31

  Friday 26 March

  Gecko was well aware of the clocks changing this weekend, with twilight being one of his best hunting times. He was cruising slowly in the van now emblazoned with the sign LANDES INTERIORS.

  Still nervous after last night’s close encounter with the police in the Palm Court restaurant on the pier, he wore his beanie even lower over his forehead, his collar turned up, and dark glasses. His bosses were not happy with him for failing to deliver yesterday and he was now trying extra hard. But at least, he thought happily, Elvira had been delighted with her watch. Like, super delighted, despite the evening having been cut short. He would need to make up for that, he knew, but at least she seemed to believe what he’d told her about why they’d had to run out of the restaurant. His spiel about an old enemy of his having just walked in had sorted that out.

  Late afternoon and early evening were when a lot of people took their dogs out for a walk. Guilty office workers hurried home to get back and walk their mutts. Although many were working at home more often these days, they still took that time for walking them in the parks, throwing balls and bending down with their plastic bags to scoop up their poop. During the winter at that time, he was all but invisible. But now, with lighter evenings, it was just a little harder.

  He glanced, proudly, at the gold Rolex on his wrist: 5.25 p.m. Thanks to the overcast sky, it already felt like dusk, although sunset was still a good hour away. As he cruised slowly along Shirley Drive, past Hove Recreation Ground, he was looking over to his left, into the large park, at the people walking their dogs. He had a new, additional task today. An instruction to find a short-haired female dachshund puppy. The photograph of one was displayed on his iPhone screen. He was going to get it right this time.

  He watched a massive badly trained dog leaping up at its owner’s chest – nearly as tall as the man and almost knocking him over. Then, a short distance beyond, he saw a young girl, a goth-type, walking what looked like three unruly dachshund puppies on a lead. And struggling with them.

  At that moment a black cat ran across the road right in front of him.

  A sign!

  Some people thought a black cat crossing their path was bad luck, but his mum had always told him the opposite. He turned sharp left into Hove Park Road and immediately saw a parking space to his left. Oh yes, good luck indeed! His mum was right. She was always right.

  He pulled into the space and checked the picture of the dog again. A match for sure. He jumped out of the van, scrambled over a bush and sprinted across the wet grass towards the teenage girl in her studded black jacket, black hair, tight jeans and Doc Martens, trying to untwist the leads of her three dogs from around her legs.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Need some help?’

  ‘I’m just trying to help my nan out – these crazy things – I’m not really a dog person.’

  ‘How old are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Twelve weeks – this is their first time out – I— Stop it, you little bastard!’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘I used to have dachshunds, I know what they’re like – they can be crazy.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’

  ‘Are they male or female?’

  The leads were getting even more twisted around her legs.

  ‘Stop it, calm down! Max, Dufoss, Doris!’

  ‘Doris?’ he said.

  She pointed at the one attached to a pink lead. It was running crazily around her, winding the leash around her ankles.

  ‘I’ve got her!’ Gecko said, kneeling down and grabbing the dog by its pink collar.

  ‘Thanks. Why are you wearing sunglasses?’

  ‘Yeah, right, I see better with them.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Darren,’ he said, untwisting the pink leash, and walking the dog – Doris – around her twice. There were still the leashes of the other two dogs well twisted around her legs. Then, scooping Doris in his arms – the dog was heavier than he had expected – he sprinted away.

  ‘Hey!’ the girl yelled. ‘Hey, hey!’

  He turned and saw she had fallen flat on her face.

  Result! he thought, reaching the van. He clambered in, dumped Doris on the passenger seat, then looked across. The girl was struggling to her feet, totally tangled up in the leads of the other two dogs.

  What a result!

  A female dachshund, too young to have been spayed. Mr and Mrs Jim would be well pleased with him. He started the engine, checked his mirror and drove off. It was going to be a proper payday. Then he would go to Elvira and make it up to her for the crappy night yesterday.

  Thank you, black cat!

