Peter James: Dead Man's Grip

‘Where to?’

‘Somewhere in Brighton you and I have never been before.’

‘Thanks for the offer, boss man, but being a tourist at 1 a.m. doesn’t float my boat.’

‘Don’t worry. We’re not going boating – we’re going to go underwater.’

‘Terrific. This is getting better every second. Scuba-diving?’

‘No. Tunnelling.’

‘Tunnelling? Now? At this hour? You’re not serious?’

Grace stood up. ‘Get your coat and a torch.’

‘I’m claustrophobic.’

‘So am I. We can hold hands.’

‘What do you think the chances are?’ Glenn Branson said, as Grace drove slowly along the road, peering to the left, looking for the building Lynn Sebbage had described. A strong wind buffeted the car and big spots of rain spattered on the windscreen.

‘One in a million? One in a billion? One in a trillion that he’s in this tunnel?’

‘You’re not trying to think like the perpetrator,’ Grace said.

‘Yeah, and that’s just as well, coz I’d be hanging you on a meat hook and filming you right now if I did.’

Grace smiled. ‘I don’t think so. You’d be trying to outsmart us. How many times has he changed number plates? Those cameras he left behind, like giving us two fingers. This is a very smart guy.’

‘You sound like you admire him.’

‘I do admire him – for his professionalism. Everything else about him I loathe beyond words, but I admire his cunning. If he’s holed up anywhere with that kid, it’s not going to be some garden shed full of mushrooms. It’s going to be somewhere he knows that we haven’t thought of. So I don’t think we’re looking at one in a million. I think we’re looking at very good odds and we need to eliminate this place.’

‘You could have sent a couple of uniforms along,’ Branson said grumpily. ‘Or Norman Potting.’

‘And spoiled our fun?’ Grace said, pulling over on the kerb. ‘This looks like it.’

Moments later, in the beam of his torch, Grace saw the broken padlock lying on the ground. He knelt and peered at it closely.

‘It’s been cut through,’ he said.

Then he pulled the door open and led the way down the concrete steps. At the bottom they stepped on to a gridded metal platform with a handrail. A network of old metal pipes spread out all around them.

Branson sniffed. ‘Someone’s managed to use this place as a toilet,’ he said.

Grace peered over the handrail, then shone his torch beam down the vertical shaft.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath. It looked a long, long way down. Then he shouted, as loudly as he could, ‘POLICE! Is anyone down there?’

His voice echoed. Then he repeated his question again.

Only the echo, falling into silence, came back at them.

The two officers looked at each other.

‘Someone’s been here,’ Glenn Branson said.

‘And might still be here,’ Grace replied, peering down the shaft again, and then looking at the ladder. ‘And I’m sodding terrified of heights.’

‘Me too,’ Branson said.

‘Heights and claustrophobia? Anything you’re not scared of?’ Grace quizzed him with a grin.

‘Not much.’

‘Shine the torch for me. I can see a rest platform about fifty feet down. I’ll wait for you there.’

‘What about Health and Safety?’ Branson asked.

Grace tapped his chest. ‘You’re looking at him. You fall, I’ll catch you.’

He climbed over the safety rail, decided he was not going to look down, gripped both sides of the rail, found the first rung and slowly, carefully, began to descend.

It took them several minutes to get to the bottom.

‘That was seriously not fun,’ Glenn Branson said, and flashed his torch around. The beam struck the tunnel. ‘Holy fucking shit!’ He was staring at the skeletal remains.

Both men took a few steps towards them.

‘Looks like a new cold case to add to your workload, boss,’ Branson said.

But Grace wasn’t looking at the skull and bones any more. He was looking at a screwed-up ball of paper on the ground. He pulled on a pair of gloves, knelt, picked it up and opened it out. Then he frowned.

‘What is it?’ Branson said.

Grace held it up. ‘A tide chart.’

‘Shit! How long do you reckon that’s been down here?’

‘Not long,’ Grace replied. ‘It’s current. This week’s – seven days’ tides for Shoreham, starting yesterday.’

‘Why would someone want a tide chart?’

‘The entrance to the harbour mouth is only six feet deep at low tide. There’s not enough draught for big ships two hours either side of low water.’

‘You think this is connected with Tyler?’

Grace almost failed to spot the tiny object lying beneath a section of rusted piping. He knelt again and picked it up, carefully, between his gloved forefinger and thumb, then held it up.

‘I do now, for sure,’ he said. ‘A Lucky Strike cigarette.’ He pressed the burnt end to his check. ‘You know what? That’s still warm.’

Pulling on gloves himself, Glenn Branson took the tide chart and studied it for a moment. Then he checked his watch.

‘The harbour mouth opens, if that’s what they call it, at 2.06 a.m. That’s fifty-six minutes’ time. Shit! We have to stop any ship from leaving.’

This time, all his fear of heights forgotten, the Detective Sergeant threw himself up the first rungs of the ladder, with Grace inches behind.

Tyler, utterly terrified, was whimpering with fear and quaking, yet at the same time he did not dare struggle too much. Choppy, ink-black water splashed at him like some wild, angry creature just inches below his feet. Rain lashed down on him. He was hung by his arms, which were agonizingly outstretched like in a crucifixion.

He had thought he was being thrown into the water but then he had been jerked tight just above it. He kept trying to cry out, but there was tape over his mouth again and all his cries just echoed around and around inside his skull.

He was crying, sobbing, pleading for his mother.

There was a strong stench of seaweed. The blindfold the man had put around his head after he had climbed back up from the tunnel had been taken off only at the last minute before he had been dropped.

Above the sound of the water he heard the chop-chop-chop of a helicopter approaching. A dazzling beam of light passed over him, briefly, then darkness again.

Come over here! Come over here! I’m here! Come over here!

Please help me. Please help me. Mum, please help me, please.

It wasn’t until they reached the top of the ladder that Grace and Branson were able to get any radio or phone signal. Grace immediately called Trevor Barnes, the Silver Commander, who was at his desk in Sussex House.

The two detectives sprinted up the stone steps and out into the fresh wind and rain, sweating profusely, grateful for the cooling air. Above them they heard the clatter of the helicopter swooping low over the harbour basin, the dazzling bright pool of its searchlight illuminating a wide radius of the choppy water.

Moments later Barnes radioed back that he’d checked with the Harbour Master and the only vessel scheduled to leave the harbour, via the large lock, was the dredger the Arco Dee . It had already left its berth and was heading along the canal towards the lock.

‘I’ve been on that ship,’ Grace shouted at Branson, above the noise of the helicopter and the howling of the wind. ‘There’s any number of ways he could kill that kid on it.’ Then he radioed to the Silver Commander. ‘Trevor, get it boarded and searched while it’s in the lock.’

For some moments Grace stood still, following the beam of light as it crossed the massive superstructure of Shoreham Power Station. The building had a dog-leg construction, with the first section, which had a flat roof, about sixty feet high, and then the main section about 100 feet high. At the western end was the solitary chimney stack, rising 200 feet into the sky. Suddenly, as the beam traversed it, he thought he saw something move on the flat roof.