‘Roy, you know that the Metropolitan Police have been one of the first forces in the UK to start getting rid of bureaucracy on arrests? That they now employ civilians to process criminals so police officers don’t have to spend two to four hours on paperwork on every person they arrest?’
‘Yes, I had heard that.’
‘They’re the biggest and most innovative police force in the UK. So don’t you think we can learn something from Cassian?’
He noted the use of the man’s first name. ‘I’m sure we can – I don’t doubt that.’
‘Have you thought about your personal development record this year, Roy?’
‘My record?’
‘Yes. What’s your assessment of how you have done?’
He shrugged. ‘Without blowing my own trumpet, I think I’ve done well. We got a life sentence on Suresh Hossain. Three serious crime cases solved, successfully. Two major criminals awaiting trial. And some real progress on several cold cases.’
She looked at him for some moments in silence, then she asked, ‘How do you define success?’
He chose his words carefully, aware of what might come next. ‘Apprehending perpetrators, securing charges against them from the Crown Prosecution Service and getting convictions.’
‘Apprehending suspects regardless of cost or danger to the public or your officers?’
‘All risks have to be assessed in advance – when practical. In the heat of a situation, it’s not always practical. You know that. You must have been in situations where you had to make snap decisions.’
She nodded and was silent for some moments. ‘Well, that’s great, Roy. I’m sure that helps you to sleep at night.’ Then she fell silent again, shaking her head in a way that he really did not like.
He heard a distant phone ringing, unanswered, in another office. Then Alison Vosper’s mobile pinged with a text. She picked it up, glanced at it and put it back down on her desk.
‘I look at it slightly differently, Roy. And so do the Independent Police Complaints Authority. OK?’
Grace shrugged. ‘In what way?’ He already knew some of the answers.
‘Let’s look at your three major operations in the past few months. Operation Salsa. During a chase you were handling personally, an elderly member of the public was hijacked and physically injured. Two suspects died in a car crash – and you were in the pursuit car right behind them. In Operation Nightingale, one of your officers was shot and another was severely injured in a pursuit – which also resulted in an accident causing serious injury to an off-duty police officer.’
That officer had been Cassian Pewe. Delaying his start here by some months.
She continued. ‘You had a helicopter crash, and an entire building burned down – leaving three bodies beyond identification. And in Operation Chameleon you allowed your suspect to be pursued on to a railway line, where he was maimed. Are you proud of all this? You don’t think there is room for improvement with your methods?’
Actually, Roy Grace thought, he was proud. Extremely proud of everything but the injuries to his officers, for which he would always blame himself. Maybe she genuinely did not know the background – or she was choosing to ignore it.
He was cautious in his reply. ‘When you look at an operation after the event, you can always see ways you could have improved it.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘That’s all Detective Superintendent Pewe is here to do. Bring the benefit of his experience with the best police force in the UK.’
He would have liked to have replied, Actually, you are wrong. The guy is a total wanker. But his earlier feeling that Alison Vosper had some other agenda with this man was even stronger now. Maybe she really was shagging him. Unlikely, for sure, but there was something between them, some hold over her that Pewe had. Whatever, it was clear that at this moment he was definitely not teacher’s pet.
So, on one of the rare occasions in his career, he played along with the politics.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Thanks for clarifying that. It’s really helpful.’
‘Good,’ she said.
As Grace left the room, he was deep in thought. There had been four Senior Investigating Officers at Sussex House for the past five years. The system was fine. They didn’t need any more. Now they had five, at a time when they were short of recruits lower down and running way over budget. It would not be long before Vosper and her colleagues started reducing the number back down to four. And no prizes for guessing who would be axed – or, rather, transferred to the back of beyond.
He needed a plan. Something that would cause Cassian Pewe to shoot himself in the foot.
And at this moment he didn’t have one.
39
He could have murdered a Starbucks latte. Or any freshly ground coffee. But he didn’t dare leave his observation post. There was only one way out of her building, regardless of whether she used the lift or the fire escape staircase, and that was through the front door he was staring at. He wasn’t taking any chances. She had remained inside for too long, much longer than normal, and he had a feeling she was up to something.
Finding her had been hard enough – and expensive enough. With just one piece of luck on his side: an old friend in the right place.
Well, actually the wrong place, because Donny Winters was in jail for identify theft and fraud, but it was Ford Open Prison, where visiting hours were reasonable and it was under an hour’s drive from here. It had been a risk going to see him, and it had cost him, for the bungs Donny said he would need.
He’d been right, of course, in his hunch. All women called their mums. And Abby’s mum was sick. Abby thought she would be safe, calling from a pay-as-you-go mobile with the number withheld. Stupid cow.
Stupid, greedy cow.
He smiled at the GSM 3060 Intercept, which sat on a wooden vegetable box in front of him now. If you were in range of either the mobile handset making the call or the mobile receiving it, you could listen in and, very usefully, see the number of the caller, even if it was withheld, and the recipient, regardless of whether it was a mobile or landline. But of course she wouldn’t know that.
He’d simply camped out in a rental car close to her mother’s flat in Eastbourne and waited for Abby to call. He hadn’t had to wait long. Then it had taken Donny just one call, to a bent mate who worked on an installation team rigging mobile phone radio masts. Within two days he had established the location of the mast which had picked up the signals from Abby’s phone.
He learned that mobile phone masts in densely populated cities were rarely more than a few hundred yards apart, and often even closer together than that. And he learned from Donny that, in addition to receiving and transmitting calls, mobile phone masts act as beacons. Even on stand-by, a phone keeps in touch with its nearest beacon, constantly transmitting a greeting signal and receiving one back.
The pattern of signals from Abby’s phone showed she barely went out of range of one particular beacon, a Vodaphone macrocell sited at the junction of Eastern Road and Boundary Road in Kemp Town.
This was a short distance from Marine Parade, which ran from the Palace Pier to the Marina, fronted on one side by some of the finest Regency fac¸ades in the city and on the other by a railed promenade and views out across the beach and the English Channel. There was a rabbit warren of streets immediately off and behind Marine Parade, most of them residential, almost all of them containing a mix of flats, cheap hotels and B &Bs.