Dead at First Sight, page 16
The disobedient, overweight beagle had lumbered off, in one of his eternally futile chases after a rabbit. The thing was so plump it would struggle to catch a tortoise, Packham thought. Although he was only too well aware that until recently he would have struggled to catch a tortoise, too.
In his late forties, mild-mannered and polite, Packham always dressed more corporately than the more-casual average tech guru. He was on the mend from a debilitating spinal condition that had caused him to take early retirement from the Sussex Police Digital Forensics Team. After years of crippling pain, he’d now been given a new, almost miraculous treatment, and on his doctor’s orders was walking five miles a day, recording them on his Fitbit.
He was revelling in his second career as an independent IT consultant, working with police forces and banking security advisors around the world, although tonight he was feeling a bit gloomy at the prospect of going back to an empty house. His wife, Jen, was on a Mediterranean cruise with her sister. It was one they should have been on together, but two days before departure an urgent job had come up from the City of London Economic Crimes Unit, currently his biggest paymaster, which he and Jen agreed he should not turn down.
‘FATSO!’
The blooming dog was nowhere to be seen in the rapidly deepening darkness. A few miles to the south he could see, intermittently, two pinpricks of light: a fishing boat or a container ship far out on the choppy water of the English Channel.
‘FATSO! HUDSON!’
He was wishing he’d worn a heavier coat tonight, the bitter wind freezing his nuts off. Suddenly the display of his phone lit up. An incoming call.
International was all the display revealed.
‘Ray Packham,’ he answered, tenting his head with his anorak to try to keep out the noise of the wind so he could hear.
There was a brief delay then he heard a very correct-sounding English voice. ‘Mr Packham? My name is Johnny Fordwater. I’ve been given your name by Detective Investigator Lanigan of the New York Police Department. An associate of his in the FBI – Bradley Warren – suggested you might be able to help me.’
‘Bradley Warren? I met him a few years ago at Quantico. He’s a good chap, how is he?’
‘I’ve not actually met him himself – he passed on the recommendation.’
‘Very good of him, I’d be happy to try. What can I do for you?’
Fordwater filled him in on his and Sorokin’s situation.
‘I’m sorry to hear this, Mr Fordwater.’
‘It’s Major, actually. Retired.’
‘Apologies, Major. Did I hear you say £400,000, Mr – Major – Fordwater?’
‘Correct – and change.’
Hudson came lumbering out of the gloom towards him.
‘Good boy!’ he praised.
‘Pardon?’
‘Sorry, I was talking to my dog!’
‘Ah. I’m getting a lot of roaring sounds, can hardly hear you – don’t think this is a very good line.’
‘I’m halfway up a hill and it’s blowing a hooley,’ Packham said. ‘Might be best if you call me in half an hour when I’m back home.’
‘Good plan.’
When he did call back, Johnny Fordwater related the whole story in detail. As he finished, from the sound of it Ray Packham was now scraping food into a dog bowl. There were several loud, deep barks. ‘Hudson, quiet!’ More clattering, then he said, ‘I’m afraid, Major Fordwater, yours is not a unique story. I have a whole caseload of similar tales. If you’re hoping I might be able to recover your money I’d like to save you any further time and costs right away. I’m sorry to tell you this bluntly, but there isn’t a hope in hell.’
‘I know that,’ the Englishman said, bleakly. ‘But myself and my chum, Matt Sorokin here, from the Hernando County Sheriff’s office in Florida, would like to use our experiences to at least warn others not to end up in the same situation as ourselves. And I – we . . .’ His voice tailed off.
‘Yes?’ Packham prompted.
‘We have a proposal we’d like to discuss with you. I’m flying back to London tonight. Can we meet – as soon as possible? Tomorrow morning, I could come straight to you from the airport.’
‘Are you sure you want to spend the money?’
‘Oh yes, very.’
44
Tuesday 9 October
The Elvis Presley track was coming to an end.
