‘I always perform better in front of a voyeur.’

As he walked away from the pub, the heavy package still tucked in his belt, safely concealed by his jacket and parka, Tooth checked his phone.

The blue dot was heading north on the A23, the main road out of Brighton towards London, passing Gatwick Airport.

He hurried back to the Polo, which he’d parked down a side street a short distance away, and jumped in. Under the glow of a street lamp, he peered cautiously inside his coat at the contents of the brown carrier. Inside was an unbranded handgun that looked like a backstreet copy of a Beretta, a silencer and a plastic bag containing some bullets — around twenty he guessed, he didn’t have time to count them. More than enough for his purposes.

He balanced the phone on the seat beside him, stuck the bag with its contents in the glovebox, looked at the moving blue dot again and calculated that the Hyundai was around fifteen minutes in front of him.

He drove carefully through the city, then once he was out of the 30-mph zone and on the A27 dual carriageway he accelerated hard up the hill and down the far side, before peeling off left, onto the A23 north.

Taking a risk on the quiet road, he increased his speed until the needle was nudging the 90-mph mark. Steadily, over the next fifteen minutes, he narrowed the gap with the blue dot. He maintained his speed. It was reckless, he knew, but he watched out for police cars like a hawk. The gap continued to close.

A few miles on, the A23 became the M23 motorway. He continued maintaining his speed. Less than ten minutes between them now. The blue dot was turning left, off the M23. Onto the Gatwick Airport slip road, the map showed him.

Shortly after, the blue dot stopped moving. Why?

Tooth almost shot past the Hyundai. He spotted it pulled over in a lay-by a few hundred yards ahead.

He slowed right down and switched off his headlights. A couple of taxis overtook him as he was wondering where to pull in. But he didn’t need to as the Hyundai suddenly began moving again, crawling round the perimeter road. Tooth followed behind it at a safe distance, wondering what they were doing. Were they returning the car? Flying out?

The Hyundai drove all the way round, through the Departure drop-off zone and back round the perimeter road. Then it entered the short-term car park.

Tooth felt a beat of excitement. The car park would be pretty quiet at this time of the night. Perhaps, if they parked in a dark area, he could get them both as they climbed out of the car. A double-tap to each of their heads.

An untraceable gun and bullets.

He could be on a plane out first thing in the morning. Job done. Then on to South America. To the house he’d recently acquired in Cuenca, in Ecuador.

But instead of heading up the ramp to the parking levels, the Hyundai made a right, into the Sixt car rental area, and pulled up in a bay.

What were they doing?

Then he saw, under the weak overhead lighting, there was only one person in the car. Which puzzled him.

Red Shoes got out and headed towards the office.

Tooth reversed into an empty bay that gave him a view of the office through his mirrors. He watched Red Shoes approach the reception counter, with a bored-looking woman behind it.

And now he had a pretty good idea what was happening.

Leaving his Polo and keeping stealthily out of sight of the office, he hurried behind several rows of parked cars and over to the Hyundai. He crouched down behind it, felt underneath until he found the magnetic tracker, pulled it free and pocketed it.

Jules de Copeland drove away from Gatwick Airport in a new car, a small Kia, hired under a different name and card, from a different rental firm, Avis.

He was thinking about his vanished colleague. What a complete fool.

Jeopardizing their entire lucrative operation. Jesus.

His anger preoccupied him. Distracted him. Made him totally forget, as it had this past hour and a half, to properly check his mirrors.

Even if he had, he would have been unlikely to spot the headlights of the little VW Polo that followed him some distance back, staying several cars behind.

The Seekers were playing on the radio, ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’.

Oh yes I will. You, man, are history.

But all the same, he fretted. Kofi could give the whole game away if he was caught, and talked.

Hopefully, like himself, he’d been smart enough to get away.

Thirty minutes later, back in Brighton, he turned off the busy Dyke Road Avenue thoroughfare and down a short distance to leafy, secluded Withdean Road. He drove past the entrances to several houses, then halted at wrought-iron gates set between brick pillars and lowered the window to let the duty security guard in the control room see his face.

A twelve-foot-high, fortress-like brick wall protected the grounds and mansion beyond from prying eyes. The place served both as his residence and the headquarters of the JDC dating agency.

As the gates opened, he assured himself that Kofi would be there, in the private cinema, watching one of the crappy Netflix true-crime dramas he was addicted to.

He wasn’t.

He wasn’t in any of the toilets either.

Nor was he in his bedroom. The only occupant was the soul of the human skull sitting on a bookshelf. Kofi told him he’d stolen it from a grave, for his Sakawa fetish rituals. He could believe what he wanted, Copeland was fine with that, but he didn’t go for all that stuff himself.

He didn’t even like standing here alone in the room with the skull. It gave him the heebie-jeebies. Brought back too many memories, too many bad memories of too many skulls. Too many dead people. He had been a proud teenage warrior back then but he wasn’t proud of his past any more. When you were a kid you believed what older people told you. It was easy to be brainwashed. He’d moved on from all that killing and mutilating, all that bullshit ideology fighting for a cause. All the futility. Kofi hadn’t. Yeah, at times you had to be violent because that was the only thing some people understood. Kofi still got his rocks off being violent, but not himself, not any more. Now he got his bangs from seeing money in his bank accounts. Kerrrrrchinggg! The cash register ringing it all up in his head.