‘I’m sorry.’
‘Jen’s diabetic,’ he said, nodding. ‘We went out for a Chinese. Her blood sugar was off the scale this morning.’
‘Diabetes is a bummer.’
‘That’s the problem with Chinese restaurants – you don’t know what they put in their food. All tickety-boo in your neck of the woods?’
‘My wife’s got a medical condition too.’
‘Oh blimey, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yeah, she’s developed an allergy to me.’
Packham’s eyes gleamed behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. He raised a finger. ‘Ah! I know just the chap! I’ll give you his number. Top allergist in the country!’
Glenn smiled. ‘If you’d said he was the top divorce lawyer, I might be interested. Look, before we get into the briefing, I need to ask you a quick technical question.’
‘Fire away. Divorce. Sorry to hear that.’
‘Not if you’d met my wife, you wouldn’t be. But hey! I need to pick your brains about mobile phones. Yeah?’
More people squeezed past them. Guy Batchelor greeted Glenn with a cheery, ‘Good morning.’ The DS waved his sandwich at him by way of a reply.
‘You’re a film buff, Glenn, aren’t you?’ Packham asked. ‘Did you ever see
Phone Booth
?’
‘Colin Farrell and Keifer Sutherland. Yeah. What about it?’
‘Crap ending, didn’t you think?’
‘It was all right.’
Ray Packham nodded. In addition to being one of the most respected computer crime experts in the force, he was the only other film buff Glenn knew.
‘I need some help on mobile phone masts, Ray. Is that your terrain?’
‘Masts? Base station masts? I’m your man! I actually do know quite a bit about them. What exactly are you after?’
‘A guy who disappeared – on a boat. He always had his phone with him. Last time he was seen was on Friday night, sailing out of Shoreham Harbour. The way I figure it is that I might be able to plot the direction he was heading in from his mobile phone signals. Through some kind of triangulation. I know it’s possible on land – what about out at sea?’
More people filed past them.
‘Well, it would depend on how far out and what kind of boat.’
‘What kind of boat?’
Packham launched into an explanation, his whole body becoming animated. It seemed that nothing in the world pleased him more than to find a home for some of the vast repository of knowledge that was stored in his head.
‘Yes. Ten miles and more, out at sea, and you can still be in range, but it depends on the structure of the boat, and where the phone is situated. You see, inside a steel tub, the range would be drastically reduced. Was this particular phone on deck, or at least in a cabin with windows? Also the height of the masts would be a big factor.’
Glenn thought hard back to his time on board the Scoob-Eee. There was a small cabin at the front that you accessed via steps, where the toilet, kitchenette and seating area were. When he had been down there, he had the impression it was mostly below the waterline. But if Jim Towers had been driving the boat, he would have been up on deck, in the partially covered wheel-house area. And if he was heading out to sea, there would have been a direct line-of-sight behind him to the shore. He explained this to Packham.
‘Super!’ he said. ‘Do you know if he made any calls?’
‘He didn’t bell his wife. I don’t know if he called anyone else.’
‘You’d need to get access to the mobile phone records. On a major crime investigation, that shouldn’t be a problem. I take it this is connected to Operation Neptune?’
‘It’s one of my lines of enquiry.’
‘So here’s the thing. If on standby, a mobile phone registers with its network every twenty minutes or so – it sort of checks in, saying,
Here I am, chaps!
If you’ve ever left your phone lying near your car radio you can sometimes hear that beeditty-beeditty-beep noise as interference with the radio, yes?’
Branson nodded.
‘That’s when it’s radioing in!’ Packham beamed, as if the sound was a trick he had taught all phones to perform. ‘Now, from the records, you could work out where the last registration occurred, to within a few hundred yards.’
He glanced around, conscious that almost everyone had now gone into the briefing room.
‘It would probably be in contact with, say, two or three coastal base stations and would be talking to a known sector, about a third of the circle on each.’
He glanced around again.
