‘I’m sorry to wake you.’

  ‘No problem. Good to hear from you. How – how are you, sir?’

  ‘You attended a fatal yesterday evening?’

  ‘The one near Hailsham? Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything about it? It may be relevant to a murder investigation I’m running.’

  Sounding more awake, Trundle said, ‘It was a DODI – at least that’s what it seemed at first.’

  A DODI, Grace knew, was cynical traffic police language for a single vehicle accident. Dead One Done It.

  ‘At first?’ Grace pressed.

  ‘A wet road, water pooling, a nasty bend, a young girl possibly an inexperienced driver – a textbook accident. We had a fatal there just four weeks ago in similar conditions. But . . .’ he hesitated.

  ‘But?’

  ‘The Collision Investigation Team found dents on the rear of the car – a Nissan Leaf. They might have been historic, but they reckoned they were evidence of a rear-end shunt. And there were skid marks on the road that they weren’t happy with.’

  ‘Not happy in what way?’

  ‘It’s early doors, sir, but they didn’t feel the marks on the road were consistent with the driver of the Leaf losing control on the bend. They’ll be examining the car today and they’ve closed the road to study the skid markings in daylight.’

  ‘This is really helpful,’ Grace said. ‘Do you know the victim’s name?’

  ‘I do. I had to break the news to her parents at two o’clock this morning. One of my least favourite tasks.’

  ‘I can imagine. Not a nice part of the job.’

  ‘Yes, just hope and pray you never have a copper in a white cap turn up on your doorstep in the middle of the night, because it’s never going to be good news. Her name is Lyndsey Cheetham.’

  Grace wrote down the name and address. ‘Can you describe her and what she was wearing?’

  ‘She was English rose-looking, twenty-one, brown hair in a ponytail, wearing a purple jacket and jeans.’

  ‘Thanks, that’s helpful. I’ll let you go back to sleep.’

  ‘Kind of you to say that, sir. But I’ve been awake all night thinking about her. Thinking that might have been my daughter. That one day it could be.’

  77

  Tuesday 30 March

  ‘No cure?’ Chris Fairfax said, looking straight back at Dr Shah.

  The registrar looked at them both with genuine sadness in his eyes.

  ‘I want to speak to the consultant,’ Katy demanded. ‘And, as I said, why didn’t our doctor suggest it when she first saw our daughter?’ she asked desperately.

  ‘Darling,’ Chris said, trying to calm her. ‘Dr Shah has already explained – because no one knew.’

  Katy heard footsteps behind her and ignored them. ‘Why didn’t anyone know?’

  ‘Because as Dr Shah says, England has been rabies-free for so long. It’s been eliminated.’

  ‘Well obviously it bloody well hasn’t been, has it?’ She rounded on the registrar. ‘All you medics have just sodding assumed it, right? That’s some crazy assumption.’ Tears were rolling down her face. ‘Isn’t that just irresponsible of all of you?’

  Shah shot an anxious glance over her shoulder, as a voice behind her, calm but with a Welsh accent laced with thinly veiled disdain, said, ‘Mrs Fairfax, the people who are irresponsible are the ones illegally importing unvaccinated dogs into this country, and, I’m afraid, people like you and your husband who unintentionally support their criminal activity by buying these dogs and supporting this illegal trade.’

  Chris and Katy spun round to face the diminutive figure of the consultant, George Pallant, standing erect in a chalk-striped suit, who was positively glaring at them. ‘What?’ Katy said. ‘This is our fault?’

  Pallant stared up at both of them, his face stern beneath his neat, slicked-back hair. ‘Criminals only prosper when the public buy what they have to offer.’

  His tone was so imperious that for an instant both Chris and Katy were silenced. They stood, staring back at him as if in some kind of a Mexican stand-off. After a few moments, Pallant continued, his tone softer, more conciliatory and understanding. ‘I appreciate the enormity of what you have both been told, but losing tempers is not going to help your daughter.’

  Chris, his voice tight with anxiety and an icy vortex of terror swirling in his guts, said, almost pleading, ‘Dr Pallant – Dr Shah said that only twenty or so people in the world are known to have survived rabies. Can we not do any research on these survivors – on the treatment they were given?’

