Stop them dead, p.32
Stop Them Dead, page 32
‘A shih-tzu crossed with a poodle, right?’ Grace queried.
‘Correct.’
‘They’re on the list of highly desirables – worth several thousand.’
‘Shall we nick him now, boss?’
Grace hesitated. ‘How’s the woman?’
‘She’s fine, not injured. She had the dog on a lead because it was on heat and not spayed. He just shoved her and pulled the lead out of her hand.’
The correct thing would be to have Gecko arrested on the spot, and immediately return the dog to the young woman, Grace knew. But, if his hunch was right, this was too good an opportunity. He decided to take the gamble, trusting Taylor’s team not to lose him. ‘No, stay with him and keep out of sight, I need to know where he’s going. This could be a significant development for us if he’s going where I think. If he starts getting close to Appletree Farm, call me.’
‘Roger that, boss.’
As he ended the call, he heard Potting right behind him. ‘Chief, that sounds like the fellow who went to a zoo which had only one animal.’
Grace turned and frowned. ‘A zoo with only one animal?’
Potting nodded, his expression inscrutable. ‘He said it was a shih-tzu. A shit zoo, geddit?’
Grace gave him a thin smile. ‘Very good. But a bit of advice, Norman, don’t give up the day job just yet, OK?’
Back in his office, he sat behind his desk, wanting to get his ducks in a row as fast as he could. He started by lining up the files of evidence he was going to present to his boss, ACC Hannah Robinson. He was hoping to get her sanction to carry out what might well be the biggest raid of his career so far, in terms of manpower, and one of the most dangerous for his team.
Although every police officer who signed up for the job knew the risks, was aware that one day his or her life might be on the line, few officers ever thought about that when they swung the bosher at the door of a suspect, or stopped a vehicle on an unlit road in the middle of the night. But after a previous operation some while back, which had resulted in E-J Boutwood being crushed by a van and Glenn Branson being shot in the leg, his first priority ever since had been the safety of his team. A big part of that safety was to have sufficient numbers of trained firearms and public order officers to neutralize any threat.
Terry Jim – and his revolting son Dallas – posed a very real and dangerous threat. A decade ago, a severed hand in a Tesco carrier bag had been left on the counter of a pub in East Sussex shortly after Terry, Dallas and a bunch of their associates had invaded the place for a heavy drinking session. The hand had been later identified as belonging to Erroll Donleavy, scion of a rival former crime gang to Jim’s, who had vanished and the rest of his body was never found, but the police had never been able to establish a link to Terry Jim or any of his associates. Fifty people had been in the pub that night and not one of them, including the landlord and bar staff – clearly scared witless – would admit to having seen anything.
The first file Grace had in place was the work around the phones, an hour either side of Tim Ruddle’s murder. The plots showed four phone numbers, all belonging to burner phones, travelling towards the area where the Ruddles’ farm was, from somewhere in the area of Hailsham in East Sussex and returning there. Next was the investigation into the disappearance of Rosalind Esche. Then the phone work around Lyndsey Cheetham, who had died in a suspicious car accident – en route to rendezvous with Polly Sweeney. That was significant because, from the timelines, it put her as almost certainly working at Appletree Farm.
Next was the Polish-registered lorry, stopped in the early hours of yesterday morning by a traffic officer. It was carrying a concealed cargo of puppies, all high-value breeds with fake vaccination certificates. Subsequent interrogation of the vehicle’s satnav showed its destination to be Long Acre Farm – run by Terry Jim’s son Dallas.
He took a swig of coffee, then added a further file, the evidence from the Forensic Gait Analyst Haydn Kelly, linking the footprint at the Ruddles’ farm to the man with a limp filmed by the drone at Appletree Farm. And, finally, was the damning evidence from Darcy Jim. If – and it might be a big if – they could get her to come in and give a statement under caution.
