'Coffee?' Branson offered.
'I'm fine for the moment.'
They stopped at Bella's desk, which was covered in neat wodges of paper, among which stood an open box of Maltesers. Pointing at the papers, she said, 'I have Michael Harrison's Vodafone log from Tuesday morning up until nine o'clock this morning. I also thought it would be a good idea to get the ones of the other four with him.'
'Good thinking,' Branson said, impressed with her initiative.
She pointed at her computer screen, on which there was a map: 'I've plotted here all the masts of the mobile networks the five of them used, Orange, Vodaphone and T-Mobile. Orange and TMobile operate on a higher frequency than Vodafone - which Michael Harrison is on. The last signal from his mobile came from the base station at the Pippingford Park mast on the A22. But I've found out we cannot rely on the fact that this is the nearest, because if the network is busy it will hand off signals to the next available mast.'
She was going to go far, this young lady, Grace thought. Studying the map for a moment, he asked, 'What's the distance between the masts?'
'In cities it is about five hundred metres. But out in the country, it is several miles.'
From previous experience, Grace knew that the mobile phone companies used a network of radio masts that acted as beacons. Mobiles, whether on standby or talkmode, sent constant signals out to the nearest beacon. It was a simple task to plot the movements of any phone user from this information. But this was obviously a lot easier in cities than in the countryside.
Bella stood up and walked across to the map of Sussex on the wall. She pointed at a blue pin in the centre of Brighton, surrounded by green, purple, yellow and white pins. 'I've marked Michael
Harrison's phone with blue pins. The other four with him have different colours.'
Grace followed her finger as she talked. 'We can see all five pins remained together from seven in the evening until nine.' She pointed to three different locations. 'There is a pub in each of these places,' she said. 'But this is where it gets interesting.' She pointed to a location some miles north of Brighton. 'All five pins close together here. Then we only have four. Here.'
Branson said, 'Green, purple, yellow and white. No blue.'
'Exactly,' she said.
'What movement on the blue pin after that?'
'None,' she said, emphatically.
'So they parted company,' Grace said, 'at - about - eight forty five?'
'Unless he dropped his phone somewhere.'
'Of course.'
'So we're talking about a radius of five miles, about fifteen miles north of Brighton?' Glenn Branson said.
'Is his phone still giving off signals?' Grace said, distracted by Bella's combination of smart mind and good looks. He'd met her before but had never really noticed her before. She had a really pretty face, and unless she was wearing rocks inside her bra, she had seriously large breasts - something that had always turned him on. He switched his mind off her and back to business. Then he shot a glance at her hand to see if she was wearing any rings. One sapphire band, but not on the marriage finger. He filed it away.
'The last signal was at eight forty-five Tuesday night. Nothing since.'
'So what's your view, Bella?' Grace asked.
Bella thought for a moment, fixing him with alert blue eyes. But her expression bore nothing more than businesslike deference to a superior. 'I spoke to a technician at the phone company. He says his mobile is either switched off, and has been since Tuesday night, or it is in an area of no signal.'
Grace nodded. 'This Michael Harrison is an ambitious and busy businessman. He's due to get married tomorrow morning to a very beautiful woman, by all accounts. Twenty minutes before a fatal car
smash that killed four of his best friends, his phone went dead. During the past year he has been stealthily transferring money from his company to a Cayman Islands bank account - at least one million pounds that we know about. And his business partner, who should have been on that fatal stag night, for some reason was not there. Are my facts right so far?'
'Yes,' Glenn Branson said.
'So he could be dead. Or he could have pulled a smart vanishing act.'
'We need to check out the area Bella has ring-fenced. Go to all the pubs he might have visited. Talk to everyone who knows him.'
'And then?'
'Facts,' Glenn. 'Let's get all the facts first. If they don't lead us to him, then we can start to speculate.'
The phone on Bella's desk rang. She answered it, and almost instantly her expression conveyed that it was significant.
'You're certain?' she said. 'Since Tuesday? You can't be sure it was Tuesday? No one else could have taken it?' After a few moments, she said, 'No, I agree. Thank you, that could be very significant. May I take your number?'
Grace watched while she wrote down on a pad 'Sean Houlihan', followed by a number. 'Thank you, Mr Houlihan, thank you very much, we'll get back to you.'
She hung up and looked at Grace then Branson. 'That was Mr Houlihan, the owner of the undertakers where Robert Houlihan, his nephew, worked. They've just discovered that they are missing a coffin.'
