Peter James - Dead at First Sight

Perfect. He still had two unused identities on him — passports and driving licences in different names. He would collect the rental, drive to his hotel near Gatwick, pick up his bag, then head over towards Primrose Farm Cottage, Forest Row. Copeland and his beloved Lynda were due to rendezvous at 6.30 p.m. He would get there nice and early. Later he would drive to Ashford and catch a late Eurostar to Paris with his one remaining identity.

He was thinking about the lyrics of one of the few musicians he liked listening to, John Lennon, and one of his favourite tracks, ‘Beautiful Boy’ — ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’

Oh yes.

Jules de Copeland, think about that. It’s not going to happen.

Shortly before 9 a.m., partly through hunger and partly to relieve the monotony, Doug Riley opened his rucksack, removed the lid of the plastic box inside and ate a breakfast of the egg sandwich, tomatoes and cucumber his wife had prepared for him. Just as he finished, his earpiece crackled.

‘Mike Whisky One?’

‘Mike Whisky One,’ Riley replied to the support van.

‘Two covert entry officers approaching in a white Ford van, index Juliet Foxtrot, Five Nine, Papa November Echo. They said to thank you for the photographs.’

‘Glad we had the time to fit them in,’ Riley answered, facetiously.

Moments later the van passed him and halted outside the house. Two officers in forensic protective suits climbed out and hurried to the front door, one carrying a toolbox.

Riley watched through his binoculars as the one with the toolbox opened the lid, selected a device that looked like a pocketknife and inserted a rod into the lock. Within seconds the door opened and they went in.

Ten minutes later they came back out, closing the door, and drove off. Riley radioed in what he had seen.

His earpiece crackled into life again. ‘Mike Whisky One,’ he said.

‘Mike Whisky Two. An overweight British Blue cat has just appeared through the rear-door flap.’

‘Thanks for that information, Mike Whisky Two.’

‘Just thought you’d like to know.’

‘Sure it’s not a cat burglar?’

‘Might be going cat-fishing,’ Hastings retorted.

Riley groaned. ‘Just don’t let it piss on you.’

Half an hour later there was another break in the monotony when a post van appeared. The driver pulled up, got out, shoved several envelopes through the letter box in the door and drove off.

Riley radioed his colleague to tell him.

‘Any mail for me?’ Hastings asked.

Pinned to a whiteboard in the Incident Room was an aerial map of Primrose Farm Cottage and the immediate surrounding area. Two red circles marked the positions of the CROPS officers, logged from their transponders.

Below was pinned a floorplan of the cottage, obtained from council records, from when a planning application to extend the building had been put in twenty years back. Roy Grace had virtually memorized it. There was no hallway; the front door opened straight onto an open living area, with a dining area to the left and kitchen beyond, and a door out to the rear. To the right was the snug area, with an inglenook fireplace. A staircase, facing the front door, went up to the first floor where there were four bedrooms and two bathrooms, and what looked like a narrower staircase up to an attic. In the kitchen was a trapdoor, with steps down to what was marked on the plan as a wine cellar.

Also pinned to the whiteboard was a section of an Ordnance Survey map of the area. Grace had marked a circle of approximately five miles radius from Primrose Farm Cottage and was now staring at it, noting the terrain, studying the grid of roads, lanes, bridleways, footpaths. He needed to have a ring of steel around the property. The ability to check out every approaching vehicle from any direction.

There was so much potential for this to go badly wrong. Maybe he should take the safe option, after all, he wondered, and put in a decoy?

His thoughts were interrupted by DS Alexander, standing beside him. ‘Sir, we’ve found a Streamline taxi that picked up a man matching Copeland’s description. He flagged the car down a short distance from Marina Heights at 7.45 a.m. — the time fits.’

‘Nice work. Where did it drop him?’

‘Gatwick Airport — South Terminal.’

Grace looked at him. ‘Does that mean he’s bailing out? Are they looking for him at the airport?’

‘Yes, sir, security has a full description of him and his alias. Inspector Biggs is the duty commander there today. He’s checked with security and is pretty sure no one of that description has passed through so far. He has officers checking the departure areas.’

‘Make sure he checks the lounges, too.’

‘That’s happening, sir, and the CCTV. There is one strange thing the taxi driver reported. He had two suitcases with him — one was reasonably heavy but the other, a large one, felt empty.’

Grace thought fast. Was Copeland doing a runner? With an empty suitcase? Ignoring £300,000? Maybe, in the scheme of things, that was small beer to him. But could that amount of money, in cash, be insignificant to anyone?

Why else would he be carrying an empty suitcase, unless he intended putting something in it?

Something as bulky as the cash?

Gatwick Airport wasn’t just a hub for flights.

While Alexander stood in front of him, Grace pulled up the calculator on his computer. On a previous case he’d had to check the weight of £1 million in fifty-pound notes, which was about twenty-six kilograms; £300,000 would be about eight kilos. Well within an airline weight limit.

But with a legal limit of £10,000 being the most anyone could take out of the country without an explanation, would anyone in their right mind take a punt on £300,000? Although, as was becoming increasingly common now, villains were converting cash into crypto-currencies.

‘Jack, I’m hypothesizing that Copeland isn’t doing a runner. He has that suitcase for a reason. Circulate his description to all car-hire companies in the Gatwick area, and to all the taxi and limousine companies. We can’t assume he’s trying to flee the country.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He turned to Glenn Branson.

‘Want to come for a drive in the countryside?’

‘To take in the autumn colours? Sounds idyllic, boss.’

As Branson stood up, DS John Camping approached Grace with a clutch of documents in his hand. ‘Sir, I have an update from Jersey. Their States Police Financial Crimes Unit have come back with some potentially useful intel. Our enquiry links with something they’ve been working on for many months. A network of internet fraudsters, focused on internet dating, operating throughout Europe, but mostly Germany. And here’s the best bit!’ Camping gave him a broad smile. ‘It tallies with information we already have. Mr Big — the mastermind — they suspect is none other than Steven Barrey.’

Grace banged the desk. ‘Yes!’

‘How confident are they, John?’ Branson asked.

‘Confident enough to put him on 24/7 surveillance, sir.’ He looked at Branson, then Grace. ‘They’ve also put a phone tap on his landline and listening devices to try to capture any mobile phones he uses. My contact over there, DC Vanessa Forde, says they are particularly anxious to stamp out this operation because of the importance to Jersey of being a secure financial centre.’

‘Are they planning to arrest Barrey?’

‘They are still information gathering, sir,’ Camping said. ‘But if he tries to leave the island they will stop him.’

‘Good.’ Then Grace turned back to his immediate situation. In less than seven hours, if he was right, Jules de Copeland, with an empty suitcase and potentially murderous intent, was meeting Lynda Merrill, who had romance in mind, in the remote rural location on the whiteboard in front of him.