Want You Dead (29 page)

‘Tell me more.’

But the line had gone dead.

Grace called the controller back and asked if she had the man’s number. But, no surprise, the number was withheld.

He thought for a moment. Tip-offs could be highly valuable, but as often as not they were crank calls that proved to be a huge waste of police resources. It was always hard to gauge whether one was real or not. He hadn’t liked the man’s voice; there was something deeply unpleasant about it. Could he have been a colleague of the firefighter with a grudge?

The door opened, and Glenn Branson came out. ‘You okay, old timer?’

Grace nodded.

‘You look green as hell. I think you should go back to bed.’

‘I’ll be okay.’ He held up his phone. ‘Just had a response from the
Argus
piece this morning. We’ve been given a name. A fire officer in Worthing. But the caller sounded odd.’

‘Bryce Laurent was a firefighter once.’

‘Is there anything Laurent hasn’t sodding been?’ Grace said. ‘Do we know where?’

They went back into the conference room and Grace tasked DC Jack Alexander with contacting Worthing Fire and Rescue to see if they had a Matt Wainwright working there, and a researcher, Becky Davies, to find out if Bryce Laurent had ever worked for the Fire and Rescue Service and, if so, when and where.

As Glenn Branson looked down at his notes to move on to the next item, an internal phone warbled insistently. Guy Batchelor looked at Branson for a nod, then picked up the receiver. ‘DS Batchelor, Operation Aardvark.’

There was a moment of silence as all eyes were on the Detective Sergeant, as if sensing from his body language that the call was significant.

It was.

He thanked the caller and replaced the receiver, then turned to Glenn Branson, his eyes moving from him to Roy Grace and back. ‘That was an officer called Gwen Barry, from the UK Border Agency at the Eurostar Channel Tunnel terminal in Folkestone. She’s got a sighting of Bryce Laurent, using one of his known aliases, Paul Riley, on CCTV footage. He was spotted in the duty-free shop yesterday evening at 11.25 p.m., picking up whisky and cigarettes, then he drove a Toyota, index Golf Victor Zero Six Kilo Bravo November, and boarded a train to Calais.’

‘Who’s the car registered to?’ Grace asked.

‘Avis rental. It was picked up from their depot at Gatwick four days ago.’

‘Let’s see if we can get his ID confirmed from some of the staff there.’

Branson nodded and made a note.

Eurostar last night, Grace thought to himself. 11.25. France was an hour ahead, so with the half-hour crossing time the train would have arrived around 1 a.m. Time enough for Bryce Laurent to be anywhere in Europe by now. Or indeed, if he had gone to an airport, anywhere in the world.

But why?

Okay, he had a grudge against Red Westwood’s parents, but they were a sideshow compared to his grudge against Red herself, surely? Leaving the country made no sense.

Then he had a thought. Turning to Branson, he said, ‘Glenn.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Get Red Westwood on the phone.’

Less than a minute later Branson handed Grace his iPhone.

‘Ms Westwood?’ he asked.

‘Sorry to bother you, but this is urgent. It might seem a strange question, but is Bryce Laurent a smoker?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Emphatically not. He has a pathological hatred of smoking.’

Grace frowned. ‘Okay, what about whisky?’

‘Whisky? Like in Scotch?’

‘Yes?’

‘No, he hates that too. Champagne and fine white wines are all he will touch.’

‘Okay, thanks, that’s really helpful.’ He ended the call and turned to his colleagues, who were frowning.

‘Guy, get the Border Agency woman back. I want to know what their CCTV cameras cover, and I want all footage they have of Laurent sent here right away, like now. I want all the footage with him and without him, everything from every camera in and around the duty-free shop from the time he was first sighted. Get on to Kent; ask them to send it to us digitally as soon as possible.’

74

Friday, 1 November

At 10.50 Guy Batchelor phoned Roy Grace, who was in his office trying to clear his email inbox of everything that needed an urgent answer before he left at the end of his final day, to tell him the CCTV footage from Folkestone had come through.

