‘I’ll join you, I’ll have a cigarette too.’
‘Bad for your health, Roy.’ Batchelor raised a leg, as if about to kick him.
‘It’ll be worse for my health if I fall off this bloody ladder,’ he panted.
‘You didn’t have to come up here.’
‘Guy, you’re my friend! Just tell me, what’s happened to you?’
‘I’m finished, Roy. You’re wasting your time — don’t forget I’m a trained suicide negotiator too. I know all the tricks. They’re not going to work on me.’
Grace heard a click, then smelled cigarette smoke.
‘You’re not my friend, Roy, you’re no one’s friend. You’re a copper, you’d nick your best friend if it helped you get a result.’
‘Guy, listen to me.’
‘I’m finished.’
Then Grace heard the voice of Ops-1. ‘Roy, we have the drone approaching the i360 tower, but visibility is bad. What assistance do you need?’
His arms were aching. He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on for. Using all his strength, he wrapped first his right arm then his left around the ladder and pulled himself tightly into it. That eased some of the strain and he felt slightly more secure. ‘I’m OK,’ he replied. ‘No assistance at this moment.’
‘There’s nothing worse than a corrupt officer, is there, Roy? One who lets the team down?’
Grace could hear him sobbing.
‘Guy, come on, let’s talk, tell me what is going on. Talk to me, be honest with me, and I’ll tell you what I can do for you.’
‘I didn’t mean to kill her. We just had an argument and it all got out of hand. She hit her head, I panicked. You know the rest. I thought I might get away with it — I nearly did. But he recognized me, that Weatherley, I could see it in his face. That’s why he didn’t want to say anything in front of me. I saw it, Roy. He knew it was me.’
‘If you didn’t mean to kill her, you need to tell your story. A decent barrister might be able to argue self-defence, or whatever. OK, you’ll lose your job, but this doesn’t sound like murder. Maybe manslaughter? You know the evidence, Guy. If you think you can convince a jury to believe you panicked and it was an accident, or worst case, manslaughter, you’ll get a sentence, yes, but maybe not a long one.’
‘How’m I going to explain running the Met guy — the Super Recognizer — off the road, Roy? You and I both know I’m going down for a long time. I’ll lose my family, my career. I’ve just two choices, I give myself up to you or I jump.’
‘Think of your family, Guy. Let’s talk.’
‘What’s there to talk about?’ Batchelor suddenly sounded calm. ‘I’ve betrayed you and I’ve betrayed Sussex Police by trying to cover it up. By attempting to set up a friend and colleague — Jon Exton. I did it pretty well, didn’t I? Well enough so you arrested him. I just tried to kill a cop. I’ve betrayed everything I signed up for.’
‘Look, it’s bad, I’m not going to deny it, Guy. But come down, the Federation will help you. You’ll get a fair trial. You’ll go to jail, but there’s life beyond, try to think about that for a moment. You have a lovely wife, a daughter, you have so much to live for. You’re still a young man. Come down and tell us the truth about everything that’s happened.’
‘No way, that’s not going to happen!’
‘Let me come on the platform with you — I bloody need a cigarette!’
‘There aren’t any ashtrays. This is a no-smoking tower. I would hate to be an accomplice to you committing a crime, too.’
Suddenly, Batchelor moved out of sight.
‘Guy!’ Grace yelled. ‘Guy!’
Silence.
‘GUY!’
Frantically, finding strength from somewhere inside him, he scrambled up the last few rungs and, petrified of looking down, pulled himself through the hatch, onto the narrow, gridded platform.
There was no sign of Batchelor.
‘Guy!’ he yelled, running round the entire circumference of the tower.
He was gone.
He stood in numb silence. Stared at a smouldering cigarette butt. Then he heard the voice of Kim Sherwood through his radio.
‘Roy, the drone is on site now. What is your position?’
For some moments he did not know what to reply. He felt gutted. He’d had Batchelor in his grasp and had let him go.
‘Man down,’ he said finally, flatly.
‘Man down?’ she queried.
He hauled himself inside, onto the ladder, and began the long, long descent.
110
Saturday 30 April
Fifteen minutes later, completely and utterly spent, Grace stepped gratefully down from the last rung, back onto terra firma. There were three police officers as well as two men in yellow hard hats all looking at him.
He wasn’t often lost for words, but he was now. He felt close to collapsing from exhaustion. He staggered forward and stumbled. A sturdy man in a hard hat grabbed him, supporting him.
‘All right, mate?’
‘Where is he?’ Grace gasped.
‘Where’s who?’
It wasn’t going to be a pretty sight, he knew that much. That sort of vertical drop. He’d seen what that did to people. They exploded. Limbs came off, their innards burst out through their stomachs. He was feeling sick at the thought.
The thought that his friend, and colleague, was lying out there in the darkness. His body broken.
‘Is he still up there, sir?’ a uniformed officer whom he did not recognize asked him.
‘Is who still up there?’ he replied, puzzled.
‘DI Batchelor, sir,’ the PC said, looking equally puzzled.
‘He jumped,’ Grace replied. ‘He’s not still up there.’ His voice was choked. ‘I’m sorry but — but — he jumped.’
He turned away, suddenly feeling deeply emotional and close to tears. He should have scrambled up those last few rungs and grabbed him. Held on to him. Knocked him out.
‘No one’s jumped, sir,’ another voice said.
‘He jumped! I saw him! Didn’t you see him? Didn’t anyone find him yet?’
A siren was wailing in the distance, approaching.
Ops-1’s voice came through the radio. ‘Roy, can you give me an update?’
‘Give me a couple of minutes, Kim,’ he said. Then he looked at the group standing around him. ‘He must be somewhere close,’ he said, then ran for the door and outside. Right above him was the illuminated glass observation car.
The first officer he had spoken to followed him. ‘Sir, we have ten officers around the base of the tower — they would have seen anyone falling.’
Grace heard an electronic whirring sound above him. He looked up and saw a drone hovering, a red light blinking beneath it.
He called Ops-1 back. ‘Kim, have the drone do a search around the base of the tower for a body.’
‘Golf 99 at Brighton, Inspector Anakin is controlling it, sir. He’s already carried out a search and there is no sighting of a body.’
‘Kim, he jumped, for God’s sake! The man jumped! He was on a platform outside, right in front of me, then he vanished. Tell him to look again.’
The drone rose into the air and was swallowed by the mist in seconds. Grace looked around at everyone, bewildered. ‘He’s not sodding Superman,’ he said. ‘He didn’t fly off into the night, he jumped, I’m telling you.’
The siren was approaching now. Arriving at the scene.
Then he heard Kim Sherwood again. ‘Roy, Golf 99 has found him. The drone is filming him now.’
‘Finally.’
‘He’s entangled in some kind of netting near the top of the tower.’
‘What?’
One of the maintenance men in a hard hat said, ‘That’s the safety net put up for the inspection and maintenance team.’