It read: Wednesday 8 May 3.24 p.m.
Grace felt a beat of excitement. This was the day before Stuie Starr’s body was discovered by his carer. The day on which, according to the pathologist, Stuie might have died. It fitted.
‘Keep watching, chief!’
More of the city appeared as the camera tracked over it. Then, suddenly, the image froze. It began zooming in on a particular area below, before it started moving again.
‘I’ve had Digital Forensics work on this all day, enhancing it,’ Potting said.
Grace could now see a garage, with a housing estate opposite. As the image was enlarged even further, he could make out what he was pretty sure was the Starrs’ house. A lone car was parked further down the road and, after the camera zoomed in further still, he could recognize the marque, a Mercedes, dark-coloured — either a C or E-class, he wasn’t sure.
Two figures, in hoodies, suddenly ran out of the house, sprinting away to the car. They looked furtively around, then jumped into the Mercedes and drove off at speed.
‘Norman, this is bloody brilliant! How did you get it?’
‘We didn’t have any luck from the aerodrome, but whilst I was out I passed a park in Chichester and saw people flying their drones. I went over and spoke to them and asked if any of them had been flying them on the 8th of May. They said they hadn’t but would mention it to other drone enthusiasts that they knew. One of them contacted me earlier today and produced this video. Sheer luck, chief.’
‘Excellent work, Norman.’
The video continued moving away from the house, in the opposite direction to the car, across the city, circling out over the harbour and the sea. Grace stopped and replayed the earlier part.
‘A local dealer’s confirmed the model as a current E-Class,’ Potting said. ‘I’ve had the ANPR team check all cameras in the Chichester area for an hour either side of 3.24 p.m. The gods are smiling on us, it was relatively light traffic. Just five of that particular model had pinged any cameras and only two of them dark-coloured. And here’s the bit you are really going to like, chief — one of them has a Sussex Police marker on it as being linked to a suspected armed drug dealer. Name of Conor Drewett.’
‘That’s a familiar name.’ Grace smiled. ‘I nicked him a while back in a drugs bust.’
‘Yep, well, he’s still around and still a nasty piece of work. I had the pleasure of being bitten on the nose by him about ten years ago and then ending up with a dislocated thumb as I put him on the ground. We have his address. With your permission, chief, I’d like to arrange some of our guys and the local team to pay him a visit early tomorrow.’
Grace grinned. ‘What a shame to spoil his beauty sleep.’ He shook his head. ‘Driving a known car and parking it in the same road. I often think how lucky for us that some villains are not the whole enchilada.’
‘The whole enchilada? You’ve been away in the smoke for too long. Know what I mean?!’
‘Six months in the Met, you pick up their jargon, but I’m back home now.’
‘He could be a candidate for the Darwin Awards,’ Potting said.
Grace frowned. ‘The what?’
‘It’s a spoof award, given annually to the person who by the nature of their stupidity has contributed the most towards Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Mostly they’re awarded posthumously for editing themselves out of the gene pool.’
Grace smiled. ‘Love it. Any idea who the other person with him is?’
The DS shook his head. ‘No doubt one of our finer citizens, chief. If we arrest Drewett, maybe he’ll squeal, or we’ll find some DNA in the Mercedes.’
‘Whatever, nice work, Norman.’ His phone rang. Grace answered and listened to the call, intently. The moment he ended it he turned to Potting. ‘That was the lab — it shows that good detective work will always produce results. The lab has found DNA material in the drain-hole contents in the shower tray, belonging to Conor Drewett. My hunch about the towels on the floor has come up trumps. I had a feeling that with all that blood at the crime scene, one of them may have taken a shower.’
As soon as the DS had left his office, Grace dialled Cassian Pewe’s number. Long past his sell-by date Pewe had said, dismissively, about Norman Potting.
He waited, eagerly, for the ACC to answer.
101
Thursday 30 May
Meg had slept better. Certainly her first reasonably decent night’s sleep since the nightmare of the trial had begun. Eight of the jury, including herself, were ready to deliver a ‘not guilty’ decision. She just needed one more to get a 9–2 verdict, once the judge had said he would accept a majority verdict.
Hopefully, after his night of thinking over the spreadsheets, geeky oddball Rory O’Brien would have arrived at the same conclusions as the majority of them — and Laura would be safe.
And if O’Brien didn’t, she was confident she could work on him and on the other two who had voted ‘guilty’, one of whom had to be Harold Trout.
She made sure she arrived early, and was already seated by 9.30 a.m. The rest of the jurors filed in over the next twenty minutes, and there was a relaxed, end-of-term feeling in the room.
At 10 a.m., there was just one absentee. Rory O’Brien.
Where was he, Meg wondered? Five minutes later he had still not appeared, and a dark thought crossed her mind. Had something happened to him? Surely there would have been nothing to gain by Gready’s henchmen doing anything to him?
A couple of minutes later, the geek hurried in, muttering an apology, something about a change in the bus timetable.
With all eyes on him, he took a while to settle down and find his place in the bundle of documents he had left in situ from yesterday. He then apologized again, to Meg, for his tardy arrival.
‘No problem, Rory,’ she said in an encouraging tone.
The jury were summoned to the courtroom for a short time before being escorted back to the jury room by the bailiff, as before, to continue their deliberations.
102
Thursday 30 May
‘Have you arrived at your own verdict?’ Meg asked the young man.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m there. But I don’t think you are going to like this.’
Meg looked at O’Brien and felt, suddenly, very scared. There was something about the calm way he had spoken that unnerved her. His words ground into her brain like the whine of a chainsaw.
I don’t think you are going to like this.
She held her breath for a moment then said, ‘Tell us your thoughts, Rory?’
The man looked nervous, as if unused to having an audience. He stammered a little. ‘Well — um — the thing — the thing is — the d-d-d-dates — this is what I find in-in-interesting.’
He fell silent.
‘Dates of what, Rory?’ Meg asked, maintaining her gently inquisitive tone.
‘I’ve checked the dates of the classic car importations and also the large deposit transfers involving the overseas accounts and the classic car company. From these dates provided I’ve discovered that, if Mr Starr is to be believed, Mrs Gready was very conveniently abroad, judging orchids in international competitions, on each of those dates. All the competition dates were in the document bundle.’
‘And your point is?’ Meg asked.
O’Brien responded, ‘Well, it’s very simple. Is it beyond coincidence that on all twenty-seven occasions that Mrs Gready has been abroad, engaged in her judging, that a classic car, packed with Class-A drugs, has entered a British port, or a large cash deposit has been moved through the LH Classics account? I don’t think so. I would say that to consider this a series of coincidences is pretty far-fetched.’