He wondered for a moment whether to pull into the customer car park and have a recce inside the shop. Perhaps buy something. But he’d already seen all he wanted and decided there wasn’t any point in showing his face. That was just an unnecessary risk.
Besides, he didn’t do smoked fish.
51
The week proceeded without any significant progress being made by Roy Grace’s team. This was despite the DNA from the flesh found under Preece’s fingernails producing a suspect within Ford Prison – a giant of a man called Lee Rogan. Rogan was serving out the final months of a sentence for armed robbery and grievous bodily harm, prior to being released on licence.
Rogan had been arrested on suspicion of murdering Warren Tulley but was claiming in his defence that they’d had a fight over money earlier the same evening Tulley had died. So far the internal investigation had not unearthed any calls made by Rogan using his PIN code, or any mobile phone concealed in his cell. If he had been intending to claim the reward, they had no evidence of it as yet. But with the number of illegal mobile phones that were inside Ford, it was more than possible he had borrowed – or rented – one off another prisoner. Which would be almost impossible to establish. The West Area Major Crime Branch Team were keeping Grace informed of progress.
Thanks to her sharp Legal Aid solicitor, a man called Leighton Lloyd, with whom Grace had had many run-ins previously, Evie Preece had gone no comment and had been released on police bail after eighteen hours. Grace had put surveillance on her house, in case her brother returned. It was unlikely, he knew, but at the same time, Preece was stupid enough to do that.
He’d had a conversation with a helpful law enforcement officer in New York, Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, of the Special Investigations Unit of the Office of the District Attorney, who had given him detailed background on the dead boy’s parents, but Lanigan had no specific intelligence on the current situation, other than to tell him of Fernanda Revere’s fury when he had broken the news of her son’s death to her – which had been confirmed by her actions when she was over in the UK.
Grace always knew it was a bad sign when the reporter from the Argus stopped phoning him and he had not heard from Spinella for several days now. He decided to call a press conference for the following day, Friday, his hope being to spark some memories in the public, followed by a reconstruction at the collision scene. Apart from other considerations, he needed to show the Revere family that everything possible was being done to find the driver so callously involved in their son’s fatal accident.
At 11 a.m. the conference room at Sussex House was crammed. The Mafia connection and the $100,000 reward had generated massive media attention – far more even than Roy Grace had anticipated. He appealed to members of the public who might have been in the vicinity of Portland Road on the morning of Wednesday 21 April to cast their minds back and see if they remembered a white Ford Transit van and to attend the reconstruction, which would be held the following day.
Then he appealed specifically to the residents of Southwick, and Manor Hall Road in particular, asking if anyone remembered the van or seeing Ewan Preece – at this point he showed a series of police and prison photographs of the man. Although it stuck in his craw to continue to deal with Spinella, the little shit was now at least being cooperative.
Heading back along the corridors towards his office immediately after the press conference, Grace checked his diary on his Black-Berry. There was an exhibits meeting scheduled for 2 p.m., which he needed to attend.
Glenn Branson caught up with him, saying, ‘You know, for an old-timer, you do pretty good at these conferences.’
‘Yep, well, that’s something you’re going to have to learn. We need the press. Love them or loathe them. How do you feel about taking one on your own?’
Branson looked at him. ‘Why are you asking?’
‘I was thinking I might let you handle the next one.’
‘Shit.’
‘That’s what I say every time, before I start. Another thing, I need you to take this evening’s briefing. You OK with that?’
‘Yeah, fine. I don’t have a life, remember?’
‘What’s the latest?’
‘According to Ari’s lawyer, I was bullying and aggressive and made unreasonable sexual demands on her.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah, apparently I asked her to sit on me. Goes against her religious principles of the missionary position only.’
‘Religious principles?’ Grace said.
‘In some states in the US it’s still illegal to do it any other way than the missionary position. She’s now going religious fundamentalist on me. I’m a deviant in God’s eyes apparently.’
‘Doesn’t that make Him a voyeur?’
At that moment Grace’s mobile phone rang. Nodding apologetically at Glenn, he answered it.
It was Crime Scene Manager, Tracy Stocker.
‘Roy,’ she said. ‘I’m at Shoreham Harbour. You’d better come down here. I think we might have found Preece.’
52
Grace let Glenn Branson drive. Ever since gaining his green Response and Pursuit driving ticket, Branson was keen to show his friend his prowess. And every time he allowed Branson to take the wheel, Roy Grace quickly regretted it.
They headed down the sweeping dip in the A27, passing the slip road off to the A23 and up the far side, the speedometer needle the wrong side of the 120mph mark, with Glenn, in Grace’s view, having a totally misplaced confidence in the blue flashing lights and wailing siren. It didn’t take a normal, sane police officer many days of response driving to realize that most members of the public on the road were deaf, blind or stupid, and frequently a combination of all three.
Grace pressed his feet hard against the floor, willing his friend to slow down as they raced past a line of cars, any one of which could have pulled out and sent them hurtling into the central barrier and certain oblivion. It was more by sheer good luck than anything he would want to attribute to driving skill that they finally ended up on the approach road to Shoreham Port, passing Hove Lagoon – a short distance from Grace’s home – on their left, with their lives, if not his nerves, still intact.
‘What do you think of my driving, old-timer? Getting better, yeah? Think I’ve nailed that four-wheel-drift thing now!’
Grace was not sure where his vocal cords were. It felt like he had left them several miles back.
‘I think you need to be more aware about what other road users might do,’ he replied diplomatically. ‘You need to work on that.’
They drove straight over a mini-roundabout, narrowly missing a Nissan Micra being driven by a man in a pork-pie hat, and entered an industrial area. There was a tall, brick-walled warehouse to their right, double yellow lines and a blue corrugated metal warehouse to their left. They passed a gap between two buildings, through which Grace caught a glimpse of the choppy water of Aldrington Basin, the extreme eastern end of the Shoreham Port canal. They passed a van marked D & H Electrical Installations and saw ahead of them a sign above a building advertising pet foods. Then, immediately in front of them was a marked police car, its lights flashing in stationary mode.
As they approached, they saw several parked vehicles, including the Crime Scene Manager’s, and a second marked car, turned sideways, between two buildings. It was blocking the entrance to an open gate in the middle of a chain-link fence. Beyond was the quay. A line of crime scene tape ran between the walls of the two buildings and a PCSO scene guard stood in front of it.
They climbed out of the car into the blustery, damp wind, walked up to her and gave their names.
‘Need you both to suit up, please, sirs,’ she said to Grace, then nodded respectfully at Branson. ‘CSM’s request.’