Dead Man's Grip

of his protégé. Branson went on. ‘According to Officer Setterington, who has spoken with several of the prisoners whom Preece and Tulley hung out with, Tulley was shooting his mouth off about the reward money. They all saw it on television and in the Argus . He was boasting he knew where Preece was and was weighing up his loyalty to his friend against the temptation of a hundred thousand dollars.’
    ‘Did he genuinely know?’ asked Bella Moy.
    Branson raised a finger, then tapped his keypad. ‘Every prisoner in a UK jail gets given a PIN code for the prison phone, right? And
they have to nominate the numbers they will call – they can have a maximum of ten.’
    ‘I thought they all had mobile phones,’ Potting said with a sly grin.
    Branson grinned back. It was a standard joke. Mobile phones were strictly forbidden in all prisons – and as a result they were an even more valuable currency than drugs.
    ‘Yeah, well, luckily for us, this fellow didn’t. Listen to this recording on the prison phone of a call made by Warren Tulley to Ewan Preece’s number.’
    He tapped the keypad again, there was a loud crackle, then they heard a brief, hushed conversation, two scuzzy, low-life voices.
    ‘Ewan, where the fuck are you? You didn’t come back. What’s going on?’
    ‘Yeah, well, had a bit of a problem, you see.’
    ‘What kind of fucking problem? You owe me. It’s my money in this deal.’
    ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep yer hair on. I just had a bit of an accident. You on the prison phone?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Why don’t you use a private?’
    ‘Coz I ain’t got one, all right?’
    ‘Fuck. Fuck you. I’m lying low for a bit. All right? Don’t worry about it. I’ll see you right. Now fuck off.’
    There was a clank and the call ended.
    Branson looked at Roy Grace. ‘That was recorded at 6.25 p.m. last Thursday, the day following the accident. I’ve also checked the timing. Prisoners working on paid resettlement, which is what Preece was doing, are free to leave the prison from 6.30 a.m. and don’t have to be back until 10 p.m. That would have given him ample time to be driving in Portland Road around 9 a.m.’
    ‘ Lying low ,’ Grace said pensively. ‘You need someone you can trust to lie low.’ He stood up and went over to the whiteboard where Ewan Preece’s family tree was sketched out. Then he turned to Potting. ‘Norman, you know a fair bit about him. Any ideas who he was close to?’
    ‘I’ll speak to some of the neighbourhood teams, boss.’
    ‘My guess is, since the van seems to have disappeared in Southwick, that he’ll be there, with either a girlfriend or a relative.’ Grace looked at the names on the whiteboard.
    As was typical with the child of a single, low-income parent, Preece had a plethora of half-brothers and sisters as well as stepbrothers and sisters, with many of the names well known to the police.
    ‘Chief,’ Duncan Crocker said, standing up. ‘I’ve already been doing work on this.’ He went over to the whiteboard. ‘Preece has three sisters. One, Mandy, emigrated to Perth, Australia, with her husband four years ago. The second, Amy, lives in Saltdean. I don’t know where the youngest, Evie, lives, but she and Preece were pretty thick as kids. They got nicked, when Preece was fourteen and she was ten, for breaking into a launderette. She was in his car later when he was done for joyriding. She’d be a good person to look for.’
    ‘And a real bonus if she just happens to be living in Southwick,’ Grace replied.
    ‘I know someone who’ll be able to tell us,’ Crocker said. ‘Her probation officer.’
    ‘What’s she on probation for?’ Branson asked.
    ‘Handling and receiving,’ Crocker said. ‘For her brother!’
    ‘Phone the probation officer now,’ Grace instructed.
    Crocker went over to the far side of the room to make the call, while they carried on with the briefing. Two minutes later he returned with a big smile on his face.
    ‘Chief, Evie Preece lives in Southwick!’
    Suddenly, from feeling despondent, Grace felt a surge of adrenalin. He thumped the worktop with glee. Yayyy!
    ‘Good work, Duncan,’ he said. ‘You have the actual address?’
    ‘Of course! Two hundred and nine Manor Hall Road.’
    The rest of this briefing now seemed redundant.
    Grace turned to Nick Nicholl. ‘We need a search warrant, PDQ, for two hundred and nine Manor Hall Road, Southwick.’
    The DC nodded.
    Grace turned back to Branson. ‘OK, let’s get the