As he peeled it away from his mouth, the man shouted out in pain.
‘Sorry,’ Grace murmured.
The tape went all the way around the back of the man’s head and he didn’t want to hurt him any more.
‘Mike Howard?’ he asked.
‘Yes! Jesus, that hurt,’ the man said, then smiled.
Grace folded the tape back on itself. ‘I’m sorry. We’re going to lift you out. Are you injured? In pain?’
He shook his head. ‘Just get me out.’
Mike Howard was a big, heavy man. With considerable difficulty, between himself and Glenn Branson they managed to manoeuvre him forward to the edge of the boot. They freed his arms and legs, and tried as best they could to remove the rest of the tape around his head. Then they stood him up and walked him around a little, supporting him until the circulation was back in his legs and he was steadier. But he was wheezing, close to hyperventilating, so they sat him down on the Skoda’s rear bumper.
‘Can you tell us what happened?’ Grace asked him gently.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I pissed. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t keep it in any more.’
‘It’s OK, don’t worry. Are you able to tell me what happened?’
‘What time is it?’
‘Half past one,’ Glenn Branson said.
‘What day?’
‘Friday.’
The man frowned. ‘Friday? Friday morning?’
‘It’s afternoon, lunchtime.’
‘Holy shit.’
‘How long have you been there?’ Grace asked.
Mike Howard took several deep breaths. ‘I was working nights. I was just heading home – about 1 a.m. – and this man hailed me along the seafront.’
‘Where exactly?’
‘Just near the Peace Statue. He got in the back and told me to take him to Shoreham Airport – said he was working a night shift there. I remember turning into the perimeter road – and that’s the last thing.’
Grace knew that road. It had no street lighting.
‘The last thing you remember?’
‘I woke up being shaken about. I could smell diesel and fumes. I figured out I was in the boot of my cab. I was terrified. I didn’t know what was going to happen.’
‘Can you remember what this guy looked like?’ Grace asked.
‘He was wearing a baseball cap pulled low. I tried to get a look at his face – you always do in this game when you pick someone up late at night off the street. But I couldn’t see it.’
Grace was relieved that the taxi driver seemed to be cheering up a little.
‘What about his accent?’
‘He didn’t say much. Sounded English to me. Do you have any water?’
‘There’s some on its way. Do you need anything to eat?’
‘Sugar. I’m diabetic.’
‘An ambulance will be here any minute – they’ll have something for you. Will you be all right for a few minutes?’
Mike Howard nodded.
Grace continued his questioning. ‘We think the man who did this to you has kidnapped a child and we need to find him urgently. I know you’ve had a horrendous ordeal, but anything you can tell us, anything at all that you can remember, would be valuable.’
Mike Howard eased himself forward and stood up. ‘Agggghhh,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the most terrible cramp.’ He stamped his foot, then stamped it again. ‘I’m trying to think. He was short. A short, thin little fellow, like a weasel. Promise me something?’
‘What?’ Grace asked.
‘If you find him, can I get him to pay me what he owes me, then thump him one, really hard, where it hurts?’
For the first time in what felt a long while, Grace smiled. ‘You’ll have to beat me to it,’ he said.
‘I will, mate, don’t you worry.’
Glenn Branson then said to the driver, ‘Is there someone you’d like us to contact and tell that you’re safe?’
Grace looked at his watch pensively. Almost two and a half hours since Tyler Chase had been picked up. Why was he brought here? His assumption was that the abductor had a car parked here, with luck the rental Toyota Yaris, choosing this as a good location to attack and disable the boy, then switch vehicles. Even more ideal with its CCTV cameras out of action. Inspector Carpenter might think it was scummy Brighton vandals, but he didn’t. He had a feeling he was starting to recognize the killer’s handwriting.
He did a calculation in his head. There were roadworks along the seafront clogging up the traffic, badly. The journey from the school would have been in the region of fifteen to twenty minutes, assuming they came straight here. The pervert seemed to like to film his victims dying. Grace was able to make another assumption, that he had not done that here. From the image he was building of the man, this wasn’t his style of location. He was going to take the boy somewhere he could film him dying. And he sensed it would be somewhere dramatic. But where?
Where in this whole damned city – or beyond?
He studied his watch again. If he’d brought the boy in here around 11.20 a.m., it was likely he’d not hung around. He would have left again within a few minutes. Certainly within half an hour.
Two paramedics, accompanied by a uniformed officer, were running towards them. Grace edged Glenn Branson to one side to make way for them, then he said the DS, ‘We’re out of here.’
‘Where to?’
‘I’ll tell you in the car.’
94
Tooth, keeping rigidly to the 30mph speed limit, drove the Toyota west along the main road above Shoreham Harbour. He was looking at the flat water of the basin, down to his left, where Ewan Preece had taken his last drive, and almost did not notice a roadworks traffic light turning red in front of him.
He braked hard. Behind him in the boot of the car he heard a thud and further back a scream of locked tyres. For an anxious moment he thought the car behind was going to rear-end him.
Then the sudden wail of a siren gave him a new concern. Moments later, blue lights flashing, a police car tore past from the opposite direction. He kept a careful watch in his mirrors, but it kept on going, either not noticing or not interested in him. Relieved, he drove on for some distance, passing a number of industrial buildings to his left, until he saw his landmark, the blue low-rise office block of the Shoreham Port Authority building.
He turned right into a narrow street opposite it, passing a modern kitchen appliances showroom on the corner. He drove a short way up the street, which rapidly became shabbier and went under a railway bridge up ahead. But before then he turned off it into a messy area that was part industrial estate and part low-rent apartment blocks. He remembered it all well and it seemed unchanged.
He passed a massive, grimy printing works on his left and various cars, some of which were parked on the road, while others had been left haphazardly in front of and around different buildings. It was the kind of area where no one would notice you, or take any interest in you if they did.
He turned right again, into the place he had discovered six years ago. He drove along the side of a shabby ten- storey apartment block, passing cars and vans parked outside, and came into a wide, half-empty parking area at the rear of the building, bounded by a crumbling wall on two sides, a wooden fence on a third and the rear of the apartment block.
He reversed the car in, backing it tight up against the wall, then sat and ate the chicken sandwich he had bought earlier at a petrol station, drank a cranberry juice, got out and locked up. With his cap pulled down low and
