his sunglasses on, he peered up at the grimy windows for any sign of an inquisitive face, but all he saw was laundry flapping from a couple of balconies. He stood by the car, pretending to be checking a rear tyre, listening to make sure that his passenger was silent.
He heard a thud.
Angrily he opened the boot and saw the boy’s frightened eyes behind his glasses. It didn’t matter how tightly he bound him, there was nothing to anchor him to in here. He wondered if it would be wisest to break his back and paralyse him – but that would mean lifting him out first and he didn’t want to take that risk.
Instead he said, ‘Make another sound and you’re dead. Understand what I’m saying?’
The boy nodded, looking even more frightened.
Tooth slammed down the lid.
95
Tyler was terrified by the man in the black baseball cap and the dark glasses, but he was angry, too. His wrists were hurting from the bindings and he had cramp in his right foot. He listened, hard, could hear footsteps crunching, getting fainter.
He’d felt the car move when the man got out, but it hadn’t moved again, which meant he hadn’t got back in. He must have gone somewhere.
Tyler tried to work out what time it was, or where he might be. He’d just seen daylight when the boot lid rose up. And the wall of a building, a crummy-looking wall, and a couple of windows, but it could have been anywhere in the city, anywhere he had ever been to. But the fresh air that had come in, momentarily, smelled familiar. A tang of salt, but mixed with timber and burnt gas and other industrial smells. They were close to a harbour, he thought. Almost certainly Shoreham Harbour. He’d been kayaking here with his school, several times.
The daylight wasn’t bright, but it didn’t feel like it was evening, more just overcast as if it was going to rain.
They would find him soon. His mother would know where he was from Friend Mapper. She might even ring him – not that he would be able to answer it.
Defiantly, he threw himself against the side of the car, kicking out as hard as he could. Then again. And again.
He kicked until he had tired himself out. It didn’t sound as if anyone had heard him.
But surely they would find him soon?
96
Grace, followed by Branson, sprinted up three floors at Brighton’s John Street Police Station, hurried along a corridor and went into the CCTV Control Room, which was manned around the clock.
It was a large space, with blue carpet and dark blue chairs, and three separate workstations, each comprising a bank of CCTV monitors on which was a kaleidoscope of moving images of parts of the city of Brighton and Hove and other Sussex locations, keyboards, computer terminals and telephones. Every police CCTV camera in the county could be viewed from here.
Two of the workstations were currently occupied by controllers, both hunched over them with headsets on. One of them looked busy, engaged in a police operation, but the other turned as they came in and nodded a greeting. He was a fresh-faced man in his late thirties with neat brown hair, wearing a lightweight black jacket. His badge gave his name as Jon Pumfrey. Moments later they were joined in the room by Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington, the Gold Commander.
Barrington, in his mid-forties, was a tall, slim man with short, fair hair, and the athletic air of a regular marathon runner. He wore a short-sleeved white uniform shirt with epaulettes, black trousers and shoes, held a radio in his hand and had a phone clipped to his belt.
‘Jon,’ the Chief Superintendent said, ‘which are the nearest cameras to the Regency Square car park?’
‘There’s a police one right opposite boss,’ Pumfrey said, ‘but it’s hopeless – there’s some constant interference with it.’
He tapped the keyboard and a moment later they saw successive waves rippling up and down one of the screens directly in front of him.
‘How long’s it been like that?’ Roy Grace asked suspiciously.
‘At least a year. I keep asking them to do something about it.’
He shrugged. ‘There are also cameras to the east and west – which direction do you want?’
‘We’ve just done a quick recce,’ Grace said. ‘If you exit in a vehicle from the Regency Square car park, you have to turn left on the seafront, on Kings Road – unless you go around up to Western Road, but that’s complicated.’
Part of that road was buses and taxis only. Grace did not think the abductor would take the risk of getting stopped there.
‘I’ve set some parameters,’ he said. ‘What we need to see is the video footage showing all vehicles in motion close to the car park, travelling east or west on King’s Road between 11.15 a.m. and 11.45 a.m. today. We’re looking particularly for a dark-coloured Toyota Yaris saloon, with a single male driving, either accompanied by a twelve-year-old boy or solo.’
Graham Barrington said, ‘All right, you guys, I’ll leave you to it. Anything you want, just shout.’
Grace thanked him, and the two detectives then stood behind Pumfrey and began to watch intently.
‘The Yaris is a popular car, sir,’ Pumfrey said. ‘Must be thousands on the roads. We’re likely to see a few.’
‘We’ll put markers on the first five we see, to start with,’ Grace said. ‘If they’re turning left, they’re heading east, but that might be only for a short distance, before they make a U-turn and head west. Let’s check east first.’
Almost as he spoke they saw a dark-coloured Yaris heading east, past the bottom of West Street. The camera was on the south side of the road.
‘Freeze that!’ Branson said. ‘Can you zoom in?’
Jon Pumfrey tapped the keyboard and the camera zoomed in, jerkily but quickly, on the driver’s door and window. It was a grainy zoom, but they could see clearly enough that it was two elderly ladies.
‘Let’s move on,’ Grace said.
They watched the fast-forwarding images, cars darting by in flickering movements.
Then Grace called out, ‘Stop! Go back.’
They watched the tape rewind.
‘OK! That one.’ They were looking at a dark grey Yaris with what appeared to be a single occupant, a male, driving. The time said 11.38.
‘Now zoom in, please.’
The image was again grainy, but this time it looked like a male, most of his face obscured by a baseball cap and dark glasses.
‘It’s not that bright out there. Why’s he wearing dark glasses?’ Pumfrey queried.
Grace turned to Branson. ‘That was the description by the school teacher – the taxi driver was wearing a baseball cap. And so was the man who rented the car from Avis!’ Suddenly he felt his adrenalin pumping. Turning back to Pumfrey, he asked, ‘Is that the best image you can get?’
‘I can send it for enhancement, but that would take a while.’
‘OK, run forward. Can we get the registration?’
Pumfrey inched the car forward frame by frame.
‘Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray,’ Branson read out, as Grace wrote it down.
‘Right. Can you run an ANPR check from here?’ he asked Pumfrey.
‘Yes, sir.’
