Want You Dead (24 page)

Grace then brought his team up to speed on Bryce Laurent’s relationship with Red Westwood, and what was known so far about the fires. When he had finished, he began to detail the lines of enquiry for his team. First up, he delegated DCs Jack Alexander and Alec Davies to work on the outside enquiry team, interviewing all members of Haywards Heath Golf Club who were present either the afternoon or evening of 23 October, or the morning of 24 October.

Next, he said, ‘I need a list of all the non-members who were at Haywards Heath Golf Club that day. Anyone from the general public who paid a green fee, or maybe bought something in the pro shop. All the staff who were there that day. What tradesmen made deliveries. And, this is a big task, we need to find out what mobile phone company masts are in the vicinity – speak to the telecom unit and arrange to secure phone dumps for the relevant time. It’s possible the offender phoned someone to say,
job done.
If so, who?’

Norman Potting raised his hand, and Grace nodded at him.

‘Are you going to try
Crimewatch,
chief?’

‘Yes, we have contacted them, and they’re interested. But they are not on air again for two weeks. We are also planning to issue a reward.’ He turned to DS Exton. ‘Jon, I’m tasking you with managing the intelligence, which should include what we might get from our covert human intelligence sources.’ Next he looked at Potting. ‘Norman, we have Bryce Laurent’s last known mobile phone number, which was with O2. Go through the Telecoms Unit and see if you can get a plot of his movements, and also find out, crucially, whether the number is still active.’

He sipped some coffee and studied his notes again for a moment. Then he pointed at the two photographs of Red Westwood. ‘I’ve had these analysed. They were taken with a Motorola digital camera. We are able to extrapolate the exact location, the time of the photograph, and the distance the photographer was from his – or her – subject. Ms Westwood told me that Bryce Laurent is a keen photographer. She has dozens taken by him, not just of her, but of landscapes around Sussex and elsewhere. Have her albums looked at and see if you can establish a favoured geographical location for him.’

Potting nodded compliantly.

Grace next looked at DS Moy. ‘Bella, if Bryce Laurent has been responsible for these fires, it’s possible he might have burned himself in the process. I’m tasking you with checking all hospitals in the surrounding area to see what burns admissions they’ve had in their A&E departments and whether the dates coincide with what we know about him.’

Then he turned to the forensic podiatrist, Haydn Kelly, who was standing a few metres away facing the room, waiting patiently. ‘Haydn, thanks for joining us at such short notice. The night Dr Murphy died was a clear sky, but there had been heavy rain in the previous forty-eight hours. I’m told there are some good footprints.’

‘That is correct, yes,’ Kelly said. ‘But so far I’m unable to obtain a match on any of the databases.’

‘But you can still pick out the person who left that footprint, in a crowd, from his gait?’ Roy Grace quizzed.

‘If there is video footage of the person, then yes, with a high percentage of accuracy.’

Grace turned to the financial investigator, DI Gordon Graham. Suspects were commonly traceable through their finances. Most people today had credit and debit cards. All money movements located and dated them, and, as additional help for the police, fewer establishments still took cash. DI Graham outlined what enquiries he would be getting his star financial investigator, Emily Gaylor, to undertake.

Suddenly, Grace’s phone, which he had switched to silent, vibrated. The caller’s identity did not show on the display. Ordinarily during a briefing meeting he would take no calls as a matter of principle. But something told him this call was urgent.

He was right. It was Constable Rob Spofford and something had happened. His voice sounded tight with anxiety.

He signalled to Glenn Branson to take over the meeting and stepped away, holding his phone to his ear.

61

Thursday, 31 October

Out in the corridor, Roy Grace closed the door to MIR-1 and said to Rob Spofford, ‘Tell me.’

‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I need to email you something that Red Westwood has just received. There’s quite a large attachment with it.’

Grace sometimes had problems reading attachments on his phone. ‘I’ll go to my office and look on my screen there. Call me back in two minutes on this number.’

He hurried back along the corridor, dismissing his secretary, who wanted a word with him, with a wave of his hand, sat at his desk, and opened his email. Moments later one appeared from Spofford. He clicked on the attachment.

