He pulled up behind the queued traffic at the roundabout in front of Brighton’s Palace Pier. As he did so a large white lump of seagull shit splattered on the shiny bonnet of his Audi, which he’d only taken through the car wash yesterday. ‘Thanks, pal!’ he murmured. Gulls were an occupational hazard of seaside living and it didn’t dent his good mood. He was so much looking forward to getting home to Katy, who, ever since their daughter had been born, did not work on Fridays, to Bluebell and to their new puppy, Moose. And thanks to an irate Family Law judge, he was getting a bonus extra hour with them this weekend.

  As he drove on, navigating the roundabout and then along the seafront, past the Royal Albion Hotel, he shook his head and grinned. Jesus! He’d spent the past five hours, including a lunch break, in chambers with his client Garry Grimes, his wife, Elaine, and her solicitor, in front of an increasingly irascible Judge Bonner.

  There were three sticking points on their divorce settlement from which neither side would budge. Their elderly West Highland White Terrier, their Christmas decorations, and Elaine’s granny’s bone china tea set – which his client was arguing was a wedding present and should be divided equally.

  Judge Paul Bonner several times had repeated, ‘You need to sort it out, this is ridiculous – and it’s costing you both a fortune.’

  But they hadn’t sorted it out. Finally, the judge, who had a train to catch, had adjourned the hearing to Monday, telling the couple to try and agree something over the weekend, unless they wanted to make their respective lawyers even richer still.

  And they married and lived happily ever after! That great myth, Chris thought, as he drove along, squinting against the low sun.

  Hey, stop this, I’m happily married, I love my wife, my daughter. My life! Don’t ever let us get angry, dull and resentful, please.

  And he determined they never would.

  His mood improved even more as he made a right turn opposite Hove Lagoon into Wish Road, a pretty street of mock-Tudor houses, some detached and some semis, and a couple of hundred yards up turned left onto the drive of their semi, parking alongside Katy’s pink electric Fiat 500, cable running to the charger in the wall.

  ‘I’m home!’ he called out as he went in through the front door. Then frowned. Normally at the sound of his voice, Bluebell would come running up to him. But not this afternoon. He could hear the television on in the kitchen, the show Pointless that Katy was addicted to.

  Chucking his bag and jacket onto the tall hall-porter’s chair in the hallway, he strode past the funky black and white sign on the wall which read LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE, through into the kitchen, bright from the late afternoon sunlight, and to his slight surprise saw Katy in jeans and a baggy sweater kneeling beside the dog basket, tenderly stroking Moose, who was surrounded by her toys. Katy had a strange expression on her face.

  ‘Hey, babes,’ he said, bending down and kissing her. ‘All good?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’ Immediately some of his good mood slipped away. ‘Why, what’s up?’

  ‘Moose hasn’t left her bed all day – except to pee and poop on the kitchen floor a couple of times, and she’s not eating.’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s unsettled – it’s her first day away from her mummy and her brothers and sisters, it’s probably pretty traumatic for her.’

  Katy shook her head. ‘I’ve been googling stuff about puppies. Sure they need to sleep a lot, but they should be playful and curious, too. She’s neither. I hope she’s not ill. And look.’ She raised her hand above the puppy’s head and the dog flinched, then looked balefully at her. ‘Do you think she’s been mistreated?’

  ‘I – I wouldn’t have thought so – that breeder, John Peat, seemed a pretty caring guy.’ He put a hand forward to try to stroke the puppy’s head and she flinched again, then closed her eyes.

  ‘She’s not right,’ Katy said. ‘I think we should take her to the vet to get her checked over. I spoke to Kerry and she also uses Helen Bradley who’s still based along New Church Road.’ Kerry was her best friend and was animal-mad.

  ‘Sure, we need to get her registered anyhow,’ he said and again reached to stroke the puppy. This time Moose let him, but gave no reaction back. ‘She hasn’t been sick?’

  ‘No but her poop was pretty runny.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ he said.

