They walked through each of the rooms, their footsteps echoing. The whole place looked as if it had been professionally cleaned. In the kitchen, Glenn opened the fridge and freezer doors. Inside they were bare. As was the dishwasher. He checked the inside of the washing machine and tumble dryer in the utility room and those were empty too.
There was nothing that either Glenn Branson or Bella Moy could see, in this cursory inspection, that gave any clue as to the previous occupant, or indeed that there had ever been one. There weren’t even any shadows on the walls from where pictures or mirrors might have been removed.
Branson rubbed his finger down one pale grey wall, but however recent the paint might have been, it was now dry.
‘Did he rent this flat or own it?’ Bella Moy asked.
‘He rented it,’ the concierge said. ‘Six-monthly renewable lease, unfurnished.’
‘How long has he been here?’
‘About the same as me. Ten years I been here, next month.’
‘So his lease just expired?’ Glenn Branson said.
Dowler shook his head. ‘Not at all. He’s paid up for about three months still.’
The two detectives frowned at each other. Then Glenn handed him a card.
‘If he gets in touch with you, will you contact me, please? We need to speak to him very urgently.’
‘He said he would be dropping me a line or an email, with a forwarding address, like for the bills and stuff.’
‘Can you tell us anything about him, Mr Dowler?’ Bella asked.
He shook his head. ‘In ten years I never had a conversation with him. Nothing. Very private.’ Then he grinned. ‘But I saw him a few times with some lovely ladies. He had a good eye for women, he did.’
‘What about his car?’
‘Gone too.’ Then he yawned. ‘Will you be needing me any more tonight? Or shall I leave you to be getting on with your search?’
‘You can leave us. I don’t think we’ll be very long,’ Glenn said.
‘No,’ the concierge said with a grin, ‘I don’t think that you will.’
After he had departed Glenn smiled at something. ‘Got it!’
‘What?’ Bella enquired.
‘Who the concierge reminds me of, the actor, Yul Brynner.’
‘Yul Brynner?’
‘
The Magnificent Seven.
’
She looked puzzled.
‘One of the greatest movies ever made! Also had Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn.’
‘I never saw it.’
‘God, you’ve led a sheltered life!’
From the crestfallen look on her face, he realized he’d touched a raw nerve.
101
At 7.45 a.m. in the cramped conference room of the Specialist Search Unit, Tanya Whitlock was briefing her team on an operation none of them was enjoying.
Post-mortem tests on Brighton drug dealer, Niall Foster, who had fallen to his death from a seventh-floor flat, had concluded that the blow to the side of his head was caused by a heavy, blunt object which had struck him before he fell, and not, as had originally been believed, by one of the metal railings on which he had landed, head first.
From the bevel-mark imprints on his skull, and metallurgy analysis from fragments in the hair, the pathologist believed the murder weapon might well be an antique brass table lamp – which Foster’s distraught girlfriend said was missing from his flat.
Spread out in front of Tania was a crude map of a large open space to the south of Old Shoreham Road, adjoining Hove Cemetery – the Hove Domestic Waste and Recycling Depot. The whole team would be spending their entire Saturday searching through eighteen tons of rat-infested rubbish for this object. Last time they’d had to search this dump, a couple of months ago, several of them suffered headaches for days from the methane rising from the decomposing rubbish. None of them was looking forward to this return visit.
*
In the breaking dawn sky above the SSU building, the pilot of a four-seater Cessna was radioing Shoreham Tower.
‘Golf Bravo Echo Tango Whiskey inbound from Dover.’
The little airport was unlit, so only operated between the hours of sunrise and sunset. This plane would be one of the morning’s first arrivals.
‘Golf Bravo Echo Tango Whiskey, Runway Zero Three. How many passengers?’
‘I’m solo,’ the pilot said.
*
As Sergeant Whitlock showed the next section on the grid that her team members were to cover, they were all concentrating hard. None of them heard the drone of the light aircraft coming in low overhead, circling to make its landing approach to Shoreham Airport’s runway 03.
