‘Do we know anything about who put up the bail – did Goff himself know?’ Polly Sweeney asked.
Grace shook his head. ‘No, he was in prison for a bit before bail was paid. It was arranged through his solicitor, Paul Donnelley.’
‘I thought Donnelley had been struck off?’ Potting said.
‘Appears not, Norman.’ He turned to Polly. ‘Can you follow that up, see where it takes us?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What we do know,’ Grace continued, ‘is that Goff had an accelerant, believed to be petrol – which the lab will verify – poured over him, but it wasn’t ignited, which indicates it was done to frighten him. He was badly beaten up and had electrical burns on his body, according to the pathologist, as well as a cigarette burn on his chest. At some point during the torture process, he suffered a fatal heart attack.’ He took another sip of coffee.
Velvet Wilde raised a hand. ‘Boss, wouldn’t the cigarette have ignited the petrol?’
Grace shook his head. ‘That burn might have been done before the petrol was poured on him. But even if the petrol was already on him, it only ignites at a certain temperature – unlike what we see in movies when someone drops a cigarette into the petrol tank of a car. All that would happen then is that it gets extinguished.’
‘So who said smoking is bad for your health?’ quipped Potting.
Several of the team laughed. Grace glanced at him sympathetically. That was some show of bravado, he thought, considering Potting was awaiting a possible diagnosis of cancer related to his pipe smoking. Then he continued.
‘Some of you are experienced enough to know that as and when we track down Goff’s assailants, a smart defence brief will have a field day with his pre-existing medical condition, but we don’t need to concern ourselves with that now. We have four significant lines of enquiry. The first is to find out more about who put up Goff’s substantial bail. Second is tracing Goff’s exact movements from the morning of his release from Lewes Prison to his death. The third is why he was tortured and by who. Finally, who deposited his body outside 20 Saltdean Close – and why there? Is that location relevant? Is it too coincidental not to be relevant?’
EJ Boutwood raised a hand. ‘Sir, does Goff have any history of stealing art? Could that be a link to the occupant of 20 Saltdean Close – Daniel Hegarty?’
‘I think it’s a possibility, EJ. We’ll need to interview Hegarty and see if he has anything useful to tell us. Norman and Velvet, can you pick that up?’
He turned to Alexander. ‘Jack, I asked you yesterday to organize an outside enquiry team to do a house-to-house in the vicinity of 20 Saltdean Close. Any luck with anyone who might have seen anything suspicious the evening before, or any CCTV footage?’
‘We talked to one lady a few doors up, who’s obsessed with people who let their dogs foul pavements, sir,’ the DS said. ‘She’s a little eccentric in my opinion.’ He glanced at Polly Sweeney who nodded in confirmation and Alexander continued. ‘She has an outward-facing CCTV camera covering the pavement in front of her house and the road beyond, which is there mainly to spy on a neighbour, who she’s convinced deliberately gets his German Shepherd to dump outside her house every evening around 7 p.m. We spoke to her at approximately 8 p.m. last night. She said she’d been reviewing the footage and a white van she didn’t recognize drove past at approximately 6.45 p.m. She claims to know every car and van in her neighbourhood, and this one struck her as odd, especially at that time on a Saturday evening.’
Sweeney took over. ‘She invited us in, to view the footage. The vehicle was a white Ford Transit with no markings. The number plate was recorded but in poor lighting, with a couple of options on one of its numbers and one of its letters. Jack and I ran both through the PNC and came up with two possible vehicles, one belonging to an electrician in Brighton, the other to a funeral director in Eastbourne. We’ve managed to speak to the owners of both, and we’re pretty confident that neither were in Saltdean Saturday evening.’
‘The van was on cloned plates?’ Grace asked.
‘Looks like it, sir,’ Sweeney replied.
‘Good work, Polly and Jack,’ he said, then reflected on this development.
Nadiuska had estimated, very roughly, that Goff’s body had been dumped sometime between 6 and 9 p.m. yesterday evening. And during that time a van, on possibly cloned plates, drove in the direction of the deposition site. ‘Do you have anything more on this van?’ he asked them.
‘No, sir,’ Alexander said. ‘But we’ve been checking the serials for any similar vans that might have been stolen in the Sussex area during the past week, and we’ve been on to – and are still working through – all the local and regional car rental companies that might have rented out a vehicle of this description. We have one so far, from SIXT.’
Grace had long thought that Jack Alexander had a big future as a detective and this latest initiative reinforced that even more. He always acted on his initiatives. ‘Have SIXT got any CCTV, Jack?’
‘They have, sir. They record every customer. Polly and I are hoping to get the CCTV of the one who rented their Transit two days ago, later this morning.’
‘Great stuff. I’m going to see the ACC and suggest it’s about time we merged the investigations. I’m pretty confident she’ll agree.’
70
Monday, 4 November
Hegarty led Kilgore into the open-plan living area, with its magnificent view through the picture-window across to Saltdean Lido and the English Channel beyond, and then into an adjoining room. The bare, stark concrete walls with no windows made it feel like being inside a cave, which was exactly how the artist felt every time he came in here. His man-cave, the place where he was most inspired, away from all distractions.
Copies of paintings, including a Banksy, were among many other works stacked higgledy-piggledy against the walls. Wooden bookshelves on three of the four walls heaved under the weight of reference books on great painters past and modern.
Next to them was a shelf laden with technique manuals. One was titled Master Class in Seascape Painting, another Anatomy Perspective Composition, and above those, Dog Painting – the European Breeds, Techniques of the World’s Greatest Painters and Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Colour Palettes. They were weighted down by a small, plump, white bag labelled L. Cornelissen & Son, Genuine White Marble Dust. Medium. 1 Kilogram.
Another shelf contained glass jars with brushes of every size in cleaning solution, as well as a rack of palette knives. And in the centre of the room stood a paint-spattered easel, on which was mounted an elaborate Lowry, evidently a work in progress, as some of the dozens of thin figures populating what looked like a factory forecourt had not yet been coloured in.
The tart reek of stale cigarette smoke on Kilgore’s clothes mingled with the smells of oil paint and turpentine. The American looked around in wonder, as he did every time he came here, into the master’s inner sanctum. ‘Banksy now?’ he said.