Peter James: Dead Man's Grip

Tooth turned and helped the boy to sit upright, with his back propped against the wall, and a view ahead of him along the tunnel and of the bones and the skull. The boy was blinking and something looked different about him. Then Tooth realized what that was. His glasses were missing. He shone his flashlight around, saw them and replaced them on the boy’s face.

The boy stared at him. Then flinched at the skeletal remains, his eyes registering horror and deepening fear as Tooth held the beam on it.

Tooth knelt and ripped the duct tape from the boy’s mouth.

‘You all right, kid?’

‘Not really. Actually, no. I want to go home. I want my mum. I’m so thirsty. Who are you? What do you want?’

‘You’re very demanding,’ Tooth said.

Tyler looked at the sight.

‘He doesn’t look too healthy to me. What do you think, kid?’

‘Male, between fifty and sixty years old. Eastern European.’

Tooth frowned. ‘You want to tell me how you know that?’

‘I study archaeology and anthropology. Can I have some water now please – and I’m hungry.’

‘You’re a goddamn smartass, right?’

‘I’m just thirsty,’ Tyler said. ‘Why have you brought me here? Who are you?’

‘That guy,’ Tooth said, pointing at the skeleton, ‘he’s been here for six years. No one knows about this place. No one’s been here in six years. How would you feel about spending six years down here?’

‘I wouldn’t feel good about that,’ Tyler said.

‘I bet you wouldn’t. I mean, who would, right?’

Tyler nodded in agreement. This guy seemed a little crazy, he thought. Crazy but maybe OK. Not a lot crazier than some of his teachers.

‘What had that man done?’

‘He ripped someone off,’ Tooth said. ‘OK?’

Tyler shrugged. ‘OK,’ he said, his voice coming out as a parched, frightened croak.

‘I’ll get you sorted, kid. You have to hang on. You and me, we have a big problem. It’s to do with the tides, right?’

Tyler stared at him. Then he stared at the remains, shaking. Was this going to be him in six years?

‘Tides?’ he said.

The man pulled a folded sheet of printout from his rucksack, then opened it up.

‘You understand these things, kid?’

He held the paper in front of Tyler’s face, keeping his flashlight trained on it. The boy looked at it, then shot a glance at the man’s wristwatch.

‘Big ships can’t come into this harbour two hours either side of low tide,’ Tooth said.

He stared at the boxes, each of which had a time written inside it, below the letters LW or HW. Alongside was written Predicted heights are in metres above Chart Datum .

‘This is not easy to figure out. Seems like low tide was 11.31 p.m. here, but I’m not sure I’ve got that right. That would mean ships start coming in and out again after 1.31 a.m.’

‘You’re not looking at today’s date,’ Tyler said. ‘Today it will be 2.06 a.m. Are you taking me on a boat?’

Tooth did not reply.

The phones in MIR-1 had been ringing off the hook ever since the Child Rescue Alert had been triggered, and the abduction of Tyler Chase was front-page news in most of the papers, as well as headline news on radio and television. It was coming up to 12.30 a.m. During the nearly fourteen hours since his abduction just about everyone in the nation who didn’t live under a rock knew his name and a good many of them had seen his photograph.

The room was as busy now as it was in the middle of the day and the air was thick with the continuous ringing of landline and mobile phones. Roy Grace sat, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, tie slackened, reading through a list that had been emailed over by Detective Investigator Lanigan of the methods of operation of all known currently active contract killers. Not wanting to restrict their search to the US, police forces around Europe had also been contacted and their information was starting to come in.

But nothing matching their man so far.

Or his car.

In view of the frequency with which the suspect appeared to go about changing number plates, Grace had sent out requests to every police force in the UK to stop and search every dark-coloured Yaris, regardless of whether it was grey or not. He wanted to eliminate any possible risk of the suspect slipping through the net, including a mistake being made by someone who might be colour blind.

It was possible the boy was already abroad, despite the watch that had been put on all airports, seaports and the Channel Tunnel. There were private aircraft and private boats that could easily have slipped the net. But he was fairly certain that the Toyota Yaris belonging to Barry Simons was the one Tyler Chase had been driven in from the Regency Square car park. And if that was the case, Grace did not think he had left the Shoreham area.

Checks had been carried out with the Harbour Master, the Port Authority and the Coast Guard. All vessels that had sailed from Shoreham Harbour today had been accounted for. No cargo ship had passed through the lock after eight o’clock this evening. A few fishing boats had gone out, but that was all.

Suddenly Stacey Horobin came over to him and said, ‘Sir, I have a Lynn Sebbage on the phone, from a firm of chartered surveyors called BLB. She’s asking to speak to Norman Potting – said she’s tried his mobile but he’s not picking up. She says she’s been working through the night to look for the information he asked her for, urgently, and she thinks she’s found it.’

Grace frowned. ‘Chartered surveyors?’

‘Yes, called BLB.’

‘You mean chartered surveyors as in structural engineers ?’

Horobin nodded. ‘Yes, sir, that area.’

‘What do they want at this hour of the morning?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where is DS Potting?’

‘DS Moy says she thinks he may have gone out to get something to eat, sir.’

‘OK, let me speak to the woman. Did you say Sebbage?’

‘Lynn Sebbage.’

He picked up the phone and moments later she was put through. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. She sounded as fresh as if it was the middle of her normal working day. ‘I’m a partner in BLB. We’re very old-established chartered surveyors in Brighton. We had a visit from Detective Sergeant Potting late this afternoon, regarding the little boy who’s been abducted, saying he was looking for places around Shoreham Harbour where someone might be concealed. The Chief Engineer told him that he knew my firm, BLB, has done a lot of work at the harbour over the past century, particularly in the construction of the original coal-fired power station. He said he thought there was a tunnel bored then that’s been disused for decades.’

‘What kind of a tunnel?’ Grace asked.

‘Well, I’ve been hunting through our archives all night – they go back over a hundred years – and I think I’ve found what he was referring to. It’s a tunnel that was built for the old power station, Shoreham B, about seventy years ago, to carry the electricity cables under the harbour, and it was decommissioned when the new power station was built twenty years ago.’

‘How would someone other than a harbour worker know about it?’

‘Anyone studying the history of the area could find it easily. It’s probably on Google if people look hard enough.’

She then explained where the access to it was.

A couple of minutes later, just as he thanked her and hung up, Glenn Branson walked in carrying two steaming mugs.

‘Brought you a coffee.’

‘Thanks. Want to come and take a ride? We could both do with a quick change of scenery.’