As he made notes, Grace went through a mental checklist, trying to ensure he was not missing anything, as well as checking online through the National Crime Agency’s kidnap protocols. He repeatedly looked down at his phone, at the two texts Glenn Branson had forwarded to him, the first an hour ago, the second just moments ago.
Drive to the Devil’s Dyke, alone. Three hundred yards south of the Devil’s Dyke Hotel is a derelick Second World War pillbox. Instructions await you there. Go alone if you want to see your son again. We will be watching.
Good man. You are being sensible coming alone. Take this phone home. We will use it for the next instruxxion on how to save Mungo’s life. Do not text back. Do not speak to the police, unless you want directions to Mungo’s corpse.
Roy Grace stared also at the photograph of Mungo, in the darkness, with grey duct tape over his mouth. He could see the terror in his eyes. Poor kid. One of the worst nightmares for a child. Something from which the boy would never fully recover, because kidnap victims rarely did. After they — hopefully — found him, Mungo would be haunted by nightmares for the rest of his life and very possibly end up dependent on medication and in therapy. Let alone the traumatic impact on his family. That was one of the consequences of this ugly act that the perpetrators probably did not think or, more likely, care about. With most major crimes, it was rarely just the victim who suffered a life sentence of fear and instability.
He read through the texts again, once more clocking the two spelling errors, ‘instruxxion’ and ‘derelick’, and thinking about them. Someone dyslexic? He turned to DC Kevin Hall, sitting close to him. ‘Any word from Digital Forensics?’
‘Not so far, guv. But they’re looped in and on it with all the phone companies, and they’re carrying out cell-site analysis to try to locate the device that sent this, as well as checking if it had geo-mapping, which would give us the location where it was taken.’
There was a sudden appetizing smell of French fries in the room.
‘Nice to think whoever’s taken Mungo would be dumb enough to leave their geo-mapping on,’ Grace said.
‘Indeed.’
He was about to say something else when he was interrupted by DC Alec Davies. ‘Sir, what was it you ordered?’
‘Ordered?’
‘To eat. From the Big Mouth Burger Bar. John Palmer’s just made the delivery.’
‘Great, I’m ravenous. A cheeseburger and fries with onion rings, thanks, Alec.’
His phone rang.
‘Roy Grace,’ he said.
He heard a hubbub at the other end; it sounded like the din of a rammed pub or bar. Then, above it, he heard a precise, clear voice.
‘Detective Superintendent, it’s PC Denero. I have some information you requested.’
‘Great, Nikki, what have you got?’
‘Well, sir, from what I’ve been able to find so far, this Kipp Brown character has been cultivating clients from the Albanian business community in the city. He appears to be the go-to man for them for unsecured — or poorly secured — cash loans and mortgages. I’m with twenty or so Albanians at the moment and almost all of them have had dealings with him — pretty happily, they assured me. You might be interested to know that Edi Konstandin is one of his major clients.’
‘When you’ve finished, could you come to the Intel suite at HQ CID? I’d like you on my team until we find the boy.’
‘Yes, sir — I could be there in an hour.’
‘Thank you.’ Ending the call, he looked down at the texts again. The spelling errors.
instruxxion
derelick
The kind of mistakes that might be made by someone for whom English was their second language?
He looked behind him at the whiteboards, stood up and went over to the one on which there was now an association chart for the dominant Brighton Albanian crime family. At the top was the name Edi Konstandin, who Intel put as the local Godfather — the equivalent to a Mafia Don or Capo. Directly beneath him was the consigliere, Jorgji Dervishi, Aleksander’s father, and beneath him the underboss, Valdete Gjon. He turned to another whiteboard, on which was the photograph of the man in the red cap.
‘This is a person of extreme interest to us. He vanishes just after the sign for the South Stand Waste Management. OK, we know from all the CCTV at the Amex that people cannot just disappear there, so what happened? My hypothesis is that this camera was deliberately disabled at this point. It was done so that Man-in-Red-Baseball-Cap could change his clothes and perhaps so that Mungo Brown could be concealed somewhere at the same time. The contradictory evidence regarding Mungo is that his phone was recovered after being thrown from a BMW car leaving the car park at high speed. How did he get from the stadium to the car park without being seen?’
He looked around at a sea of blank faces.
‘Is his middle name Houdini, guv?’ Norman Potting asked.
‘Thank you, Norman,’ Grace retorted. ‘His middle name is actually Eric.’
‘Houdini’s real name was Erik Weisz,’ Potting retorted.
‘Is that helpful to our enquiry, Norman?’ Kevin Hall interjected.
Potting mumbled that it probably wasn’t. Hall, answering a call on his phone, did not hear him.
Grace, ignoring the banter, said, ‘I’ve contacted Forensic Podiatrist Haydn Kelly, who is, fortunately, available and is on his way down from London now. I’ve also contacted the Met Police Super Recognizer Unit, and they are sending down one of their team. I’m going to have both Haydn and the Super Recognizer look at all footage of the crowd leaving the Amex after the game, to see if they can spot Red Cap, either from his gait or a facial feature.’
Ending his phone call, Kevin Hall said animatedly, ‘Guv, I may have something.’
Grace looked at him. ‘Yes?’
‘DI Branson got the IMEI code off the phone Kipp Brown brought back from the Dyke — I sent it straight to Digital Forensics and we have a result from it!’
Criminals used pay-as-you-go phones — so-called burners — under the impression these could not be traced. That was true to an extent, but every phone had a unique IMEI code that could be accessed by entering a series of digits and numbers: *#06#. This would reveal the identity of the phone, from which Digital Forensics could find out its provenance and history.
Excitedly, Grace asked, ‘Tell me?’
‘Well, guv, this is interesting. It’s a phone that’s been used before by a character called Fatjon Sava — who was linked to this burner two years ago. At the time, we had him on file as one of Dervishi’s henchmen. Do you remember the case of an Albanian left in the middle of Churchill Square with both his eyes burned out with a cigarette lighter? The charmer who did this, who was never identified, sent a text on behalf of Mr Jorgji Dervishi to the victim, politely warning him not to tread on Mr Dervishi’s toes again.’
‘Nice work, Kevin,’ Grace said. ‘What happened — was Dervishi arrested?’
‘No, the Albanian wall of silence came down. No one would say a word, not even the victim’s wife, she was too frightened. But we knew Fatjon Sava was probably the offender, although we didn’t have sufficient grounds to arrest him.’
‘The eyes have it,’ Potting announced, looking around, pleased with himself.