Radio Sussex presenter Danny Pike said, over the music, ‘From the King! The one and only Elvis Presley! “Can’t Help Falling in Love”. Great song, eh? But it comes today with a health warning. My next guest will be familiar to regular listeners of BBC Sussex, and we’ve all learned something positive from him – Brighton’s very own motivational speaker, Toby Seward. Me, I learned from him how to be motivated enough to wake up early in the morning. Then my son, Josh, was born and my wife and I didn’t need an alarm clock any more! But today Toby Seward is here to talk about something quite different. Thanks for coming along, Toby.’
‘My pleasure, thanks for having me on, Danny.’
‘Just to set the scene, Toby is a handsome fellow, forty-eight years old with nice hair and great teeth. He is so handsome in fact that his image has been used, without his knowledge or consent, to chat up no less than eleven different ladies who’ve signed up to internet dating agencies in search of a soulmate. He is in the studio with me to talk about the dangers of online dating. Sussex Police today released figures on internet crime, showing it to have reached epidemic status, and online dating is the biggest of all in this current crime wave. In Sussex alone, during the past twelve months, over forty residents have been scammed out of £30 million by people they had met online and fallen in love with. The smallest loss was £40,000 and the largest scam relieved one person of an incredible four million quid. Toby, you’ve recently had a pretty shocking experience. Would you like to tell our listeners about it? I should repeat, this comes with a health warning. So, Toby, you must have had lots of success internet dating?’
‘Thank you, Danny,’ Toby Seward said with a grin. ‘I’ve got no need at all to go internet dating now. My husband, Paul, and I are very happy – we did actually meet on a dating site some years ago. But since then I’ve had an experience I felt I needed to publicize because, as you rightly say, online romance does indeed come with a very serious warning.’
‘Tell us what happened to you, Toby.’
‘Sure. Well, it was about a fortnight ago I got a phone call out of the blue from a well-spoken lady called Suzy. It’s a call I will never ever forget. She asked if I was Toby Seward. When I said yes, she said, “I’m very sorry if this sounds strange, Mr Seward. My name is Suzy. You see, you don’t know me, but the thing is, I thought I knew you.”’
‘Wow!’ Pike interjected. ‘And you didn’t, right?’
‘I’d never heard of her, no. She went on to tell me that we’d been in love with each other for the past eight months, having met on a dating website.’
‘In love – but you hadn’t actually met, right?’
‘Right. She’d signed up to this agency, putting up a photograph of herself and her profile. She was the fifty-five-year-old widow of an antiques dealer, looking for a new life-partner. One of the replies she’d received was from a gentleman giving his name as Dr Norbert Petersen, a geologist from Norway working in Bahrain in petrochemicals. And he used my photograph!’
‘Your photograph? Where did he get it from?’
‘He must have pulled it off the internet. He also said he was fifty-eight, which is a bit insulting as I’m only forty-eight!’
‘I’d be a bit annoyed by that, too, I think! So how did she rumble this person?’
‘Well, it seems he strung her along for several months, all the time professing to be falling more and more in love with her.’
‘Although they hadn’t actually met?’
‘Not physically, no. I think there is something very powerful about internet flirtations. I remember the excitement when I first met Paul over the internet. There’s something both mystical and compelling about it.’
‘And dangerous?’
‘Exactly. Very. If you meet someone through friends, you have a frame of reference, you’ll know something about that person’s background by the fact that they’re a friend of a friend – that’s a kind of automatic vouching for them. When you meet a complete stranger online, it’s a very different situation.’
‘Don’t online dating agencies check out their clients carefully?’
‘I’m sure that some do, Danny, but there’s a limit to how far they can, and all the more so with the current data protection legislation in place.’
‘OK, so go on.’
‘Well, a few weeks ago, Norbert Petersen told Suzy that his grandmother was desperately ill and needed expensive hospital treatment. He explained that his wife, whom he was divorcing, had had their bank account frozen. Could she lend him £20,000 to help with the medical bills, which he promised to pay back as soon as the divorce was sorted and he could sell their home. Fortunately, Suzy is – was – a smart lady. She became suspicious at this point and did a reverse Google search.’
