Peter James - Not Dead Yet

‘You’re certain?’

‘One hundred per cent.’

‘You have CCTV here?’

She pointed up at the ceiling-mounted camera. ‘Yes, we installed it after we had a couple of terminals nicked.’

‘You get such a nice class of people in this city.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Would you be able to show me the footage between 8.30 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Monday?’

‘I’ll ask my husband – he knows how to operate it.’ She turned and shouted through the archway, ‘Craig! I need you!’

Moments later a short, thin man appeared, with a shaven head, even more tattooed and pierced than his wife. Late at night, in a dark alley, he’d have scared the shit out of anyone, Potting thought. But here in daylight he looked surprisingly meek and spoke with a friendly, rather weedy, voice.

Potting explained what he needed, and five minutes later was seated, with a trendily large tea cup with a clumsy handle, in a sparse office at the back of the café, staring up at a monitor. The time was displayed digitally in the top right-hand corner of the screen. The image quality wasn’t great, but clear enough for his purpose. He could see five of the ten terminals were occupied.

Three were young men who looked like students. The fourth was an attractive girl, in her early twenties. The fifth was a middle-aged woman, wearing a leather baseball cap, a polo-neck sweater and a bomber jacket with the collar turned up.

By 8.35 p.m. four of the occupants had left, leaving the woman in the leather baseball cap on her own. Shortly after 8.46 she rose and walked up towards the counter, out of shot. Then a couple of minutes later she came back into frame, leaving the premises.

‘Her!’ Potting said. ‘Do you remember her?’

‘Yes, I do,’ Craig said. ‘We get a lot of oddballs in here. She was definitely one of them.’

‘In what sense?’

‘Well, sort of just her manner, and she had a very husky voice, you know, like someone who’s a heavy smoker. Before she started her session she asked how much we charged and I told her two pounds for half an hour or three pounds for an hour. She said she needed to draw some cash out and asked if there was a hole-in-the-wall machine anywhere around. I remember telling her the nearest one was just up in Queen’s Road – an HSBC.’

‘She went to it?’

He shrugged. ‘She went out and came back ten minutes later. I remember she paid with a brand new ten pound note, and I thought that must have come straight out of the machine.’

‘I need to borrow the disc,’ Potting said. ‘Do you have any objection?’

The man hesitated.

‘I can get a warrant, if you insist.’

Craig shook his head. ‘No, that’s fine.’

Potting took the disc, then hurried up to the top of Trafalgar Street, walking through the archway beneath Brighton Station, then turned left into Queen’s Road. He saw the HSBC bank, with two cash machines, diagonally across to his left.

Glenn Branson sat at his terminal in MIR-1 with a row of index cards laid out in front of him. On one was written, Torso at Stonery Farm . On another was, Arms and legs found in West Sussex Piscatorial Society lake . On the third, Suit fabric at Stonery Farm, West Sussex Piscatorial Society Lake and Gaia German tour . The fourth was headed, Myles Royce . The fifth, Drayton Wheeler .

It was a method he employed whenever he found himself stuck. Each card related to photographs pinned to the whiteboards above the workstations where the investigation team were working in mostly silent concentration. Every few moments, he could hear Norman Potting’s irritating voice. The DS always seemed to speak louder than anyone else when he was on the phone, as if assuming the person down the other end of the line was hard of hearing.

Then a female voice interrupted Branson. ‘Sir?’

He looked up to see the tall figure of DC Reeves, in a bright red dress and flaxen hair, standing over him, looking excited. ‘I have something from eBay that might be significant.’

‘What?’

‘They’ve been really helpful. I’ve got the entire history of the auction for Gaia’s suit, and all the names of the bidders. It ended up with just two people who between them drove the price up from seven hundred pounds to the final winning bid of twenty-seven thousand, two hundred.’

‘That was some bidding war. Incredible!’

‘I know! And the winning bidder was none other than our jigsaw puzzle man, Myles Royce.’

‘Royce?’ Branson said. He frowned. ‘I thought he already had this suit – he bought one.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Emma Reeves agreed. ‘But he didn’t own this one. Gaia’s personal suit, worn by her at a concert. That’s what gives it kudos and value to a collector.’

‘Yeah, I get it, but shit, you’ve got to be sad to pay that kind of money.’

‘Gaia gives it all to charity, apparently,’ Emma Reeves said. ‘And for the collector it could be a good investment.’

Branson shrugged. ‘Even so, you’d have to want something real bad.’

‘I think these collectors do, sir. Anyhow, I gave the names of all the other bidders to Annalise Vineer, and she’s run checks on them. Remember an incident at The Grand Hotel, last week, when an over-zealous Gaia fan got pushed over by one of her security guards? This fan called the police, who attended; subsequently it was found that she had given them a false address.’

‘Yep,’ Branson said. ‘Her name was Anna Garley – Galicia – or something like that, right?’

‘Spot on! Galicia . Well, she was the underbidder on this auction for the yellow suit.’

Branson absorbed this for some moments. A possibility was shaping in his mind. A motive? Had they been looking down the wrong track? Could anger over the suit be behind this murder? Were the yellow cloth fragments at the deposition sites put there deliberately? Out of some kind of spite?

Norman Potting, who had just ended his call, looked up. ‘You’re talking about a female Gaia obsessive?’

Branson gave him a surly look. ‘Possibly.’

‘I just got back a short while ago from that internet place, Café Conneckted.’ He held up a CD. ‘This is the footage of the person who was online at 8.46 p.m. Monday night, when the threatening email was sent to Gaia.’ Like an actor playing to an audience, Potting took a deliberate pause before going on. ‘It’s a woman.’

This was greeted by frowns, and a brief silence.

‘A woman?’ Guy Batchelor said.

‘Yep.’

‘Is there footage of her walking?’ Haydn Kelly, sitting just opposite him, asked.

‘I think so, a bit,’ Potting said.

‘May I see it?’

Potting handed him the disc. Kelly loaded it immediately.

‘This person, whoever she is, went to an HSBC bank hole-in-the-wall machine in Queen’s Road around 8.30 p.m. on Monday to make a cash withdrawal,’ Potting said. ‘There are two ATMs, side by side. I’ve just been on to the bank asking them to let us have details of all the people who made cash withdrawals from these machines between 8.15 and 9 p.m. on Monday – to allow for the machine clocks being slightly wrong. I should have it a bit later today.’

Glenn Branson stood over Haydn Kelly’s shoulder and studied the distinct, if poor quality, colour image.

‘You can fast forward through the first few minutes as the others leave the café, Haydn,’ Potting said.

The forensic podiatrist did so, then slowed as the clock counter approached 20.44. Only the woman in the leather cap was there now. From her body language it was clear she had a decisive moment around 20.46. Shortly after that she appeared to log off, then stood up and walked towards the counter, and out of shot.