Arnie Crown was a diminutive, wiry American of thirty-six. Due to his height he had been nicknamed Notmuch, as in ‘Not Much Cop’. It was a soubriquet he appeared to revel in. His wife, Vivienne, now a member of the enquiry team, was proving extremely effective as the analyst.
‘Mr Seward is a smart guy,’ Crown said. ‘No question he had absolutely no idea his identity had been taken. He was devastated that Suzy was dead. He certainly didn’t think she was remotely suicidal — he said she was a feisty lady who was rather enjoying her sleuthing, and she was hatching a plan to turn the tables on the scammers.’
‘That’s helpful, thanks, Arnie,’ Grace said. ‘Now, we have another significant development regarding her sister, Lena Welch. We have established from talking to relatives and friends of Suzy that they were close. Suzy was widowed, Lena Welch was a divorcee. The two ladies both joined online dating agencies — Digital Forensics have looked at email exchanges between them in which they compared notes on the replies from men they received. Where this gets particularly interesting is that in the weeks prior to their deaths, each woman had become suspicious about a man they were communicating with.’
‘The same man?’ Simon Snape queried. The Detective Sergeant, an intense and very keen officer in his early thirties, was a new addition to Roy’s team. With his elongated neck that left his shirt collar snagged on his Adam’s apple, and small head with eyes close together, he had the look of a reptile constantly poised to strike. An effect further enhanced by his sometimes hissy voice from the way he pronounced his ‘S’s.
‘No.’ Grace hesitated. ‘Actually, Simon, that’s a very good question. Certainly neither women thought or suspected that. But from what Digital Forensics have learned, and from what we’ve been told by Munich, each of them was in communication with someone who had gone a very long way to hide his — or even her — identity.’
He paused to turn the page, momentarily distracted by Norman Potting who was tapping his vaping device on his worktop. Then he continued.
‘On Monday, September 24th, Lena Welch plunged to her death from her sixth-floor apartment in Munich, landing on railings which impaled her. Moments after her fall, according to witnesses, a man ran up to her wielding a machete and hacked at her face with it, which accords with the subsequent forensic report in which the front part of her tongue was severed. A week later, Suzy Driver was found hanged in the bedroom of her home here in Hove. Although it was meant to look like suicide, in my opinion and supported by forensic evidence, she was murdered. Kevin has some details on this.’
Despite his confident figure, DC Hall looked a tad nervous addressing the team. ‘Thank you, guv. Well, two primary reasons for believing Suzy was murdered. The first as the boss says is the forensic evidence. She had a blow to the rear of her head — sufficient in the pathologist’s view to have rendered her unconscious prior to her being hanged. This was backed up by further forensic evidence — traces of her hair and blood found on the carpet of her bedroom. Secondly, we have new information from the Landeskriminalamt in Munich. A neighbour of Lena Welch reported seeing a man acting suspiciously outside her flat in Munich, sometime before she fell to her death. Her description of this man matches closely a report from one of Mrs Driver’s neighbours who saw a person of his description in a car near her house several times over the weekend she died. This is possibly the same man who stars in very blurry CCTV footage the LKA have obtained from a convenience store opposite Lena Welch’s apartment building.’
‘How blurry, Kevin?’ Grace asked.
‘The quality’s rubbish, I’m afraid.’
The team watched on the monitor, in poor, hazy colour, with constant flare-out from the street lighting, a man of African origin pacing up and down the street, past Lena Welch’s front door. He appeared to press the door panel and disappear inside. The image was too blurred to make out his face, but he was wearing bright-red shoes of some kind. After a gap of several minutes, he reappeared and walked out of frame.
Suddenly, a second African appeared, holding something, possibly a blade, that glinted in the light. After a brief gap, a dark-coloured car raced past at speed.
‘It gets better, guv. Here’s footage from a concealed camera in Lena’s flat.’
He hit a couple of buttons on his laptop and on the screen appeared an African man, blurry at first, and there was the sound of a scuffle, followed by a woman’s voice crying out, then stifled. Something, possibly two figures, moved past the camera. There was a loud thud. The woman was silent. They saw the African again, in better focus now, walking hurriedly around as if looking for something. Then he ran out of the room.
Hall stopped the recording.
‘Nice work, Kevin. Have Munich police said anything about getting this analysed?’
‘Only that they’re working on it, guv.’
‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘Last Tuesday, DI Branson and myself met with a PI, Jack Roberts, of Global Investigations, whose company has carved a niche in the romance fraud area. He told us that the biggest current player in this field is an outfit with links to Ghana, Nigeria, Munich and the Channel Isles. He believes there is a possible mastermind currently based in Jersey. I’ve made contact with a Detective Inspector Nick Paddenberg of the Jersey States Police Financial Crimes Unit. I understand from him that with a large number of elderly, wealthy residents, they’re experiencing, proportionately, just as big a problem in the field of romance fraud as we are. I’m tasking you with making contact with them to see what you can find out.’
‘I’ll get straight on it, sir,’ Camping replied.
Grace thanked him, then saw DS Alexander had raised a hand. ‘Yes, Jack?’
‘I have something that may be very relevant, sir. A neighbour of Mrs Driver told one of my Outside Enquiry Team officers this afternoon, DC Patel, that she too had noticed an unfamiliar car drive up and down the street several times over the Friday and Saturday of the previous week. The Saturday was the last time Suzy’s daughter in Australia spoke to her. There has been no phone or internet activity from Suzy since early Saturday afternoon, and no transactions on her credit or debit cards since then either.
‘At around 9 p.m. on the Saturday evening, this same neighbour was putting a lead on her puppy in the front garden of her house to take it across the road into the park, St Ann’s Well Gardens, when she heard someone running down the road — a jogger, she assumed. She was distracted by her puppy, which was playing up and not letting her get the lead on, but she glanced up and noticed the man was African-looking. A minute or so later she heard a vehicle start up and drive off at speed. She didn’t immediately connect this jogger to the two men she’d seen in the car during the previous two days, because she was focused on her dog at the time. It was only when DC Patel spoke to her that she started making the connection.’ Alexander glanced at his notes, then up again. ‘And she said something which I think now might be highly significant. She noticed that this jogger — runner — passing under a street lamp had bright-red trainers.’
43
Monday 8 October
‘Fatso!’ Ray Packham called out. ‘HUDSON! FATSO!’ he shouted, even louder, the wind instantly whipping his voice away as he dutifully traipsed across the hilly fields behind his Woodingdean home, on his evening constitutional walk with the dog.
The disobedient, overweight beagle had lumbered off, in one of his eternally futile chases after a rabbit. The thing was so plump it would struggle to catch a tortoise, Packham thought. Although he was only too well aware that until recently he would have struggled to catch a tortoise, too.