Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

Springs Smoked Salmon was a household name throughout Europe and the family were proud of the quality. Harris was second-generation, running the company that had been started by his parents. The location, tucked away in a valley in the South Downs, close to Brighton, was an improbable one for a fish company, and the place had an unprepossessing air – the ramshackle collection of single-storey buildings could have belonged to a tumbledown farm rather than containing a business that had become an international legend.

He walked up an incline, past a fork-lift truck and a line of parked delivery vans, between the identical cold-storage sheds. Inside them the rows of headless Scottish salmon and trout, his company’s speciality, were being smoked, hung on hooks suspended from overhead racks that stretched back the full hundred-foot length of the shed, or lay packed in white Styrofoam boxes, ready for dispatch to gourmet stores, restaurants and catering companies around the globe. Also stacked on pallets were other fish and seafood products they supplied to their customers, in particular langoustines and scampi, most of which came from Scotland as well as scallops, lobsters and crabs.

He unlocked the padlock on the first door and pulled it open, checking that the temperature was fine. Then he checked each of the next three sheds as well, before moving on to the smokery ovens. These were nearly fifty years old, but still going strong. Huge, grimy, brick and steel walk-in boxes, each with a wood-fired kiln in the base, and the ceiling covered with racks and hooks, on which hung rows of pink and golden-brown fillets of smoking fish.

When he had finished his inspections, and had topped up the burners with oak logs, he entered the shop. This was a long, narrow building with a counter running the entire length of one side, while on the other side shelving was piled with every conceivable canned seafood delicacy, as well as jams, pâtés and preserves. His staff who ran the retail side, all wearing dark blue overalls and white hats, were busy putting out the displays of freshly smoked fish and making up the orders that had come in overnight by phone and email.

Jane, the manageress, flagged up a problem. One of the overnight orders was from a hamper company who were infuriatingly slow payers. They had run up an alarmingly high bill and no payment had been received for nearly three months.

‘I think we should tell them we need payment before we dispatch any more, Mr Harris,’ she said.

He nodded. For the next ten minutes they continued to work on the orders, then he sat down and began, on the computer, to check his stock. At that moment the phone rang. As he was the nearest to it, he answered.

An American voice the other end asked, ‘How quickly could you supply two thousand, five hundred langoustines?’

‘What size and how quickly do you need them, sir?’

After a moment, the American said, ‘The biggest available. Before the end of next week. We’ve been let down by a supplier.’

Harris asked him to hold for a moment, then checked on the computer. ‘We are low on stock at the moment, but we do have a delivery coming down overnight from our supplier in Scotland on Tuesday, arriving here early Wednesday morning. If you want that quantity I could get it added to the consignment.’

‘When would you need me to confirm?’

‘Really as soon as possible, sir. Would you like me to give you the price?’

‘That won’t be an issue. The consignment would definitely be here? You could guarantee Wednesday morning?’

‘We have a delivery from Scotland every Wednesday, sir.’

‘Good. I’ll come back to you.’

In his rental car parked a short distance along the road from the smokery, Tooth ended the call on his cellphone. Then he turned the car round and drove back down the narrow road, passing the sign that said SPRINGS SMOKED SALMON – SHOP OPEN.

He wondered for a moment whether to pull into the customer car park and have a recce inside the shop. Perhaps buy something. But he’d already seen all he wanted and decided there wasn’t any point in showing his face. That was just an unnecessary risk.

Besides, he didn’t do smoked fish.

The week proceeded without any significant progress being made by Roy Grace’s team. This was despite the DNA from the flesh found under Preece’s fingernails producing a suspect within Ford Prison – a giant of a man called Lee Rogan. Rogan was serving out the final months of a sentence for armed robbery and grievous bodily harm, prior to being released on licence.

Rogan had been arrested on suspicion of murdering Warren Tulley but was claiming in his defence that they’d had a fight over money earlier the same evening Tulley had died. So far the internal investigation had not unearthed any calls made by Rogan using his PIN code, or any mobile phone concealed in his cell. If he had been intending to claim the reward, they had no evidence of it as yet. But with the number of illegal mobile phones that were inside Ford, it was more than possible he had borrowed – or rented – one off another prisoner. Which would be almost impossible to establish. The West Area Major Crime Branch Team were keeping Grace informed of progress.

Thanks to her sharp Legal Aid solicitor, a man called Leighton Lloyd, with whom Grace had had many run-ins previously, Evie Preece had gone no comment and had been released on police bail after eighteen hours. Grace had put surveillance on her house, in case her brother returned. It was unlikely, he knew, but at the same time, Preece was stupid enough to do that.

He’d had a conversation with a helpful law enforcement officer in New York, Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, of the Special Investigations Unit of the Office of the District Attorney, who had given him detailed background on the dead boy’s parents, but Lanigan had no specific intelligence on the current situation, other than to tell him of Fernanda Revere’s fury when he had broken the news of her son’s death to her – which had been confirmed by her actions when she was over in the UK.

Grace always knew it was a bad sign when the reporter from the Argus stopped phoning him and he had not heard from Spinella for several days now. He decided to call a press conference for the following day, Friday, his hope being to spark some memories in the public, followed by a reconstruction at the collision scene. Apart from other considerations, he needed to show the Revere family that everything possible was being done to find the driver so callously involved in their son’s fatal accident.

At 11 a.m. the conference room at Sussex House was crammed. The Mafia connection and the $100,000 reward had generated massive media attention – far more even than Roy Grace had anticipated. He appealed to members of the public who might have been in the vicinity of Portland Road on the morning of Wednesday 21 April to cast their minds back and see if they remembered a white Ford Transit van and to attend the reconstruction, which would be held the following day.

Then he appealed specifically to the residents of Southwick, and Manor Hall Road in particular, asking if anyone remembered the van or seeing Ewan Preece – at this point he showed a series of police and prison photographs of the man. Although it stuck in his craw to continue to deal with Spinella, the little shit was now at least being cooperative.

Heading back along the corridors towards his office immediately after the press conference, Grace checked his diary on his Black-Berry. There was an exhibits meeting scheduled for 2 p.m., which he needed to attend.

Glenn Branson caught up with him, saying, ‘You know, for an old-timer, you do pretty good at these conferences.’