88

Friday 16 January

At 6.45 p.m., Roy Grace, running on adrenalin and caffeine, sat in a small office at the end of the Ops Room, on the third floor of Brighton Central police station. The John Street location of the huge, six-storey building, right on the edge of Kemp Town and just a couple of hundred yards from Edward Street – part of the area where Julius Proudfoot was predicting the Shoe Man’s next attack would take place – made it ideal for this current operation.

In the short space of time since this morning’s briefing, with the aid of some helpful pressure in the right places from ACC Rigg, the Detective Superintendent had assembled a Covert Team of twenty officers, and was busily working on increasing that to his target of thirty-five for tomorrow.

He currently had a surveillance team of eight out on the streets, on foot and in vehicles, and another twelve, including some members of his own inquiry team, together with several constables, Specials and PCSOs he had commandeered, who were located in buildings at strategic intervals along Edward Street and Eastern Road – as it became – and some of the nearby side streets. Most of them, as was common in surveillance, were in upstairs rooms of private houses or flats, with the consent of their owners.

A bank of CCTV monitors covered most of the wall in front of his desk. Grace could instantly call up on them views from any of the 350 cameras situated around the city’s downtown area, as well as zooming, panning and tilting them. The room was used for the officer in charge, the Gold Commander, at all major public order events, such as party political conferences or for monitoring major demonstrations, and for major operations in the city, as this had now become.

His number two on this, his Silver Commander, was the Crime and Ops Superintendent at John Street, who was currently in the Ops Room, liaising by secure radio with the two Bronze commanders. One, a female detective inspector who ran the Force Surveillance Teams from CID headquarters, was out in an unmarked car, coordinating the street surveillance team. The other, Roy Apps, a senior uniform inspector at John Street, was running the static team, who radioed in anything of potential interest from their observation points.

So far all had been quiet. To Grace’s relief it was not raining – many police officers jokingly referred to foul weather as policeman rain. Crime levels always dropped during heavy rain. It seemed that villains didn’t like getting wet any more than anyone else did. Although the Shoe Man appeared, on past form, to have a penchant for light drizzle.

The rush hour was drawing to an end and Eastern Road was quietening down. Grace flicked through all the screens showing views close to his observation points. He stopped as he saw one unmarked surveillance car slow down and park.

Taking a quick break, he phoned Cleo, telling her he was likely to be late and not to wait up. She was exhausted after last night, she said, and was going to bed early.

‘I’ll try not to wake you,’ he said.

‘I want you to wake me,’ she replied. ‘I want to know you’re home safe.’

He blew her a kiss and turned back to his task.

Suddenly his internal command phone rang. It was the Silver Commander.

‘Boss,’ he said. ‘Just had an alert from an RPU car – it’s picked up the index of the taxi driven by John Kerridge on its ANPR and just clocked it turning left into Old Steine from the seafront.’

Grace tensed, feeling the hollow sensation he often got in the pit of his stomach when things were starting.

‘OK, alert the Bronzes.’

‘I’m on to it.’

Grace switched his radio to pick up all comms from the Bronzes to any members of their team. He was just in time to hear the excited voice of one of the surveillance team, through a radio crackling with interference, ‘Target turning right-right, into Edward Street!’

Moments later there was a response from an observation post just to the east of John Street. ‘Target passing, continuing east-east. Hang on – he’s stopping. Picking up one male passenger.’

Bugger! Grace thought. Bugger! Bugger!

If Kerridge stopped for a passenger, that meant he wasn’t hunting. Yet it seemed curious that he had turned into the very area where they suspected the next attack would take place.

Coincidence?

He wasn’t so sure. Something about this John Kerridge character bothered him. From his years of experience, offenders like the Shoe Man often turned out to be oddball loners and Kerridge ticked that box. They might have had to let him go because of lack of evidence at this moment, but that did not mean he wasn’t their man.

If I was driving a cab, plying for fares, why would I drive along almost deserted Eastern Road at this time on a Friday night? Why not along St James’s Street, one street to the south, which was always teeming with people? Or North Street, or London Road, or Western Road?

He phoned Streamline Taxis, stated who he was and asked if John Kerridge had been sent to Eastern Road to do a pick-up. The controller confirmed back to him that he had.

Grace thanked her. So there was an innocent explanation for the taxi driver’s presence here.

But he still had a bad feeling about him.