Being with each other and scraping a living out of their franchised takeaway pizza business kept Glynn and Fiona busy and contented. They drove a clapped-out Austin Ambassador car which limped from one annual MOT to another. Affectionately naming it Anna (‘Anna nother thing wrong with her!’) they had no need for anything more ostentatious, which was just as well given they lived from hand to mouth.
Staff turnover was high. People did not view riding a Perfect Pizza-liveried moped around the city distributing boxes of Meat Feasts and garlic bread as a long-term career. Many treated it as a stopgap between other jobs or a short-term way of boosting their income.
Glynn was grateful when David McLellan had been transferred from another branch a few years previously. He knew the ropes already and didn’t need training. When he left around 1996 he had been with them longer than most.
For Glynn and Fiona it was like any other Saturday night in winter; steady but not rushed off their feet. Trade petered out naturally by the midnight closing time so they were able to clean and cash up before the shutters came down, meaning a swift getaway. Never in their wildest dreams did they imagine what was about to happen. Never did they realize that their every thought, word and act that followed would be delicately drawn out of them by detectives and savagely scrutinized by a sterile justice system.
The safe locked, the ovens off and the mopeds crammed into the shop, they secured the doors, jumped into Anna and made their way the short distance home.
‘One day we’ll actually find a space outside,’ complained a frustrated Glynn as the car crawled along the crammed street where they lived.
‘Why don’t you drop me off at the flat and I’ll go and put the kettle on while you find somewhere to park?’ suggested Fiona.
‘OK. I won’t be long. See you in a minute,’ replied Glynn as he stopped in the road by their front door.
He would never see her again.
As Glynn inched the car round the corner Fiona noticed a man walking briskly past her. She immediately realized it was David McLellan, and it struck her as odd him being in Hove as he lived on the other side of the city. Despite being almost certain that he had not noticed her, she took the precaution of pretending to search for her keys so he would not spot which house was theirs. At that moment she became aware of a second figure pass her by. She glanced up and saw him join McLellan near the junction at which Glynn had just turned. They disappeared from sight.
Not expecting Glynn to be long, she ambled up the steps to the front door when suddenly the roar of a racing engine and the squeal of tyres grabbed her attention. Startled, she turned to see Anna racing and weaving away from her, the rear passenger door being slammed shut as it went.
She couldn’t believe that someone had had the audacity to steal Anna so brazenly with Glynn being right there. How could he allow that to happen?
She walked to the corner, expecting Glynn to emerge from a shadow, clueless, wondering what was going on. As the minutes passed by so her fears soared.
Where was he? What was happening? She was right to be worried.
Glynn had found a perfect parking space just around the corner. Normally it would be, at most, a five-minute walk back from where he managed to squeeze his oversized car into the gap.
As he switched off the engine, he flung open the driver’s door and swung his legs out. He wearily stretched as he stood on the deserted pavement, tired from his long day.
As he was closing the door, he saw McLellan walking straight at him. A second man was closing in from behind. The man behind grabbed Glynn’s keys, forced him into the front of the car, pushed him across to the passenger side and jumped into the driver’s seat next to him. At the same time McLellan leapt in the back behind Glynn.
The driver seemed flustered and couldn’t get the keys in the ignition.
‘You do it,’ he ordered.
Confused, Glynn did as he was told and leant over and started the car. As it raced off and around the corner, he came to his senses. He spun sideways and tried to kick the door open, intending to throw himself out, but it held fast.
McLellan grabbed him from behind and he felt cold steel being pressed against his throat. The threat of the knife told him this was about more than Anna. Terrified, he sensed they were making their way northwards out of town. The last thing he recalls is the driver demanding, ‘Have you got the shop keys?’
His memory of that night, and the next three months, finishes there. The brain is a wonderful thing. It can blot out forever the most horrific events, saving its host from a lifetime of flashbacks and nightmares.
Fiona frantically dashed to find a working telephone box. After hitting 999 she asked for the police. ‘My boyfriend’s been kidnapped. They’ve driven him off in our car. Please help me.’
Officers were dispatched immediately and, returning late from another enquiry, DC Mick Burkinshaw headed straight for Fiona. Doing his best to reassure her, he coaxed her into his car and drove around the local area hoping to glimpse Glynn or Anna. More cops saturated the neighbourhood and beyond, desperate to find him, hoping that he would have been dumped and that it was just the worthless car that was the robbers’ target.
PCs Richard Jarvis and Jo Nutter were conscientious and intelligent young officers. Regularly crewing together, they were a good team. Richard, despite his youth, had a dour demeanour that belied his dry sense of humour. Jo was the opposite. Irrepressibly bubbly and chatty, she was a perfect foil for Richard. They played to their differences expertly with the public, adopting good cop, bad cop roles when needed.
Knowing the patch well, they were familiar with the sites where stolen cars were dumped. Sometimes they were easy to find as the flames the thieves had ignited lit up the night sky. They made their way slowly northwards to Devil’s Dyke, making sure they clocked every car, moving or stationary, on the way.
Roy Grace used to visit Devils Dyke with his wife Sandy. They liked to park at the top of this 2,000-acre beauty spot and walk across the fields, taking in the panoramic views of the city and the patchwork of the mid-Sussex farmland to its north. So named because, legend has it, the magnificent downland valley was dug by the Devil to flood the local churches.
There are a number of small stopping points along the meandering road that leads to the top; some are just passing places, some bus stops and some, like Poor Man’s Corner, handy little car parks that serve as viewpoints.
As that particular car park came into view, it seemed empty, with not even a carload of teenagers sharing a crafty joint. Ever professional, Jo turned the car towards the narrow entrance as a movement caught her eye.
She made out a jerky figure desperately yet pathetically trying to lift an arm in a plea for help. Crunching the car to a sudden halt, Richard and Jo jumped out and rushed towards the blindly stumbling form, and leant the poor soul up against the car, unable to determine if they were dealing with a man or a woman. If you stretched your imagination you would possibly have recognized a mutilated shape that might be a head. You might just have been able to work out the facial features. If you’d thought about it, the gurgling spluttering groans could have been an attempt at speech.
Were it not for the fact that this horror had been discovered in a rural car park way off the beaten track, you could easily have assumed that the devastating injuries had been the result of a collision with a 70mph truck. It wasn’t. This was pure evil, plain and simple. This poor soul had been beaten and kicked almost to death. Every single facial bone had been broken, probably by repeated stamping, as if crushing a tin can. Richard and Jo knew that he had been left to die, and he certainly would if they didn’t act swiftly. From the description of his clothing, Jo and Richard established this was indeed Glynn Morgan. However, his own mother wouldn’t have recognized him.