Peter James - Dead at First Sight

As he walked along, the street suddenly lit up with approaching headlights. He stepped behind a thick tree and watched a small, dark car with two people in it drive past, slowly.

Too slowly.

Two people inside. Looking for something? An address?

Midweek, mid-October, this was not party season. They sure weren’t looking for a party — nor a rave. All his instincts pinned them as cops.

Were they simply patrolling the city’s Nob Hill? In an unmarked car? Or, more likely, looking for something — or someone?

As he walked on, light built up behind him. A car.

The same car. Coming back.

It passed him as he stood, invisible, behind another tree. Had someone tipped them off?

What were they looking for? Him?

They’d have spotted his car for sure. Checked it out. Found it was a rental.

And hopefully left it at that.

Would they?

Or would they be wondering what a little rental Polo was doing parked half on the sidewalk, in the middle of the night?

He abandoned any thoughts of breaking into the grounds of Withdean Place and walked as fast as he could, trying not to look obvious to any CCTV camera that might be clocking him, back to his car.

He set off, driving sedately, keeping carefully to the speed limits, and headed into a maze of residential streets, looking specifically for something. A Volkswagen Polo identical to his own.

After ten minutes, he found it, down a smart side street in Hove. A dark Polo, parked on the driveway of a detached house, which had clearly been there for some while, judging from its misted-up windows.

It took him less than five minutes to swap number plates.

When he arrived back outside Marina Heights, twenty minutes later, to further avoid possible detection by police cameras, he made a second number-plate swap, this time with the dusty one he had seen in the underground car park.

Roy Grace sipped a fresh mug of coffee he’d made as he read through the latest report from Kullen. The team there had established links between the suspects in the murder of Lena Welch — whom they had identified as Kofi Okonjo, alias Dunstan Ogwang, and Tunde Oganjimi, alias Jules de Copeland — to a Sakawa organization in Accra, Ghana. They had further established links to a British crime lord called Steven Barrey. Barrey was a Person of Interest to them in connection with a wide range of internet fraud schemes perpetrated out of Germany, and they were in the process of gathering more evidence on this. They believed Barrey might have relocated to the Channel Isles.

Kullen had also identified that Copeland had a wife and small baby residing near Munich.

Then, reading on, he was interested to see another piece of information from the German detective on the two suspects. Something which fitted with their behaviour and made them chillingly dangerous.

A shadow fell over him and he looked up to see the analyst Vivienne Crown standing in front of him, looking excited.

‘You have something, Vivi?’

She handed him a printout. ‘Take a look at this, sir. I ran our suspect’s biometrics, which I got from Custody, through the Home Office Border Control database.’

He read the document and sensed a breakthrough. ‘Nice work!’

He immediately looked back at the report from Munich, which confirmed what she had brought him. He jotted down a number of notes and a reminder to himself to call Kullen in the morning. Then he yawned again, feeling exhausted. The best thing, he thought, was to send his team members still here home, to get some sleep and be fresh for the morning. He was about to stand up and tell them when DC Alec Davies came over to him, holding a small sheet of paper.

‘Sir, I’ve just had a call from Oscar-1. The car sent to patrol Withdean Road has reported a suspicious vehicle, a Volkswagen Polo, parked near to the target house. They’ve checked it out and from the index it’s a rental from Budget at Gatwick, hired on October 8th to a Mr John Jones.’

‘Great name,’ Grace said, sarcastically. ‘We could narrow that down to around fifty thousand John Joneses. What licence did “Mr Jones” show?’

‘A UK one.’

‘Of course. With what address?’

‘One in Brighton, sir, but I’ve since established it’s fictitious.’

‘What about the car — is it still there?’

‘No, it left approximately ten minutes ago. The surveillance crew didn’t see it leave. They did stop to check it out when they first saw it, and it was unoccupied. But the engine was warm so it hadn’t been there that long.’

Grace was thinking. A rental car parked at this hour of the morning, then driving off, quite possibly spooked by the police car, was not likely to be there visiting friends. It could have been there casing properties for a potential burglary.

Or...

‘Did whoever it was at the rental desk give a description of John Jones?’

‘I just phoned Budget myself, sir, and spoke to a young lady there. She said he was in his fifties, short, wiry, with brown hair, green-rimmed glasses and a gold ear stud. He was dressed in a jacket and slacks. And he had what she thought was an American accent. She remembered him particularly because he was surly and walked with a limp.’

A fleeting thought crossed his mind. Could it possibly be?

No way. Forget it...

‘Instruct Oscar-1 to put out an alert for the Polo. I don’t want it stopped, just followed. Make that very clear.’

‘Sir, I put in a request for any ANPR sightings of the vehicle.’

Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras were in various strategic locations across the city and the county.

‘Good man.’

‘Between 11.30 p.m. and 11.45 p.m. the Polo was picked up by three cameras, the first heading down Dyke Road, the second heading south on West Street and the last one heading east along the seafront, Marine Parade. The next camera it would have pinged was at Rottingdean, but it didn’t, indicating it either stopped or turned off somewhere before then. There were no further sightings until 12.15 a.m. when it travelled west on Marine Parade. At 12.45 a.m. it was sighted heading up Dyke Road. Then, coinciding with your timings, at 1.20 a.m. it was picked up travelling again on Dyke Road and turning down a number of side streets. It hasn’t been clocked since.’

‘A busy fellow,’ Grace said.

‘As he was earlier, sir, darting around the city.’

‘No cameras have picked him up in any other direction?’

‘No, sir.’

Roy Grace stood up, walked over to the whiteboard on which was pinned a map of the Brighton area of Sussex, showing the ANPR locations, and picked a red Sharpie pen from the rack at the base. He drew a circle, encompassing the Onslow Road area, as far as Brighton Marina and the immediate areas to the east and north, keeping the circle short of the other cameras. Then he turned to DC Hall. ‘Kevin, have the local officers do a street-by-street search for the Polo, right away. Also ask Comms to get any unmarked vehicles available to do an area search.’

‘Yes, sir.’

As Hall walked back to his workstation, Grace was thinking hard again. Withdean Road, with its houses beyond most people’s dreams, would always be a prime target for burglars. There was bound to be CCTV surveillance outside most of them.

He glanced at his watch. It was almost 2 a.m. He was always mindful of the need to allow his team rest, in order for them to be fresh. But, equally, if you wanted to be an effective member of a major crime investigation, you had to understand that meant putting your normal life on hold.

He dialled Jack Alexander’s number.

A young woman with an American accent answered, sleepily. Instantly Grace recognized the voice of their nanny, Kaitlynn. ‘Yrrr, hello?’