  ‘Reminds you? Of what?’

  He stood, removed a plastic bucket from under the sink and ran water into it from the hot tap. ‘Got a direct hit on the bonnet from a seagull. And I had the car cleaned yesterday.’

  She grinned. ‘Isn’t that meant to bring luck?’

  He shook his head, squeezing washing-up liquid into the bowl. ‘You have some weird superstitions!’ He dropped in a sponge and pulled on a pair of rubber gloves. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.’ Then he hesitated. ‘Where’s Bluebell? I didn’t get my usual hug – is she doing homework?’

  Katy shook her head. ‘Having a lie-down in her room. She said she wasn’t feeling great when I picked her up from school. She’s got a birthday party tomorrow that she’s really looking forward to, so I’m sure she’ll perk up.’

  ‘Not great in what way?’

  ‘She said she feels a bit feverish. Her forehead is a little clammy. I took her temperature and it’s just very slightly up – nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ll go up and see her in a minute. Perhaps we’ll take her to the GP just to be sure.’

  He went back out through the front door and stopped, staring in dismay. There was a large splatter on the Audi’s windscreen and another two on the roof as well as on the driver’s door. And Katy’s car, which just a few minutes ago had looked pristine, looked like it had suffered an aerial bombardment from an entire squadron of gulls.

  Hey-ho, he thought, walking around the side of the house, past the bin store, and grabbing the end of the hose on the reel. Looks like we’re in for years of good luck!

  29

  Friday 26 March

  Tomorrow night the clocks went forward for UK daylight saving. This was one of the weekends of the year that Roy Grace loved the most. Waking up on Sunday morning to a day that always felt like the start of spring, even if it was windy and raining. That glorious first week of longer days and lighter evenings always gave him a feeling of optimism, no matter how dark the cases he was dealing with.

  He sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves in a pensive mood. He had a lot on his mind at the moment, the most important of which was to get an Easter card and egg for Cleo and some bits for the kids for the following weekend. As well as a giant bag of mini-eggs for his goddaughter Jaye Somers, he thought, guilty he’d not seen her or her family for far too long. When he had been with Sandy, they’d been close friends with the Somers, going on several holidays together, but hey, that was life. Some friends you stayed tight with, others you drifted apart from. He made a note on his long to-do list to see if they could go out for a pub supper one evening. Cleo liked them and it would be good to catch up and not lose touch completely.

  Then he focused back on work, on his preparation for the 6 p.m. briefing, in one hour’s time. As he did so he flicked, habitually, through the serials on his computer screen – the rolling, and constantly updated, log of all incidents in the county attended by the police – looking in particular for anything dog-related. But the reported theft of Sara Gurner’s dog – and her subsequent reunion with it – was the only one.

  He clocked a snatch-and-grab robbery at a jeweller in Brighton’s East Street yesterday afternoon, in which the thief had made off with a high-value Rolex watch and a cheap talking watch for blind people. Odd, he thought inconsequentially. What was that about? Continuing his scan, he saw nothing other than the usual litany of minor crimes and public order incidents. Just another day in the city he loved so much.

  Out of interest he returned to the Sara Gurner report of her dog theft and saw there had been some follow-up before her dog was found wandering on the street later in the day. A house in Goldstone Crescent, opposite the park, had an outward-facing CCTV camera which had apparently recorded a man in a beanie grabbing the dog, putting it into a van and driving off at speed.

  He emailed Luke Stanstead to get the footage; it might be worth his Operation Brush team looking at it, and perhaps have the super recognizers that Sussex Police worked with look at it also. This tiny minority of people, mostly civilian volunteers, had powers of recognition way beyond the norm. They could identify someone from a single facial feature, such as the shape of an ear, nose or chin, and match them to known criminals. They could be invaluable when there was no other form of evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA, available. Might turn out to be a lead, or might be nothing.