Ten minutes later, Grace sat with Glenn Branson, Guy Batchelor and Ray Packham in a small viewing room in the CID HQ, and Packham started the footage running. The first thing they saw, in reasonable-quality colour, was Bryce Laurent, casually dressed in a leather bomber jacket, slacks and boots, walking across a car park at a leisurely pace towards the Eurostar Terminal and the
DUTY FREE
shopping sign. Laurent paused to look around, turning one way, then another. Not like a shopper getting his bearings, Grace thought, more like someone posing.

‘Definitely him?’ Batchelor asked.

‘From all the pictures I’ve seen, yes,’ Grace said, and looked at Branson for confirmation.

The DS nodded. ‘It’s him.’

Then Laurent did a strange thing; he turned a full, slow, three hundred and sixty degrees, then carried on, still at his slow pace, as if he had all the time in the world, towards the doors of the building.

‘What was all that about?’ Branson said. ‘The pirouette.’

‘I’ll tell you, if my hunch is right,’ Grace replied.

The next section of footage was from a grainier camera inside the building. After a few moments it picked up Laurent, from the rear, pulling two cartons of cigarettes from a shelf and placing them in a wire shopping basket. He turned slowly around, then back and walked out of shot. Next they saw him, picked up by another camera, again from the rear. He was looking at a selection of whiskies. He made a choice, pulled two bottles out and also placed them in his basket. Then he turned right around again, before once more walking out of sight.

Grace noted down the time showing on the video. 23.33. Then he turned to Packham. ‘Ray, can you find the camera covering the checkout desks?’

They saw several other views of the interior of the duty-free shopping area, as Packham scrolled through the cameras. Then a clear view of the checkout tills. Grace looked at the clock. 23.32. He sat for several minutes watching, until 23.38, then said to Packham, ‘Okay, Ray, now show me the exterior shot of the duty-free terminal. Pick it up from 23.32.’

A few moments later the camera view came up. 23.32. Then 23.33; 23.34; 23.35. Then at 23.36 Laurent strode out, and walked across the car park. He was empty-handed.

‘What’s he done with his purchases?’ Guy Batchelor asked.

Grace shook his head. ‘He didn’t buy anything. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t like whisky.’

‘Are we missing something here?’ Glenn Branson said.

‘I don’t think we are,’ Grace replied. ‘No. He just wanted to make sure the cameras saw him. He wanted to make sure we knew he was at Eurostar, leaving the country. Because, in my view, he wants us to believe he’s gone.’

‘But he has, hasn’t he?’ the DI said. ‘There’s footage of him driving onto the train.’

‘Yep,’ Grace said. ‘He went to France last night, all right. But I wouldn’t be too sure he’s still there this morning.’

‘You think this is all a ruse to make us think he’s gone away?’ Batchelor said.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not back here already,’ Grace said. ‘And I think we’d be wise to presume he is.’

75

Friday, 1 November

His beard itched in the warm fug of the transport cafe. The false beard he had glued on, in his rental Toyota, in the darkness of the public car park near to the Eurostar station in Calais.

He had googled it in advance and learned from conversation threads online that the car park was free and had no CCTV surveillance. Hundreds of people parked there for their visits on the train to England, so it was likely to be a long time before anyone took any interest in the car, many weeks with luck. By then his job would be done and he would be well gone.

The warmth in here felt good, and the second mug of strong builder’s tea was helping his body to thaw and dry out. He’d had a long, cold vigil up on the freezing deck of the ferry, where he had remained throughout the voyage to avoid any risk of being seen. Then his traipse on foot through early morning Dover in the pelting rain. No one would be expecting him to return to England so soon, but even so he had taken every precaution not to be noticed entering the ferry port, or on the ferry, or leaving it.

Wearing a hoodie over his bobble hat, he sat hunched over the tired Formica tabletop, ignored by the handful of other men in here, eating his fry-up, sipping his scalding tea, and making a pretence of reading the
Daily Mail.
The headlines were a spat between the
Mail
and the Labour leader. Politics had never interested him at the best of times. And right now he had plenty of things that interested him much more. Such a busy weekend ahead, so much to do.

Starting with the wedding!

