‘Clear as mud,’ Darling said.
At that moment Batchelor’s phone, which he had switched to silent, began vibrating. Stepping away from the table, he answered it.
It was Julian Raven, from Digital Forensics. ‘Guy,’ he said. ‘We’ve been working on Lorna Belling’s phone and there’s something that might be of interest to you.’
‘Yes, what, Julian?’
Raven told him.
Batchelor made some notes on his pad, thanked him and hung up, with a beat of excitement. He turned and signalled to Roy Grace and the pair walked to the door. As they reached it, Darling called out, ‘Hey, Mister Detectives — thanks a lot, for nothing.’
50
Sunday 24 April
‘Tell me?’ Grace asked Batchelor as they left the custody suite building and headed over to his parked car.
‘Julian Raven says Lorna Belling had been in regular contact with one particular phone number a few days before her death. She had disguised the name on her phone contacts list.’
‘Do we have a name?’
‘Better than that!’ Batchelor said with a grin. ‘We have a plot on his movements.’
Twenty minutes later, back in his office, Grace removed his dark-blue suit jacket and hung it on a hook behind the door, then slipped behind his desk, with his back to the window. Batchelor sat down in front of him.
‘Might this be the James Bond that our friend, Darling, was referring to?’ Grace pondered.
‘His name’s Kipp Brown, he’s an IFA with his own very successful business in Brighton. Kipp Brown Financial Services. He has ads all over the place in the Argus, Latest Homes and on Juice radio — always featuring himself with his catchphrase, “Trust Kipp!”’
‘Does he have any form?’
‘No.’
As Grace wrote the name down on a pad, Batchelor glanced out of the window behind the DS. He could see a man with a clipboard looking up towards the roof of the building.
‘According to Raven,’ Batchelor continued, ‘triangulation on Brown’s mobile phone puts him in the vicinity of Vallance Mansions on two occasions in the past week. The first was for a two-hour period, 2 p.m to 4 p.m. on Monday, April 18th, and the second — here’s the interesting bit — between 1.45 p.m. and 3.55 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20th.’
‘Bloody hell! That tallies with what Darling told us.’
‘Seems like we might have another suspect, boss.’
Grace was pensive for some moments. His private phone pinged with an incoming text and he was momentarily distracted by it. The text was from Cleo and there was an accompanying photograph. It showed Bruno in bed, with Humphrey curled up on the duvet, on his stomach.
Looks like Humphrey has a new best friend! XXX
He smiled, raised an apologetic hand to Batchelor then texted back.
How great is that???? Love it!! Love you. XXXX
Then he focused back on the information he’d just received, thinking hard. On his desk was a copy of Friday’s Argus newspaper. The seventh page was dominated by a dramatic photograph of the scene where Corin Belling had been run over. Halted cars and blue and white police tape. The headline read:
From the story accompanying it, Guy Batchelor appeared to have handled the press release skilfully, giving enough to satisfy the reporters, but nothing for them to sensationalize. Just bald facts. Lorna Belling had been found dead in her rented apartment on Thursday morning. She and her husband had a history of domestic violence and the city support service, RISE, had been in the process of intervening. Corin Belling had run from his office when police officers (Grace appreciated the anonymity Batchelor had afforded him) had gone to interview him, and, attempting to flee, had run into the path of oncoming traffic. The incident had been referred to the IPCC.
He held the paper up. ‘You did a good job, Guy. Let’s hope it goes just as well in tomorrow’s briefing with the press.’
‘Protecting our backsides, boss. I did my best. Let’s hope the buggers at the IPCC don’t make it too hard for you.’
‘Yep, Cassian Pewe won’t need much encouragement to take a pop at me. But hey, let’s focus. Kipp Brown. Could he be Lorna Belling’s anonymous sperm donor?’
Batchelor smiled. ‘Shall we go and talk to him?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Screw up his Sunday for him?’
Grace looked at his watch, also. It was too late to try to catch someone having a Sunday morning lie-in, and he was mindful of the potential damage that it could do to Brown’s life. He reminded Batchelor of the aftermath of the IRA bombing of The Grand, and the distress it had caused. Then he added, ‘We need to get Kipp Brown checked out. He has his own, very successful business, he isn’t going anywhere. Let’s find out all we can about him today, then talk to him tomorrow — perhaps on his way into his office — or at his office.’
‘We need to get his DNA. What do you suggest?’
‘The smart way would be to arrest him tomorrow. We’ve got more than enough to do that. He’s on the phone with her and then goes to her flat hours before she was found dead. We’ve enough to arrest him — or am I missing something?’
‘No, boss, you’re smack on the button!’
‘If we get a DNA match to the semen, then we’re cooking with gas.’
‘I’ve a good feeling about this one, boss.’
‘Keep that feeling, but assume nothing.’
51
Sunday 24 April
‘The time is 4.30 p.m., Sunday, April 24th, this is the fifth briefing of Operation Bantam,’ Guy Batchelor said. Roy Grace, seated beside him in the conference room, was happy to let him continue in his deputy SIO role.
Batchelor brought the team up to speed on the developments of the day, regarding the interview with Seymour Darling, the results on the semen taken from Lorna Belling, and the new information that had come to light that she appeared to have had a lot of contact with a man they believed to be Kipp Brown. So far, he said, Brown did not appear on their radar, and had no history or form.
DI Dull, hunched over his tablet, raised a hand. ‘Guy?’
‘Go ahead, Donald,’ he said.
Dull had a slow, monotone voice. As he spoke, Roy Grace wondered, privately, if he wouldn’t be better employed providing sleep therapy to insomniacs. After thirty seconds he was ready to nod off.
‘You can see from my spreadsheet,’ Dull droned, pointing at a whiteboard to which a series of graphs were pinned, with highlights in orange, green and purple, ‘I’ve put all the details about Kipp Brown that the search engines would provide. You’ll appreciate the time constraints, so there may be omissions. I’ve made a matrix of his life on a spreadsheet — taking into account background, schooling, business and social interests, history of relationships. Then I’ve compared them to known data on six convicted criminals in related fields, as I thought it might give us some helpful insights.’
Grace stared at the man, listening intently and a tad impatiently. Dull seemed to be assuming the role of amateur psychological profiler. But fair play if he came up with something of interest.
Dull turned to another whiteboard, which had seven different graph plots on it. Six of them converged on several points. The seventh, in a thicker, black line, was well clear of the rest.
‘The six different coloured lines that you can see here,’ Dull said, standing up and pointing with a red dot from a laser pen, ‘represent six individual convicted murderers. I’ve created spreadsheets on each of them, drawing on socio-economic backgrounds, offending histories, age and a number of other significant factors. The wider black line is a plot of Kipp Brown, from what I’ve been able to ascertain about him from a trawl through search engines and his LinkedIn profile. As you can see, his journey is completely different.’