Private aircraft and helicopters came and went here all the time. As there were no international flights, there was no Border Control presence, or any Customs either. Incoming flights from abroad were meant to radio a request for a customs officer and a border control agent to attend, and to remain in their aircraft until both had cleared them. But that normally meant a long delay, often with no officers arriving anyway, so pilots sometimes took a risk and did not bother.
Certainly the pilot of the twin-engined Cessna was not intending to radio them. The flight plan he had filed last night was from Shoreham to a private airstrip near Dover and then back. He had omitted to include, on the plan, a minor detour across the Channel to Le Touquet in France and back – which he had made with his transponder switched off. For cash payments of the size that he was receiving for this trip, he was always more than happy to make omissions in his flight plans.
He taxied along the three-deep line of parked aircraft towards his parking space, happy to hear that there were several more incoming aircraft stacking up, which would keep the crew in the tower occupied. He turned in, manoeuvring his plane to the same angle as the others, then put on the parking brake and throttled back the engines. He looked around carefully for signs of anyone who might be taking an interest in them, then switched off both ignitions.
As the propellers spun down, the aircraft vibrated less and less and the noise diminished. The pilot removed his headset, turned to the beautiful, blonde German woman directly behind him and said, ‘OK?’
‘
Sehr gut
,’ she said, and began unbuckling her harness.
He raised a cautioning hand. ‘We have to wait a little.’ He peered anxiously out again, then turned to the tired-looking teenage girl, dressed in a smart white overcoat, on the seat behind the woman. ‘Enjoyed the flight?’
The girl didn’t understand English, but she picked up the gist of what he had said from his tone and nodded nervously. He unbuckled himself and reached over to help her out of her safety harness. Then he signalled for her to stay, climbed out and jumped down, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Marlene Hartmann welcomed the blast of cold, fresh air, even though it was laced with the smell of kerosene. Then she yawned and gave Simona a smile. The girl smiled back. A pretty little thing, Marlene thought. In another country, in different circumstances, life could have been good for her. She yawned again, longing for a cup of coffee. It had been a long, long night. By road to Belgrade, then a late flight to Paris, then a taxi at four in the morning to Le Touquet. But they were here. And she was happy with the plans.
Yes, after the visit from the police officer yesterday, it would have been more sensible to abort. But then she would have lost a good customer. She did not think the Detective Superintendent could move this fast. Everything would be done before he even knew it and by tonight she would be back in Germany.
Another plane was coming in to land and the pilot, standing outside, heard the roars of several different aero engines, including the clatter of a helicopter, and saw a convoy of three aircraft taxiing out towards the runways. Plenty to keep the tower occupied. This was always a good time of day, still a little bit of darkness and numerous distractions, including the vehicles of airport workers arriving.
The white van was parked a few hundred yards along, beside the perimeter fence. He stared at it, then pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
Behind the wheel of the van, Vlad Cosmescu was watching. This was the signal.
He started the engine and put the van into gear.
102
Lynn Beckett sat, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night, her heart thudding, hunched over her kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea. She had lain in bed for hours, tossing and turning, shaking her pillows to try to get them comfortable, and getting up, obsessively, every twenty minutes or so to check on Caitlin, help her to the loo, ensure she drank glucose water and took the antibiotic tablets. The combination Ross Hunter had prescribed, probably aided by the jab, seemed to be working. Caitlin’s pain had subsided and the itching was a little less bad.
For a long time after the doctor’s visit, she had remained downstairs with Luke. They had downed a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and smoked their way through an entire packet of Silk Cut, sharing the last cigarette between them.
Now her head was pounding, her lungs were raw and she felt terrible. Luke had finally fallen into a deep slumber in the chair beside Caitlin’s bed.
