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.
110
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.
111
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.
Instantly he radioed the Controller. ‘Patch me through to Hotel 900.’
Moments later, through a crackling connection, he was speaking to the helicopter spotter. ‘Go back round. Light up the power station roof again,’ he shouted.
Both detectives waited as the helicopter turned in a wide arc. The beam struck the chimney first and the ladder that went all the way up it. Then the flat roof of the first section. They could see a figure scurrying across it, then ducking down behind a vent.
‘Keep circling,’ he instructed. ‘There’s someone up there!’ He turned to Branson. ‘I know the quick way there!’
They ran over to the car and jumped in. Grace switched on the blues and twos and raced out into the road.
‘Call Silver,’ he said. ‘Get all available units to the power station.’
A quarter of a mile on he braked hard and swung left, in front of the Port Authority building, then sped down the slip road beside it, until they reached a barrier of tall steel spikes. The sign ahead of them, fixed to the spikes, read:
SHOREHAM PORT AUTHORITY
NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS
PUBLIC ROUTE ACROSS LOCKS
Abandoning the car, they ran along the walkway, which was bounded on each side by a high railing. Grace flashed his torch beam ahead of them. To their right now he could see, brightly illuminated by a bank of floodlights on a tower, the harbour’s two locks, a small one for fishing boats and yachts, the other, much larger, for tankers, dredgers and container ships.
A long quay separated the locks, in the middle of which was a substantial building housing the control room. On its wall, beneath the windows, was a vertical traffic light, with three red signals showing.
He briefly clocked a warning sign on the entrance gate to this quay, forbidding unauthorized people to enter. The gate had no lock on it, he observed, but his focus was to his left, to the massive superstructure of the power station, partially lit by the helicopter’s beam. He ran on, followed by a puffing Branson, stepping over metal slats and then past more red warning lights at the start of the curved walkway over the main lock gates. A sign cautioned against entering when the red lights were flashing and the siren was sounding.