When Silence Kills by Mark Griffin

Author:Mark Griffin [Griffin, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2021-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Thirty-seven

The knock on his office door woke Bishop at 3.45 a.m. and he stared bleary-eyed at the sergeant standing by his desk trying to comprehend what was being said to him.

‘You want me to do what?’

‘In the incident room, sir, you might want to come and look at this.’

Bishop pulled himself up from the sofa and followed the sergeant.

‘More dashcam footage from Brighton?’ he asked.

‘No, sir.’

He had managed three hours’ sleep, having spent the majority of yesterday evening answering the phones after Crimewatch showed the re-enactment in Brighton. There had been over four hundred calls and a lot of people walking or driving on Marine Parade had remembered seeing Vee before she turned into Wellington Road. All witness accounts and camera footage had so far pointed to her being by herself.

It was a skeleton crew in the incident room and the team had patched the police station CCTV onto one of the big screens. It was dark outside and the floodlights at the main entrance made the picture glare.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘There, sir.’

A figure paced backwards and forwards by the iron-railed entrance, going out of frame then coming back in again.

‘He’s been there for nearly twenty minutes.’

‘Do we know who it is?’ said Bishop.

‘We managed to grab a screenshot when he came closer. He said something, but we haven’t got audio, so we don’t know what, but we think it’s Dustin Eccles.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘No, sir, we’re not.’

The figure came back into view and stood by the main gates with his hands above his head.

‘It is him.’ Bishop said. ‘He’s giving himself up. Who’s down on the station desk? Get them outside now with two other officers.’

‘Do we need armed response?’

‘No, we don’t need to be heavy-handed. Just get everybody inside on alert.’

The officers were ordered outside and Bishop watched the events unfold on the screen. They opened the gate and talked to the man. He raised his hands higher with his head kept neutral and then they led him off camera and into the station.

Bishop met Dustin downstairs at the booking desk as the suspect was getting cautioned.

‘You took your time,’ the man said. ‘I almost ran out of fags.’

‘Dustin,’ Bishop said. ‘Lovely to see you again. You know we’ve been looking for you then?’

‘Yeah, my mum said you people had popped by. I knew you’d never find me so thought I might as well come in. I need a lawyer and I want to make a statement.’

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