In the absence of that, he reviewed everything he had in front of him, aware of what he needed to convince the Crown Prosecution Service that he had a case against the suspects. The holes they’d pick in all of this, even if, as he expected, Hannah Robinson did sanction his raid, would be the same holes a smart defence barrister would find. He needed to get rock solid evidence from the raids on Appletree and Long Acre farms to be sure of convicting Terry Jim and, hopefully, Dallas, on either murder or conspiracy to murder charges – on top of conspiracy charges to traffic, illegally import, breed and sell dogs.
The crucial evidence he needed was something that would link Terry and Dallas Jim incontrovertibly to the murder of Tim Ruddle. Something that put them or their employees at the crime scene. Evidence strong enough to convince a jury. It needn’t be anything big – sometimes, where evidence was concerned, small could be beautiful. A single fingerprint. DNA from a droplet of blood. Or just a footprint. If they arrested any of the suspects and then could find their shoes, from the footprint moulds Kelly had taken, these could either put them at the crime scene – or eliminate them.
He was distracted from his thoughts by DS Taylor ringing with an update.
‘Target is heading east on the A27 in the direction of Hailsham, boss.’
Grace thought quickly, with growing excitement. He turned to the aerial-view map showing both Appletree and Long Acre farms – a printout of Google Earth – he’d put up on the wall. A mile west of Appletree Farm there was a roundabout with four turn-offs. The one leading to Appletree was a minor, almost single-track road. If Gecko took that, there would be little doubt about his intended destination. And the turn-off left, a couple of miles further on, was again a narrow lane leading to Long Acre Farm. His hunch was looking good. Hopefully Gecko was on his way to one of these. But he needed to be stopped before entering either.
‘Mark, we need a couple of Traffic cars on standby to intercept if he approaches either Appletree or Long Acre – I don’t want you to blow your cover – we may need you for further surveillance on these two farms.’
‘I’ve got it covered, boss. Two cars from the Road Policing Unit at Polegate are in position, ready for your instructions.’
Grace smiled. He loved nothing better than to work with smart professionals, who were capable of thinking ahead and anticipating. ‘Nice work. Update me as soon as we see which direction Gecko chooses – and let’s hope I haven’t got this wrong.’
Moments after he ended the call, his phone rang again. It was DS Alexander. ‘Sir, we’ve just taken a call in the incident room from someone I think you might want to speak to. He says he’s a solicitor – and he doesn’t sound a flake. I’ve got him on hold. He says you left him a message yesterday to contact you ASAP.’
One of the problems with any enquiry in which appeals were put out to the public, Grace knew, was that a significant number of them were simply bored people who figured that a marked police car turning up outside their residence would be exciting. But just occasionally, there was a nugget. And a big part of his role was to identify and mine that nugget. And maybe, just maybe, this caller, Chris Fairfax, might be that nugget.
‘This is Detective Superintendent Grace, the Senior Investigating Officer of Operation Brush. Hello, Mr Fairfax?’
The voice was hesitant, nervous, someone clearly under stress. ‘Detective Superintendent, I’m a family law solicitor in Brighton. I read in the Argus about your investigation and I was just going to call you when I received the message that you wanted to speak to me – I may have some information that could be helpful. Perhaps I should have contacted you earlier, but I wasn’t thinking straight, as you’ll understand.’
‘Thank you, Mr Fairfax,’ he replied. ‘Please, tell me?’
Chris Fairfax related the events leading up to their buying the puppy from a van in a pub forecourt north-east of Horsham, and how their daughter was bitten on the nose by another puppy in the van. And subsequently how she came to be diagnosed with rabies. His hiring of the private detective, Ken Grundy, and how it led to him driving to Appletree Farm yesterday in search of John Peat, and then being assaulted.
As Roy Grace listened to this seemingly decent man’s story, concluding with the terrible diagnosis of his daughter’s illness, anger rose inside him. But excitement too, when the solicitor told him of the other names connected to John Peat – Tom Hartley, Jonathan Jones and Michael Kendrick.
Ending the call, he stared down at the notes he had been writing on his pad. And at the name of the so-called breeder Chris Fairfax and his wife, Katy, had bought their puppy from.