  Next, he turned his attention to the report that had come in from Forensic Gait Analyst Professor Haydn Kelly, and the research that had been done by his team on the footprints he had photographed and taken casts of in the Ruddles’ farmyard. The UK National Footwear Reference Collection was a constantly updated resource, providing pattern data on pretty much every shoe sold in shops or online. They also used the National Footwear Database, which documented shoe prints taken from crime scenes and in custody. From the moment a shoe started being worn, the wear in tread pattern would be unique to the individual wearing them. As unique as their fingerprints.

  On his screen in front of him he had images of seven different sets of footprints in the farmyard. Three had already been eliminated by Kelly, as belonging to Ruddle himself, his wife and the farmhand – although they hadn’t yet fully eliminated Norris Denning as a suspect. Of the remaining four, because of heavy rain over the past few days, it was likely they were reasonably fresh. They almost certainly, Grace thought, belonged to the offenders.

  Taking a moment out, he called the recently promoted Commander of Haywards Heath Police, Chief Inspector Vicky Boarder, a bright officer who had once been a detective on his Major Enquiry Team before going back to uniform.

  ‘Roy!’ she answered. ‘Great to hear from you, all good?’

  ‘All good – how’s life in the sticks?’ he teased.

  ‘Haha! Apart from coming into work with muddy boots and chewing straw it’s pretty challenging. What can I do for you?’

  ‘You’ve a PC, Eldhos Matthew, with you, right?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘He struck me as a brighter than average spark.’

  ‘He is and very keen. Why? You’re not thinking of poaching him from me, are you? I’m short-handed enough as it is.’

  Grace waggled a hand in the air, even though she couldn’t see it. ‘I met him the night before last – on Operation Brush – I liked his energy.’

  ‘Everyone here does – he’s very popular.’

  ‘I thought he might be. I had a brief chat with him, and he told me he’s ambitious to be a detective.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Just saying.’

  ‘I know you too well, Roy. I remember when you had eyes on that young DC, Glenn Branson – and look how you’ve helped him. If you want to talk to PC Matthew, I won’t stand in your way.’

  ‘You’re a brick.’

  ‘Nah, I’m just a sodding martyr. In fact, I can release him for a few days for him to work with your team. He came on at 3 p.m.’

  ‘That’s great. Send him over to the incident room at headquarters. It’ll be good for him, and me too!’

  Laughing, he thanked her and hung up. Then he opened the file of the drone footage of the Ruddles’ farm and surrounding twenty-square-mile area that had been sent to him earlier today and began fast-forwarding through it. He was looking in particular for known criminal hotspots within close proximity. As the drone radius broadened, he saw a couple of small sites – just a handful of caravans and vehicles, but nothing on a large scale, and no pair of vehicles matching those described by the murder victim’s wife.

  All the same, he made a note for the Outside Enquiry Team to check them out thoroughly. It was a known scam to park up illegally on farmland, or close to it, steal farm dogs and then ransom them back. But murder was a whole different level.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his door.

  ‘Come in!’ he called out.

  It was Norman Potting. ‘Do you have a moment, chief? Want to ask you something personal – some advice.’

  Grace fondly beckoned the old war horse in.

  30

  Friday 26 March

  Lyndsey Cheetham had from earliest childhood wanted to work with animals. She loved all creatures but held a particular soft spot for dogs – pretty much all breeds or mixes. Her ambition had once been to become a vet, but she had failed the tough entry exams to qualify for a university place. Instead, she’d settled quite happily on a veterinary nursing course.

  As part of this, she needed to spend some time gaining practical experience working with animals. To her joy – well, at least initial joy – she found work in the kennels of Appletree Farm, a few miles from her parents’ home in Chiddingly, East Sussex, where she still lived.

  At first it had seemed a dream job. A major part of the business for Mr and Mrs Jim, who owned the farm, was breeding puppies, and with the current demand for lockdown dogs, they had converted two large, concrete-walled outbuildings to house several different breeds of dogs and their litters. There were currently over eighty puppies – all popular breeds and cross-breeds – springer spaniels, cockapoos, golden doodles, Staffies and French bulldogs as well as several adult dogs.