‘A what?’
‘She popped Norbert Petersen’s photograph into Google and basically did a search on it – it’s very simple. Through this she discovered that “Norbert Petersen” was one of a number of different names under which this same photograph of myself appeared across different dating sites.’
‘Blimey, so what happened?’
‘She confronted him, saying she believed she was being scammed and she was going to report it to the police. He came back at her with a story about his identity being taken by an internet scammer, which again she was smart enough not to believe. Then yesterday I heard the shocking news that she is dead and Sussex Police have begun an investigation. It begs the question of whether there is a connection.’
‘What do you know? What do you believe, Toby?’
‘I don’t know anything more than I read in the Argus. Two officers came to interview me, but they wouldn’t give me any details. All I can say is that from my conversation with her she was a very nice lady. I can’t think of any reason why someone would kill her other than to silence her.’
‘She was the widow of a very successful antiques dealer,’ Pike said. ‘Might it not be simply and tragically a burglary gone badly wrong?’
‘It might indeed be, but I don’t think it’s that.’
‘So what’s your theory, Toby?’
‘I’m speculating wildly here, Danny, but knowing how much money is at stake with internet fraud, I think it’s possible Suzy was killed to stop her investigating any further. She had also hinted to me the last time we spoke that she had found out something really damning about the person who’d been trying to scam her.’
‘What do you think that might have been, Toby?’
‘I don’t know. I suspect it was something to do with his past – about who he really is.’
‘And do you think that could have got her killed?’ Pike pressed.
‘It could have, yes.’
‘So the dark side of internet dating,’ Pike said. ‘Do you have any message for our listeners, Toby?’
‘I do, yes. I want people who go online looking for love to understand the potential dangers they’re exposing themselves to.’
‘So should people should stop online dating? Is that what you’d like to see, Toby?’
‘Not at all. But for anyone out there listening, who is either internet dating or contemplating it, please just be aware.’
45
Tuesday 9 October
They were aware. Very aware.
Only too aware.
‘Like, you should be aware, too, Toby Seward-sounds-like-Sewage,’ Jules de Copeland muttered back at the radio. ‘You know, going live on air and saying this shit.’ Tossing his cigarette butt out of his window, he glanced at his colleague in the passenger seat. Ogwang was playing a game on his phone, concentrating intently. ‘Right?’
‘Yeah.’
Ogwang glanced at his watch. His large, shiny, £15,000 Breitling Navitimer that was his pride and joy. And more swanky than Copeland’s smaller Vacheron Constantin.
The wipers squeak-clonked in front of them, shovelling away the pelting rain. ‘You’re not even listening to me, man. Local radio, that’s where you find what’s going on. That and the local paper, right? They’re your eyes and ears, yeah?’ Copeland pointed to his own eyes, then ears.
A gusting sou’westerly straight off the English Channel rocked the car. Copeland had rented the little black Hyundai deliberately, figuring they would look less conspicuous than in something bigger and flashier. But with his hulking frame making him look like he had been shoehorned into the small vehicle, his penchant for shiny clothes and his sidekick an angry bonsai version of himself, they were about as inconspicuous as two sharks in a toddler’s paddling pool.
Ogwang had recently picked up urban street language and had taken to using it. ‘I’m hearing you, bro, got you mega. Mr Toby Seward, OK, right? This dude’s dangerous. We should teach him a lesson.’
‘Like, not to go on radio and shoot off his big fat mouth?’
Ogwang stuck his tongue out, pinched the end of it between his forefinger and thumb, then made a chopping motion with his free hand. He looked at Copeland expectantly.
Copeland turned left away from Hove seafront as the lights changed, without replying. They headed up Grand Avenue, past tall apartment blocks. ‘Lotta rich people in them apartments,’ he said. ‘Lotta older folks, widows, widowers. Looking for love. Rich pickings, here, Eastbourne, Worthing. Rich and lonely, looking for love. This is the place to be.’