And he thought back to Bournemouth. Tom Hartley. Jonathan Jones. Michael Kendrick. All but the last duck was now lined up.
He picked up his phone and called the ACC. Her Staff Officer answered, and Grace asked him to set up a meeting urgently.
She was free at 2 p.m., he told Grace.
The moment he ended the call, Mark Taylor rang again. ‘Boss, Gecko has turned off the roundabout onto the lane leading to Appletree Farm, three miles ahead. I’ve informed the RPU vehicle a mile up the lane. I think it’s pretty clear where he is heading.’
Roy Grace, phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear, punched his right hand into his left fist. Yesss! ‘Instruct them to stop and arrest him initially on suspicion of stealing a dog.’
‘Copy that, boss, yes-yes.’
Turning back to his row of files, Grace flipped open Gecko’s. Thanks to his stealing Humphrey and then trying to extort reward money from Cleo, they had his phone number. They had established, through its plots, the regular journeys from the Brighton and Hove area to Appletree Farm that Gecko had made over the past month or so.
Good evidence, but not the cigar. He decided that, as soon as Mark Taylor called to confirm Gecko had been arrested, he would tell him to have Gecko taken to Brighton Custody Centre and booked in there. Then he would pay him a visit and have a cosy chat.
95
Wednesday 31 March
Chris and Katy stood by Bluebell’s bed, hands linked tightly, staring at her through tearful, fearful eyes. They’d been left alone with her. Dr Shah had suggested they might like to spend a few minutes before the procedure to put her into an induced coma started.
They knew the subtext. The words that Dr Shah did not say but which they heard anyway.
You might like to spend a few minutes with your daughter, to say your goodbye in case she doesn’t come round from the coma.
Because eighty per cent don’t.
Katy felt so utterly helpless, staring down at Bluebell, who was tossing, moaning, perspiring and sounding at times as if she was struggling to breathe. Chris dabbed her forehead with his handkerchief, but she shook her head wildly, crying, ‘No – no – no . . .’
In a few minutes she would be wheeled into theatre, where, under Dr Pallant’s observation, along with Dr Shah and the consultant neurologist, the anaesthetist would steadily, over the next twenty-four hours, sedate her through drip lines with ketamine, propofol and benzodiazepine, until she was completely paralysed and the virus paralysed too, in the hope of enabling her own immune system to begin to destroy it.
Broken-hearted, they watched their child, this beautiful girl with her angelic face and golden curls, murmuring in her delirium. Eyes closed one moment, then open, staring up at them, almost accusatorily, the next. There were beads of spittle in the corner of her mouth. ‘Thirsty,’ she murmured. ‘So thirsty. So thirsty. Please. Please. So thirsty. Drink, please drink, a drink.’
Chris and Katy looked around for water, and Katy hurried out towards the nursing station, then returned with a tiny paper cone of water. But as she reached the bed, Bluebell suddenly screamed. Eyes wide open, she was flailing her arms. ‘Nooooooo! Noooooo! Noooooooooo!’ She struck Katy, sending the cone flying, some of it spilling on Chris.
The pitiful terror in her voice felt to him that it was ripping the very lining of his heart. He looked at Katy in bewilderment. All around them in the Intensive Care Unit, children lay in beds, suspended between life and death, their desperate parents, like themselves, at their sides.
Bleakly, Chris thought that if you believed in Hell, despite the calm, despite the genuinely caring and kind attitude of everyone working here, this place, right now, with what Bluebell was enduring, was as close to Hell as he could imagine. Evil. Maybe Dr Willoughby was right. The rabies virus that was trying to destroy their beautiful daughter was pure and utter evil.
He gripped Katy’s hand even more tightly, as tears rolled down his cheeks. Bluebell had to live. She had to pull through this. A little scratch on the nose wasn’t going to kill her, it wasn’t, it damned well wasn’t.
He turned away and pressed his sodden handkerchief against his eyes. Then he turned sharply back as Bluebell screamed again, even more loudly.
Dr Shah came into the room, looking more nervous than either of them had seen him before.
‘What can we do?’ Chris asked. ‘Anything?’
