lead you to something very satisfying to do with a case you are working on. This case, I think.’
‘Can you elaborate?’ Grace asked, puzzled.
‘No, I… No, that’s all. As I said, I don’t know if it means anything.’
‘Any particular make?’
‘No. Expensive, I think.’
‘Expensive?’
‘Yes.’
‘A man’s or a woman’s?’
‘It’s a man’s watch. I think there might be more than one.’
Grace shook his head, thinking hard. It really meant absolutely nothing at this moment. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Harry. Let me know if you get anything else.’
‘Oh, I will, don’t you worry!’
Grace ended the call and immediately dialled the Interpol number in London. He had a two-minute wait for Farrier to finish a call, listening to ‘Greensleeves’ on what seemed a permanent loop, then heard a sharp Cockney accent.
‘DS Farrier, can I help you?’
Grace introduced himself. Immediately, Farrier became excited.
‘I’ve got detectives in Greece, Turkey, Switzerland and Paris who would like to have a chat with Mr Luvic.’
‘I know where his car is,’ Grace said. ‘What do you have on Carl Venner?’
‘Zilch. Hasn’t been sighted in three years. And there’s enough of him to see; he’s a fat bastard.’
There was a knock on the door, and Norman Potting came in, clutching a sheet of paper. Grace signalled that he was busy. Potting hovered by the door.
‘I’d be very interested in anything you can come up with on Venner,’ Barry Farrier said. ‘Got markers on him as long as my right arm. Right across Europe.’
‘Could he be in England?’
‘If Luvic is, there’s a chance.’
‘Tell me more about Luvic?’
‘Albanian. Thirty-two. Smart boy. Studied technology at uni there, as well as becoming a kick-boxing champion and a bare-knuckle fighter. Typical of his generation – came out of uni, no jobs. Got involved with a bunch of students designing computer viruses for fun, probably out of boredom. Then he hitched up with another lot, blackmailing large companies.’
‘Blackmailing?’
‘Big business. Take a big sporting event here, like the Derby. The major bookies get threatened with attack by computer viruses, just a few days before, which will shut down their systems for twenty-four hours on Derby Day. Unless they pay up. So they pay up; it’s the cheaper option.’
‘I’ve heard of this happening,’ Grace said.
‘Yeah, it’s big time. Anyhow, then somehow Luvic got hooked up with Venner. Probably recruited by him. They were involved in the French snuff ring together, for sure. Both of ’em vanished at the same time. I can email you all the files.’
‘Please.’
‘Yeah, no worries. Right away. Tell you one thing. I seen some of the pictures. I’d like to get my hands on Venner and Luvic in an alleyway on a dark night. Just five minutes with them, I’d like.’
‘I know how you feel. Tell me something, does a scarab beetle mean anything to you – in connection with these two?’
‘Scarab? Scarab beetle?’
‘Yup.’
After some moments’ silence, Barry Farrier said, ‘Their business in France – there was an insect, a scorpion, always present somewhere in the photos and films.’
‘Alive or dead?’
‘Dead. Why are you asking, can I enquire?’
‘Sounds like he’s well into his entomology,’ Grace said. ‘If it’s the same man, he’s now using scarabs – dung beetles.’
‘Very fitting.’
Grace thanked him, agreed to keep him fully in the loop and hung up. Norman Potting immediately strode over to his desk and laid the sheet of paper he was holding down in front of him.
‘Sulphuric acid, Roy. I’ve got what I think is a pretty comprehensive list of all the suppliers in the UK. There are five down in the south, two of them in our patch – one in Newhaven and one in Portslade.’
Grace, still absorbing the information he had been given by Barry Farrier, picked up the list and quickly scanned through the names and addresses. He clocked the two local ones.
Suddenly, the door burst open and Glenn Branson came in, his face lit up with excitement. ‘I’ve got a result!’ he said, his face inches from his SIO’s.
‘Tell me?’
Branson slapped the photograph of the VW Golf driver down triumphantly on the desk. ‘I’ve just had a phone call from a taxi driver mate of mine.’
Frivolously, and for no real reason, Grace asked, ‘Not the one who sneaked on me and Cleo to you?’
‘The very same.’ Branson grinned, then continued, totally elated, ‘I circulated this photograph to all my contacts. He just belled me. He just picked up a fare who he says is a dead ringer for this fellow – in central Brighton twenty minutes ago. He’s convinced it’s this man. Dropped him off at a warehouse in Portslade. At this address.’ He gave a handwritten scrap of notepaper to his boss.
Grace read it. Then he looked again at the list Potting had just given him. At the distributor of sulphuric acid based in Portslade.
It was the same address.
83
Tom remembered something. He did not have his mobile phone, but he had something else. He had felt the hard lump – he had been lying on it some of the time. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of it before? he wondered.
He dug his hand into his trouser pocket and extricated his Palm Tungsten PDA. He pressed one of the four buttons on the bottom. Instantly the display lit up. The machine emitted a glow that, at this moment, suddenly felt as good as a thousand torches.
He could see!
‘What’s that?’ Kellie called out.
‘My Palm!’ He could see her, actually see her face!
‘How did – you – you can move?’ she hissed.
‘My hands.’
The beam did not have a long throw, it was wide and short, but for the first time he could begin to orient himself. They were in a huge store, with a ceiling maybe twenty feet high, stacked all the way round with racks of chemical drums; there were hundreds of them, if not thousands. There was a concrete floor, no windows, and the beam did not get as far as the door. From the temperature and the total absence of light, he guessed they were underground.
There must be a door big enough to get a forklift through for these drums, he thought. And almost certainly a lift.
He examined the shackle around his ankle. It looked like one of those police manacles for criminals he had seen in the movies: a wide metal clamp, locked, with a chain running off it secured to the wall by a metal hoop which was not going anywhere. Kellie was chained to another hoop some distance away. Her chain was fully extended. He stood up and moved towards her, but when his chain went tight there was still a gap of about ten