A childlike but elaborate cartoon appeared, part black and white and part in colour. It was a jaunty sketch of a yacht, with two figures in the cockpit, a male and a female, on a choppy sea. Circling around the hull were shark fins. And right in the centre of the boat, rising up, enveloping the mainsail and foresail, were flames. Written in the centre of them was the single word,
BOOM!

Moments later his phone rang. ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

‘Did you get it, sir?’

‘Yes, what’s this all about?’

‘I don’t know if Ms Westwood told you, Bryce Laurent is something of a cartoonist?’

‘She did, yes.’

‘He has a pathological hatred of her parents, in particular her mother. He believes it was her who poisoned their relationship.’

‘Because she hired a private detective who found out the truth about him, right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So what’s the significance of this weird cartoon? Some sick joke?’

‘I believe it’s more than that. Her parents could be in immediate danger. They have a thirty-two-foot yacht, and they’re sailing it today from Chichester to Brighton Marina, where they keep it during the winter. This might just be a joke, but in my view he may have placed some form of incendiary device, or even an explosive, on board. We know he has extensive knowledge of bomb-making techniques from his time in the Territorial Army, and he has access to explosives through his firework licence.’

‘Do we know where this email’s come from?’

‘I don’t, sir, no. I’m not an expert in these things. Perhaps someone from the High Tech Crime Unit could tell us.’

Grace stared at the cartoon again, and a chill rippled through him. Beneath its childlike simplicity, there was something deeply sinister about it. He hit the command to print the email and attachment.

As the printer chuntered into noisy action he asked, ‘Do we know if they’ve set off yet?’

‘Ms Westwood says she tried phoning her parents, knowing they were making an early start. She got a very crackly signal, and briefly heard her mother’s voice saying they were going out of phone range.’

‘So they’re at sea?’

‘Sounds like it, sir.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘How long will they be at sea for?’

‘Ms Westwood tells me, depending on whether they are using just wind or motor-sailing, about six hours.’

Grace made a mental note about Spofford’s efficiency. The constable was sharp and smart. A possible future member of his team. ‘What’s the name of the yacht?’

‘
Red Margot
, sir. Named after the two daughters. I understand her father’s rather seriously into wine.’

Yes, and possibly into history
, Grace nearly said grimly. ‘We can’t run the risk of anything happening. We need to get them off the boat right away. Does Ms Westwood have any means of communication with them?’

‘They have ship-to-shore radio on board, she told me. But they’re not necessarily going to be listening to it.’

Roy Grace had gone on a flotilla sailing holiday with Sandy, around the Greek islands, many years back. From memory, the radio would be down in the cabin. If you were up on deck, you would never hear it – and that was assuming it was even switched on. He was feeling panicky. He stared at the cartoon again. Shit. If it was for real, how long did they have? Minutes? Hours? If it wasn’t already too late.

He sprinted along the corridor, entered MIR-1, apologizing to Glenn for interrupting, and thrust the printout at Ray Packham. ‘Drop everything you’re doing and see if you can find out where this was sent from.’ Then he turned to his team. ‘Does anyone have any ocean sailing experience?’

Dave Green, the Crime Scene Manager, said, ‘Superintendent Nick Sloan does – he has a yacht master’s certificate.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s gone to Serious and Organized Crime in London.’

‘Try to get hold of him and put him through to me. This is an emergency.’

Asking Glenn to come with him, Grace hurried back to his office, briefing him on the way, and picked up his landline phone, put it on loudspeaker, and dialled Inspector Andy Kille, the duty Ops-1 Controller in the Haywards Heath Control Room.

He quickly apprised Kille of the situation. ‘We need to find that boat, fast, and get them off it, Andy. They must have a life raft or dinghy – we’ve either got to get them into that or airlift them off. Is NPAS 15 available?’

The National Police Air Service helicopter that served Sussex was based at Redhill, having been recently moved from Shoreham.

‘It would take them twenty-five minutes to get here, sir,’ Kille replied. ‘That’s if they are available. I think we’d be better off using the Coastguard – their helicopter’s down in Lee-on-Solent; they’d be faster and would have winching facilities to get them off the boat. And they’d probably be better able to find them, too. There’s a low cloud ceiling over the Channel at the moment, making visibility poor.’

