‘Very.’
Grace entered Seymour Darling’s name on the computer and studied the man’s criminal record for some moments. ‘Hmmm,’ he said. ‘Darling seems to be a man who likes getting into disputes. BHIMS have been involved with him twice — once sorting out a boundary dispute with a neighbour, and another time some issue with a dog.’
‘BHIMS?’ Batchelor queried.
‘It stands for Brighton and Hove Independent Mediation Service.’ Then switching subjects, he asked, ‘When are we expecting the semen DNA results from the lab, Guy?’
‘They only went off yesterday afternoon, so probably sometime tomorrow, with luck, boss.’
Grace nodded, thinking. Rape was often an escalation from minor crimes. And it was often more about anger and power over a woman than sexual gratification. A classic scenario for a rapist was a burglar foiled by the owner of a property he had entered, deciding that next time if it was a female he would incapacitate and rape her, almost to show her who was boss. Darling’s criminal history showed just such a scale of progressive escalation.
‘How was Germany? How did it go?’
‘Do you know that old Chinese curse? May you live in interesting times.’
‘It went badly?’
Grace shrugged. ‘You’ve got a daughter, right?’
‘Anna, yes, great kid.’
‘In part because she’s lucky enough to have great parents.’
The DI smiled. ‘I like to think that’s part of it. But it’s not everything.’
‘But we know, don’t we, Guy, the percentage of offenders who come from broken homes, single-parent families, alcoholic or drugusing families, abusers, you name it. It doesn’t always start that way, but nine times out of ten you can show me a man — or a woman — in a prison cell and I’ll show you the train crash of a family that brought them up.’
‘Is he screwed up, your kid — what’s his name again?’
‘Bruno. I don’t know. He’s complex, that’s for sure, but I think he’s OK. He’s a bright boy, with a lot of curiosity about things. Hell, you’d have to be a bit screwed up with all the shit his mother’s put him through. I think he’s fragile; he’s obviously spent a lot of time on his own, and seen his mother having to deal with a lot of issues, including drugs. On top of all that he’s now been taken away from his homeland and friends. We’ll try to give him all the love and attention we can, and we’re going to have a chat with an expert in the child psychology field to see what’s best. I’m sure he’ll be fine once he’s settled.’ He shrugged and peered again at the computer screen.
Batchelor leaned forward a little. ‘If you don’t mind my saying it, you look whacked. Do you want to take the weekend off? I can handle everything.’
‘Thanks, Guy, but I think it’s better for me to be here for a while. To give Cleo a little time this morning alone with Bruno to try to bond with him.’
‘So what’s he actually like?’
Grace shrugged. ‘What would any of us be like, being told our mother had committed suicide, and that our father, whom we had never met, was going to come and take us to a foreign country where we didn’t know a soul?’
‘Tough call.’
‘Yep. You’ve said it. Tough call. One of our priorities is to get him some friends. Jason Tingley’s kindly taking him to a Crystal Palace game this afternoon, with his son, Stan.’
‘Is that wise? Getting him to fraternize with the opposition on his first day?’
Grace grinned. Since Brighton and Hove Albion’s biggest rival was Crystal Palace, this had long been a friendly bone of contention between Grace and Tingley.
‘If it helps him make a friend here, then what the hell. Anyhow, enough about me, let’s focus. We need to talk to Seymour Darling, PDQ.’
‘Want to take a ride with me over to his house?’
Grace thought for a moment. His plan had been to spend a few hours catching up on all the emails that would have come in for him during the past day and a half that he had been away in Germany. But this development excited him. One thing that he had missed as he had risen through the ranks was what all officers who got promoted away from frontline duties and became increasingly deskbound missed. And that was the adrenaline rush of action.
‘Good suggestion,’ he said.
40
Saturday 23 April
Roy Grace had a fondness for the sprawling, hilly mass of the Hangleton estate, to the northwest of the city. It was where he and Sandy had been the happiest, the first five years of their married life, in a tiny flat, with a view out across the rooftops on the far side of the street towards the hilly pastureland of the South Downs.
The village of Hangleton was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Its small, beautiful Norman church, St Helen’s, is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the whole city of Brighton and Hove. And its close neighbour, medieval Hangleton Manor, is the oldest secular building in the city. But not much else in Hangleton is historic. Most of it was developed in the first half of the twentieth century and subsumed into the city at the same time.
Grace sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked car, as Guy Batchelor drove. He felt the same emotions he always did when in this area. So many memories.
They swept down a hill, made a right, up a steep incline, then a sharp right again into a crescent-shaped close. Batchelor slowed to a crawl as they peered out at the house numbers. Grace pointed to the right. ‘Twenty-nine over there.’
Moments later Batchelor halted the car outside a squat little house, with a large bay window, that looked only a few years old. A small, dog-wee-yellow-coloured hatchback was parked on the driveway.
The two detectives climbed out of the car and walked up to the front door. Batchelor rang the bell, which set off loud barking from inside.
Moments later the front door opened a fraction, accompanied by more deep barking, and a coarse female voice shouting out, ‘Shut the fuck up, Shane!’
The door opened wider, and they saw a tiny woman, with a mass of tangled black, wiry hair and almost absurdly large black-rimmed glasses, dressed in a brown velour tracksuit. She was stooping down, struggling to restrain a massive Rhodesian Ridgeback by its collar. Behind her was a small, dingy hallway. The place smelled of damp dog.
Batchelor held up his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Batchelor and Detective Superintendent Grace, Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Branch. We’d like to have a word with Mr Seymour Darling. Is he in?’
‘Not, if I have anything to do with it, for much longer.’
‘Are you Mrs Darling?’ Batchelor asked.
‘So what if I am?’ She turned back to the dog and yelled, ‘Fuck you! Shut the fuck up, Shane! OK? Shut the fuck up!’ Then she turned back to the two detectives. ‘He’s not in, he’s gone to the football.’ Then she turned back to the dog. ‘I’m fucking warning you!’
‘May we confirm your name, please, madam?’
‘You know it, don’t you, you just said it.’
‘And your first name?’
‘It’s Trish. Trish Darling. And I don’t want any funny comments about it, had enough of them.’
‘What time are you expecting your husband home, Mrs Darling?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
‘Beautiful dog,’ Batchelor said.
‘Yeah? You want him? Take him, he’s yours! Seymour can’t handle him, I can’t handle him, he’s a fucking nightmare. And my husband goes to the footy, leaves me to walk him. I can’t walk him, I ain’t got the strength.’
Batchelor handed her a card. ‘We’d like to have a word with your husband. Could you call me — or ask him to call me — when he gets home?’
She took the card in her hand, dubiously, without glancing at it, as if she had been handed a leaflet by a street peddler. ‘I’ll be the one having a word with him when he gets home.’ Then, darkly, she added, ‘If he gets home.’