Just as she smiled as she removed the spade — the one she’d bought at a garden centre a while back — from the thick gorse bush where she’d concealed it. Then she began to scrape out the soil of the shallow grave she had dug in the early hours of Friday morning. Next, she unwrapped the cling film from around the bloodstained kitchen knife, put the wrapping carefully into the bag and dropped the knife into the soil.
Forty minutes later, when she had finished interring the clothes she had brought and covering them sparsely with earth, ensuring some were showing on the surface, scratching the ground to make it look like it had been disturbed by an animal, she returned to her car, placed the spade and the bag — the sole contents of which was now the cellophane in which the knife had been wrapped — in the boot and climbed into the driver’s seat.
Before driving off, she keyed a text and sent it.
ETA 25 mins XXXXXX
Moments after starting the engine, a reply pinged back.
Make it 24 mins, I can’t wait that long XXXXXXXX
79
Moments after Gummy announced that the subject was on the move, Mark Taylor and the team members in the room with him were watching on the live feed. The Fiesta hire car, followed by the old red van that had let it out, and a further stream of cars, headed north up Nevill Road and vanished from view. One car, three back, was a dull grey Nissan Micra — call sign Alpha One. A moment later the voice of the driver, Kim Howe, came over the radio.
‘Alpha Seven, I have eyeball on subject.’
With all the team listening, Taylor replied, ‘Alpha One, stay with him for as long as you can.’
‘Stay with him, Alpha Seven, yes, yes,’ she replied.
The image on the monitor switched to a road map, with Alpha One, now an avatar, a grey car-shaped symbol, moving steadily along the road around a long curve. She was heading towards the junction with King George VI Avenue. Two further vehicle avatars, one green, one blue, were spaced out behind her.
‘Subject waiting at the junction, indicating right,’ Howe said.
‘Alpha One, you have Alpha Four and Alpha Eight trailing you. If you end up directly behind subject, let one overtake you. Copy?’
‘Alpha Seven, yes, yes.’
They watched the symbol now move north, heading uphill towards the roundabout at the top which would give four options — onto the A27 in either direction, north towards Devil’s Dyke, or south-east towards the city centre.
‘It’s the second left, left, left,’ Howe’s calm voice came through. ‘I’m now directly behind.’
Taylor felt a thrum of excitement. From his earlier briefing with Grace and Branson, the car park at the Devil’s Dyke beauty spot was where Niall Paternoster had a previous suspected liaison. Was he headed there now?
It was a fast, narrow road to the Dyke, which demanded maximum concentration from any driver. There were fields to the north, sloping down into a deep valley, and further on, the Dyke Golf Course. There were open farmland fields to the left, down across a panoramic vista to the urban conurbations of Southwick and Shoreham, with the harbour and sea beyond. A short distance on, to the south, was another golf course, the nine-hole Brighton and Hove Golf Club.
Quite apart from being stunning scenery, this whole area, Mark Taylor well knew from his police experience, was the place that many young dating couples in Brighton and Hove, who had access to a vehicle, would sooner or later go for perhaps their first proper kiss — and likely more. It was also, occasionally and sadly, a favoured local deposition site for bodies.
Taylor watched the blue avatar right behind the red one and spoke into the mic. ‘Alpha One, Alpha Four is tailing you in a blue Suzuki Vitara Jeep — let him pass. You’ll then have Alpha Eight in an old Mazda MX-5 behind. Let him pass and he’ll then pass subject.’
All the team watched the manoeuvres. However vigilant Niall Paternoster might be, he would have struggled to figure out he was being followed.
Three minutes later, Howe reported, ‘Alpha Seven, subject has entered car park and is heading to the far end, where I can see just one other car, a white-and-black Range Rover Evoque, index Golf November Seven Zero Charlie Papa November. We’re all parking up, and I’m keeping eyes on him.’ A moment later, she said, ‘Subject exiting the Fiesta holding a carrier bag that looks like it contains a bottle. Someone inside the Rangey has opened the passenger door for him. Alpha Eight has parked right opposite, may have a better view.’
A different voice came on the radio. The chirpy voice of Nigel Hurst. ‘Alpha Seven, Alpha Eight here, boss. Subject having an embrace with a blonde lady in the Range Rover. Now he’s inside and closed the door. Possible Ugandan discussions,’ he quipped, quoting the euphemism coined by the satirical newspaper Private Eye for illicit copulation.
Taylor radioed the Range Rover’s registration number through to a controller, requesting an ident on the owner. The information came back in less than a minute.
80
Just as he was about to enter the conference room for the evening briefing, Roy Grace’s phone rang. It was Mark Taylor.
‘Sir,’ the DS said. ‘You told me in our briefing you suspected Niall Paternoster was having an affair. We currently have eyes on a Range Rover Evoque parked up at Devil’s Dyke, where he appears to be having a liaison with a lady. The index of her car gives her as Rebecca Watkins of 17 Barrowfield Drive, Hove.’
‘Nice area,’ Grace said, memorizing the name and address. ‘Quite posh. Paternoster’s trading up, is he?’
‘Very much so,’ Taylor replied. ‘A dream house — fat chance on my pay!’
Grace ignored the comment, thinking hard, visualizing Devil’s Dyke. ‘You should have enough vehicles to cover any of the possible routes Paternoster takes from there.’
‘Yes, sir. There’s only one road out of the Devil’s Dyke car park. Soon after, there’s one junction, with an option to go straight on or turn left, up past the Dyke Golf Club. We can cover that easily.’
‘Good.’
‘Something else, sir,’ Taylor said. ‘Subject has parked out of direct sight of the Range Rover, including its mirrors. The area’s fairly quiet and we think we have a chance to put a tracker on subject’s car, while he’s otherwise preoccupied. I already have authority.’
‘Don’t take any risk of anyone being seen,’ Grace cautioned.
‘That is my job, sir.’
Grace felt the reproachful tone of the DS’s voice like a rebuke. He should have known better, he realized, than try to give advice to a man of Taylor’s calibre.
‘Of course, Mark. I understand.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Grace took his place next to Glenn Branson at the table in the conference room, thinking to himself how the receiver of the text message from Sunday night was almost certainly Rebecca Watkins. As the team filed in, he rapidly familiarized himself with the notes he had prepared for the briefing. Over many years, he had imbued the importance of punctuality in all his team members. On one occasion, when a particularly arrogant young detective had sauntered in ten minutes after the decreed starting time, Grace had given him a withering look and said to the DC, whom he had never used again, ‘You know what being late tells me? It says that your time is more important than mine and everyone else’s gathered here.’
On the dot of 5.30 p.m. on the wall clock, with everyone present, Grace said, ‘This is the seventh briefing of Operation Lagoon, the investigation into the disappearance and suspected death of Eden Paternoster.’