  ‘Dr Shah is on that now,’ the consultant said. ‘We are short of staff but I’ve asked a couple of retired doctors to come and locum while he works on doing whatever he can to save your little girl.’ He looked at Shah, who nodded. ‘There is one other thing, Mr and Mrs Fairfax,’ Pallant said, suddenly formal and stiff again now. ‘Rabies is a reportable disease.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Chris asked, although he had a pretty good idea.

  ‘It will be this hospital’s duty to report that we have a possible rabies case to Public Health England.’

  ‘And the implications are – are what, exactly?’ Katy questioned, her voice trembling.’

  ‘Well, that will be for them to decide,’ Pallant replied.

  ‘Decide?’ Chris asked. ‘Decide what?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. Those are the regulations, that’s all I can tell you at this stage.’

  Katy, calmer, turned to the registrar. ‘I’m sorry’ – she shrugged – ‘for shouting at you. I-I-I’m just desperate with worry – Chris and I both are.’

  He nodded with sympathy. ‘I have a young daughter. I know how scared I get for her whenever she’s unwell. Just be assured she is in the best place and we’ll be doing everything we can for her. You both look utterly exhausted – I suggest you go home, have a little rest, freshen up and come back later in the day, and we’ll see if we have any more news then.’

  ‘Is there anything else we can do?’ Chris asked. ‘Anything else at all?’

  Shah looked at each of them in turn, his gentle brown eyes bloodshot, and gave them a smile. ‘Pray.’

  78

  Tuesday 30 March

  Roy Grace knew just what the Roads Policing Officer Richard Trundle had meant when he’d said, a short while earlier, that sometimes the job made you think about your own circumstances and how it could have been one of your loved ones. Delivering a death message was a part of the job that many officers hated the most.

  He could vouch for that from when he’d started in the force as a uniform beat copper. He’d been sent to deliver such messages on three different occasions and could still remember them too clearly. His first was when a young male student at Sussex University had hung himself in his lodgings. His second was a twenty-seven-year-old young woman who had died of a drugs overdose. And the third when an eighteen-year-old girl had gone under the wheels of a lorry on her bicycle.

  On each occasion the reaction had been different. One mother had collapsed on the floor. Another had attacked him, pummelling him with her fists. And the father of the girl who’d been killed on her bike simply stood there with a blank smile, as if Grace had delivered the news that the day to put the bins out had changed.

  He’d decided to send Polly Sweeney and Emma-Jane Boutwood to interview Lyndsey Cheetham’s parents, thinking they were the two members of his team who might come across as the most empathetic and elicit the best information. They were also both trained as Family Liaison Officers.

  He explained the reason for their absence to the rest of his assembled team at the start of the 9 a.m. briefing meeting on Operation Brush, then pointed at the video screen on which were images of an older-model Range Rover and a Ford Ranger pickup truck.

  ‘We now believe, thanks to the work of the Collision Investigation Unit, that the offenders who we suspect murdered Tim Ruddle, in the process of stealing the dogs from Old Homestead Farm, used two vehicles similar to these. We don’t know the actual registration plates of either vehicle, but it is likely they were on the two cloned plates picked up on the ANPR cameras.’ He paused and saw all his team nod in concurrence.

  He held up several pages of printout. ‘I have a report here of the ANPR records of all matching vehicles in the East and West Sussex area, as well as our three neighbouring counties. Just two vehicles, a Ford Ranger and a Range Rover, stand out as both on cloned plates, both heading towards the Ruddles’ farm, the Old Homestead, in the early hours of Thursday, March 25th, and later heading away from it. After being clocked by a camera four miles outside of Hailsham, in East Sussex, neither vehicle was picked up again. Which means they ended their journey somewhere within this rural area. I believe these are our suspect vehicles.’

  He stood up and walked over to a fifth whiteboard, alongside the association charts, which had been brought in, on which there was a section of a large-scale map encircled in red. ‘Norman and Velvet are in the process of visiting all farms in this target area where we have intel of previous criminal activity.’ He looked at them both and they nodded in confirmation.

