In an elevated position, directly behind the goal posts, the room had a commanding view of the brightly lit pitch and the terraces. The game was in progess and a quick look at the scoreboard told Grace the score, at the moment, was nil-nil.
Over twenty thousand of the twenty-seven thousand fans here today were season-ticket holders and there had been a lot of careful strategizing to minimize trouble when the seating areas had been allocated. One whole section of the East Stand was for families. Next to them were the fans known to be milder mannered. The rowdiest had been placed at the North Stand, close to the observation room. Visiting fans were grouped in an area on the South Stand.
The CCTV controllers behind a bank of monitors in this room could zoom any of the stadium’s eighty-seven cameras in on a troublemaker so tightly they could read the time on his or her watch.
Balkham introduced Roy Grace to Chris Baker, the Safety Officer, smartly dressed in a grey suit. ‘You’re looking for someone in the crowd – Lucas Daly?’
‘That’s right,’ Grace said.
‘I’ve already checked out our list of season-ticket holders and he’s not one of them. You don’t know who he might have come with?’
‘No. I tried to get hold of him earlier and his wife said he was coming here.’
Baker led him over to the bank of monitors and sat Grace down next to an operator.
Although monitoring potential hooliganism was the primary object of the cameras, they had a secondary function for the CID, which was to observe Persons of Interest to the police. In particular, to watch where local villains were seated, and who they were with. It was a valuable source of intelligence.
With the assistance of the operator, steadily scanning the 27,000-strong crowd, it took Grace just under fifteen minutes to spot Lucas Daly, on the twelfth row of the West Stand. He was wearing a leather aviator’s jacket with a fleece collar, a roll-neck sweater and jeans, and a blue and white Seagulls scarf draped around his shoulders. Grace recognized him from the photographs in the living room of his home when he had gone to talk to his wife, Sarah Courteney. He also recognized the men seated either side of him. One, Ricky Chateham, was a local wheeler-dealer, in the vending-machine trade as a day job, but a known handler of high-end stolen goods, whom the police had been watching for some time; he was also suspected of being behind the supply of drugs into several clubs around Sussex and its neighbouring counties, but so far there had never been enough evidence to nail him. The Albion records showed he was the season-ticket holder for the three seats they occupied. The other man was a criminal solicitor favoured by many of the city’s villains called Leighton Lloyd. Handy, Grace thought, cynically. Daly might well be needing him sometime soon.
It was a lacklustre game, enlivened by a couple of early yellow cards, and then some minutes later by a tantrum thrown by the team manager, Gus Poyet, after a player was sent off in a highly disputed decision by the referee.
The crowd roared and broke into their regular angry chant against the ref. The referee’s a wanker!
But Roy Grace wasn’t following the game. He was glued to Lucas Daly’s every movement. Daly wasn’t following the game, either. He was engaged in what looked like very intense discussions with the two men. Grace dearly wished he had a lip-reader with him at this moment.
Ten minutes before the final whistle he left the observation room and made his way along past the exits to the West Stand, then waited. All the supporters would have to pass him, whether heading towards the car parks, the buses or the train station.
As they poured out, his target, flanked by Chateham and the solicitor, stopped less than ten yards from him to light a cigarette. Grace stepped forward, holding up his warrant card. ‘Lucas Daly? Detective Superintendent Grace. I’m the Senior Investigating Officers on your aunt’s murder. Wonder if I could have a quick word?’
Ricky Chateham gave Grace an uneasy glance of recognition and strode on. The solicitor stood his ground, giving Daly an inquisitive glance.
‘See you in the car park, Leighton,’ Daly said, dismissing him. Then he looked levelly at Grace, showing no surprise or any other emotion. ‘Yes?’
Grace put Lucas Daly’s age at around late-forties. He studied his face for any signs of his father in it, but saw none. Unlike his father, whose aged face was etched with character, Lucas Daly had blandly thuggish good looks, with an unreadable expression, and exuded all the personality of an unplugged fridge.
‘How was your golf this weekend?’
Daly frowned, then took a moment to reply. ‘It was all right.’
‘Nice golf courses around Marbella?’
‘Does my golf have something to do with my aunt, Detective – er – sorry – didn’t get your name?’
‘Grace.’ Then in answer to the question he said, ‘Yes, perhaps it does.’ He noticed the man’s discomfort, and his eyes all over the place. ‘You were in Marbella this past weekend?’
‘What of it?’
‘On a golfing holiday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who did you go with?’
‘On my own – went to meet up with some friends who live out there.’
‘Expats?’
‘What of it?’
‘You didn’t actually go alone, did you?’
Daly stared at him, looking uneasy, his eyes all over the place. ‘What are you saying?’
‘You travelled with a gentleman called Augustine Krasniki – you bought return tickets for both of you on easyJet.’
‘Oh yeah, right – him.’ His eyes continued moving around wildly. ‘He’s my assistant, you know.’
‘Caddies for you, does he?’
‘Yeah, exactly.’
‘Good golfer, are you?’
‘Average.’
‘What’s your handicap?’
As Daly dragged on his cigarette, Grace watched the man’s eyes.
‘Twelve.’
Roy Grace had had a go at taking up golf some years back, but had given up after a few months of Sandy complaining about him being away so much during his precious hours of free time. He knew that a twelve handicap was impressive; you didn’t get that unless you played regularly. And if you played regularly, every now and then you would win a trophy. Which you would put on display. ‘Where do you play locally?’
‘Haywards Heath, mostly. I’m sorry, what does this have to do with my aunt – my late aunt?’
‘Do the names Anthony Macario and Kenneth Barnes mean anything to you, Mr Daly?’
Daly squinted at him, as if a stream of smoke had gone into his eyes. ‘No, never heard of them.’
Grace nodded. ‘So it wasn’t you or your father who had anything to do with them ending up in the harbour at Puerto Banus, then?’
For a moment Grace really thought, from Daly’s ferocious expression, that he was going to be punched in the face; he braced himself to duck. But the punch never came. Instead, Lucas Daly pointed an arm in the direction that the crowd was taking. ‘Never heard of them. Okay if I go now? I want to beat this mob out of the car park.’
‘You can go, but I want you to know something. No one’s above the law, Mr Daly. Okay? I’m very sorry about your aunt. What happened to her should not happen to any human being, ever. But you need to know I don’t allow vigilantes.’
Daly dragged on his cigarette again. ‘What exactly are you insinuating, Detective Grates?’
‘Grace,’ he corrected. ‘I’m insinuating nothing. But I’m not convinced you went to Marbella to play golf and I don’t allow people to take the law into their own hands.’
‘My father and I are law-abiding people,’ he said.
‘Good.’
‘So can I ask, how are you doing in finding out who killed my aunt, and getting her property back? In particular the watch – it means a great deal to my dad.’
‘We’re working on it,’ Roy Grace said.
‘Yeah, well, my dad and I are working on it too. Just in case you don’t deliver – nothing personal. We’ll see who gets the watch back first, Detective Grace. The longer it’s gone, the less chance any of us have of getting it back. True?’