Dead Man's Grip

always knew it was a bad sign when the reporter from the Argus stopped phoning him and he had not heard from Spinella for several days now. He decided to call a press conference for the following day, Friday, his hope being to spark some memories in the public, followed by a reconstruction at the collision scene. Apart from other considerations, he needed to show the Revere family that everything possible was being done to find the driver so callously involved in their son’s fatal accident.
     
     
    At 11 a.m. the conference room at Sussex House was crammed. The Mafia connection and the $100,000 reward had generated massive media attention – far more even than Roy Grace had anticipated. He appealed to members of the public who might have been in the vicinity of Portland Road on the morning of Wednesday 21 April to cast their minds back and see if they remembered a white Ford Transit van and to attend the reconstruction, which would be held the following day.
    Then he appealed specifically to the residents of Southwick, and Manor Hall Road in particular, asking if anyone remembered the van or seeing Ewan Preece – at this point he showed a series of police and prison photographs of the man. Although it stuck in his craw to continue to deal with Spinella, the little shit was now at least being cooperative.
    Heading back along the corridors towards his office immediately after the press conference, Grace checked his diary on his BlackBerry. There was an exhibits meeting scheduled for 2 p.m., which he needed to attend.
    Glenn Branson caught up with him, saying, ‘You know, for an old-timer, you do pretty good at these conferences.’
    ‘Yep, well, that’s something you’re going to have to learn. We need the press. Love them or loathe them. How do you feel about taking one on your own?’
    Branson looked at him. ‘Why are you asking?’
    ‘I was thinking I might let you handle the next one.’
    ‘Shit.’
    ‘That’s what I say every time, before I start. Another thing, I need you to take this evening’s briefing. You OK with that?’
    ‘Yeah, fine. I don’t have a life, remember?’
    ‘What’s the latest?’
    ‘According to Ari’s lawyer, I was bullying and aggressive and made unreasonable sexual demands on her.’
    ‘You did?’
    ‘Yeah, apparently I asked her to sit on me. Goes against her religious principles of the missionary position only.’
    ‘Religious principles?’ Grace said.
    ‘In some states in the US it’s still illegal to do it any other way than the missionary position. She’s now going religious fundamentalist on me. I’m a deviant in God’s eyes apparently.’
    ‘Doesn’t that make Him a voyeur?’
    At that moment Grace’s mobile phone rang. Nodding apologetically at Glenn, he answered it.
    It was Crime Scene Manager, Tracy Stocker.
    ‘Roy,’ she said. ‘I’m at Shoreham Harbour. You’d better come down here. I think we might have found Preece.’

52
    Grace let Glenn Branson drive. Ever since gaining his green Response and Pursuit driving ticket, Branson was keen to show his friend his prowess. And every time he allowed Branson to take the wheel, Roy Grace quickly regretted it.
    They headed down the sweeping dip in the A27, passing the slip road off to the A23 and up the far side, the speedometer needle the wrong side of the 120mph mark, with Glenn, in Grace’s view, having a totally misplaced confidence in the blue flashing lights and wailing siren. It didn’t take a normal, sane police officer many days of response driving to realize that most members of the public on the road were deaf, blind or stupid, and frequently a combination of all three.
    Grace pressed his feet hard against the floor, willing his friend to slow down as they raced past a line of cars, any one of which could have pulled out and sent them hurtling into the central barrier and certain oblivion. It was more by sheer good luck than anything he would want to attribute to driving skill that they finally ended up on the approach road to Shoreham Port, passing Hove Lagoon – a short distance from Grace’s home – on their left, with their lives, if not his nerves, still intact.
    ‘What do you think of my driving, old-timer? Getting better, yeah? Think I’ve nailed that four-wheel-drift thing now!’
    Grace was not sure where his vocal cords were. It felt like he had left them several miles back.
    ‘I think you need to be more aware about what other road users might do,’ he replied