  Grace moved on, pressing his clicker. On the screen now appeared the low-res CCTV footage of the man who had stolen the dog in Hove Park last Thursday.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ Potting said. ‘It’s our friend the gecko!’

  Grace found himself smiling. ‘This handsome fellow appears to be in the business of stealing dogs in the Brighton and Hove area. Including Humphrey, the dog Cleo and I own, which he tried to ransom back to us. Whether out of the kindness of his heart, or sheer dim-wittedness, he has allowed Cleo to capture his phone number.’

  ‘Must be the kindness of his heart, chief,’ Potting interrupted. ‘With a face like that you wouldn’t even get on radio, would you?’

  Suppressing another grin, Grace continued. ‘We are now onto plotting its movements, but it might be a burner. It is my hypothesis, from all the reports of dogs that have been stolen in the city and environs during the past four weeks, and the descriptions of the offender, that this fellow with the moniker Gecko may be working for an organized crime gang – and perhaps, on occasions, as we suspect he did with our dog, creaming off a few quid for himself.’

  ‘Thought it was only the cat that got the cream, boss,’ Jack Alexander quipped and met a half-smile from Grace.

  ‘He is also linked to the theft of two watches from a jeweller in East Street Brighton last Thursday – one a high-value Rolex, the other, in contrast, an inexpensive talking watch. The kind used by blind or partially sighted people.’ Grace turned to DS Jo Dillon, the office manager, a serious, studious woman who, in another life, could have been a brilliant librarian. ‘Jo, you have some updated intel on this Gecko character that a lot of this team won’t have heard yet.’

  ‘I do, boss. I was contacted late yesterday by DS Matt Nixson from Brighton who was at the Albion match on Saturday, doing routine observation of people in the crowd for known villains.’

  ‘Hope he didn’t have to drown his sorrows after the result,’ Potting commented.

  ‘Fortunately not, Norman,’ she replied, unsmiling, and asked Grace to pass her the clicker. ‘There was an over-excited character in the family stand whom Adrian Morris noticed – he had to send a steward over twice, to ask him to calm down and stop swearing. As you know, the CCTV coverage in the Amex stadium is such that they can zoom in on any individual.’

  ‘They boast the quality’s so good they can tell time on anyone’s watch in the whole stadium,’ Potting said.

  ‘Quite right, Norman,’ Dillon said, almost condescendingly, before continuing. ‘When they focused on this individual, DS Nixson radioed the Football Liaison Officer, PC Balkham, to keep an eye on him, recognizing him as a potential POI to Brighton Police in relation to dog crime. But it seems this gentleman and the lady he was with took flight. I’ve a video of them heading out of the stadium and to the railway platform.’

  On the monitor there appeared a series of images of a short, stubby man in his late thirties, in a blue and white Seagulls beanie, puffer and jeans, hurrying across the stadium concourse. He was accompanied by a plain-looking woman, similarly dressed with a Seagulls scarf around her neck, and clutching a white stick. The final image of them before she paused the tape was of the two of them on the platform of Falmer station.

  ‘They’re on the southbound platform,’ Dillon said.

  ‘Next stop would be Brighton,’ Jack Alexander said. ‘Then they either left the station or changed trains, right?’

  ‘They changed trains, Jack,’ Dillon replied. ‘But I only got as far as checking the CCTV at Preston Park – which is where they got off.’

  ‘Did you get on the Preston Park CCTV what they did next?’ Grace asked.

  ‘They left the station, sir. I checked with the local taxi company and they didn’t pick up anyone of that description.’

  ‘Could have got an Uber,’ Potting said.

  ‘Possibly,’ Jack Alexander murmured. ‘Or that’s where they’d parked their vehicle. Or perhaps that’s the area where they live?’

  ‘The white stick,’ Grace said suddenly. ‘The way he’s holding her arm in all the footage indicates he’s guiding her. Wind the tape back, Jo. Go back to the first image of him at the Amex, the one with him jumping up in the air and waving his arms.’

  The tape reversed, fast, overshot, then returned to the image Roy Grace had requested. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Zoom in on his right hand. Show me his wrist – his watch.’

