Dead Man's Grip

was pumping. Like most officers, he’d always loved the thrill of raids, and the fear that went with it. You never knew what you were going to find. Or what missiles or weapons might be used against you. His eyes darted everywhere, warily, ever conscious of the possibility that someone might appear with a weapon, and that both himself and Glenn were less well protected than the members of this team, wearing only stab vests beneath their jackets.
    The LST members, all experienced and well trained in this kind of operation, had split up in here. Some were bursting into different downstairs rooms and others at the same time were charging up the stairs, yelling menacingly, ‘POLICE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE! DON’T MOVE!’
    The two detectives stayed in the narrow, bare hallway and heard doors banging open above them. Heavy footsteps. Then a female member of the team, whom Grace knew and rated as a particularly bright and plucky officer, Vicky Jones, called out to him in a concerned voice, ‘Sir, you’d better come in here!’
    Followed by Glenn Branson, he walked through the open doorway to his right, into a small and disgustingly cluttered sitting room that reeked of ingrained cigarette smoke and urine. He noticed a wooden-framed settee, bottles of wine and beer littering a manky carpet, along with unwashed clothes, and a massive plasma TV screen on the wall.
    Face down, occupying whatever floor space wasn’t littered with detritus, was a writhing, moaning woman in a fluffy pink dressing gown, bound hand and foot with grey duct tape, and gagged.
    ‘No one upstairs!’ shouted Jason Hazzard.
    ‘Garage is empty!’ another voice called out.
    Grace ran upstairs very quickly, glanced into the two bedrooms and the bathroom, then went back down and knelt beside the woman, as Vicky Jones and another member of the team worked away the tape over her mouth, then the rest of the bindings.
    The woman, in her mid-twenties, had a shock of short, fair hair
and a hard face with a flinty complexion. She spoke the moment her mouth was freed.
    ‘Fuckers!’ she said. ‘What took you so fucking long? What’s the fucking time?’
    ‘Five past ten,’ Vicky Jones said. ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Evie Preece.’
    ‘Are you injured, Evie?’ She turned to another officer and said, ‘Call an ambulance.’
    ‘I don’t need no fucking ambulance. I need a bleedin’ drink and a fag.’
    Grace looked at her. He had no idea at this stage how long she had been there, but she looked remarkably composed for someone who had been tied and gagged. He wondered if it was a set-up. This was not a woman you could trust with any story.
    ‘Where’s your brother?’ Roy Grace asked her.
    ‘Which bruvver?’
    ‘Ewan.’
    ‘In prison. Where you pigs put him.’
    ‘So he hasn’t been staying here?’ he pressed.
    ‘I didn’t have no one staying.’
    ‘Someone’s been sleeping in your spare bed,’ Grace said.
    ‘Must have been the Man in the Moon.’
    ‘Was that who tied you up? The Man in the Moon is into bondage, is he?’
    ‘I want a solicitor.’
    ‘You’re not under arrest, Evie. You only get a solicitor if you are charged with something.’
    ‘So charge me.’
    ‘I will do in a minute,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll charge you with obstructing a police officer. Now tell me who slept in your spare room?’
    She said nothing.
    ‘The same person who tied you up?’
    ‘No.’
    Good, he thought. That was a big step forward.
    ‘We’re concerned about your brother,’ he said.
    ‘That’s bleedin’ touching, that is. You been nicking him since he was a kid, but you’re suddenly concerned about him? That’s rich!’

49
    At the evening briefing, Grace brought his team up to speed on the raid. Evie Preece was unable to give any information about her assailant, but the fact that she consented, albeit reluctantly, to a medical examination was an indication to Grace that the attack on her had been real and not a put-up job by herself and her brother, as he had first suspected. The house was such a tip it was hard to gauge whether it had been rifled through, which could have given robbery as a possible motive for the attack.
    The police doctor’s opinion was that the severe bruising to her neck was indicative of a sharp blow. She added that the side of the neck, just above the collarbone, was the place where someone experienced in martial arts would strike, if they wanted to render their victim instantly unconscious.
    This was