‘Oh deer!’ Norman Potting said, looking around, but there was no response. Undeterred, he quipped again, referencing an enquiry many of them had been involved with some time back. ‘Stag night gone wrong, was it?’

‘Not today, Norman, OK?’ Grace turned as Dennison-Wilkins came back into the room, looking like she had news. ‘Sir,’ she said to Grace, but addressing everyone. ‘That was PC Bennion-Jones, who’s working with the team at the garage examining the Paternosters’ BMW. He called right away because he thought it might be significant to our enquiries. They’ve found a magnetic GPS tracker concealed under the rear of the car.’

81

Friday 6 September

For some moments no one in the conference room spoke. The silence was briefly broken by the sound of Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ bursting out of a phone and being rapidly shut off. Roy Grace looked at a red-faced Jack Alexander.

‘Sorry, boss – Kaitlynn put it on my phone as a joke. Thought I’d got rid of it.’

The silence resumed, to be broken again by Grace exclaiming, ‘A tracker under the Paternosters’ BMW, which must have been there before we seized the vehicle? What is that about?’

‘Bennion-Jones told me it was a TKSTAR – a good brand, waterproof, with a three-month battery life,’ Lorna Dennison-Wilkins informed him.

‘A tracker under the Paternosters’ car,’ Grace repeated, more calmly now. ‘So who put it there? Niall Paternoster? Eden? Someone external – not the police, so far as we know – but we need to check that.’ He turned to Potting. ‘Norman, I’ll give you the action of eliminating the police from putting it there.’

‘Yes, chief.’

Grace was pensive again, then said, ‘Whoever put it there wanted to see where the car was going. This was a vehicle that both husband and wife shared. Did one of them place it there and, if so, which one? And why? Or could it have been someone else altogether?’

He looked around a sea of faces deep in thought. ‘Lorna, did JBJ give you any sense of whether this is a rare or common tracker?’

‘He said it was one of a number widely available, sir. This particular one costs around thirty pounds – it’s sold in a lot of shops and on Amazon.’

‘Do we know if it was active or dormant?’ Grace asked. ‘Could it have been there for years perhaps, from a previous owner of the vehicle?’

She shook her head. ‘He said it’s a recently upgraded version that’s only been on the market for a couple of months.’

‘OK, well that might help us find out where it was bought from and by who.’

Martyn Stratford called out, ‘Sir.’

‘Yes, Martyn?’

‘I’ve just looked up this product,’ he said, nodding at his laptop screen. ‘There seem to be a very large number of retailers – including Amazon, as Lorna just mentioned.’

Grace made a note. They needed to check the Paternosters’ laptops for Amazon purchase history. ‘Let’s hypothesize for now that it’s either Niall or Eden Paternoster who has put this there. For what reason?’