Grace thanked him and ended the call.
Jon Exton, now their prime suspect, was in the Eastbourne District General Hospital, under a round-the-clock police guard. As soon as he was well enough to be interviewed he would be arrested and transported to the central police station in Portsmouth.
But. He was still struggling to see Exton as a suspect, despite all he knew and had experienced. There was something about the DS that was just so straight, so honest.
Equally, he knew, from all his experience, it was precisely those qualities that enabled many killers to evade justice for years.
With just a tad of reluctance he made a series of phone calls, to Superintendent Darke at Professional Standards, the Head of Corporate Comms and to the Detective Chief Superintendent, Head of CID, setting up a meeting for late afternoon with Pewe and the Chief Constable to discuss the interview process and media strategy for one of their trusted detectives on his release from hospital.
91
Friday 29 April
It was nearly 5 p.m. when an apologetic Christopher Diplock arrived home from his client and was finally able to make a copy of the GoPro recording for Packham to take across to Guildford.
The meeting in the Chief Constable’s office finished an hour later. With Exton due to be released from hospital in the morning, and both the enhanced GoPro video and, hopefully, data from the laptop recovered from the harbour expected, tomorrow promised to be a big day.
Grace decided to go home early for once, eager to see Noah, and to find out how Bruno was getting on at St Christopher’s school — and he hadn’t forgotten his promise to teach him firearms techniques. He was also looking forward to having a rare quiet evening with Cleo.
All was fine in the house. Noah had been grizzling earlier, teething, Cleo said, and Bruno had been getting on with his homework. He went up to Bruno’s room and chatted to him about how he was getting on at his new school, and if he had made any friends. Then he helped him — with some difficulty — with a couple of maths queries he had. Mathematics had never been Grace’s strong point — he’d failed twice before finally struggling through at the third attempt. Failure would have hindered his chances of becoming a police officer.
Bruno thanked him politely, and knuckled back down.
As he left the room he realized he still hadn’t fully accepted that this boy really was his son.
Nor, as he lay wide, wide awake at 2 a.m., had he fully accepted what all the evidence pointed to about Jon Exton.
Tossing and turning in bed, plumping his pillow then replumping it as gently as he could, trying not to disturb Cleo, sleep was elusive. He saw the green digits of his clock radio change. 2.03 a.m. 2.17 a.m. 2.38 a.m.
Thinking. Thinking.
Lorna Belling.
Her eyes wide open.
Staring at him from the bathtub.
Find my killer.
Or are you teasing me? Did you kill yourself?
Oh yes, and I wiped that memory card and put the GoPro in Jon’s car, from beyond the grave. Sure, to cover my tracks.
The one certainty he had right now was that he could rule out suicide.
At around 4 a.m. he fell into a deep sleep, to be awoken just twenty minutes later by Noah crying.
92
Saturday 30 April
Just before midday Chris Gargan emailed Roy Grace, telling him they’d done their best with the GoPro images, but they were hampered by the rain on the windscreen. He was sending them over by WeTransfer and they should be with him in minutes.
Grace called Guy Batchelor, updated him and asked him to come to his office and view them with him.
The DS came in a few minutes later, clutching a cup of coffee. He was still smarting after the bollocking he’d been given by Roy for entrusting Exton, clearly in an unreliable state, with a crucial piece of evidence to take to Guildford. He’d already apologized to Roy, telling him he just hadn’t thought it through, it was time critical and Exton was available.
‘Any updates, Guy?’ Grace asked, as he waited for the files to load.
‘Exton’s on his way to Portsmouth. Glenn Branson and Kevin Hall are accompanying him and will do the interview, as you suggested, boss. He’s got a solicitor on the way from Eastbourne.’
‘Who’s that?’ Grace asked.
‘Nadine Ashford, from Lawson Lewis Blakers.’
Grace had selected the two trained suspect interviewers carefully. Glenn was good at reading body language — something he’d taught him himself; Hall had a beguiling warmth about him that masked a chip of ice in his heart. Grace had done a number of suspect interviews with him in the past, and no one played the role of good cop better.
The downloads were complete, and Grace opened the first one. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what this gives us.’
The image wasn’t great, but it was, to Grace’s surprise, clearer than Gargan had warned. They could see the residential road, and the flare of the street lights. Orientating himself, he could see that the view through the windscreen of the BMW was north, up Vallance Street, with the seafront directly behind. To the left, across the quiet residential road, was the eastern facade of Vallance Mansions and the side entrance.
After some moments, in a series of staggered, jump-frame time-lapse images, a young female jogger jerked past, the images making her look almost comically fast. Then a male figure emerged from the side door of Vallance Mansions.
The time display showed 9.01 p.m.
Tall, wearing a raincoat, the top half of his face was totally obscured by a plain, long-peaked baseball cap, of the kind favoured by golfers. The features of the lower half of his face were impossible to see clearly. He seemed to be clutching something concealed inside the coat. He was also carrying two bin bags and some flowers.
‘What’s inside his coat?’ Grace said.
‘The laptop?’ Batchelor replied.
‘Could be.’
In the next frame he appeared a yard further on down the pavement. Then another yard. Then he was gone from view.
Grace stopped the video, wound it back to where the man first appeared, then magnified the image. The larger it became, the more blurry it was.
‘Exton’s height,’ Batchelor said.
Grace nodded, uncertainly. ‘Exton’s height, yes, but not his build — although that could be the quality of the image, distorting through the wet glass.’
‘They say television adds pounds to anyone’s face — and features,’ Batchelor said, staring intently at the screen.
Diplock had done a good editing job; the two detectives observed the time display jump to 10.22 p.m. This time the same man appeared striding up the pavement on the other side of the road now. One hand held an umbrella and he carried a bag in the other. He was visible for three frames, looking carefully around, then went out of shot.
‘Hello!’ Batchelor said. ‘Nice to see you again!’
‘Laptop’s gone?’ Grace suggested.
‘Looks like it. He’d have had plenty of time to go to Shoreham Harbour and ditch it.’
‘It would have been a round trip of ten minutes in a car.’
‘A good half an hour walk each way on foot though,’ Batchelor said, thoughtfully.
After another time jump they saw the man again, walking back down the street, on the opposite side of the road, still using what appeared to be a busted umbrella.
‘Aha, looks like he’s the local Good Samaritan,’ Grace said. ‘Carrying out everyone’s rubbish for them in the middle of the night.’
They looked back at the footage of the man’s return to the flat.
When the man reached the side door to Vallance Mansions he stopped, pulled out what both detectives presumed must be a key, opened the door and went in.