‘I’ve got to pick my eldest up from a swimming lesson.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Is it something quick?’
‘Just a few minutes – it’s really important – sorry to do this to you. I’m right, aren’t I, that Janet McWhirter would have had signatory authority to make entries on the PNC?’
‘Yes. She was the only person here who could.’
‘On her own, unsupervised?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you mind looking up something for me on the PNC?’
She smiled. ‘I can see you need me for more than just a few minutes. I’ll get someone to pick Claire up,’ she said, pulling her mobile from her handbag.
They went and sat down in her office, and she tapped her keyboard, logging on. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Shoot!’
‘I need you to look up someone’s criminal record. What information do I have to give you?’
‘Just his name, age, address.’
Grace gave her Brian Bishop’s details. He listened to the click of the keys as she entered the information.
‘Brian Desmond Bishop, born 7 September 1964?’
‘That’s him.’
She leaned forward, closer to her screen. ‘In 1979, at Brighton Juvenile Court, he was sentenced to two years in a young offenders’ institute for raping a fourteen-year-old girl,’ she read. ‘In 1985, at Lewes Crown Court, he received two years’ probation for GBH on a woman. Nice guy!’ she commented.
‘Is there any anomaly with the entry?’ he asked.
‘Anomaly? In what sense?’
‘Could it have been tampered with?’
‘Well, there is just one thing – although it’s not that unusual.’ She looked up at him. ‘Normally records as old as these are never touched – they just sit on the file forever. The only time they are touched is when amendments are made – sometimes because of new evidence – old convictions getting quashed or a mistake that needs rectifying, that kind of thing.’
‘Can you tell when they’ve been touched?’
‘Absolutely!’ She nodded emphatically. ‘There’s an electronic footprint left any time they are altered. Actually there’s one here.’
Grace sat bolt upright. ‘There is?’
‘Each of us with signatory authority has an individual access code. If we amend a record, the footprint we leave is our access code, and the date.’
‘So can you find out whose access code that is?’
She smiled at him. ‘I know that access code without having to look it up. It’s Janet’s. She amended this record on –’ she peered closer – ‘7 April this year.’
Now Grace’s adrenaline was really surging. ‘She did?’
‘Uh huh.’ She frowned, tapped her keyboard, then peered at the screen again. ‘This is interesting,’ she said. ‘That was her last day in the office.’
114
An hour and a half later, shortly before eight o’clock, Nick Nicholl drove a marked police Vauxhall Vectra slowly up Sackville Road. Grace was in the front seat, wearing a bullet-proof vest beneath his jacket, and Glenn Branson, also in a bullet-proof vest, sat behind him. Both men were counting down the house numbers on the grimy Edwardian terraced buildings. Following right behind them were two marked police Ford Transit vans, each containing a team of uniformed officers from the Local Support Team.
‘Two-five-four!’ Glenn Branson read out. ‘Two-five-eight. Two-six-zero. Two-six-two! We’re here!’
Nicholl double-parked alongside a dusty Ford Fiesta, the other vehicles pulling up behind him.
Grace radioed the second LST van to drive round and cover the back entrance, and to let him know when they were in position.
Two minutes later he got the call back that they were ready.
They climbed out of the car. Grace instructed the SOCO to stay in his vehicle for the moment, then led the way down the concrete steps, past two dustbins, then a grimy bay window with net curtains drawn. It was still daylight, although fading fast now, so the absence of any interior light did not necessarily mean the flat was empty.
The tatty grey front door, with two opaque glass panes in it, was in bad need of a lick of paint, and the plastic bell-push had seen better times. Nonetheless, he pressed it. There was no sound. He pressed it again. Silence.
He rapped sharply on the panes. Then he called out, ‘Police! Open up!’