  32

  Friday 26 March

  Norman Potting could have taken retirement on his full pension some years earlier, but he had chosen to stay on and was now in his late fifties. There were plenty of senior colleagues who would have liked to have seen dinosaurs like him gone, but Roy Grace constantly fought his corner.

  Sure, Potting was old-fashioned, sometimes his comments were close to the line, but rarely offensive these days and he was a damned good detective. The team accepted him for what he was, and all were more than capable of slapping him down if needed. He was one of the finest detectives Grace had ever worked with, with decades of experience that the younger generation lacked, and he solidly believed the day Potting did hand in his warrant card would be a big loss to the job Sussex Police existed for – to catch criminals and keep the community safe.

  Not long back, after falling in love with one of his team members, Bella Moy, Potting had gone through a transformation, losing his old comb-over in favour of a more modern style and sharpening up his wardrobe. Ever since Bella’s tragic death, Grace had noticed the Detective Sergeant not paying so much attention to his appearance. But he was glad he’d not started smoking again, after he’d recently had a cancer of the larynx scare. Though he did sometimes see him take a sneaky puff on his vape.

  ‘Tell me?’ Grace asked, as Potting sat down in front of his desk.

  ‘I need some advice about a young lady, Roy,’ he said, a little sheepishly.

  Grace smiled sympathetically. Potting had been married four times, three had failed and the other was annulled. He would have married Bella, but she’d died in the line of duty. He would have liked nothing better than to hear that the DS had finally found a new soulmate.

  ‘The thing is,’ Potting said in his rural Devon burr, ‘I met this lady during chemo. We were both in the hospital together having our treatment. I’ve rather fallen for her.’ He shrugged and fell silent.

  ‘OK,’ Grace said, trying not to be distracted by the drone footage of fields and farm buildings on his screen, which he’d paused. ‘She feels the same about you?’

  ‘She does, Roy, but life’s a bitch, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sometimes – you’ve had more than your fair share of that.’

  Potting gave him a wan smile. ‘I really care about her, you see. No one will ever replace Bella, but I feel – you know – almost as strongly for Heather as I did for Bella.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Grace said. But he had the feeling there was something else to come.

  ‘Well, Roy, the thing is, after I came through the treatment with an all-clear, I was so elated that day that I invited her out to dinner – and it’s been going pretty well since.’ His eyes lit up. ‘I think I’m in love again.’

  Grace stared back at him. God, he was so fond of this old monster. ‘I’m very happy for you, Norman.’

  Potting shook his head. ‘The chemo seems to be working at the moment, but I don’t know what the future really holds for her.’

  ‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘So that’s good news the treatment is working, Norman. Focus on the positives.’

  ‘I know, Roy. I love her, I really love her.’

  ‘Tell me more about her – how old is she, has she been married before, does she have kids?’

  ‘She’s fifty-eight, two kids, one in Canada and the other in Australia. She’s high up in HR at a recruitment firm. Ex is an idiot she’s not seen for ten years.’

  ‘What does your heart tell you?’

  ‘She’s a keeper. Shit. Did you ever see that old film Love Story?’

  Grace shook his head and smiled. ‘I bet Glenn has, you know he loves a good romance.’

  ‘Saw it when I was a kid. Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. He falls in love with this girl and then she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Moved me to tears – now I feel I’m living it.’

  ‘But, Norman, she isn’t at that stage yet. I guess if it was me, and I truly loved her, I’d be hoping she makes a full recovery, like you have. In any sense, none of us know how much time we have, do we? I think about that every day myself with Bruno being taken from us so young. But if you really do love her, then make time with her count. I say go and get on with it!’

  Potting looked at his watch. ‘Thanks, chief. I know we’ve got the briefing in half an hour. I appreciate your advice. I really do.’

  Grace smiled and shook his head. ‘My first marriage wasn’t exactly textbook perfection, Norman. I read somewhere, once, you have to make choices in life, and live with the consequences not only of your actions, but of your inactions. I don’t know if that’s of any help.’

  Potting nodded thoughtfully.

