Stop them dead, p.27
Stop Them Dead, page 27
‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s 12.45 – I’ll be there 3 p.m. latest. Love you.’
‘Love you,’ she replied bleakly.
80
Tuesday 30 March
Roy Grace had just come out of his meeting with the Chief Constable, updating her on Operation Brush and discussing with her possible ways to tackle the wave of dog crime in the county on a broader scale. This included asking the Police and Crime Commissioner to provide extra funding for policing the county’s ports. He was about to take a break and stroll into Lewes, now the rain had stopped, and grab a sandwich for his very late lunch, when his phone rang.
It was DS Ross from Intelligence. ‘Boss, is this a good moment?’
‘Sure.’
‘The phone number you gave me, from the chap who found your dog – the one your wife had logged on her phone, right?’
‘Yes?’ he said hesitantly.
‘We’ve got a plot on its movements back from the phone company.’
‘Brilliant – what does it show, Julian?’
‘The team’s working on a full mapping of its movements of the past four weeks. But it looks like he might be based in the Preston Park area of Brighton.’
‘Preston Park, interesting.’
‘It’s always hard to get an accurate plot in a dense residential area, but there is a section of one street that he seems to gravitate towards and then remain static there for many hours. Kingsley Avenue.’
‘I know it,’ Grace said. ‘Sandy had an aunt who used to live there.’
‘From what we can work out he stays constant – usually from early evening until early morning – somewhere between number 8 and 22 – we can’t tell you which side of the street, and I don’t know how densely populated it is.’
‘It’s a nice street, pretty houses – mostly terraced. Quite small properties – what estate agents might term “bijou”, so I would think most are intact and not divided up into flats – single person or family occupants.’ He felt a beat of excitement at Julian’s news.
‘I guess that will help narrow your search. I’ll try to get the wider map back to you later today – we’re a bit under the cosh with two other urgent jobs today, but I’ll do my best.’
‘You’re a star, Julian!’
‘Yeah, I know!’
Grinning, Grace ended the call, all thoughts of lunch gone from his mind. He hurried back across the campus towards the Major Crime Suite and went straight to Luke Stanstead in the Detectives Room. ‘Luke, I need you urgently to do some research on Kingsley Avenue, Brighton. Check the electoral register for the names of all householders between numbers 8 and 22.’
‘I’ll get on it right away, sir.’
Grace walked back to his office, thinking of the best way he could use this intel from Julian Ross. The electoral register would give him the house owners – or current occupants’ names if they were renting – and maybe one of those would raise a flag when run through the PNC. He could instigate a house-to-house with officers equipped with Gecko’s photo and of the woman with him, but that could warn Gecko they were on his trail and drive him into hiding. It would be smarter, he thought, to put surveillance on the street.
Grace returned to his office and, as he reached it, he heard Polly Sweeney’s voice call out to him. ‘Sir!’
He turned and saw her. ‘How did it go at Lyndsey Cheetham’s parents – any joy, Polly?’
After he had ushered her into his office, Sweeney said, ‘Joy’s not the word I’d use to describe it, sir. Lyndsey’s parents are on the floor – as you’d expect. Lyndsey’s an only child and they had her relatively late in life – and utterly doted on her. They told us she was studying to become a veterinary nurse and was doing some work in the kennels of a dog breeder to gain experience.’
His excitement increasing, Grace said, ‘So it sounds like she was the informant you were due to meet – the timing and location fit, right?’
‘They do, sir,’ Sweeney replied hesitantly. ‘The location where she had her accident puts her between the Hailsham area and our planned RV at approximately the right time. The clothing she said she’d be wearing confirms it also.’
‘You got the name of these kennels from the Cheethams?’
She shook her head. ‘No, sir – unbelievably they don’t know.’
‘She never told them or are they covering up something?’
‘They’re not in any state to cover up anything. Seems like they never actually asked her the name of the farm. Lyndsey was very happy it was so close to their home – just a half-hour drive.’
