Dead Man's Grip

right into the entrance to the underground car park and partway down the ramp, had another fit of sneezing. He halted the car, sneezing again and pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. He sneezed once more into it.

‘Bless you,’ Tyler said again.

The driver turned. Tyler thought the man was going to thank him, but instead he saw something black in the man’s hand that looked like the trigger of a gun, but without the rest of the weapon. Then he felt a hard jet of air on his face, accompanied by a sharp hiss. Suddenly he found it hard to breathe, and he took a deep gulp, while the air still jetted at him from the capsule.

Tooth watched the boy’s eyes closing, then turned and continued down the ramp, lowering his window, then removing the handkerchief from his face. He carried on winding down to the car park’s lowest level, which was deserted apart from one vehicle. His rental Toyota, with new licence plates.

He reversed into the bay alongside it.

87

At 11.25 a.m. Roy Grace was seated at his desk, making some last-minute adjustments to his press statement, which he was due to read out at midday.

So far nothing seemed to be going his way in this investigation, and to make matters even more complicated, the trial of snuff-movie merchant Carl Venner was starting in just over two weeks’ time. But for now he had no time to think about anything other than Operation Violin.

There had been no progress reported on any of the lines of enquiry at this morning’s briefing meeting. The Outside Inquiry Team had not found anyone who had sold the cameras that had filmed Preece’s and Ferguson’s demise. No one so far had witnessed anything unusual outside Evie Preece’s house. The West Area Major Crime Branch Team had had no breakthrough yet in their investigation into Warren Tulley’s murder in Ford Prison.

So many people had bought tubes of superglue in shops around the city during the past week that it made any follow-up a resourcing nightmare. Despite that, the team members had collected all available CCTV footage from inside and outside each of the premises that was covered by it. If – and when – they were able to put a face to the suspect, then they’d begin a trawl through these hundreds of hours of video.

His phone rang. It was his Crime Scene Manager, Tracy Stocker, calling from Newport Pagnell Services.

‘Roy, we’ve found one item of possible interest so far. The stub of a Lucky Strike cigarette. I can’t tell you if it is significant, but it’s a relatively unusual brand for the UK.’

As a smoker, albeit an occasional one, Grace knew a bit about cigarette brands. Lucky Strikes were American. If, as he surmised, the killings of Preece and Ferguson were the work of a professional, it was a distinct possibility that a hit man known to the Reveres and trusted by them had been employed. He could be an American, sent over here. He felt a beat of excitement, as if this small item did have the potential to be interesting – although he knew, equally, its presence could have a totally innocent explanation.

‘Did you manage to get a print from it, Tracy?’ he asked.

Getting fingerprints from cigarette butts was difficult and depended to some extent on how they had been held.

‘No. We can send it for chemical analysis, but we may have more luck with DNA. Do you want me to fast-track it?’

Grace thought for a moment. Fast-tracking could produce a result within one to two days. Otherwise it would take a working week or longer. The process was expensive, at a time when they were meant to be keeping costs down, but money was less of an issue on murder inquiries.

‘Yes, fast-track definitely,’ he said. ‘Good work, Tracy. Well done.’

‘I’ll ping you the photos of it,’ she said.

‘Any luck with shoe prints or tyre prints?’

‘Not so far. Unfortunately the ground’s dry. But if there is anything, we’ll find it.’

He smiled, because he knew that if anyone could, she would. He asked her to keep him updated. Then, as he hung up, his phone rang again. It was Duncan Crocker, sounding as if he had been up all night.

‘Boss, we’ve had two possible hits on cars at Newport Pagnell that arrived at the same time as Stuart Ferguson. One is a Vauxhall Astra and the other is a Toyota Yaris – both of them common rental vehicles,’ the Detective Sergeant said. ‘We’ve eliminated the Astra, which was being driven by a sales rep for a screen-printing company. But the Yaris is more interesting.’

‘Yes?’

‘You were right, sir. It’s a rental car – from Avis at Gatwick Airport. I put a marker on it and it pinged an ANPR camera on the M11 near Brentwood at 8 a.m. this morning. A local traffic unit stopped it. It was a twenty-seven- year-old female driver who lives in Brentwood, on her way to work.’

Grace frowned. Was Crocker being dim?

‘It doesn’t sound like you got either of the right vehicles, Duncan.’

‘I think it may do when you hear this, sir. When the young lady got out of the car, she realized it wasn’t her licence plates on the car. Someone had taken hers and replaced them with these.’

‘While she was in the Newport Pagnell Services?’

‘She can’t swear that, sir – she can’t remember the last time she noticed her number plates. To be honest, a lot of us probably don’t.’

Grace thought for a moment.

‘So it may be that our suspect has switched plates with hers. Have you put a marker out on her plates?’

‘I have, sir, yes. So far nothing.’

‘Good work. Let me know the instant anyone sees that car.’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Have you sent someone down to Avis at Gatwick?’

‘I’ve sent Sara Papesch and Emma-Jane Boutwood.’

Grace frowned. ‘Who’s Sara Papesch?’

‘She’s just joined the team. Bright girl – a Kiwi detective, over here on a secondment.’

‘OK, good.’

Grace liked to know everyone on his team personally. It worried him when an inquiry started getting so big that his team members began taking on new members without his sanction. He was feeling, for one of the rare moments in his career, that things were getting on top of him. He needed to calm down, take things steady.

He looked at the round wooden clock on his wall. It had been a prop in the fictitious police station in the TV police series The Bill. Sandy had bought it for his twenty-sixth birthday. Beneath it was a stuffed seven pound, six ounce brown trout Sandy had also bought him, from an antiques stall in Portobello Road, early in their marriage. He kept it beneath the clock to give him a joke he could crack to detectives working under him, about patience and big fish.

It was also there as a reminder to himself. To always be patient. Every murder investigation was a puzzle. A gazillion tiny pieces to find and fit together. Your bosses and the local media were always breathing down your neck, but you had to remain calm, somehow. Panic would get you nowhere, other than leading you to make wrong, uninformed decisions.

His door opened and Glenn Branson came in, looking as he did most of the time these days, as if he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Grace waited for him to begin regaling him with the latest saga in his marriage break-up, but instead the DS placed his massive hands on the back of one of the two chairs in front of his desk and leaned forward. ‘We have a development, old-timer, and it’s not a good one. I’ve just had a call from Carly Chase in New York.’

Now he had Grace’s full attention. ‘Her mission isn’t going well, as predicted, right?’

‘You could say that, boss. Tony Revere’s mother was killed in a car smash last night.’

Grace stared at him in stunned silence. He could feel the blood draining from every artery in his body.

‘Killed?’

‘Yes.’

For some moments, the Detective Superintendent was too shell-shocked to even think straight. Then he asked,