He was completely unaware of the small, grey Polo, four cars back, that steadfastly followed them.
‘Where we going, bro?’ Ogwang clicked his cheap lighter and moments later the interior of the car filled with ganja smoke. He glanced at his watch again, admiringly. He’d had it for over two years, but it still gave him a thrill.
‘Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you where we’re not going. Prison.’ Mimicking his friend’s street accent he said, ‘Now put that weed out before we gets our asses busted and we gone have to ’splain what we doing here.’
They were returning to base, their gated mansion on Brighton’s leafy, secluded Withdean Road, from a shopping trip. Ogwang took another drag on the joint, inhaled deeply and removed it from his mouth. He held it in front of his face, staring at it, as if weighing up his options. Copeland closed them off for him. He snatched it and tossed it out of the window.
‘That was good shit, man!’ Ogwang protested.
‘You get good shit by staying out of prison, dumbfuck. I made that bitch in Munich look like a suicide, until you gone crazy and cut her tongue off. Now here we have a suicide, they not gonna prove nothing.’
‘Gotta leave warnings,’ Ogwang said. ‘See? Gotta leave them, bro, else they talk. Gotta stop this Tony Sewage man talking. Dissing our agency.’
‘So we go frighten him, right?’
‘Right.’
‘But that’s all. We don’t hurt him, we don’t want the police coming for us.’
Ogwang slipped his hand inside his parka and closed his fingers around the wooden handle of his sheathed machete. He pulled it out a few inches and felt the cold steel of the blade. He sharpened it every day of his life, keeping the edge like a razor.
‘You hearing me?’ Copeland said. ‘I don’t think you’re hearing me.’
Ogwang tested the sharpness of his blade again and said nothing.
46
Tuesday 9 October
There wasn’t much about being back in Brighton that pleased Tooth, but the heavy rain did. Rain was always good for surveillance – it distracted people, making them less alert to their surroundings, less aware. The rain was obligingly misting up the windows of the little rental Hyundai, four cars in front, further obscuring the rear view of the two men inside it. Although in Tooth’s opinion, what was mostly obscuring the view was their combined lack of intelligence. They ignored speed limits, pinging camera after camera they passed. What were they doing inside that little shitbox ahead of him? Playing a game of pass-the-brain-cell?
He had the radio tuned in to the local station, BBC Sussex. Over the years he’d learned that local radio gave you stuff that could be useful, and he was curious to hear any news reports about Suzy Driver. And he had been right to tune in. A man, whose name he hadn’t caught, was talking in a mellifluous voice, by sheer coincidence about how his identity had been used in attempted romance frauds on eleven victims. One of whom was Suzy Driver.
Tooth had flown into Shoreham yesterday morning, one of his alias passports at the ready in case he was challenged, but no one from Border Control was around. Then he’d been dropped off, by a driver Steve Barrey had arranged, at a car rental place at Gatwick where he’d hired this Volkswagen, turning down the offer of a free upgrade. He told the surprised Budget reception guy that if he’d wanted a bigger car he’d have rented a bigger car. He wanted small.
And inconspicuous.
Wary of spending too much time in the city itself, he’d checked into a Ramada at Gatwick Airport. Tomorrow, he’d switch to another hotel in the area. For security reasons, he never liked to spend more than one night in the same location. And as yet he didn’t have the firearm Barrey had assured him he was fixing for him. As soon as he got it, he’d do a double-tap on Jules de Copeland and Dunstan Ogwang and be on a plane, back out of Shoreham Airport.
The Hyundai Getz shot an amber light and he pulled up his little Polo for the red. Didn’t matter he wouldn’t lose them. Earlier this morning, after they’d emerged from the gates of their fortress-like residence, he’d followed them into Brighton where they’d parked in a multistorey, giving him plenty of time to place a magnetic tracking bug under the rear of the car.
And at least his employer had finally come to his senses. He no longer had the lame instruction to frighten. He had an updated order from Barrey.