From his knowledge of the county, Grace was aware that a thirty-minute drive created a pretty big radius – albeit one inside the red circle drawn on the map in the conference room. ‘OK, we should be able to get a plot of her phone from the phone provider that should take us to her place of work.’
Sweeney shook her head. ‘I’ve already spoken to the Road Policing Unit SIO who’s running the investigation. She said none of the officers or any of the Collision Investigation members who attended could find a mobile phone. Lorraine Bute, who was part of the team mapping the collision scene, said she’d spoken to PC Trundle, who was the first officer at the scene. He said he’d meant to tell you earlier, when you called him, but given his sleepiness he didn’t have his brain fully in gear. He and his colleagues did a thorough search around the area of the collision, in case the phone had been ejected from the vehicle, but they couldn’t find one anywhere. He thought that strange – particularly as it was a young person driving, who almost certainly would have had a phone with her – she must have done because she called me from her car. I have obtained her mobile number from her parents, and we can use that for our enquiries.’
‘Thanks, did the car roll?’ Grace asked. ‘It might have been flung out of a window into undergrowth.’
‘Lorraine said the car didn’t roll – it went straight off the road and into a tree. They’re certain they didn’t miss anywhere it could have landed if ejected from the car – and the windows were all up, which makes that very unlikely, in any case.’
Grace was pensive for some moments. ‘There were marks at the rear of the car indicating a possible rear-end shunt from a larger vehicle. There is some possible red-paint transfer from that vehicle, but more lab analysis is needed to confirm. Tyre marks on the road inconsistent with a skid from entering the bend too fast. Could it be she was deliberately shunted off the road and into the tree? And whoever did that, then took her phone?’
‘It’s a very credible hypothesis, sir.’
‘The vehicle Lyndsey was driving was an older-model Nissan Leaf, from 2011,’ Grace said. ‘All electric. It must either have an onboard satnav or some other recording device that would have logged its journeys. See what the Collision Investigation team can interrogate from it – or else get them to take the vehicle to a Nissan dealer if that will be quicker.’
‘I’ll get on it right away, sir.’
As Polly Sweeney left his office, Roy Grace sat, thinking hard, reflecting. Lyndsey Cheetham’s accident might not be connected in any way to Operation Brush. He could be sending Polly Sweeney down a rabbit hole. And yet, all his instincts were telling him there was a link here. Polly was due to meet an informant who worked in a dog breeder’s kennels. The informant never turned up. Lyndsey Cheetham worked in a breeder’s kennels. She died in a car accident somewhere between her place of work and the planned rendezvous with Sweeney. There was evidence another vehicle had been involved in her fatal accident – which had disappeared from the scene. As had her mobile phone. The clothes matched.
As he entered the details into his policy book, he was certain that the informant and Lyndsey Cheetham were one and the same person, particularly as this was confirmed by the phone research that Polly had carried out.
He turned his thoughts back to Gecko, and called the ACC, Hannah Robinson. He was relieved when her Staff Officer put her through immediately. After he had given her his reasons, the ACC agreed without hesitation with his decision to deploy surveillance on Kingsley Avenue, which had been approved by the Force Authorizing Officer.
81
Tuesday 30 March
PCs Eldhos Matthew and Mike Shaw sat in their marked car, in a lay-by a few hundred yards from the scene of Lyndsey Cheetham’s fatal collision with a tree. Folded open in front of them was a small-scale Ordnance Survey map of the area. They had been given the action of calling at houses and business premises in the vicinity of the scene. Eldhos was a lot more excited than his colleague about the task they were now carrying out.
Mike Shaw, who was twenty-four and had been in the force for five years, had just applied, for the second time, to join the Roads Policing Unit. Ever since his early teens he had wanted to be a traffic cop, and now they were recruiting again, he had an interview coming up in two weeks. He considered this current task, of endless knocking on doors, boring. In complete contrast to his younger colleague who seemed to love it.
