Dead Man's Grip

killed him, OK? I want them to suffer.’

31
    Reading from his prepared notes to the team assembled in the conference room of Sussex House, Roy Grace said, ‘The time is 8.30 a.m., Saturday 24 April. This is the sixth briefing of Operation Violin , the investigation into the death of Tony Revere, conducted at the start of day four.’
    It was of little consequence that it was the weekend. For the first few weeks of any major crime inquiry, the team worked around the clock, though with the current financial cutbacks overtime was controlled much more tightly.
    At the previous evening’s briefing, PC Alec Davies played CCTV footage he had retrieved from a betting shop a short distance along the road from the scene of the accident. The video was grainy, but it showed that although it had been a near miss, there was no impact between the cyclist and the Audi car. Inspector James Biggs, from the Road Policing Unit, had confirmed that after a second interview with the woman driver, Mrs Carly Chase, and forensic examination of her vehicle, they were satisfied that no contact between the cycle and the Audi had occurred. Moreover they were not intending to charge her with any further offence other than driving while unfit through alcohol.
    Carly Chase’s mistake, Grace knew, was thinking, like most people, that the alcohol in her blood from the previous night would have all but gone by the following morning. It was something that used to bother him about Cleo. There were times before her pregnancy when she would drink quite heavily after work. He sometimes reckoned he would drink heavily if he did that job, too. He had hoped that she would be coming home yesterday, but at the last minute the consultant decided to keep her in for one more day. Grace was going to pick her up this afternoon.
    A major focus of this morning’s meeting was on damage limitation concerning the massive reward the dead boy’s parents had
offered. It had made big headlines in many of the nation’s papers, prompting any number of conspiracy theories. These ranged from Tony Revere being murdered by a Brighton crime family in a drugs turf war to this being a revenge killing by a rival crime family or Tony being an undercover agent for the CIA.
    Glenn Branson and Bella Moy took the team once more through the reactions of the dead boy’s parents. It was agreed that there was no indication from them that their son’s death might have been a targeted hit, or that he had any enemies. The only issue with the parents, DS Branson added, had been their anger that they could not take their son’s body home with them and that it might be necessary to subject it to a second Home Office post-mortem. Philip Keay, the Coroner’s Officer, had explained to them that it could be in their interests. If the van driver was found and brought to trial, his defence counsel would not necessarily be content with the results of the first post-mortem.
    In reply, Tony Revere’s father had told him, in plain English, that the cause of his son’s death did not require fucking Sherlock Holmes .
    Tracy Stocker, the Crime Scene Manager, raised her hand and Grace indicated for her to go ahead.
    ‘Chief, Philip Keay and I explained to the parents that regardless of whether there needed to be a second PM, the Coroner would not release the body until after the results of the toxicology reports. We could be looking at two weeks minimum for those, maybe more. Tony Revere was on the wrong side of the road and that suggests to me that he might have had drugs or alcohol in his system, possibly from the night before.’
    ‘Are we having a full tox scan, Roy?’ asked David Howes.
    The Chief Constable, Tom Martinson, was under the cosh from the government to lop £52 million from the annual police budget. CID had been asked to send only what was essential to the labs, as every forensic submission was a big expense. A full toxicology scan, including eye fluids, cost over £2,000.
    Ordinarily, Grace would have tried to save this money. The cyclist was clearly in the wrong. The woman in the Audi had been driving while over the limit, but she had not, from what he’d seen,
been a contributory factor in the accident. The van driver, however, had gone through a red light and when found would be facing serious charges. The lorry driver, regardless of being over his legal hours, could have done nothing to avoid the collision. The toxicology report was not going to add anything to the facts