Go fuck yourself.
He looked at the man lying on his back, his blood-drenched chest, the bullet graze on the top of his forehead, his glassy, sightless stare.
Tell you what, mate, he thought, irreverently. You look pretty fucked yourself.
He had another thought. One of the bits of technology he did know about was from a lecture he’d attended at the Homicide conference in Las Vegas two years ago. If you left the software activated, and most people did, iPhones kept a record of all your movements. He took a pair of protective gloves from his pocket and pulled them on, then, for the second time in this investigation breaking all the rules of crime scene management, rummaged in the pockets of the man slumped at the table and pulled out a cheap-looking Nokia, a burner.
Kneeling beside his new best friend on the floor, he searched first in his windcheater pockets, pulling out another cheap-looking throwaway phone. Then, exerting himself to move the man a little, he reached round into the back pocket of his jeans and felt, with hope rising, a familiar, slim rectangular shape.
He pulled out a recent model iPhone. But when he pressed the power button, the numerical keypad appeared along with the words, Enter Passcode or Touch ID.
It had been too much, he knew, to expect it not to be password-protected. In desperation, he grabbed the dead man’s hand and pressed his forefinger against the power button. Nothing happened. He tried again, but still nothing. He knew the forensics team had been working on software to enable a dead person’s fingers to activate a touchpad. Had whatever electrical impulses were needed already left this man? He tried with the dead man’s thumb, middle fingers, then with the fingers and thumb of his left hand, but no success. He was wasting critical minutes, he realized, glancing at his watch.
Less than three hours left.
He thought about the tide chart he had memorized. How the hell were they going to find Mungo in time? He stared around the room. What could he do that he was overlooking?
His eyes alighted on a set of Range Rover keys on the kitchen table. Yes! He photographed them and pocketed them, knelt back down and went through the anorak, then jeans pockets, of the man on the floor and found a set of Audi car keys. He pocketed them, too. He found a third set of keys, the Golf’s, in the zipped hoodie of the dead man in the hallway, grabbed them, and ran out of the flat, past Inspector Allchild, and down the steps, radioing Kevin Hall to meet him in the underground car park.
As he burst through the door, he saw Hall running down the ramp. He thrust the Audi keys at him. ‘Kevin, check the Audi’s satnav. See what the last destination was!’
He went to the Range Rover, clicked the door lock to let himself in, sat in the driver’s seat, looked around for the key, then realized the ignition had been switched on by keyless-go.
He pushed the button on the vehicle’s display for satnav. The system opened and he studied it, then tapped RECENT DESTINATIONS.
Shoreham Beach came up.
Underneath was Boden Court.
Bugger.
He went to the Golf and repeated the process.
Shoreham Beach.
Boden Court.
Shit, shit, shit. He was no closer. He went over to Hall. ‘Anything?’
‘Zilch,’ Hall replied. ‘Gatwick Airport is the last entry.’
‘We need to get back to HQ,’ Grace said. ‘Fast.’
90
Sunday 13 August
15.00–16.00
As Hall drove, Grace updated Sam Davies on what he had done at Boden Court. He then called Oscar-1 to check on the ETA of the Digital Forensics team at the flat, and was reassured they would be at the scene within ten minutes. Next, he asked Glenn Branson for an update from the Browns’ house.
As soon as they arrived back at HQ, Roy Grace held an emergency briefing of his team. Behind him on a whiteboard was a blow-up of the latest photograph of Mungo, together with the tide chart, with 17.40 p.m. highlighted in red.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘If we are to believe this chart and the latest photograph, then in about two and a half hours the water will have risen above Mungo’s head, and it’s game over. The persons we believe were our three prime suspects, who might have been able to tell us his location, are dead. At this moment, we don’t know who killed them or the motive. Unfortunately, the Boden Court CCTV system has been down for the past twenty-four hours.’
‘Unfortunate or coincidental, boss?’ Norman Potting asked, suspiciously.
‘I don’t have any information on that yet, Norman,’ Grace replied. ‘We are reasonably certain Mungo is being held in a location somewhere in or close to Shoreham.’ He turned to the whiteboard and pointed. ‘Here.’ Then looked at DS Exton. ‘Jon, I want you to get on to Shoreham Port Authority immediately — speak to Keith Wadey, the Chief Engineer, if you can get hold of him, show him a copy of this photograph and see if he can identify any possible location.’
‘Yes, boss, but we need to bear in mind that it’s Sunday.’
‘Are you planning to go to church?’ Grace gave him a quizzical look.
Exton looked unsure, for a moment, if Roy was joking.
‘The port runs twenty-four-seven, Jon,’ Grace said. ‘If you can’t contact anyone by phone, get down there immediately and find someone — the lock gates are manned round the clock, there’ll be people there. Go immediately and use the blues — take someone with you—’ He looked around and his eye fell on DC Davies. ‘Alec, go with DS Exton.’
As the pair left the room, Grace went on. ‘Right, we have a boy kidnapped at the Amex. Our information leads us to believe a criminal gang within the local Albanian community may be responsible. If we are correct, we are dealing with a particularly brutal group of people who do not give a toss about committing their crimes openly in public — in fact they embrace that as a warning to others. Surely, someone must have seen something? In the past twenty-four hours, there’s been a bomb threat at the Amex. Human remains discovered at a crusher site in Shoreham. The crusher operator dead hours later — in possibly suspicious circumstances. And now three people dead in a flat in the city. Oh, and an unfortunate young drugs mule, dead at Gatwick Airport, with links to one of Jorgji Dervishi’s businesses.’
There was a reflective silence from his team. ‘Someone has to be able to connect the dots. OK? Someone, somewhere, must have seen something. A boy disappears in broad daylight from a football stadium that has one of the world’s most sophisticated security systems — not a tiny infant, a big, bolshy teenager. Someone has seen him. This boy is being held somewhere below the high-water level, where the sea is going to cover him — drown him. Someone out there knows how to save his life.’
Potting raised his hand.
‘Yes, Norman?’
‘Have Digital Forensics not been able to enhance any of the photographs, chief?’
‘Not enough to reveal anything helpful, Norman, no.’
‘In case it’s significant, chief,’ Potting went on, ‘while DC Wilde and I were at Dervishi’s house during the night, I went for a pee.’
‘Good for you, Norman!’ EJ Boutwood said with a grin. ‘Hope you put the seat back down afterwards.’
Ignoring the jibe, Potting continued. ‘He’s got one of those photo boards in the downstairs loo. You know the kind of thing — him and his wife and son on a yacht. Pictures of them all at a big party. Pictures at a barbecue. Another at their wedding anniversary. I took a photo of it on my phone, to check it out afterwards. I thought my findings might interest you. There’s one character who pops up in many of them, repeatedly — Edi Konstandin.’