Eldhos Matthew knew they were both very small cogs in the investigation into the collision. But equally, from all the information he had acquired on roles in policing that could help him with his ambition to become a detective, he had learned that normally in a fatal road traffic collision, an inspector from the Roads Policing Unit would have been appointed as the Senior Investigating Officer. The SIO!
Those three letters held a kind of magic for him. One day, he would be an SIO. In charge of a murder investigation. Then he would be able to tell his father, who had been so against him joining the police, that he had truly made a good decision.
And this current task, which his handsome but rather laid-back colleague, Mike Shaw, found so tedious, he found very exciting. Because although the SIO was Roads Policing Inspector James Biggs, there was a bigger picture to this whole investigation, and at the top of it was a possible link to Operation Brush, the investigation that they were working on into the murder of a farmer called Timothy Ruddle, being run by Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. It was a long shot, but there was a possibility, nonetheless, to impress the detective he would so much like to work under.
He pointed his finger at a road leading to a village they’d not yet covered. ‘Here next?’ he said to Shaw. ‘Two miles away.’
Shaw looked at his watch. ‘We’ve done four hours. How about we go to the RPU at Polegate for a coffee – they’re only about fifteen minutes from here?’ he suggested hopefully. He liked the idea of having the chance to talk to some Roads Policing officers at Polegate police station.
‘Let’s do the village and then we’ll take a break,’ Eldhos suggested.
Shaw agreed reluctantly.
A few minutes later they passed a 30 mph sign and immediately saw a row of pretty terraced thatched cottages on their right. Several vehicles were parked on the street in front of them, but they found a gap and Eldhos reversed into it. They walked up a short, steep flight of steps and Shaw rapped on the door of the first one, the end-of-terrace house.
After several more raps on the door, and pressing a bell button that made no sound, they moved on to the next cottage.
Within moments of knocking, the door, which had a spyhole, opened a crack on a safety chain, which Eldhos immediately thought was odd in such a relatively remote village community. A gruff male voice called out, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t talk to police.’
‘Sir,’ Eldhos Matthew replied, ‘we are investigating a serious car crash two miles from here yesterday evening. We would just like to talk to you about any vehicles you might have seen around that time.’
The door closed on them, and both officers looked at each other, wondering if that was it. Then there was a metallic clank, and the door opened, to reveal a silver-haired man – in his seventies, Eldhos guessed – wearing a baggy Iron Maiden T-shirt, shorts and Crocs. ‘That was the young lady who died?’
They held up their warrant cards. ‘Yes, sir,’ Eldhos said.
‘A dangerous bend, I don’t understand why the council done nothing about it. There was a fatal there about ten years ago and another last month – a teenage boy – hit that same tree.’
‘Maybe they will do something about it now, sir,’ Mike Shaw said.
‘Bunch of wankers, the council, no chance. Come in, I did see something, since you’re here.’
He limped ahead of them, through a hallway hung with framed Formula One motor racing pictures into a tiny kitchen, with a view onto a large well-tended garden. He ushered them to sit at a pine table and offered them tea or coffee, which they declined – Mike Shaw reluctantly.
Pulling out his electronic pad, Eldhos asked the man his name. Looking around, he saw some framed family photographs on a Welsh dresser, the man in front of them with a woman, and several of young children beside them.
‘What’s your name, sir?’ Shaw asked.
‘Simon Cronin,’ he replied. ‘I’m sorry but I’m pretty pissed off with you lot. You’re always stopping people outside our local. Don’t you have anything better to do?’
Ignoring the comment, Eldhos asked him, ‘You said you’d seen something, sir?’
‘That piece of shit from up the road driving his ridiculous red Yank 4 x 4 like he owns the road, yet again.’ Cronin’s round, amiable face had turned a little red. ‘He doesn’t give a monkey’s about anyone else. Nearly took me out last week.’