‘Okay, get them up.’

‘How much information do we have on
Red Margot
’s whereabouts, sir?’

‘Very little.’

‘Do we have a description of the yacht?’

‘One moment.’ Grace covered the mouthpiece and turned to Glenn. ‘Get Ms Westwood on the line. We need a full description of the boat and the numbers on the sails. It’s best you ring because she knows you.’

Branson nodded.

‘I’ll get you that in a few minutes.’

‘Okay, good,’ Kille said. ‘I ran an operation last year trying to track a boat suspected of carrying drugs. The UK Border Agency Maritime Division were very helpful. I dealt with their Commander, James Hodge. I’ll give you their number.’

‘Okay, you get the Coastguard moving and I’ll come back to you.’

Grace wrote the number down, hung up, told Glenn to pull up a map of the south coast from Chichester Harbour to Brighton Marina on the computer screen, and then dialled the number.

It took several minutes before James Hodge came on the line, while Grace anxiously drummed on his desk, staring at the map that was now on the screen in front of him. Hodge was a quietly efficient-sounding man. ‘How can I assist?’ he asked.

‘We urgently need to locate a thirty-two-foot yacht sailing between Chichester Harbour and Brighton Marina, with two persons on board who may be in imminent danger from a bomb on the vessel, and get them off. Can you assist?’

‘How much information do you have on its whereabouts?’

‘Only what I’ve told you. I would not imagine it’s been at sea very long.’

‘Vessels over three hundred tons at sea, anywhere in the world, have to carry and keep switched on at all times their AIS – automatic identification system. Those under that weight – which is what this yacht would be – sometimes carry AIS, but it would be unusual for them to leave it on in the daytime, except in fog, because of the drain on the batteries. I guess you’ve no way of knowing if it’s fitted or not?’

‘I don’t.’

Hodge thought for some moments. ‘Sailing from Chichester to Brighton, they would normally take the Looe Channel, about two miles offshore – unless they’re attempting to evade detection.’

‘I don’t think they would have any reason to do that. They’re a respectable retired couple.’

‘I’ll see if Shoreham Harbour or Brighton Marina breakwater could confirm its track. In the current wind conditions, the yacht as you describe would be travelling between five and six knots. Do we know when they set off?’

‘Our best guess would be an hour or so ago,’ Grace replied.

‘It should be detectable on radar. There’s a low cloud ceiling today which is not helpful for a helicopter search. But it sounds as if we could narrow the whereabouts of the yacht down to a few miles. How much time do we have?’

‘None,’ Grace said emphatically.

His office phone rang. It was Dave Green, telling him Superintendent Sloan was on a boat somewhere in the Atlantic, and unreachable until he radioed in.

Grace stared back at the cartoon. He was feeling helpless, he realized. Finding a small yacht in the Channel with poor visibility was not going to be straightforward. Please God they had AIS and had it switched on.

If it wasn’t already too late.

His phone rang. It was Inspector Kille, telling him that the Coastguard helicopter was up and would be over Chichester Harbour mouth within ten minutes. It would then track east along the Looe Channel, below the cloud ceiling. A second helicopter would be along in twenty minutes, and two Coastguard vessels were heading to the area at full speed, but the closest would still be up to an hour.

‘An hour?’ Grace said.

‘Hopefully the helicopter will find them well before then.’

‘I’ve also called out RN EOD,’ Kille said. ‘Royal Naval Explosive Ordnance Disposal,’ he added. ‘If we rescue the people from the boat, we could be leaving an unattended drifting bomb.’

If they’re not blown to smithereens already
, Grace thought, but did not say.

He had a sick feeling of dread in his stomach.

62

Thursday, 31 October

Red arrived at her office shortly after 9 a.m. for an urgent meeting she needed to attend. She was worried out of her wits about her parents. PC Spofford had assured her before she left home that he would keep her updated on the search for their yacht.

But his news that the craft, a potential floating bomb in the narrow shipping lanes of the Channel, was causing a major alert did nothing to cheer her. The Navy, in addition to the Coastguard, were carrying out an air search, and a warning had gone out to all shipping in the vicinity to keep well clear of the vessel if sighted. All efforts to contact them by radio had so far failed.