  She’d become good friends with her co-worker in charge of the kennels, a fun and outgoing Ukrainian girl a couple of years older than her, Rosalind Esche, who had entered the UK before Brexit. They’d also become friendly with Darcy Jim who, despite her brutal stepfather and fairly cold mother, seemed genuinely kind, and to like them. None of the three young women currently had a boyfriend and Lyndsey and Rosalind had been experimenting – unsuccessfully so far – with internet dating. Darcy listened to their litany of train-crash after train-crash of disastrous dates, dispensing advice with the earnest enthusiasm of a magazine agony aunt.

  Over the past months they’d been working in the kennels, during which there was a fast turnover of puppies, with some mysteriously appearing overnight to replace others that had been sold. They had all been increasingly unhappy about the conditions the dogs were kept in. They were only permitted, by the deeply unpleasant Mr Jim, to change the straw in the kennels once a week, but worse was the rations of food. The puppies were all pitifully hungry. Mrs Jim was more amenable – but only to Darcy. She made Lyndsey and Rosalind nervous.

  It had got to the point where the girls sneaked in extra bags of food and treats they paid for themselves from their meagre wages. They never saw any visitors to the kennels. As far as they could work out, all sales of the puppies were done online.

  On this particular chilly day, the three of them were taking their mid-afternoon tea break outside one of the sheds, as usual, so that Rosalind could smoke a cigarette. None of them was aware that Terry Jim was on the other side of the thin corrugated-iron wall, fixing wiring that mice had chewed through, for the shed’s lights.

  ‘Hey,’ Lyndsey said. ‘Those five blue French bulldog puppies and the two adult ones that have just arrived – do either of you think there could be any connection to that story on the news today about the farmer murdered in Balcombe? Apparently he had French bulldog puppies stolen.’

  Darcy, who had long fair hair obscuring much of her face, shook her head. ‘No way, it’s got to be a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lyndsey said, sounding unconvinced. ‘He’s your dad, you’d know best.’

  ‘Stepfather,’ Darcy corrected her. ‘Look, I know he’s a total bastard and a bully. I hate how cruel he is to all the dogs here. But he hasn’t anything to do with that. He’s not a bloody murderer.’

  ‘You sure? I thought you were scared of him?’ Rosalind quizzed her.

  ‘I am, well, a bit, and you should be too,’ Darcy said a little anxiously.

  ‘I thought you said your mum knows the real reason he keeps pigs is because they eat everything. Like, everything!’ Rosalind added.

  Lyndsey frowned. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning anyone who pisses him off!’ Darcy added.

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘Sort of, I mean he’s a horrible man. I know he’s tortured people over in Sty 9 – the deep one – to punish them when they piss him off, but he doesn’t kill them. I’m certain he hasn’t anything to do with that news story. I’d have seen something, heard something.’

  ‘I’m not scared of him; I’m going to ask him outright. I’m sick of the condition these animals are kept in. I want to see how he reacts, if he squirms.’ Rosalind exaggerated the last word.

  ‘Shushhhhh. Be serious a minute, girl. I’m honestly thinking about tipping off the police about what’s going on here, tell them about the bulldogs. What do you both think?’ Lyndsey asked, her voice a little hushed.

  ‘I think you should go ahead,’ Rosalind said, crushing out the stub of her cigarette and quickly lighting another.

  ‘Yeah, who doesn’t want a bit of torture!’ Darcy said jokingly. ‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If I were you, I’d keep zipped. We can help the puppies in a better way. I could try to get Mum to let us clean them out and feed them more.’

  ‘Well, I won’t go to the police till after the weekend – if I do. Give us some time to see what’s really going on,’ Lyndsey said.

  On the other side of the wall, Terry Jim had stopped replacing the chewed wire and was listening intently with rising fury. He stepped away and dialled Dallas’s number on his phone.