Dead Man's Grip

burnt gas and other industrial smells. They were close to a harbour, he thought. Almost certainly Shoreham Harbour. He’d been kayaking here with his school, several times.
    The daylight wasn’t bright, but it didn’t feel like it was evening, more just overcast as if it was going to rain.
    They would find him soon. His mother would know where he was from Friend Mapper. She might even ring him – not that he would be able to answer it.
    Defiantly, he threw himself against the side of the car, kicking out as hard as he could. Then again. And again.
    He kicked until he had tired himself out. It didn’t sound as if anyone had heard him.
    But surely they would find him soon?

96
    Grace, followed by Branson, sprinted up three floors at Brighton’s John Street Police Station, hurried along a corridor and went into the CCTV Control Room, which was manned around the clock.
    It was a large space, with blue carpet and dark blue chairs, and three separate workstations, each comprising a bank of CCTV monitors on which was a kaleidoscope of moving images of parts of the city of Brighton and Hove and other Sussex locations, keyboards, computer terminals and telephones. Every police CCTV camera in the county could be viewed from here.
    Two of the workstations were currently occupied by controllers, both hunched over them with headsets on. One of them looked busy, engaged in a police operation, but the other turned as they came in and nodded a greeting. He was a fresh-faced man in his late thirties with neat brown hair, wearing a lightweight black jacket. His badge gave his name as Jon Pumfrey. Moments later they were joined in the room by Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington, the Gold Commander.
    Barrington, in his mid-forties, was a tall, slim man with short, fair hair, and the athletic air of a regular marathon runner. He wore a short-sleeved white uniform shirt with epaulettes, black trousers and shoes, held a radio in his hand and had a phone clipped to his belt.
    ‘Jon,’ the Chief Superintendent said, ‘which are the nearest cameras to the Regency Square car park?’
    ‘There’s a police one right opposite boss,’ Pumfrey said, ‘but it’s hopeless – there’s some constant interference with it.’
    He tapped the keyboard and a moment later they saw successive waves rippling up and down one of the screens directly in front of him.
    ‘How long’s it been like that?’ Roy Grace asked suspiciously.
    ‘At least a year. I keep asking them to do something about it.’
He shrugged. ‘There are also cameras to the east and west – which direction do you want?’
    ‘We’ve just done a quick recce,’ Grace said. ‘If you exit in a vehicle from the Regency Square car park, you have to turn left on the seafront, on Kings Road – unless you go around up to Western Road, but that’s complicated.’
    Part of that road was buses and taxis only. Grace did not think the abductor would take the risk of getting stopped there.
    ‘I’ve set some parameters,’ he said. ‘What we need to see is the video footage showing all vehicles in motion close to the car park, travelling east or west on King’s Road between 11.15 a.m. and 11.45 a.m. today. We’re looking particularly for a dark-coloured Toyota Yaris saloon, with a single male driving, either accompanied by a twelve-year-old boy or solo.’
    Graham Barrington said, ‘All right, you guys, I’ll leave you to it. Anything you want, just shout.’
    Grace thanked him, and the two detectives then stood behind Pumfrey and began to watch intently.
    ‘The Yaris is a popular car, sir,’ Pumfrey said. ‘Must be thousands on the roads. We’re likely to see a few.’
    ‘We’ll put markers on the first five we see, to start with,’ Grace said. ‘If they’re turning left, they’re heading east, but that might be only for a short distance, before they make a U-turn and head west. Let’s check east first.’
    Almost as he spoke they saw a dark-coloured Yaris heading east, past the bottom of West Street. The camera was on the south side of the road.
    ‘Freeze that!’ Branson said. ‘Can you zoom in?’
    Jon Pumfrey tapped the keyboard and the camera zoomed in, jerkily but quickly, on the driver’s door and window. It was a grainy zoom, but they could see clearly enough that it was two elderly ladies.
    ‘Let’s move on,’ Grace said.
    They watched the fast-forwarding images, cars darting by in flickering movements.
    Then Grace called out, ‘Stop! Go