‘Exposed, then?’
‘By the looks of it. We’ll see if we can spot him from the viewpoint I know. If nothing else, I get to have a smoke,’ Hen said.
‘In a nature reserve, guv?’
‘It’s the open air.’
She lit up the moment she stepped out of the car. She’d brought Gary to the rear of the Crab and Lobster at Sidlesham Quay because she knew they didn’t need to walk far to have a panoramic view of the harbour. The pub would also be a good meeting point if reinforcements were needed. Coppers know how to find pubs.
‘We’re going to need glasses.’
‘Plenty in the pub, I reckon,’ Gary said.
‘Field glasses.’
He opened the boot of his car and handed her a pair of 8x binoculars.
‘Good planning. You wouldn’t have size five wellies as well? I thought not.’ She told him to look through the glasses for a tall, solitary man, possibly hooded. Meanwhile, she found a flat rock and sat inhaling from her cigarillo.
‘Any joy?’
‘Not yet,’ Gary said. ‘It’s as quiet as the grave this morning. Just a courting couple on the Church Norton side.’
‘How do you know they’re courting?’
‘He’s unbuttoning her jacket.’
‘They must be good glasses.’
‘They’re steaming up.’
‘Isn’t there anyone else in view? Who’s that on the other side?’
Gary put the binoculars down to check and then refocused. ‘A little bald guy in a shellsuit walking his dog.’
She came to a decision. ‘Obviously we can’t see all of the harbour from here. We’ll have to find another viewpoint.’
‘Church Norton?’
‘Voyeur.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You just want a closer view of that couple.’
‘Seriously, guv. Church Norton looks like the best bet. We could follow the footpath.’
‘That isn’t serious, Gary. It’s at least a mile off.’
They returned to the car and used the roads to reach the car park created for birders and visitors to St Wilfrid’s Chapel. Theirs was the only vehicle. A short walk in the harbour direction gave them a view right across to Pagham. Nobody of Jake’s description was in sight. Even the lovers had disappeared.
Hen lit up again. She was getting anxious. This manhunt wasn’t the doddle it had first appeared.
‘You know what? This is a job for the Eye in the Sky.’
Gary was wide-eyed. ‘The chopper?’
‘Think big, lad.’
There was only one helicopter for the whole of Sussex Police, a McDonnell Douglas 902 Explorer, based at Shoreham airfield.
‘Get on to the Air Ops Unit and see if it’s available. From all I’ve heard there are four pilots on standby and they spend most of their time playing poker.’
‘It costs a bomb to run.’
‘Six-fifty an hour. A lot of those hours are spent collecting suicide victims at Beachy Head. This will give the lads a break: a real, live suspect to find. Tell them we’ll meet them on the Church Norton shingle spit. Too many trees around this poky little car park. They can put down there, no problem.’
Gary got busy with his personal radio. The chopper would arrive in under twenty minutes, he informed Hen.
‘I’m surprised we qualify to use it,’ he told her as they stepped out towards the spit, and then added, ‘Do we?’
‘Leave that for me to sort out,’ she said. ‘We’re dealing with a serious crime here.’
She’d not flown in the helicopter and she was sure Gary hadn’t. It was supposed to be used when life was at risk or a serious crime in progress, but she’d once seen a headline in the Mail on Sunday: SPY IN THE SKY POLICE AIM TO TRAP SPEEDSTERS. The Sussex chopper was ‘bringing more misery to Britain’ by reporting speeding motorists, timing them from eight hundred feet between sections of road marked with spots as large as dinner plates. Hen was occasionally tempted to put her foot down. She’d been caught in a speed trap once and only escaped thanks to a good story and a sympathetic traffic officer. If the helicopter crew hadn’t got anything better than speeding motorists to occupy them, she reasoned, they could help round up Jake.
The spit was the harbour’s bulwark against the sea, an artificial hump of shingle about a hundred metres wide. They reached it with time to spare.
She lit another while they waited. If truth were told, she was a mite uneasy about calling in the helicopter, for all her bravado. The top brass enquired into every mission, and flying over a nature reserve was sure to breach the bylaws. ‘Just a thought,’ she said to Gary. ‘If they ask, he’s on the run and dangerous, okay?’
‘Okay.’
She undermined this by what she said next. ‘Between ourselves, I get the impression Jake is a loner, but I suppose it’s possible he has a girlfriend. When you had the glasses on that couple did you look at the guy’s face?’
‘The lovers? He had his back to me, guv.’
‘Could you make a guess at his height?’
‘He was horizontal.’
She took a long, thoughtful drag on the cigarillo. Everything seemed so peaceful, too peaceful for an emergency.
‘We didn’t check inside that pub,’ Gary said.
‘You’re not helping.’
A buzzing from over Bognor heralded H902, the Eye in the Sky. Gary started waving a white handkerchief.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ Hen told him. ‘We’re pretty damned obvious standing out here.’
The helicopter was yellow and black and noisy. The rotor action lifted some sand off the stones and flattened some of the shingle plants that grew in abundance here. One of the crew beckoned to Hen and Gary to go closer. When the aircraft touched down properly they bowed their heads and got in.
There was seating for eight, but only three crewmen were inside, including the pilot. ‘What exactly is the mission?’ one of them shouted to Hen.
‘A search for a murder suspect. White Caucasian male in his forties, about six foot six, dark, possibly hooded.’
‘Has he been sighted?’
‘Not yet. He works here. Familiar with the terrain.’
‘There’s no railway this side of Bognor.’
It was hard to hear. ‘Never mind.’
‘Let’s go, then. And chuck the stogie, for Christ’s sake.’
She’d forgotten she was still holding the cigar-butt.
The Explorer began a near vertical ascent that left Hen’s stomach on the ground.
With the door closed, conversation was possible. She learned that the crew were the pilot, a police observer, and a paramedic.
The pilot reported back to his flight controller in Shoreham and then said, for the benefit of his passengers, ‘Let’s be methodical. I’ll take you to the southern limit of the reserve and back, following the shoreline. Is this guy armed?’
‘Could be,’ Hen said, giving herself a fright as she realised that a shotgun would be needed by a warden, even
