There was just one email sitting in the in-box, and it had a massive attachment, marked SC5w12. A symbol showed the email and attachment had been forwarded on to someone. The address of the sender was [email protected]. Grace felt a surge of adrenalin as he saw the word ‘scarab’. ‘We’ve hit the damn jackpot!’

‘Dot al,’ Branson wondered, now standing behind them, reading over their shoulders. ‘What country is al?’

‘Albania,’ Nick Nicholl said.

Grace looked at him. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘You some kind of a closet geek, man?’ Branson asked admiringly. ‘How do you know that?’

The detective turned to Branson and grinned a little sheepishly. ‘It was the answer to one of the questions at a quiz night down at our local a few weeks ago.’

‘I’ve never been to one,’ Branson said. ‘Maybe I should go with Ari, improve our general knowledge.’ Might improve our marriage, more importantly, he thought. Try and find a few things to do together, other than argue.

Grace was looking at the address again. ‘Tisana,’ he said. ‘Did they have that one in your pub quiz too?’

Nicholl shook his head. ‘Let’s Google it.’

He keyed a search, but all that came up was an Italian website with a translator option. Nicholl clicked on that. Moments later they were staring at a long, detailed list of pathologies and plants. Acne, Grace read. Carrot, soluble Tisana vitamins, Germ of Grain, Oil of Borragine, Burdock. Then, more interesting to him at this late – or early – hour, he read, Fatigue. Ginseng, Guarana, Elueterococco, Tisana vitamins and minerals. Lecitina di Soia.

‘Maybe he’s a health nut,’ Glenn Branson wisecracked. Nicholl ignored him, too weary for jokes at the moment.

‘Go to the sent mail box,’ Grace said.

Nicholl clicked on that. It contained just one email – the same one, with the same attachment.

‘Can you see who it was sent to?’ Grace asked.

‘Strange,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘There’s no recipient showing.’

He double-clicked on it, and moments later the reason why became evident. There were hundreds and hundreds of recipients, all blind-copied. And all had email addresses that were just sequences of numbers combined with Tisana.

Grace read the first one: [email protected]. Then the next one: [email protected].

‘The first part looks like the name – obviously coded,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘Tisana must be the internet service provider.’

‘So why didn’t Tisana show up on the search?’ Grace queried.

‘My guess is because someone doesn’t want it to.’

‘Can you hide things from search engines like Google?’

‘I’m sure if you know what you are doing, you can conceal anything you want.’

Nodding, Grace said, ‘Let’s take a look at the attachment. See what that has to tell us.’

He stared at the screen as Nick Nicholl moved the cursor onto the attachment and double-clicked on it. Then, moments later, he was rather wishing he hadn’t suggested it be opened after all.

All three of them watched in numb silence for the next four minutes.

71

At 6.30 a.m. Roy Grace rang Dennis Ponds, the senior Public Relations Officer, at home, apologetically waking him and asking him to come and see him at eight fifteen in his temporary office in the Major Incident Suite.

Grace had managed to snatch two hours of restless sleep, slumped, vaguely horizontally, across the two armchairs in the Interview Room, before heading back to his desk at the workstation shortly after 6 a.m. Branson had fared better, borrowing the sofa in the Chief Superintendent’s office. Nicholl had gone home for a couple of hours, concerned at leaving his heavily pregnant wife on her own for too long.

At seven twenty Grace was standing outside the entrance to the Asda supermarket across the road and was the first customer when the doors opened, at seven thirty. He bought a packet of disposable razors, shaving cream, a white shirt, two croissants, six cans of Red Bull and two packs of ProPlus.

At eight he rang Cleo, but his call went straight through to her voicemail. He left her a brief message: ‘Hi, it’s Roy. Sorry I had to do a moonlit flit. You are amazing! Call me when you can. Giant hug.’

On the dot of eight fifteen, as Dennis Ponds entered the small bland office opposite the doorway to MIR One, Grace was feeling terrific. The wash, shave and change of shirt had freshened him, and two cans of Red Bull and four ProPlus were doing their stuff. The only thing not good was his back, which felt like it was burning. Cleo had scratched it to pieces. He couldn’t believe it, standing in the men’s room looking over his shoulder in the mirror at the long, raw red lines. But he grinned. It had been worth it. The fire on his back was nothing compared to the furnace burning in his belly for her. God, she was insane in bed.

‘Morning, Roy,’ Ponds said. He looked more like a city slicker than ever today, with his gelled-back hair, loud, chalk-striped suit, pink shirt with cutaway collar, and a blue tie that looked as if it was made of snakeskin.

Grace shook his hand and they both sat down. ‘I apologize for calling you so early.’

‘No problem,’ Ponds said. ‘I’m always up at sparrows; two young kids, three dogs.’ He shrugged. ‘So?’

‘I want you to sit in on the eight thirty briefing with us – there’s some video footage I need you to see.’

Looking at him a little uncertainly, Ponds said, ‘Well, OK… I have quite a tight schedule this morning; I have to organize the press conference for Janie Stretton-’

‘That’s what this is about, Dennis,’ Grace interrupted him. ‘But it’s also about something else. You may not have heard yet, but a vehicle my team was pursuing late last night was in collision with a taxi, in Kemp Town.’

Pond’s face fell. ‘No, I hadn’t heard.’

‘As a consequence of trying to apprehend the vehicle before it drove off, one of my best young officers is on life support at Sussex County. I just came off the phone. She’s survived a five-hour operation but it still doesn’t look good. She put her life on the line to stop that fucking vehicle – a Ford Transit. Do you understand that? She put her fucking life on the line, Dennis. She’s twenty-four years old; she’s one of the brightest and bravest young cops I’ve ever seen. She clung to the side of that vehicle to try to stop it, and the scumbag driving it smashed her into a parked car. She was trying to do her job, to uphold the law. Are you still with me?’

Hesitantly, Ponds nodded.

‘I’ve got an officer on life support. I’ve got a scumbag suspect unconscious. I’ve got an innocent taxi passenger with a broken leg.’

‘I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at,’ Ponds said.

Grace realized all the caffeine might be making him seem a little aggressive. ‘What I’m getting at, Dennis, is I want the editor of the Argus, and the editors of any other papers, radio news or television news that might pick up this story, to cut me some slack. I don’t want to have to deal with a room full of braying vultures after another cheap let’s-have-a-pop-at-the-police story about how reckless we are, endangering public lives, when actually we are trying to save lives, and risking our own in the process.’

‘I hear what you are saying,’ Ponds said. ‘But it’s not easy.’

‘That’s why you are coming to the briefing, Dennis. I’m going to show you something that I saw earlier this morning. Then I’m going to give you a copy of it. I think you’ll find it’ll make things a whole lot easier.’ He gave Ponds an almost demonic grin.

They walked a few yards along the corridor and into the Briefing Room, which was quickly filling up, both with members of Grace’s team and with the new team that had been assembled during the course of yesterday by Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor for the Reggie D’Eath murder enquiry – there were several clear areas of crossover between the two.