Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he said, banging his knuckles together. He shook his head. ‘Seems a little coincidental, the timing.’

‘This car park is quite a hot spot for trouble, sir – in fact this whole area is,’ she reminded him, and pointed across the road at the ruin of the West Pier – one of Brighton’s biggest landmarks, which had been burned down some years before in one of the city’s biggest ever acts of vandalism.

Grace and Branson followed Inspector Carpenter past a PCSO who was guarding the entrance and down a smelly concrete stairwell. Then they walked along the bottom level of the car park, which was almost deserted and smelled of dry dust and engine oil. The old, tired-looking concrete floor, white stanchions and red piping stretched away into the distance, gridded by parking-bay markings.

Over to the right, partially obscured by a concrete abutment, he saw a Skoda saloon taxi that had been reversed into a bay and backed up tight against the rear wall. Two young officers stood beside it.

As they approached, Grace noticed a few fragments of black plastic on the ground close to the car. He fished the gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. Then he knelt, picked the fragments up and put them in an evidence bag, just in case.

At that moment a controller’s voice came through Inspector Carpenter’s radio. Grace and Branson could both hear it clearly. Apparently the Streamline operator was concerned, as she’d not been able to get a response from the driver since just after midnight last night.

‘Do we have a name?’ Carpenter asked.

‘Mike Howard,’ the voice crackled back.

‘Ask if she has a mobile phone number for him,’ Grace said.

He peered into the front, then the rear of the car before trying each of the doors in turn, but they were all locked.

Sue Carpenter radioed the request. A few moments later the operator came back with the number. Grace scribbled it down on his notebook, then immediately dialled it.

A few moments later they heard a muted ringtone from inside the rear of the taxi. Grace ended the call, turned to one of the PCs and asked him for his baton. Looking apprehensive, the young officer produced it and handed it to him.

‘Stand back!’ Grace said, as he swung the baton hard at the driver’s door window.

It cracked, with a loud bang, but remained intact. He hit it again, harder, and this time the glass broke. He smashed away some of the jagged edges with the baton, then slipped his arm in, found the handle and tugged it. He pulled the door open, leaned in and released the handbrake.

‘Give me a hand,’ he said to the officers, and began trying to push the car.

For an instant it resisted, then slowly, silently, it inched forward. Grace kept going until it was a few feet out from the wall, then jerked the brake back on. He leaned in, staring at the unfamiliar controls, saw the driver’s ID on the windscreen, which showed a photograph of a burly-looking man in his forties with thinning brown hair and a startled expression. The name Mike Howard was printed beneath. Grace looked around hard, wondering if there was an internal boot release. Moments later he found it and the boot lid popped open.

Glenn Branson reached the rear of the car first.

Then, as he stared in, his face dropped.

‘Oh shit,’ he said.

Carly, seated in the busy waiting area by boarding gate 47, looked at her watch. Then she stared for a moment at the two British Airways women standing and chatting behind the desk. Occasionally there was a bong , then a brief announcement. Final call for boarding for some other flight. She looked at her watch again. Twenty-two minutes past eight. The flight was due to depart in less than twenty minutes and they hadn’t even started boarding yet. What was going on?

She gripped her handbag and kept her holdall right in front of her. No checked luggage, she did not want any risk of delay at the other end. Her legs kept knocking together. She badly needed a cup of tea and something to eat, but she did not feel able to swallow anything.

She called her mother. She was almost in a worse state than Carly was, blaming herself for having her medical appointment and not picking Tyler up. Then Carly just sat, shaking, raw-eyed, staring around the room at her fellow passengers, and occasionally looking through the emails that were pouring into her iPhone. Mostly work stuff. Questions or information she had requested from clients. Emails from her colleagues. Jokes from a couple of friends who hadn’t yet heard about Tyler. She did not read any of them. All she was interested in was looking to see if, by chance, an email had come in from her son.

Two middle-aged couples sat near her, Americans in a jovial mood, heading to the UK for a golfing holiday. They were talking about golf courses. Hotels. Restaurants. The normality was irritating her. These people were in earnest discussion. Her son had been kidnapped and they were chatting away about long carries and fast greens and some water hazard they’d all had a problem with on their visit last year.

She stood up and moved away, walked up to the desk and asked if the flight was going to be leaving on time. She was told they would be starting boarding in a couple of minutes.

That gave her some small relief. But not much.

She checked Friend Mapper on her phone for the hundredth time since leaving the hotel. But Tyler’s purple dot remained stubbornly in that same place, close to the entrance to Regency Square car park.

Why there? Why are you there?

The screen blurred with her tears. It had been over an hour since she’d spoken to DS Branson. She wondered if she should call him one more time before she got on the plane.

But he had already promised to call the moment he had any news and she was sure he would; he seemed a good communicator. But what if he had been calling and was unable to get through? The flight was about seven hours long. How the hell was she going to be able to sit there for seven hours without news?

She dialled to check her messages, but there were no new ones. Nothing from DS Branson. So she called his mobile number and, to her relief, he answered almost immediately.

‘It’s Carly,’ she said. ‘I’m at Kennedy Airport, about to board. Just thought I’d check in with you.’

‘Right, yeah. You OK?’

‘Just about.’

‘We’ve got your flight times and one of us will be at the gate to meet you when you land.’

His voice sounded strange, as if he was hiding something from her. And he sounded in a hurry.

‘So – no – no news?’

‘Not yet, but we hope to have some for you later. We have just about every police officer in the county looking for Tyler. We’re going to find him.’

‘I had a thought – if there is – you know – any news while I’m up in the air, can you get a message to me via the pilot?’

‘Yes, we can. We can get you an ACARS text message via the cockpit, and most long-haul planes have satellite phones in the cockpit. The moment there’s any news I’ll get it relayed straight to you. OK?’

She thanked him and hung up. As she did so, she heard the boarding announcement. She towed her overnight bag over towards the rear of the rapidly lengthening queue, her insides a solid knot that was getting tighter by the second.

Seven hours.

Seven hours of waiting.

Carly handed over her passport and boarding card for inspection, then walked on in a silent haze, more alone and scared than she’d ever felt in her life.

Suddenly, as she stood in the crush in the aisle of the plane, her phone pinged with an incoming text. Her heart flipped with sudden hope and she looked down eagerly. But to her disappointment it was from the phone company, O2, warning her she was close to her 50 MB overseas data limit.