  As he did so, an email pinged in on Grace’s computer. Glancing at it, he saw it was from Luke Stanstead. The CCTV footage he’d requested only a short while ago of the dog theft in Hove Park yesterday morning.

  Potting stood up. ‘Thanks, chief. It’s good to be able to talk this through with someone.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’ve been much help.’

  ‘You have,’ he replied. ‘Hugely.’

  ‘If you’d like to have a drink one day after work and talk more sometime?’

  ‘I would, I’d like that.’ Potting thanked him once more and headed for the door.

  As soon as the DS had walked out and closed the door behind him, Grace turned his focus back to work. He watched more of the drone video, but it wasn’t telling him much more than he already knew about the murder scene and environs. He stopped it and then played the footage Stanstead had just sent.

  And watched it with growing interest.

  33

  Friday 26 March

  According to Luke Stanstead, the owners of the house in Goldstone Crescent, opposite Hove Park, had recently had their almost brand-new Porsche Cayenne stolen from their driveway during the night. As a result they’d installed two outward-facing CCTV cameras, one directed down their driveway, the other, wider-angle, covering the road and the tree-lined border of the park beyond it.

  It was this wider-angle footage Roy Grace was looking at, but it was very blurred, as if the lens was misted. Parked across the road was a white Transit panel van with the name, which he could just make out, JASON PLUNKETT PUMPS AND DRAINS emblazoned along the side in orange and black. A short-looking man with a very pale face, in a beanie, was in the driver’s seat, the window partly open, but the image was too unclear to make out his features. Grace watched as he appeared to light a cigarette and toss what he presumed was a match out onto the road.

  Faintly, Grace heard a shout. It sounded like, ‘Zulu!’

  A moment later he heard it again, louder, more high-pitched.

  ‘ZULU!’

  The van driver ducked down, out of sight. As he did so, a double-decker bus drove past, momentarily blocking the view. When it had gone, Grace saw the van driver staring in the direction of the park with a pair of binoculars held to his face.

  More vehicles passed.

  Suddenly the van driver jumped out and ran around to the pavement, out of sight on the far side of the van.

  ‘ZULU!’ the cry came again, from somewhere close in the park. It was followed by, ‘Thank you, thank you so much!’

  Moments later the driver reappeared, holding a struggling black and white dog, with floppy ears, in his arms – a poodle type, Grace recognized from his limited but growing knowledge of dogs. He watched in horror as the man opened the driver’s door and threw the dog in, as if it was nothing more than a rugby ball, and jumped in after it, slamming his door.

  At that moment a woman in a red cagoule and wellington boots appeared, looking frantic. Sara Gurner, according to Stanstead. She ran to the front of the van as if to try to prevent it from driving off. ‘It’s my dog!’ she screamed. ‘I’m the owner!’

  The van reversed and then drove off at speed, almost running her over.

  Grace watched the distraught woman standing in the road, shouting and gesticulating at the van.

  Then a Lycra-clad cyclist swerved past her, shook a fist and shouted something.

  He halted the video. Sara Gurner and the kind stranger – not, he thought.

  He wound the footage back then zoomed in on the van driver’s face, but it was just a blur. He frowned. This person had clearly been on the lookout for something and had taken this dog, Zulu, but only to set him free a few hours later. Why?

  Sara Gurner had told him the dog had been neutered. Was that the reason? Had the driver been on the lookout for a stud dog he – or whoever he worked for – could breed from? And when he realized this one had been neutered, he’d dumped it?

  This was a whole new world of crime he knew so little about. He glanced at his watch – twenty-four minutes to the next briefing.

  He spent part of it taking a quick scan through dogs being offered for sale on websites, looking in particular at poodle cross-breeds. Curious, he also looked up the advert for the spaniel puppies he was going to see tomorrow for comparison. They did look adorable, he had to admit. Next he called up the intel on known organized crime gangs operating in the Sussex area and surrounding counties. If he was going to solve the murder of Tim Ruddle quickly, he needed to do a crash course in this whole new – and clearly highly lucrative – world of dog crime.