  Moments later an image of a wristwatch, in slightly soft focus now, almost filled the screen. ‘Anyone here an expert on watches?’ Grace asked.

  ‘That looks like a Rolex, sir,’ Jack Alexander said. ‘The crown above the name. I know because I really wanted one – until I found out how much they cost! Think I’m going to have to wait until I collect my pension before I can afford one.’

  ‘You could always buy a fake,’ Potting said. ‘Nicked a bloke about ten years ago who had two thousand of ’em.’

  ‘Kept a few did you, Norman? Give me a good price, will you?’

  ‘We had a steamroller drive over them,’ Potting harrumphed. ‘Although I have to admit it was a bit of a shame, some of them looked damned good.’

  Ignoring the chatter, and focused on the image on the screen, Grace said, ‘Jack, you’re one hundred per cent sure that’s a Rolex?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘So, confirming what we know and what we’ve just heard, we have a robbery at a jeweller in East Street last Thursday, in which a Rolex watch is stolen along with a talking watch for the blind. I think we are all now up to speed with the connection, right?’

  79

  Tuesday 30 March

  Chris Fairfax left the hospital to go back home, shower, and spend some time with Moose. He made a phone call to their assistant, Khalid, to reschedule both his and Katy’s clients for the next week at the least. While finishing the phone call he saw the Maliks at the window, waving to get his attention. He invited them in to update them on the news from the hospital. The chatter made him more and more weary. Noticing his tiredness, they left, saying to contact them at any time to take on puppy care duties. That it was the least they could do to help.

  He managed to pull himself together in order to spend a little time trawling more of the internet for everything he could find out about rabies.

  As he sat down at his laptop his phone rang, with number withheld displayed on the screen. ‘Chris Fairfax,’ he answered and immediately heard a chirpy voice he recognized as the private detective, Ken Grundy.

  ‘All right, Chris, how’s it going?’

  ‘I’ve been better.’

  ‘Just tried calling your missus but she’s not picking up.’

  ‘Do you have news, Ken?’

  ‘I think I may have. Your John Peat seems like a pretty busy character. I’ve had my team on to him, and it seems that whoever he really is, he goes under a number of aliases, including so far Tom Hartley, Jonathan Jones and Michael Kendrick, advertising puppies for sale pretty widely across numerous sites. We’ve not yet been able to establish his true identity, but we’ve found a link to an organized crime gang headed by a very unsavoury character called Terry Jim, with past form for theft, threatening behaviour and ABH. He now owns a large rural property near Hailsham in East Sussex, called Appletree Farm. It looks possible this elusive Peat-Hartley-Jones-Kendrick character is fronting for Jim – selling his puppies for him.’

  ‘Do you have the address?’

  ‘I do.’ He gave it to Chris, who entered it on his phone. Then he added, ‘But I’d advise against paying him a visit on your own.’

  ‘I’m a big boy, Ken.’

  ‘I’m bigger than you and uglier, mate. If you want to go and see him, I’ll come with you and bring a few even bigger and uglier blokes as a posse. But I can’t get to you for three days because of a job we’re all on.’

  Chris thanked him, saying he would let him know, then ended the call. Immediately, he entered the address the PI had given him for Appletree Farm into his phone. It showed a journey time of 47 minutes. Moments later, his phone rang. It was Katy and she sounded completely exhausted.

  ‘Hi, darling, what news? How is she?’ he asked.

  ‘They keep telling me she’s stable,’ she replied.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Well that’s good.’

  ‘Is it?’

  He felt the fear in his voice. The fear for his daughter that coiled cold and relentlessly through him. ‘Darling, listen. I may have tracked down where Moose actually came from. I’m going to drive over there now and see what I can find out. You need to come home and get some rest, a shower, freshen up. If Bluebell is stable, then there’s nothing you can do by exhausting yourself. Come home. I’ll go and talk to the breeder and see what I can find out about the dog that bit Bluebell, then go straight to the hospital and stay there until you’ve had a rest.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave her alone for long,’ Katy said adamantly. ‘I’ll come home quickly while she’s sleeping, see you back at the hospital later.’