A large red 4 x 4, being driven recklessly – Eldhos knew it was worth checking out. ‘Do you know the driver, sir?’
‘I do, just about everyone in the village has had a run-in with him at some time or another. He lives just up the road. His name’s Dallas Jim. Oh, and I can tell you, I saw it earlier and there was some damage to the front of the vehicle.’
The two PCs thanked him and left, after it was evident he had little further to add. Eldhos was excited, and as soon as they were back in his car sent a report to Inspector Biggs.
82
Tuesday 30 March
Following the directions of his satnav, which now showed 14 minutes to Appletree Farm, Chris Fairfax rounded a series of bends in the fast, sweeping two-lane road, bordered by hedges to the left and woods to the right, then as the road straightened, he saw ahead a blue and white POLICE – ACCIDENT sign. A short distance behind it a marked police car was parked diagonally across the road, with two officers standing beside it, and tape across the road behind them.
He halted and lowered his window and told one of the officers where he was heading. She directed him to turn round and take the first left, about a half-mile away, which would bring him back on his route on the far side of the road closure.
Following her directions for a short distance before the satnav re-routed, he wound along a network of narrow, twisting country lanes, having to stop twice to let oncoming vehicles pass, and finally the satnav read, Your destination is ahead to your right.
A barely visible, crooked and badly weathered wooden sign, partially concealed by brambles, at the entrance to what was little more than a cart track, read APPLETREE FARM.
He turned onto the potholed track and drove slowly along it for some distance, with fields of crops on either side, until he reached a five-barred gate with a sign on it saying KINDLY CLOSE THE GATE. As he got out to open it, he noticed a CCTV camera on a tall pole pointed down towards the gate. Uncannily, as he looked up at it, the camera swivelled towards him.
He drove through and closed the gate behind him. After bouncing along the track for another half-mile, now with barren fields on either side, and the green hills of the South Downs in the distance to the right, and driving slowly to avoid risking a puncture, he reached a tall, spiked steel security gate that could have been the entrance to a fortress. On his right was a pod with an entryphone panel and the round lens of another camera.
Chris lowered his window and pressed the button that was unmarked, but which he presumed was the bell. After a few moments there was a crackle followed by a harsh male voice. ‘Yeah?’
Well aware of Ken Grundy’s warning to him, Chris said politely, ‘I’d like to talk to someone about buying a puppy.’
‘We don’t sell puppies,’ came the bland reply.
‘I’m looking for John Peat?’ he said.
After a long silence, in which he began to wonder if he’d had a wasted journey, the crackle came again, followed by the same man’s voice. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
‘My name’s Christopher Fairfax. I bought a puppy from a Mr John Peat and—’
‘Wait there,’ the voice said aggressively. Chris waited for some minutes, with a building apprehension about what he was doing here and if he had made the right decision.
The steel gate suddenly slid sideways and he saw a man far in the distance with a big dog next to him.
Chris got out of his car but did not dare step any further and instead stood subtly scanning the area, taking it all in. The cluster of farm buildings ahead. The stench that he thought at first was manure, but then realized, from visiting a pig-farmer client a couple of years ago, was the unmistakable smell of pigs.
To his right was a decrepit open-sided barn, in which was parked a massive tractor, and alongside it a trailer, a plough and several other large pieces of farm machinery, all looking dirty but in working condition. He heard the barking of other dogs. It was loud and frantic. A hideous concrete walled building to his left, with open slits for windows high up and a corrugated iron roof. It reminded him, unpleasantly, of images of Nazi concentration camps he’d seen in documentaries.
Next to it was an almost identical building. Much further in the distance he could see a sizeable, but sad and neglected-looking house at the far end, outside which stood a grimy Land Rover, a horsebox and a Toyota pickup truck on jacked-up suspension with a row of roof-lights. For rabbiting, Chris guessed. There was a row of stables to the right, with one chestnut horse peering out somewhat mournfully.