  A world that sickened him.

  34

  Friday 26 March

  ‘ZULU!’ the cry came. Followed by, ‘Thank you, thank you so much!’

  The video Grace had seen half an hour ago was playing again now on the monitor on the wall of the Major Crime Suite conference room, his whole team watching.

  ‘It’s my dog!’ the woman in the red cagoule yelled. ‘It’s my dog! I’m the owner!’

  They watched as the white van raced off, almost hitting the woman. Then a cyclist appeared, swerving past her and shaking his fist.

  Grace froze the video with his remote.

  ‘Looks like she thought the van driver was helping her stop her dog running off,’ Glenn Branson commented. ‘For a few moments.’

  Grace turned to Stanstead. ‘Luke, can you get Digital Forensics to see if they can enhance the video and maybe get a clearer image of this man? Perhaps enough to give to a super recognizer as I suggested to you earlier.’

  ‘Brighton CID are already on it, sir – the video came from them. They believe it could well be a current Person of Interest to them involved in dog theft – name of Marion Willingham.’

  ‘A female?’ Velvet Wilde quizzed.

  ‘No, male.’ Stanstead spelled it. ‘It can be a male or female name. M-a-r-i-o-n.’

  ‘John Wayne!’ Branson announced. ‘That was his real name. Marion Morrison!’ Narrowing his eyes, he said in a deep cod American drawl, ‘Talk low, talk slow and don’t say too much.’

  Jack Alexander asked, ‘Wasn’t he the cowboy?’

  Branson gave him a bemused look. ‘The cowboy? He was The Duke!’

  The young DS shook his head.

  ‘He died in 1979. You guys need to read up on your movie history. This guy was a legend!’

  ‘Does the name Marion Willingham ring a bell with anyone?’ Grace asked.

  Several of the team shook their heads.

  Grace looked at the analyst. ‘What intel do we have on this charmer?’

  ‘He’s thirty-two,’ Luke said. ‘Grew up in a single-parent family in Moulsecoomb; his mother was never on our radar – worked, still works, in a nail salon. He’s distinctive-looking – pale skin, big bulging wide-set eyes. He was nicked a couple of times in his early teens on suspicion of drug dealing but never convicted. Got six months for joyriding when he was eighteen. Then eighteen months for supplying cannabis when he was twenty-three. His nickname is Gecko.’

  Grace looked puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of his looks, boss. Also he was linked to Clifford Keele for several years.’

  Clifford Keele was a name well known to the police. The third generation of a venerable Brighton crime family, with tentacles in protection racketeering, prostitution, cigarette smuggling, and in more recent times drug dealing, before moving to the countryside on his release from prison. Grace remembered Keele only too well. Ten years back, when he had been the Duty Inspector at John Street, Keele had ordered the petrol bombing of a Turkish kebab house, when the proprietor had defaulted on his protection payments. Keele had received a sentence of fifteen years, of which he’d served ten.

  ‘Is Gecko linked to anyone now?’ Grace asked.

  ‘We haven’t linked him yet,’ Luke said.

  ‘Homegrown scum,’ Potting added.

  ‘Jack,’ Grace turned to DS Alexander. ‘Anything from the house-to-house?’

  ‘No, boss. We brought the farmhand in for a cognitive witness interview to see if he could remember more. Mr Denning gave us a slightly clearer description of two of the offenders in terms of height and build, and their accents – both local-sounding – but not much else that’s of any help at this stage.’

  ‘That could be useful,’ Grace said. ‘It tallies with the report from the ANPR cameras that the vehicles didn’t leave the Sussex area. It’s further indication we could be looking at a local crime family.’

  ‘I’ve been on to Chief Inspector Steve Biglands,’ Alexander said. ‘He’s sent me a list of all known organized crime gangs operating within this area.’

  ‘Good luck with those,’ Potting said.

  ‘I thought you’d like to come with me when I visit them, Norman,’ Alexander said with a grin.