He opened it up and saw the message: ‘To my Darling Daddy. With all my love, tons and tons and tons of it. J XXX’.
Grace put the card back and walked over to a tall bay window. There was a fine view down to the Hamble River; Branson joined him and they stared at a forest of masts and rigging from a marina that looked as if it was just beyond the boundary of the property.
‘Never been into boats,’ Branson said. ‘Never been totally comfortable with water.’
‘Even though you live by the sea?’
‘Not exactly right by it.’ His phone rang and he pulled it out. ‘DS Branson? Oh hi, yeah, I’m with Roy, down near Southampton. ETA about two o’clock back in Brighton. Roy wants a briefing at six thirty, so everyone there, OK? Yeah. Did we get the extra officers he requested? Only one so far? Who is it? Oh shit, you are joking! Him! I can’t believe they’ve dumped him on us. Roy is going to be well pissed. We’re going straight to her flat from here; Roy wants someone to go to her office, speak to her boss and the staff there. OK. Yeah. Six thirty. You got it.’
Branson slipped the phone back in his pocket. ‘That was Bella. Guess what – your request for two extra officers for the team – know who they’ve given us?’
‘Hit me.’
‘Norman Potting.’
Grace groaned. ‘It’s about time he retired; he’s older than God.’
‘Hasn’t exactly thrilled the ladies. Bella is not happy.’
Detective Sergeant Norman Potting was in his mid-fifties, a late joiner compared to some. He was a old-school policeman, politically incorrect, blunt and with no interest in promotion – he had never wanted the responsibilities – but nor had he wanted to retire when he reached fifty-five, the normal police pension age for a sergeant, which was why he had extended his service. He liked to do what he was best at doing, which he called plodding and drilling. Plodding, methodical police work, and drilling down deep beneath the surface of any crime, drilling for as long and deep as he needed until he hit some seam that would lead him somewhere.
The best that could be said about Norman Potting was that he was steady and dependable, and could get results. But he was boring as hell, and had the knack of upsetting just about everyone.
‘I thought he was permanently up at Gatwick with the anti-terrorist lot,’ Grace said.
‘They obviously had enough of him. Maybe they couldn’t bear any more of his jokes,’ Branson said. ‘And Bella said he stinks of smoke from his pipe. Neither she nor Emma-Jane want to sit near him.’
‘Poor precious souls.’
Derek Stretton came back into the room, carrying a tray with three china cups and a milk jug. He set it on the plastic table, then ushered them to one sofa, and sat down opposite. ‘You said on the phone you have news about Janie, Detective Superintendent?’ he asked expectantly.
Now Grace suddenly wished fervently he had sent the two FLOs in to do this task, after all.
25
Tom had done virtually no work all morning. He’d sat at his desk in his office with a pile of unanswered emails mounting up on his screen – at least his computer was working again now – and dealt with a few calls that had come in for him, as well as gone carefully through a list of costings for Rolex Oyster watches for Ron Spacks, but all the rest of the time he had been thinking.
Thinking.
His brain spinning but getting no traction.
The call last night at home from Chris telling him he had been burgled.
In fact there seems to be only one damned thing missing… Your CD…
Mind you, he had been in Chris Webb’s office at his home, and it was cluttered beyond belief. It wouldn’t be hard to lose a CD there – he had dozens lying all over the place.
Yet, Tom thought, someone was not happy that he had the CD, and they’d trashed his computer twice to tell him so. So now they’d taken it back? Had Chris Webb tried to play it and alerted them?
If whoever owned that CD – the dickhead from the train – now had it back, would that be the end of the matter?
Maybe the dickhead would be on the train again tonight? But Tom doubted it; in all the years he had been commuting he had never seen him before. Besides, he wasn’t exactly sure what he would do – whether he would go up and shout at him, or whether he would be too nervous to say anything.
He had still not said anything to Kellie about it. Best to keep quiet, keep his head down. There had been no more calls, which meant, hopefully, he’d had his warning.
He sure as hell had got the message.
26
‘The managing agents of the flat your daughter rents in Brighton let us in yesterday, Mr Stretton, and allowed us to take a couple of items belonging to her for DNA testing. We took some hair samples from a brush in the bathroom and a piece of chewing gum we found in a pedal bin,’ Grace explained.
Derek Stretton held his cup without drinking, eyeing him warily.
‘We sent these up to the Police laboratory at Huntingdon, and earlier this morning we received the results. The DNA from the chewing gum and from the hair is from the same person, and there was a complete match with the body that we found on Wednesday. I’m afraid the only conclusion we can come to, sir, is that the murdered young lady is your daughter, Janie.’
There was a long silence, and for some moments Grace thought that Derek Stretton was about to throw his head back and roar with laughter. Instead, all that happened was that the cup began to rattle in the saucer, louder and louder, until the man leaned forward and set it down.
‘I – I see,’ he said.
He looked at Grace again, then at Branson. Then slowly, like a complex folding chair, he seemed to collapse in on himself. ‘She’s all I have in the world,’ he said. ‘Please tell me it’s not true. She’s coming today – it’s my birthday – we’re going to dinner. Oh God. I – I…’
Grace stared rigidly ahead, avoiding Branson’s eye, wishing desperately that he could say it wasn’t true, that it was a mistake. But there was nothing he could add, nothing that would make this man’s grief any less.
‘I lost my wife – her mother – three years ago. Cancer. Now I’ve lost Janie. I…’
Grace gave him some space, then asked, ‘What kind of a daughter was she, sir? I mean – were you close?’
After a long silence Derek Stretton said, ‘There’s always a special bond between a father and daughter, I’m told. I’ve certainly found it so.’
‘She was a caring person?’
‘Immensely. Never ever forgot my birthday, or Christmas or Father’s Day. She’s – she’s just – a – perfect…’ His voice tailed away.
Grace stood up. ‘Do you have a recent photograph of her? I’d like to get a picture out into circulation as quickly as possible.’
Derek Stretton nodded bleakly.
‘And would you mind if we took a look in her bedroom?’
‘Do you want me to come – or…?’
‘We can go on our own,’ Grace said gently.
‘First floor – turn right at the top of the stairs. It’s the second door on your right.’
It was a young girl’s room, a tidy, organized, methodical young girl. A row of cuddly toys lay back against the cushions. A U2 poster hung on the wall. There was a collection of seashells on the dressing table. Bookshelves stacked mostly with children’s books, girls’ adventure stories and a few legal thrillers from Scott Turow, John Grisham and several other American writers. There was a pair of slippers on the floor and an old-fashioned dressing gown hanging on the back of the door.
Grace and Branson opened all the drawers, rummaged in her clothing, through underwear, T-shirts, blouses, pullovers, but they found nothing to remotely suggest what she had done to expose herself to a savage killer.