Roy Grace, in retribution for damage to Cleo’s car, dumped the hateful Amis Smallbone in the same area in Not Dead Yet. We know from Smallbone’s whingeing to his fellow villain Henry Tilney the physical toll the five-mile walk back had on him, a reasonably healthy yet odious specimen. No chance then that a man with his head and face completely staved in would survive it. He wasn’t meant to.
The paramedics worked miracles, stabilizing and treating him on the gravel and grit of the rough car park. They knew that time was running out. The temperature was close to freezing. It was a balance between getting him to the specialists he would need, but not killing him in the process. Eventually they were able to gingerly lift him and glide their way to the hospital, knowing that every pothole could be a killer. The staff at the Royal Sussex County Hospital worked against all the odds in trying to save his life.
As the duty DS, it was my turn to have my sleep disturbed. Once again my mobile phone chirped at me in the small hours. As soon as I was a safe distance from the sleeping Julie and our beautiful babies — my life would not be worth living if I woke them up — I listened to Mick Burkinshaw’s staccato briefing, trying to comprehend not only what had happened but why.
Motive is all-important in such cases. Sometimes the hypotheses are hard to swallow. Crime investigation is intrusive. It strips away all privacy and dignity. Branson and Grace brought this into sharp relief when divulging to the father of Janie Stretton, shortly after her murder in Looking Good Dead, that she had been a high-class hooker. No secret is safe.
Roy Grace, at the start of every murder enquiry, refers to the Murder Investigation Manual. The route to his favoured MIR-1 — Major Incident Room One — is adorned with checklists from it. However experienced, we all need reminders.
This was not yet a murder, but I was sure it would be. Why would anyone want to kidnap someone off the street, steal their car, crush their head and leave them on a hillside to die? The manual offers possible reasons people kill, including gain, jealousy, revenge, elimination, thrill, hate, to name but a few. To get to the bottom of this I had to find the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’. That might involve asking difficult questions of Glynn, if he survived, Fiona and all who knew them. One thing I was sure of — you don’t kill someone for an old rust heap of a car.
Later, we would need to broach the delicate subject of the relationship between Fiona and Glynn and whether there were skeletons in any cupboards, but now I needed to think like the attackers. Why Glynn? Why take him from the street? Why drive him away? Why so brutally attack him? Why focus the battering on his head? Where was the car? What was the big idea?
As I danced around the gloomy spare bedroom trying to get my trousers on and hoping the jacket I’d grabbed was from the same suit, I was making call after whispered call getting facts, triggering fast-track actions, pulling a team together.
Apologetic yet assertive was the style I used to call teams out, just as Roy did when Stuart Ferguson’s lorry was recovered in Dead Man’s Grip and on many other occasions. I needed who I needed. Apologize for disrupting their plans, yes; accepting no for an answer — never.
From the dearth of clear information I had to plump for a plausible scenario. It could have been many things but I tried to eliminate what I could. I had to strip away the unlikely to see the obvious. I needed to see what was in front of me and understand what it was telling me.
Having gently kissed Julie and our three miracles goodbye, as I was leaving the house I was told that Fiona had mentioned that she had seen a previous employee, McLellan, just before the attack. Was that relevant?
Thoughts were racing through my head as I rushed into work. McLellan might know where the takings were kept and how much there could be. Glynn himself was in no fit state to speak but Fiona had revealed that he had the shop keys with him. Surely McLellan would know that. Was that it? Was this an over-the-top burglary? Where were the keys now? I was soon at Hove Police Station and in Senior Investigating Officer mode.
The grisly task of searching the blood-soaked clothing the hospital staff had cut off the pitiful victim was one I delegated to the PC on guard. I needed to know if the keys were still with him. I sent officers to the shop to check for any sign of a break-in. Both enquires were negative; no keys, no sign of a forced entry.
No sign of a burglary, but why would there be if they had used the keys and been tidy when they went in? One of my first instructions from home had been for the nearest CCTV camera, which was on a lamppost fifty yards down the road, to be pointed towards the shop. I’d asked for it to be watched in case anyone went there after the attack. The second part of my message didn’t get passed on. I was livid about that. In those days you couldn’t review CCTV quickly. It all needed downloading onto VHS tape. I’d wanted someone monitoring it in live time. I’d been let down and someone would pay, but there was no time for that now.
Only one thing for it. I phoned Mick. ‘We need to get Fiona to tell us if there are spare keys to the shop. If there are we need to get in there now and check to see if anyone’s been in.’
‘Just in time. We were about to take her up to the hospital.’
The phone went quiet. I’d been put on mute. Was he setting me up as the bad cop to get what we wanted, even though it delayed her seeing Glynn? Click. ‘Good news, Graham, she’s got a set with her. Do you want us to go down there?’
‘Yes, but keep that shop watched while you are on your way. I need to know if anyone’s been in there since lock-up. Get a SOCO to meet you there. One who hasn’t been near Glynn or the Dyke. I’m not losing this job on cross-contamination.’
Fifteen minutes later Fiona, Mick and a PC huddled in the narrow doorway of Perfect Pizza, waiting for the SOCO, Dean O’Hara. When he arrived, he and Mick went in. Assured it was empty, and getting the forensic OK from Dean, he called Fiona through.
Still shaking with fear and worry, she checked the till. Fine. Then looked down at the safe. Open. Crouched down. Empty.
‘It’s gone, they’ve got all the money.’
‘How much?’
‘Only today’s takings. We used to have up to about £5,000 on a Saturday as we paid the wages on a Sunday, but not any more. There was probably only £600 or £700 tonight.’
Mick was straight on the phone. That was it. I was going after McLellan. He was right there when Glynn was snatched, he probably knew the old banking procedures and had assumed they were still the same, and he would certainly know where the money was kept. I needed more, but Mr McLellan and I were going to have a chat. He had a lot of questions to answer and, if my hunch was right, he or his clothes would be covered in blood.
Dawn was breaking and we were already beyond the Golden Hour. The Grace novels mention this period of sixty minutes following a crime, and it is criticaclass="underline" the immediate aftermath of discovering a crime or victim provides the best chance of finding forensic evidence, witnesses and getting the truth out of people. So time was now against us. My team knew this. On days like this we worked like Trojans for as long as it took. No-one was waiting in the wings to take this over from us so everything was put on hold from now until we could come up for air.
We had the scene at Poor Man’s Corner taped off and being searched. While not quite on the scale of the chicken farm in Not Dead Yet, it was a large windswept area that, being Sunday, ramblers would want to reclaim.
We needed the CCTV footage from all the shops near Perfect Pizza as well as our own. We needed to speak to anyone who might have seen the car being driven off. We needed intelligence on McLellan; was he capable of this and who did he knock around with?