Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

It wasn’t fully dark and there was some lighting from her windows and those of her neighbours. She looked up the steep lawn, past the ponds, towards the summer house, and saw Otis running around, barking furiously. At what? She could see nothing. But at the same time it unsettled her. This wasn’t his normal behaviour. Had there been an intruder? Otis stopped barking and rushed around the lawn again, nose to the ground, as if he had picked up a scent. A fox, she thought. Probably just a fox. She turned back to Tyler and saw to her surprise that he was crying.

She walked the few steps back over to him, knelt and hugged him.

‘What is it, darling? Tell me?’

He stared at her, eyes streaming behind his glasses. ‘I’m scared,’ he said.

‘What are you scared of?’

‘I’m scared after your crash. You might have another crash, mightn’t you?’ Then he looked at her solemnly. ‘I don’t want to have to make another memory box, Mummy. I don’t want to have to make one about you.’

Carly put her arms around him and gave him a hug. ‘Mummy’s not going anywhere, OK? You’re stuck with me.’ She kissed his cheek.

Out in the garden, Otis suddenly began barking even more ferociously.

Carly got up and moved to the window. She peered out again, feeling a deepening sense of unease.

The plane landed hard, hitting the runway like the pilot hadn’t realized it was there. All the stuff in the galley rattled and clanked, and one of the locker doors flew open, then slammed back shut. Flying didn’t bother Tooth. Since his military days, he considered it a bonus to be landing any place where people weren’t shooting at you. He sat impassively, braced against the deceleration, thinking hard.

He’d slept fine, bolt upright in this same position for most of the six-and-a-half-hour flight from Newark. He had gotten used to sleeping this way when he was on sniper missions in the military. He could remain in the same place, in the same position, for days when he needed to, relieving himself into bottles and bags, and he could sleep anywhere, wherever he was and whenever he needed to.

He could have charged the client for a business or first-class seat if he’d wanted, but he preferred the anonymity of coach. Flight crew paid you attention when you travelled up front and he didn’t want the possibility of any of them remembering him later. A small precaution. But Tooth always took every small precaution going. For the same reason, he’d flown out of Newark rather than Kennedy Airport. It was a lower-profile place; in his experience it had less heavy security.

Trails of rain slid down the porthole. It was 7.05 a.m. UK time on his watch. The watch had a built-in digital video recorder with the pinhole camera lens concealed in the face. It had its uses for clients who wanted to see his handiwork. Like his current client.

A female voice was making an announcement about passengers in transit which did not concern him. He looked out across the grey sky and concrete, the green grass, the parked planes and signposts and runway lights and slab-like buildings of Gatwick Airport. One civilian airport looked pretty much like another, in his view. Sometimes the colour of the grass differed.

The bespectacled American in the seat next to him was clutching his passport and landing card, which he had filled out.

‘Bumpy landing,’ he said, ‘huh?’

Tooth ignored him. The man had tried to strike up a conversation the moment he’d first sat down last night and Tooth had ignored him then, too.

Fifteen minutes later a turbaned immigration officer opened the UK passport up, glanced at the photograph of James John Robertson, brushed it across the scanner and handed it back to the man without a word. Just another British citizen returning home.

Tooth walked through, then followed the signs to the baggage reclaim and exit. No one gave a second glance to the thin, diminutive, shaven-headed man who was dressed in a dark brown sports coat over a grey polo shirt, black jeans and black Cuban-heeled boots. He strode towards the green Customs channel, holding his small bag in one hand and a thick beige anorak folded over his arm.

The Customs hall was empty. He clocked the two-way mirror above the stainless-steel examining benches as he walked through, passing the second-chance duty-free shop and out into the Arrivals Hall, into a sea of eager faces and a wall of placards bearing names. He scanned the faces, out of habit, but saw nothing familiar, no one looking particularly at him, nothing to be concerned about.

He made his way to the Avis car rental desk. The woman checked his reservation.

‘You requested a small saloon, automatic, in a dark colour, Mr Robertson?’

‘Yes.’ He could do a good English accent.

‘Would you be interested in an upgrade?’

‘If I wanted a better model I’d have ordered one,’ he said flatly.

She produced a form for him to sign, wrote down the details of his UK licence, then handed it back to him, along with an envelope with a registration number written on it in large black letters.

‘You’re all set. Keys are in here. Will you be returning it full?’

Tooth shrugged. If his plans for the days ahead worked out the way he intended, and they usually did, the company would not be seeing the car again. He didn’t do rental returns.

If there were no developments, the initial energy of any new major crime inquiry could fade fast. Roy Grace had always seen one of his essential duties as the SIO as being to keep his team focused and energized. You had to make them feel they were making progress.

And in truth, if you didn’t get a quick, early resolution, many major crime inquiries became painstakingly long and drawn out. Too slow-moving for the brass in Malling House, who were always mindful of the press, their obligations to the community and the ever present shadow of crime statistics, as well as far too slow for the families of the victims. Days could quickly become weeks, and weeks would drag into months. And occasionally months could turn into years.

One of his heroes, Arthur Conan Doyle, was once asked why, having trained as a doctor, he had turned to writing detective stories. His reply had been, ‘The basis of all good medical diagnosis is the precise and intelligent recognition and appreciation of minor differences. Is this not precisely what is required of a good detective?’

He thought hard now about those words, as he sat with his team in the Monday morning briefing. Day six of the inquiry. 8.30 a.m. A wet, grey morning outside. A sense of frustration inside. It took Norman Potting to say what they were all feeling.

‘He’s vermin, this Ewan Preece. And he’s thick. We’re not dealing with someone smart. This is a cretin who lives off the slime at the bottom of the gene pool. My bogies are smarter than he is.’

Bella Moy screwed up her face in disgust. ‘Thank you, Norman. So what’s your point, exactly?’

‘Just what I’ve said, Bella. That he’s not smart enough to hide – not for any length of time. Someone’ll shop him, if he isn’t spotted by a police officer before then. A reward of a hundred thousand dollars – the bugger doesn’t have a prayer.’

‘So you’re saying we should just wait, not bother with this line of enquiry?’ Bella dug into him harder.

Potting pointed at a whiteboard, at the centre of which Ewan Preece’s name was written in large red letters and circled, with his prison mugshot pasted beside it. It showed a thin-faced young man. He had short, spiky hair, a scowling mouth that reminded Grace of a braying donkey and a single gold hooped earring. Various lines connected the circle around him to different names: members of his family, friends, known associates, contacts.