Dead Man's Grip

beyond on either side blanked out in a paler grey. The screen showed the white van tailgating the Audi, the cyclist emerging from a side street ahead and the articulated lorry some way ahead, on the other side of the road, approaching in the distance.
    He pressed a button and the animation came to life. On the far side of the road, the lorry began to approach. Suddenly the cyclist began to move, swinging out of the side street, on the wrong side, heading straight for the Audi. At the last minute, the cyclist swerved to the left, towards the centre of the road, and the Audi swerved left on to the pavement. An instant later, the van clipped the cyclist, sending him hurtling across the far side of the road and straight underneath the lorry, between its front wheels and rear wheels. The
cyclist spun around the rear wheel arch as the lorry braked to a halt, his right leg then flying out from underneath it.
    When the animation stopped, there was a long silence.
    Grace finally broke it, turning to the RPU Inspector. ‘James, from this simulation it doesn’t look as if the Audi driver, Mrs Carly Chase, had any contact with Revere.’
    ‘I would agree with that based on what we have heard so far. But I’m not yet convinced we’ve heard the full story. It might be that she was unlucky to be breathalysed on a morning-after offence. But it’s too early to rule out her culpability at this stage.’
    Grace turned to the Major Crime Branch Crime Scene Manager. ‘Tracy, do you have anything for us?’
    Tracy Stocker, a senior SOCO, a little over five feet tall, was a diminutive power house and one of the most respected Crime Scene Managers in the force. She had a strong, good-looking face framed with straight brown hair and was dressed today in civvies, a navy trouser suit with a grey blouse. A standard police ID card hung from a lanyard around her neck, printed with the words SERVING SUSSEX in blue and white.
    ‘Yes, chief, we have something that may be significant. We have sent the serial number on the part of the wing mirror that was recovered at the scene to Ford. They will be able to tell us if it’s from a Ford Transit and the year of manufacture.’
    ‘It’s going to be thousands of vans, right?’ Nick Nicholl said.
    ‘Yes,’ she conceded. But then she added, ‘Most of them should have two wing mirrors. Maybe a CCTV camera will give us a shot of a van with one missing. The mirror itself has been shattered, but I’ve requested fingerprint analysis of the casing. Most people adjust their wing mirrors, so there’s a good chance we’ll get something off that. It may take a while, though, because the plastic was wet from the rain and it’s not good material to get prints off at the best of times.’
    ‘Thanks. Good work, Tracy.’
    Grace then turned to Alec Davies. ‘Any luck so far from CCTV?’
    The young PC shook his head. ‘No, sir. We’ve looked at all the images taken and the angles and distance don’t give us enough detail.’
    As Davies spoke, Grace’s mind began to wander, distracted by his thoughts of Cleo, as he had been every few minutes. He’d spoken to her earlier and she’d sounded a lot better this morning. Hopefully by tomorrow she would be ready to come home.
    After a while he realized that Davies was still speaking. He stared blankly at the young PC, then had to say, ‘I’m sorry, could you repeat that?’
    Once Davies had obliged, Grace gathered his thoughts together and said, ‘OK, Alec, I think you should widen the net. If the van is travelling at thirty miles per hour, that’s one mile every two minutes. Expand your trawl to a ten-mile radius. Let me know how many people you need to cover that and I’ll authorize you.’
    Norman Potting raised his hand and Grace signalled to him to speak.
    ‘Boss, in view of the information that came to light yesterday, about the relationship of the deceased to the New York Mafia, should we be concerned that there is more to this than just a traffic accident? I know we have the hit-and-run van to investigate, but could this possibly be a hit in a different sense of the word?’
    ‘It’s a good point to raise, Norman,’ Grace replied. ‘I’m starting to think, from what I’ve seen so far, that this is unlikely to be some kind of gangland killing. But we need a line of enquiry to ensure that it’s not Mafia-related. We need to do some intelligence gathering. ’ He looked at the crime analyst he had brought into his team, Ellen Zoratti,