The television was on. She stared at the 9 a.m. news, but she had no interest in it. Nor in the programme on helicopter rescues that followed. She had no interest in anything, at this moment, except for the phone call she was waiting for from Marlene Hartmann.
Please call. Oh, please God, call.
She did not know what she would do if the German woman did not make contact. If she had simply conned them out of the money. She had no Plan B.
Then, suddenly, the landline phone rang.
She answered it before it had completed the first ring. ‘Yeshello?’
To her relief, it was Marlene Hartmann. ‘How are you today, Lynn?’
‘Yesfine,’ she gasped.
‘Everything is good. We are here. You will be ready for collection?’
‘Yes I will.’
‘The payment is in order? You have the balance ready?’
‘Yes.’ She swallowed.
Her bank manager had already queried the first transfer she had made, and she had given him a lame reason that she was buying an investment property in Germany, from a one-off-payment final divorce settlement from her ex-husband, following an inheritance he had received.
‘You will see us later. The car will arrive for you as scheduled.’
She hung up before Lynn could thank her.
The car was scheduled for midday. Less than three hours.
She was so wound up with stress, fear and excitement, she could hardly think straight.
103
Shortly after the 8.30 a.m. briefing Roy Grace was sitting at the work station in MIR One, on the phone to one of the two detectives who were on surveillance outside Sir Roger Sirius’s house. They had been there since shortly before midnight and reported that no one had left the house and the helicopter was still on its pad in the grounds. He was in an irritable mood, and while he talked, one of the phones in the room warbled on, unanswered. He clapped his hand over the mouthpiece and shouted for someone to answer it. Someone did, rapidly.
Every Secretary of State had either been abroad or out at dinner somewhere last night. It had been after midnight before one – the Home Secretary himself – had signed the phone-tapping consent, and it was after two in the morning before it was up and running on Lynn Beckett’s home and mobile phone lines.
Grace had grabbed three hours’ sleep at Cleo’s house and been back here since six. He was running on Red Bull, a handful of guarana tablets Cleo had given him, and coffee. He was very concerned that the only real lead they had at this moment was the transplant surgeon, Sir Roger Sirius – and no certainty that he was involved, or would give them anything.
He was also concerned about the news from Glenn Branson of Vlad Cosmescu’s disappearance. Was that connected with his visit to the German organ broker yesterday? Had he been rumbled by Marlene Hartmann? Had he panicked her team into aborting their plans and making a fast retreat? The all-ports alert, not only to watch for the German woman accompanied by a young girl arriving, but to watch for a man answering Vlad Cosmescu’s description leaving, had so far yielded nothing.
Ports of entry and departure would forever be a policing problem on an island like Great Britain, with miles of open coastline and numerous private airports and landing strips. Sometimes you would get lucky, but the resources to monitor everyone arriving on and departing from these shores were beyond any budget the police force had. It didn’t help that the Home Office, in its enthusiasm to comply with government budget cuts, had scrapped passport controls for people leaving the UK. In a nutshell, unless someone positively identified them, the UK law enforcement agencies hadn’t a clue who was here and who wasn’t.
The post-mortem on Jim Towers would now be under way and Grace was anxious to get down to the mortuary to see whether there were any early findings from the pathologist to link his death to Operation Neptune – and of course to see Cleo, who had been asleep when he had arrived at her house and when he had left.
As he stood up and pulled his jacket on, telling the other members of his team where he was going, yet another phone was warbling on, unanswered. Was everyone deaf in here today? Or just too plain exhausted after the long night to pick up the receiver?
He got as far as the door before it stopped. As he turned the handle, Lizzie Mantle called out to him, holding up the receiver.
‘Roy! For you.’
He went back over to the work station. It was David Hicks, one of the phone surveillance operatives.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘we’ve just picked up a call on Mrs Beckett’s landline.’
104
‘I’m like… I’ve got to be at this workshop thing at ten,’ Luke mumbled, staggering into the kitchen as if he was sleepwalking. ‘Do you think it would be OK if I went?’