‘Very quickly, there is a thing called timing advance. Without getting too technical, the signal travels to and from the base station at the speed of light – three hundred thousand kilometres per second. That
timing advance
– depending on which network we are talking about – allows you to calculate a distance to the phone from each base station. Are you still with me?’
Glenn nodded.
‘Thus you have some approximate bearings – but, more importantly, distances from each, which together should allow you to triangulate a location within a few hundred yards. But you have to remember, this is only the place where the last registration took place. The boat could have moved twenty minutes on.’
‘So at least I would get its last known position and roughly the course it was steering?’
‘Spot on!’
‘You’re a star, Ray!’ Glenn said, writing down notes on his pad. ‘You’re a fucking star!’
63
At half past eight in the morning, two people, looking to the outside world like a mother and son, stood in line at one of the dozen EU Passport Holders immigration queues at Gatwick Airport.
The woman was a confident, statuesque blonde in her forties, with hair just off her shoulders in a chic, modern style. She wore a fur-trimmed, black suede coat and matching boots, and towed behind her a Gucci overnight bag on wheels. The boy was a bewildered-looking teenager. He was thin, with ruffled black hair cut short, and with a hint of Romany in his features, dressed in a denim jacket that looked too big for him, crisp blue jeans and brand-new trainers with the laces trailing loose. He carried nothing, except a small electronic game he had been given to occupy him, and the hope in his heart that soon, hopefully this morning, he would be reunited with the only person he had ever loved.
The woman made a series of phone calls in a language the boy did not speak, German, he presumed, while he played with his game, but he was bored with it. Bored with the travelling. Hoping against hope the journey would soon be over.
Finally, it was their turn next. A businessman in front handed his passport to the female, Indian-looking immigration officer, who scanned it, looking faintly bored, as if she was coming to the end of a long shift, and handed it back to him.
Marlene Hartmann stepped forwards, squeezed the boy’s hand, her leather gloves masking the clamminess of her own hands, then handed over the two passports.
The officer scanned Marlene’s first, looked at the screen, which flagged up nothing, and then scanned the boy’s. Rares Hartmann. Nothing. She handed the passports back.
Outside, in the Arrivals hall, among the plethora of drivers holding up printed or handwritten name-boards, and anxious relatives scanning everyone coming through the door, Marlene spotted Vlad Cosmescu.
They greeted each other with a formal handshake. Then she turned to the boy, who had never been outside of Bucharest in his life and was looking even more bewildered now.
‘Rares. This is Uncle Vlad. He will look after you.’
Cosmescu greeted the boy with a handshake and, in his native Romanian tongue, told him he was happy to welcome him to England. The boy mumbled a reply that he was happy to be here and hoped to see his girlfriend, Ilinca, soon – this morning?
Cosmescu assured him Ilinca was waiting for him and longing to see him. They were going to drop Frau Hartmann off, then go on to see Ilinca.
The boy’s eyes lit up and, for the first time in a long time, he smiled.
*
Five minutes later, the brown Mercedes, with grubby little buck-toothed Grigore at the wheel, pulled out of Gatwick Airport and on to the link road to the M23 motorway. Minutes later they were heading south towards the city of Brighton and Hove. Marlene Hartmann sat in the front passenger seat. Rares sat quietly in the back. This was the start of his new life and he was excited. But more than anything, he could scarcely wait to see Ilinca again.
It had only been a few weeks since they parted company, in a flurry of kisses and promises and tears. And less than a couple of months since this angel, Marlene, had come into their lives to rescue them.
It felt like a dream.
His real name was Rares Petre Florescu and he was sixteen years old. Some time back, he could not remember exactly when but it was shortly after his seventh birthday, his mother had run away from his father, who drank and hit her constantly, taking him with her. Then she had met another man. This man did not want a family, she had explained sadly to Rares, so she was putting him in a home where he would have lots of friends, and would be with people who loved and cared for him.