Just how would Red Westwood feel when the detective in charge of hunting him down was felled with a crossbow bolt through his right eye in front of the church where he had just got married? He could just picture the scene. The smiling groom, the radiant bride, all the relatives and friends gathered around. The limousines outside with their white ribbons fluttering. Then . . .

THWANG!

No one would even hear it. It would arc over their heads. The dum-dummed tip slicing through the ball of jelly that was his eye, then piercing his brain and disintegrating into fragments, still at high velocity. Then the screaming would begin!

But it wasn’t the screaming at the wedding that he looked forward to hearing. It was the silent screaming inside Red Westwood’s head and heart when she realized that no one, not even the county’s top detective, was capable of protecting her.

And there would be plenty more screaming from her vocal cords when he had her back in his possession, which was going to happen very soon now. So much screaming and pleading for mercy that she was not going to get. Mercy that was just not going to happen. He was looking forward to that moment. That very long moment that had been a long time coming. It was all he lived for. All he had to live for now.

Soon, baby!

76

Friday, 1 November

Red Westwood sat in the morning management meeting at Mishon Mackay, trying to focus on work but distracted by the strange call she had received on her way here from Detective Superintendent Roy Grace asking her whether Bryce smoked and liked whisky. Why did he need to know that?

Geoff Brady, their gung-ho manager, a burly man in a chalk-striped suit, was pointing at the whiteboard on the wall. At the top was written in purple handwriting the word
COUNTDOWN
and the figure
£146,900
, the amount remaining for their commission target for the year to be achieved with just two months to go. Below was a chart titled,
NEW INSTRUCTIONS, HOT PROPERTIES
, with prices ranging from £179,950 up to £3,500,000.

This was a crucial month, Brady was saying. Still time for people to purchase new homes in time for Christmas. He was urging them all to go for it. Make sure they hit their viewing targets of fifteen per day. They could do it!

She listened to the jargon that shed had to learn. PTS, which was
preparing to sell.
NOM –
not on market.
U/O –
under offer.
FTB –
first-time buyer.
BTL –
buy to let.

He held up the thick handwritten ledger in which all instructions and viewings were recorded. Although they were highly computerized, they still kept handwritten information as backup. Each of the agents contributed their updates.

After the meeting ended, Brady arranged for the team to go out for a drink together after work. This was customary on a Friday, their perk for the week before the biggest day of all, Saturday, when they would all be flat out. Red returned to her desk. She looked through her diary at today’s booked viewings, and checked her messages, annoyed at the number of cancellations that had come in – over twenty per cent of her bookings. Then she ran her eye down the list of new instructions, noting the ones that might be of interest to clients with whom she had developed a rapport, whom she considered her own, and started making calls to them, following up the successful calls by emailing details and ensuring printed copies were mailed out to them that day.

She was glad of the distraction of work, but equally she was aware she was not firing on all cylinders and that inside she was shaking, and conscious that she was not sounding her usual confident, enthusiastic self. Which of course, she knew, was exactly what Bryce wanted.

And she was determined not to be beaten.

But Christ, it was hard today. She looked over to her right, through the large window onto the street and at the Tesco superstore across the road. A bus went past, then a taxi, and a line of cars. Then a yellow ambulance wailed by. A cyclist, in a yellow sou’wester, pedalled miserably past in the heavy rain. Rain as heavy as her heart.

Her parents had lost their home. She and her sister had lost it, too. All their childhood memories gone. Their childhood photographs turned to ash. Her parents had aged a decade yesterday. All her fault.

Her phone rang and she grabbed the receiver. ‘Red Westwood,’ she answered, hoping, desperately hoping, that it was Detective Inspector Branson or PC Spofford calling to tell her that Bryce Laurent had been arrested and was in custody. But it wasn’t. It was a man with an American accent enquiring about one of their most expensive properties, a secluded house in prestigious Tongdean Avenue, whose owners spent most of their time at another of their homes in Naples, Florida.

‘They’re asking £3.5 million?’ he said.

‘That’s correct, sir, yes,’ she replied politely, her enthusiasm rising a tad, sensing a possible opportunity here. This would be a huge commission for her.