‘Does she rent the house or is it hers?’ Tooth asked.
‘Couldn’t even tell you that, sir, sorry.’
Tooth left him and walked back up the drive, then headed down towards the sea, thinking about the mysterious woman. Very few photos in the house. No contact with her household staff. No messages on her landline answering machine. It seemed she liked to keep herself invisible. That suited him very well indeed.
It could mean that it would be a long while before anyone started to miss her. Time for him to be long gone. With the memory stick. Wherever she had hidden it, he would find it. She would tell him.
Not wanting to draw attention to himself, and starting to feel hungry, he walked back towards the centre of Brighton, deciding to resume his vigil later. As he strode along, he remembered a burger place called Grubbs, where he had eaten last time he was here, that made what he called proper burgers. He navigated his way along St James’s Street to it.
After his meal, he headed towards the sea, took the steps down to Madeira Drive and crossed over the road. Then, heading west, with the tracks of the Volks Railway to his left and the deserted pebble beach beyond that, he was thinking hard as he walked, but was distracted every few minutes by the clatter of a bicycle or ping of a bell on the cycle lane at the edge of the pavement. A cold, blustery, sou’westerly wind was blowing against him.
Where would he have hidden the memory stick? He’d searched every inch of the house, the loft, the garden shed. He wasn’t comfortable being in Brighton. Although he had travelled here under one of the aliases he used, he knew he was still a wanted man in this city. After his escape at Shoreham Harbour last year, he’d checked out the local news online from back home. That detective, Roy Grace, and his team had stated that he was missing, presumed drowned. But from his dockside wrestle with the black cop, he knew they were likely to have his DNA on file. The sooner he got out of here, the better.
He was feeling frustrated and aimless. How long was he going to have to wait for this bitch to return? He wanted to be back home, out on his boat in the warmth, with his associate.
He missed his associate.
Missed him more than he’d ever missed any human.
As he walked by the pier with its stalls out front — Moo Moos, the best Shakes in town, Donuts & Churros, Delicious Donuts, Crepes, The Hot Dog Hut — the clock tower over the entrance, with a pyramid sign in front of it advertising The Best Fish & Chips in Brighton — he was suddenly reminded of his childhood vacations in Atlantic City with one of his foster mothers. Hot summer days ambling alone, aimlessly, along the boardwalk, avoiding tourists in push carts, while she played the slots.
She played them all day long, coins stacked up beside her, plastic beaker of beer in one hand, yanking the handle or pushing the buttons, peering at the revolving fruits through curling smoke from the cigarette dangling permanently from her lips. When she was winning, she’d bribe him with a handful of coins, and he’d immediately go and spend them at one of the shooting galleries.
He always tried for, and normally succeeded, in getting the maximum score. When he didn’t he got angry, and on more than one occasion cracked the glass or wrenched the grip of the gun so hard that it broke.
There was an aquarium to his right and, across a busy intersection, a cream and red building advertising Harry Ramsden Fish & Chips.
Ahead, across the far side of the intersection, was the yellow and white Royal Albion Hotel. A stack of beer barrels was piled on the sidewalk. He ambled on, passing a café to his left and a flint-walled groyne. How long before the bitch came back from her cruise?
He crossed the cycle lane and waited for a green light at the pedestrian crossing, heading back to the modern slab of his hotel, unsure what the rest of the day held for him. Waiting. He was OK with waiting. He was fine with waiting. Letting time slide by. Maybe he’d catch a movie in town or on his hotel television.
The light changed to green. He was about to cross the road when he had a thought. He’d check the pier out, why not? See if it had any shooting galleries. It was something to do.
He turned back, totally forgetting the cycle lane. As he stepped forward he heard the ping of a bell, a clank and a shout then a loud squeal of rubber on metal. An instant later a shadow descended on him. He felt a crashing blow that hurled him off his feet. He saw the sidewalk coming up to meet his face.
Then a firework show inside his head.
Then silence.
65
Friday 6 March
Shortly after midday Roy Grace, still distracted by the news he’d had about Sandy, sat in Cassian Pewe’s large office, drinking coffee from a china cup. He absently noted the spoon in the saucer — and doubted that spoons ever vanished here, in this hallowed Police HQ building. He updated the ACC on the processing by the French authorities of their extradition request for Edward Crisp, and the progress on Operation Spider, the investigation into the suspicious death of Shelby Stonor.
Or to be more accurate, and to his old adversary’s clear irritation, the lack of progress on both. With luck there would be an update from the French police, so he had been assured, within a few days. But there was little progress from the actions on Operation Spider that he had given his team at their briefing three days ago. A check of Stonor’s movements since his last release from prison had revealed some relevant information, but not much.
Plotting from the ANPR cameras and footage from the city’s network of 35 °CCTV cameras, showed Stonor had recently made numerous visits to the expensive and exclusive Roedean area of the city. These visits coincided with a spate of reported house burglaries in the area. But thanks to the budget constraints, housebreaking, except where life was in imminent danger had, to Grace’s fury, become a lower priority. He could quite seriously envisage a time, in the near future, when someone would wake to find an intruder in their home, dial 999 and be told to send an email.
Angi Bunsen, Stonor’s girlfriend, had been questioned extensively, but had not provided anything useful. It appeared that Stonor had lied to her about having a job in a warehouse — presumably to cover for his burglary activities. She had said nothing of significance in any of her interviews. Stonor had given her every indication that he planned to go straight and save up to buy a Brighton taxi plate. She couldn’t understand why he might have any connection to venomous snakes.
DC Jack Alexander’s action of checking all holders of licences, under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 in the city of Brighton and Hove, had revealed just a handful, including a police inspector they knew who kept a pet python. They were all legitimate.
Suppliers of vivariums had been contacted, the addresses of all customers they held on record visited, to reveal nothing more lethal than a tank of gerbils who had ganged up on one of their own and bitten a toe off. There was a reptile owners’ association but none of its members knew of Shelby Stonor.
Information from source handlers about Stonor and his associates, since he had last been freed, so far had provided nothing new. Nor had the High Tech Crime Unit’s interrogation of his pay-as-you-go mobile phone and computer revealed any unexpected contacts, or anything else of significance other than the blurry photograph. The main person he saw regularly was a small-time drug dealer and car thief called Dean Warren, who also appeared to be part of the gang conspiring to steal high-value cars. Like Warren, Stonor had connections to the Sussex towns of Crawley and Hastings through a number of small-time criminal associates, all of whom were being interviewed, but so far nothing had come from any of them.