Two weeks later a silent old woman, with a face as flat and hard as a steam iron, led him up four flights of stone stairs, into a crowded, flea-infested dormitory. His mother was wrong. No one loved or cared for him there, and at first he was bullied. But eventually he made friends with other children his own age, though never with older boys, who regularly beat him up.
Life was hell. Early every morning they were forced to sing national songs, and like all the others, boys and girls, if he did not stand up straight, he was beaten. When he was ten he started wetting his bed and was beaten regularly for that. Gradually, he learned to steal from some of the older boys, who seemed to be able to get extra food. One day he was caught with two chocolate bars he had taken.
To escape retribution, he ran away. And stayed away, joining a community who hung out at Bucharest’s main railway station, Gara de Nord, begging and doing drugs. They slept wherever they could, sometimes in doorways, sometimes in tiny one-room shacks built along the overland steam pipes, and sometimes in cavities beneath the roads.
It was meeting pretty, lost Ilinca, in a hole beneath the road when he was fourteen, that had brought Rares alive for the first time. She had given him a reason to go on living.
Dragging their bedding further up the tunnel beneath the hot pipeline, away from their friends, they made love and they dreamed.
They dreamed of a better life.
Of a land where they could have a home of their own.
And then one day, on the street, fresh from stealing several bottles of Aurolac, he met the angel he had always believed – but had never dared to hope – would visit him.
Her name was Marlene.
And now he was in the back seat of her Mercedes car, and in a short while he would meet his beloved Ilinca.
He was in a state of bliss.
The car was stopping in a residential street. It was so clean. It was like one of the rich sectors of Bucharest where he sometimes went begging.
Marlene turned round and said to him, ‘Vlad and Grigore will look after you now.’
‘Will they take me to see Ilinca?’
‘Exactly,’ she replied. Then she climbed out of the car and walked to its rear.
Peering through the rear windscreen, Rares saw the boot lid pop open. A few moments later, she slammed it shut and walked up the path to the front door of a house, holding an attaché case. He watched her, waiting for her to turn and wave at him. But she just kept looking straight ahead.
The Mercedes pulled away, sharply, jerking him against the seat back.
64
Roy Grace sat in his office, reading through his notes from the briefing meeting. Despite the damp, grey day outside, he was in a sunny mood. In fact, he was feeling happier and more positive about life than he could ever remember. He was on a total high. His 7 a.m. meeting with an even more sour than usual ACC Vosper had not made even the slightest dent in his mood.
This afternoon he was meeting with a solicitor to work out the details of having Sandy declared legally dead. Finally he felt as if the past really was behind him, that he could close the door and move on. He was going to marry Cleo. They were going to have a baby.
Everything else suddenly seemed unimportant this morning – and that was a luxurious feeling he knew he could not allow himself to revel in. He had a ton of work ahead of him. His job was to serve the public, to catch criminals, to make the city of Brighton and Hove a safer place. He viewed any serious crime in this city as a failing by the entire police force and therefore a failing in some part by himself. He couldn’t help it, that was the way he was.
Three dead teenagers lay in fridges in the mortuary because the police had failed in some way to protect them. Now at least that wrong could be partially redressed by capturing whoever did this, and hopefully depriving them of their liberty – and ability ever to do this again – forever.
In front of him were the names of doctors in the UK who had been struck off the medical register. As he read down the very long list, looking for anyone who might be capable of organ transplantation work, he was amazed at the variety of offences.
He had always loathed the idea of bent doctors, almost as much as he loathed the idea of bent coppers – of whom he had encountered mercifully few. He hated anyone in public service, in a position of trust, who exploited it through either corruption or incompetence.
The first name on the list was a detox doctor struck off for negligence leading to the death of a heroin addict. Not a likely candidate, Grace thought.
Next were a husband and wife GP team who ran a private nursing home. He read more. They had been struck off for the disgusting condition of the place and leaving elderly patients in a state of distress. Not likely either.