Dead Man's Grip

back.’
    They watched the tape rewind.
    ‘OK! That one.’ They were looking at a dark grey Yaris with what appeared to be a single occupant, a male, driving. The time said 11.38.
    ‘Now zoom in, please.’
    The image was again grainy, but this time it looked like a male, most of his face obscured by a baseball cap and dark glasses.
    ‘It’s not that bright out there. Why’s he wearing dark glasses?’ Pumfrey queried.
    Grace turned to Branson. ‘That was the description by the school teacher – the taxi driver was wearing a baseball cap. And so was the man who rented the car from Avis!’ Suddenly he felt his adrenalin pumping. Turning back to Pumfrey, he asked, ‘Is that the best image you can get?’
    ‘I can send it for enhancement, but that would take a while.’
    ‘OK, run forward. Can we get the registration?’
    Pumfrey inched the car forward frame by frame.
    ‘Golf Victor Zero Eight Whisky Delta X-Ray,’ Branson read out, as Grace wrote it down.
    ‘Right. Can you run an ANPR check from here?’ he asked Pumfrey.
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    They continued watching. Then, to Grace’s excitement, the car reappeared, this time travelling west.
    ‘It’s gone round the roundabout at the Palace Pier, doing a U-turn !’ he said. ‘Where’s the next camera?’
    ‘Other than the dud one opposite the Regency Square car park, the next is a mile to the west, on Brunswick Lawns.’
    ‘Let’s look at that one,’ Grace said.
    Five minutes later, which indicated the vehicle was sticking rigidly to the speed limit, and allowing for a couple of traffic-light stops and the roadworks delay, the car appeared, still travelling west.
    ‘Where’s the next?’ Grace asked.
    ‘That’s the last of the city’s CCTV cameras in this direction, sir,’ Pumfrey said.
    ‘OK. Now let’s see if this vehicle has triggered any ANPR camera since 11.15 a.m. What’s the first one west of this position?’
    Pumfrey turned to a different computer and entered the data.
Grace noticed his partially eaten lunch on the wooden table beside him. An empty plastic lunchbox, a coil of orange peel and an unopened yoghurt. Healthy, he thought, depending of course on what had been in the sandwich.
    ‘Here we are: 11.54 a.m. This is the ANPR camera at the bottom of Boundary Road, Hove, at the junction with the end of the Kingsway.’
    Suddenly a photograph of the front of a dark grey Yaris appeared on the screen, its number plate clearly visible, but the occupant hard to make out through an almost opaque screen. By looking very closely it was possible to distinguish what might have been someone in a baseball cap and dark glasses, but without any certainty.
    ‘Can’t we get a better image of the face?’ Branson asked.
    ‘Depends how the light hits the windscreen,’ Pumfrey replied. ‘These particular cameras are designed to read number plates, I’m afraid, not faces. I can send it for enhancement if you want?’
    ‘Yes, both of those images, please,’ Grace said. ‘Is that the only ANPR it’s triggered?’
    ‘The only one showing today.’
    Grace did a mental calculation. If the driver avoided breaking the law, and with a kidnapped child on board he would not want to risk getting stopped … The exit from the car park on to King’s Road was a left turn only … That meant he would have driven east to the end of King’s Road and then gone round the roundabout, by the Palace Pier, and then come back on himself. Allowing for the distance and hold-ups at traffic lights, that would put the car there at the right time from its sighting on King’s Road. Excitement was growing inside him.
    The car’s location was alongside Shoreham Harbour, close to Southwick. He was certain that the sadist knew this area. A lot of villains perpetrated their crimes in the places they knew, their comfort zones. He made a note of a new line of enquiry, to have Duncan Crocker do a search on all previous violent crimes in this area. But first, still staring at the frozen image of the front of the Yaris and the faint silhouette of its driver, on the monitor, he called for a PNC check on the car.
    The information came back almost immediately that the owner
was a male, Barry Simons, who lived in Worthing, West Sussex, some fifteen miles to the west of Brighton. Grace’s excitement waned at this news. That fitted with the car’s occupant and position, heading in the direction where he lived. The only thing that kept him hopeful was the fact that the Yaris