The Detective Superintendent was equally well aware that it wasn’t his job to discriminate or decide which murder victims were more important. The life of a rich person was of no more or no less value than that of a street person. At every murder scene he’d ever attended, Roy Grace had looked down at the victim and felt profound sadness. That deceased human being had once been someone’s child, someone’s wife or husband or sibling. There was no unspoken hierarchy in homicide investigation. Whether it was a pillar of society or a particularly nasty criminal, you did your best to find out who had committed the crime, arrest them and bring them to justice.
But, in spite of that, Grace told his team that this particular unsolved murder merited a review. He went on to give his reasons, extrapolated from Sloan’s very detailed notes, explaining that Charlie Porteous was by all accounts a well-liked and respected family man as well as a generous philanthropist, and a highly respected art dealer, with no known enemies. After her retirement his wife had started as a volunteer helper at the city’s treasured Martlets Hospice, and the couple had been for years significant benefactors to many local charities.
Porteous had been struck on the back of his head, three times for good measure, by a heavy, blunt weapon that had never been identified, and he had a deep laceration behind his ear. The car was left tight to the gates of the property and upon examination there had been no obvious interference with the gate mechanism although his wife had mentioned they did occasionally have issues with their function. Nick Sloan’s team had never been able to establish a clear motive for his death.
Charlie Porteous’s rare vintage Rolex, which was insured for £45,000, was missing from his wrist, along with his wallet, in which according to his wife he only kept around £50 in cash, as well as his gold wedding band and his mobile phone. A possible random street robbery was one line of enquiry, and some credence was given to this when his wallet, minus any cash and his credit cards, but still with his driving licence inside, had been found dumped in a bin close to Brighton railway station.
Sloan’s team had checked all the man’s known credit and debit cards and no one had attempted to use any subsequently. With his reputation for being thorough, Sloan had his outside enquiry team check with every second-hand jeweller in the city and in a much wider area beyond, as well as eBay and other online sites, but neither the watch nor the wedding ring had appeared for sale.
Another major line of enquiry, Grace informed them, concerned the artwork. There was no painting found in the Bentley, but the team had come up with considerable evidence that Porteous may have had it with him at the time of his murder.
Earlier that night, the victim had been with his god-daughter, Carrie Hepworth, at a restaurant in London, although there was no evidence, certainly at the time, to implicate her in his murder. And from the information she had given in several interviews, Porteous, very excited about his bargain purchase, had showed her the painting at dinner, telling her he had broken his rule about paying cash. When he left the restaurant he carried the painting concealed beneath his raincoat over his arm.
Grace informed his team that CCTV at Brighton station had picked up Charlie Porteous alighting from the train from London’s Victoria station at 12.17 a.m. The last sighting on the station’s cameras had been of him entering the car park two minutes later, again with his raincoat over his arm.
Working in conjunction with the London Metropolitan Police Arts and Antiquities Unit, corroborating that story, Sloan’s team learned that prior to his death, Charlie Porteous had made an acquisition that he was very excited about. A painting he’d bought from an unidentified Frenchman, for the sum of £50,000, which Porteous believed – backed up by an expert he had apparently mentioned or shown it to, who had subsequently been identified and interviewed – was the work of the eighteenth-century French master Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
The price Porteous had apparently paid, just a fraction of the true worth of the painting – if it was genuine – had been a major factor in the original enquiry, raising many questions. Why had a respected dealer, who must have known the true worth of the painting, bought it from someone unknown to the art world for such little money? And without a receipt or any financial record?
Neither the French police nor Interpol had been able to trace the seller, and Sloan’s team concluded whoever this person was had given a false name. The team had been told it was possible the picture had been stolen to order by a collector in a country beyond Interpol’s reach, but there were no reports of the theft of this painting. Equally, they had learned, from the outside enquiry team’s conversations with dealers in the art world, assisted by Met detectives, that there were wealthy individuals who got a kick out of having a private gallery of paintings that no one else in the world could see. To date, the provenance of the painting remained unresolved.
ANPR cameras in and around Brighton had provided no leads, nor had any CCTV cameras in Porteous’s residential neighbourhood.
Grace took a breath and then continued. ‘The offender – or offenders – left no forensic evidence at the crime scene. However, a partial fingerprint was recovered from a restaurant bill inside the victim’s wallet that was discovered in the bin. All members of staff at the restaurant in London where the receipt was from were printed, but no match was found. It is possible, therefore, that the print is from one of the offenders, at the time he or she rummaged through the wallet for cash.’
Norman Potting raised a hand. ‘What about tapings, chief?’
‘I was just coming to that, Norman. Good thinking, though. The forensics officers took tapings off Porteous’s outside garments, and with the advances in forensics that have occurred during these past four years these should be sent for analysis to see if any potential fibres from the attacker’s clothing might be identified. We should also see if anything new, such as blood from the attacker, might be present, which we could obtain DNA from.’ He turned to Alexander. ‘Jack, I’m giving you this action as part of your forensic review.’ Then he looked up. ‘Any comments at this stage?’
Alexander raised his hand. ‘Sir, what is puzzling me is why Porteous was bludgeoned to death. If it was just a straightforward street robbery, the offender would have surely threatened him with a knife or maybe a gun and he would have handed over his valuables. It indicates something else going on, to me.’
‘Such as, Jack?’ Grace asked.
‘If this was a targeted robbery and the offenders were primarily after the painting, maybe they didn’t want Porteous reporting its theft. I’ve read that famous paintings are hard to sell in some territories, because they are instantly recognizable. Perhaps whoever the offender was knew this and reckoned it would be easier to sell if it wasn’t reported.’
Grace thought about this for some moments. ‘That makes sense, Jack, good point.’ He made a note then looked up at Branson.
‘Any thoughts, Glenn?’ Grace asked him, deliberately to get his attention focused.
The DI looked up with a bewildered expression. ‘I’m sorry, boss, I was elsewhere. Thoughts, boss?’
Not wanting to disrespect his deputy SIO, Grace said to his team, ‘We’ll take a five-minute break.’ Then to Branson with a sideways nod of his head, ‘Quick chat in private, something I need to ask you.’
‘Sure, boss.’
7
Thursday, 19 September
Out in the corridor, closing the door behind him, Roy Grace said to Glenn Branson, ‘Mate, what’s the matter – you’re not right, are you? What’s up?’