‘When you say suspicious, boss,’ Jon Exton asked, ‘what do you — or Dr West — actually mean?’
‘In Dr West’s view,’ Grace replied, ‘the venom might have been delivered to Rowley Carmichael by some other means than a bite.’
‘What kind of other means?’
‘Well, according to West there is only one other way to deliver it in a lethal form and that’s by injection. Carmichael was an insulin-dependent diabetic, who injected himself four times daily. Could his darling new bride have accidentally substituted his insulin with snake venom? It’s a possibility we can’t rule out, given her past form, which is pretty interesting. There are all the identities of Jodie Bentley, who would have become Jodie Klein by marriage, but whose prospective husband fell over a cliff in Courchevel, France. She then married Rowley Carmichael, who died a few days after their marriage. Interestingly, Jodie Bentley’s first husband, Christopher, also died from a saw-scale viper bite some years ago.’ He paused to sip his coffee.
‘She seems very adept at creating false identities. I informed ACC Pewe that at the present time, whilst we are putting a lot of resources into finding her, we do not know the whereabouts of this extremely clever and dangerous lady. We are aware of one poste-restante address she is known to use, and we have asked them to notify us when she next turns up, but not surprisingly they are reluctant to cooperate. And we don’t have the resources to place surveillance on her known addresses to see if she appears. What we are doing is keeping an eye on the CCTV camera footage in the streets outside them, but it’s a huge task. We’ve had nothing back on her phone, and therefore Michelle Websdale has not been able to set up a meeting with her.
‘We have two problems right now. The first is locking this woman up before she finds her next husband — and possible victim. The second is that so far all evidence against her is largely circumstantial and we need something more solid to arrest her.’
He brought the briefing to an end, and asked Tanja Cale and Glenn Branson, who was just back from Lyon, to come to his office.
A few minutes later, sat around the table, Roy began the meeting by saying, ‘If we are correct in our assumption that Jodie Carmichael is targeting wealthy older men, I suggest we put someone in place, with a carefully created background, who fits this mould. A retired, secretive multimillionaire, whose wife died some time ago, who is perhaps terminally ill and has returned to Brighton to spend his last days here. We use social media to seed his fake background as a rich philanthropist. I’m thinking we work with some of the local papers, the Argus in particular, but also the Brighton and Hove Independent, the Mid Sussex Times and the Sussex Express, to run features on him, and consider the local media, too — such as Radio Sussex, Latest TV, perhaps get an interview with him on the Albion Roar — about how much he’s missed attending his home football team’s games; and how honoured the city is that he’s chosen Brighton to spend his last days, that sort of thing.’
‘Isn’t there a problem, sir?’ Tanja said. ‘That anyone checking would see there is no historic social media trail?’
Grace nodded. ‘You are quite right, Tanja. I discussed this with the Chief Superintendent of the Financial Crimes Unit at the City of London Police and with the Commander of the Scotland Yard Fraud Squad.’ He smiled. ‘They’re well ahead of the curve and they anticipated these kinds of problems very early on. Almost from the get-go of so-called “social media”, they’ve been on it. Seeding and creating false identities first on MySpace, then Facebook, Twitter, and more recently on Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and all the others. Name an identity and they have it. In our case, a reclusive multimillionaire, who’s a widower and has made the decision to leave the bulk of his estate to charity.
‘Bloody hell, that’s smart!’ Glenn said.
‘I thought so, too!’ Roy Grace replied. ‘Mostly in the police we’re constantly playing a game of catch-up with villains. Nice to think we have some visionaries who occasionally put us ahead of the game. The Financial Crimes Unit of the City of London Police are sending one of their detectives down to advise us today.’
‘Do you have someone in mind for this undercover officer, sir?’ Tanja asked.
‘I don’t yet,’ he replied. ‘The Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team can approach the Covert Policing Unit to identify a suitable officer who has been trained in this field. It’s actually been so well managed, historically, that no one knows who any of these people are. The normal procedure would be to use a detective from out of area, but that’s not always possible.’
‘What about risk to the officer concerned?’ Tanja Cale asked.
‘That’s what we have to manage in the full risk assessment,’ Grace said. ‘But that’s what we all do, every day, isn’t it? We try to make our city a safer place. To do that, all of us at some time have to take risks. I’ve never met a good police officer who, at some point, didn’t have their life on the line. The day we aren’t willing to do that is the day to quit.’
Cale and Branson nodded.
89
Wednesday 11 March
After the meeting ended, Roy Grace called DC Maggie Bridgeman, who was the liaison officer at the Covert Policing Unit.
He gave her the specifics. He needed a male officer immediately available, who could pass as someone terminally ill in their sixties, and someone who had local knowledge.
Unfazed, as if she dealt with requests like this all day long, Bridgeman said she would check with Resourcing and get back to him.
A few minutes after ending the call, Pat Lanigan rang him back from New York.
‘Hey, pal! I got some of the other aliases you wanted. Try James Beam and George Dickel.’
‘Aren’t they American whisky distilleries?’ Grace asked.
‘You got it. Amazing to us all, seems like our mutual buddy, Tooth, has a sense of humour.’
There seemed to be so many false names involved that Grace was starting to wonder if this operation’s name should be changed from Operation Spider to Operation Alias. As soon as he ended the call, he passed the information to one of his team.
Ten minutes later a Detective Constable Ballantine called him back from the Waterfront Hotel’s front desk. They had a guest named George Dickel in room 407.
Grace sometimes let excitement rule his head. That had led to Glenn Branson being shot. Had the bullet gone an inch to the right his mate would have either been dead or paralysed from the waist down. He remembered that and other lessons. Yet at the same time adrenalin surged through him. Tooth would be a major prize — a massive prize. He had to be certain the man did not slip through his fingers this time.
First he asked the reception desk to check that Mr Dickel was in his room, suggesting they phone up on a housekeeping pretext of checking he was happy with the way his room had been cleaned. Then he phoned the Ops-1 Inspector, and was glad to hear the voice of the one he trusted the most, Don Mark, on the line.
Grace spoke with the Silver Commander who, within ten minutes, had an Armed Response Unit, two dog handlers and members of the Tactical Firearms Unit heading towards the Waterfront Hotel. And as an extra precaution, Silver had the helicopter NPAS 15 on standby — hoping it wasn’t called away to another police or medical emergency, as Sussex Police no longer had an exclusive helicopter of their own.