Shah hesitated then said quietly, ‘We need to take her into theatre soon. We’re doing all we can, then we all just have to wait.’
96
Wednesday 31 March
‘Come up and see me, make me smile!’ Gecko sang along to the Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel song playing on the van’s radio, feeling so happy. Yessss sir!
The shih-poo, tied to the passenger seat belt by her leash, barked at him, but he didn’t care, he was singing louder than the dumb dog could bark. He fed it another treat. It was like shoving coins into a fruit machine, just a few seconds of respite while the wheels spun. Yet another bloody dog that barked constantly, not that he cared. He was used to it. All his life dogs had barked at him, and people had laughed at him, but now he had Elvira. Beautiful, sweet, kind Elvira who didn’t have a nasty bone in her body, who loved him for what he was, for everything he was – that she knew about – and for what she didn’t know about, too.
Elvira never laughed at him. Last night she’d held his face in her hands, and as she kissed him repeatedly whispered that she wished she could see him properly, because she was sure he was even more handsome than she imagined him.
He loved her. He loved her so much. Insanely! Glancing at his Rolex, he saw it was coming up to 10.45. Maybe, he thought with a big smile, he’d truly make this a special day. She would be working at home as normal. A plan was forming in his mind as the small, familiar roundabout loomed up ahead. Feeling so happy, as he sang along for a few more lines, he was thinking . . .
I’m in love, truly, properly, head-over-heels in love!
Then the bloody dog distracted him by barking again. But he didn’t mind, because he knew Mr Jim would be pleased with this one. The name on her collar tag said ‘Rose’. A bitch, she appeared. Hopefully an un-spayed bitch – they were generally what Mr Jim paid him the most for, and he was expecting a decent wad of cash when he arrived at Appletree Farm in just a few minutes. A couple of hundred for a bitch, at least.
Enough to buy an engagement ring from one of the shops in the Brighton Lanes on his way home to Elvira, he thought. Or maybe steal an expensive one! Save the money for the wedding, and then the honeymoon!
His heart filled with joy, he took the first turn-off onto the single-track, hedge-bordered lane. Just two miles to go to the farm entrance. The song ended and he heard the voice of Danny Pike, the BBC Radio Sussex presenter. ‘Steve Harley – what a great song, love it! Right now, I have a regular listener, Margaret Duncton, on the line talking about the parking in Blunts Way. Margaret, tell me the latest.’
At that moment, as he crested a small rise, Gecko saw what looked like a shard of broken glass glinting through the greenery ahead. Seconds later, as he began rounding a long bend, he saw a police car heading towards him, headlights on full, blue lights flashing on the roof.
And he felt a deep, cold flush of fear in his stomach.
There wasn’t room for the two vehicles to pass.
A red LED display between the blue lights on the roof-light rack read, STOP.
Panicked, he crunched the gears into reverse and shot back, trying to steer with his mirrors, swerving right, then left, then right again.
He looked at the police car through the windscreen. The officer in the passenger seat was signalling to him. STOP.
Frantic now, he accelerated hard, thinking if he could just make it in reverse to the roundabout he—
The rear of the van swerved hard to the right, towards the edge, towards the ditch. He over-corrected and the rear of the van fishtailed left, then right, then left, making larger and larger arcs as the wheel spun in his hands. And moments later he was just a passenger as the rear of the van plunged off the side of the road and tilted up in the air, both he and the dog thrown flat against their seat backs.
The bloody dog started barking again. Totally disoriented, lying on his back, Gecko groped for his seat-belt buckle. He found it and pressed the release. Instantly he slid further back and was stopped by the headrest.
Got to get out. Get out and run.
He reached out a hand and found the driver’s door handle. Pulled on it. Nothing happened. He was lying against the door, he realized. The greenery of the hedgerow was pressing against the window.
Shit.
The passenger door? Or get in the back and out the rear doors?
Then the passenger door opened and a police officer’s face appeared. The officer ignored the barking dog. ‘Marion Willingham, I’m arresting you on suspicion of stealing this dog. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
