Dead Man's Time

  9

  Whenever Roy Grace left his front door he was always on guard. After over twenty years as a cop, looking around for anything unusual or out of place had long become second nature. It used to irritate his former wife, Sandy. One time, during his early days as a Detective Constable, he’d spotted a man slipping a handbag off the back of a chair in a crowded pub, and chased him a mile on foot, through Brighton, before rugby-tackling and arresting him. It had been the end of their evening, as he’d had to spend the next four hours booking the thief into custody and filling out forms.

  Often when he and Sandy were out for a meal, she would notice his eyes roving and kick him sharply under the restaurant table, hissing, ‘Stoppit, Grace!’

  But he couldn’t help it. In any public place, he couldn’t relax unless he knew he was somewhere there were no obvious villains, and no immediate signs of anything about to kick off. Sandy used to joke that while other women had to be wary of their men ogling other women, she had to put up with him ogling Brighton’s pond life.

  But there was one thing he never told her, because he didn’t want to worry her: he knew, like all police officers, there was always the danger of retribution by an aggrieved villain. Most crims accepted getting arrested – some saw it as part of the game; some shrugged at the inevitability; some just gave up the ghost from the moment the handcuffs were snapped in place. But there were a few who harboured grudges.

  Part of the reason judges traditionally wore wigs was to disguise themselves, so they would not be recognized later by those they had sent down. The police had never had such protection. But even if they had, to someone who was determined enough, there were plenty of other ways to track them down.

  * * *

  Such a man, right now, was sitting in his car, in front of an antiques shop that specialized in fireplaces, opposite the gates of a smart town-house development in the centre of Brighton.

  He had a grudge against one particular Sussex Police officer, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace.

  The cop’s baby was in there, in the third house on the left. He’d obtained plans of the house from the Planning Office where they were filed in the original building application, fifteen years ago, to turn the old warehouse into a courtyard development of seven town houses.

  The baby would sleep in the tiny room opposite, with the window overlooking the courtyard.

  But what interested him most of all right now was an estate agent’s sign, fixed to the wall to the right of the wrought-iron gates to the courtyard, advertising, TOWN HOUSE TO RENT.

  What fun to be Roy Grace’s neighbour. And how convenient?

  He’d be able to watch every movement. And bide his time.

  Happy days again!

  10

  Two hours after first entering Ralph Meeks’ flat, Susi Holiday and Dave Roberts were back out on the streets of Brighton in their patrol car. Susi drove. She loved her job. Hunting was what she liked to call it, all the time they weren’t actually on a shout – as calls to incidents were known colloquially.

  Dave, at forty-six, was one of the oldest PCs on the unit. Response was considered a young person’s game, and it could at times be extremely physical – intervening in violent domestic fights, pub brawls and chasing after robbers and burglars. But he’d been on this unit for twenty years and had no interest in promotion and the desk work that would involve, or in any other area of policing.

  If anyone were to ask him what he most loved about his job, he would have replied that it was never knowing what was going to happen in five minutes’ time. That, and ripping through the city on blues and twos, which almost every police officer with a Pursuit Driving ticket he had ever talked to admitted was one of the greatest kicks of the job.

  They were driving up North Street towards the Clock Tower, one of the city’s most prominent landmarks. Watching the faces of people meandering along the pavements on both sides of the road, recognizing the occasional villain among the crowds. And all the time monitoring their radios, clipped below their shoulders. Waiting for the next shout from the Control Room.

  It was coming up to midday, on a fine late August Thursday morning. They’d started their shift at 7 a.m. and would be on until 4 p.m. So far they’d attended a call to a potential firearms incident up at Brighton Racecourse, which had turned out to be a man shooting rabbits. That had been followed by a rip across the city to attend a collision between a motor scooter and a bin lorry, which had, fortunately, been less serious than it had sounded. Then another shout to attend a report of a woman screaming for help. Which had turned out to be an infant having a tantrum. Then the Ralph Meeks G5.

  For the past thirty minutes all had been quiet. They were thinking about returning to John Street police station to eat their packed lunches, have a comfort break and fill in the paperwork on Meeks.

  ‘What are your plans for the weekend?’ Dave Roberts asked Susi. They crewed together regularly and got on well.

  ‘Going to the Albion with James,’ she said. ‘You?’

  ‘It’s Maxim’s fifteenth birthday on Saturday,’ he replied. ‘Marilyn and I are taking him and some of his friends for fish and chips on the pier – to the Palm Court. Best fish and chips in Brighton!’

  ‘Tiffany going, too?’

  Tiffany was his teenage daughter.

  As he was about to reply, their radios crackled into life.

  ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Three?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Charlie Romeo Zero Three,’ Dave answered.

  ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Three, we’ve a call from a concerned individual. A man who normally speaks to his elderly sister every day. Says he’s not been able to reach her for two days. He’s out of the country, otherwise he would have gone round to check on her himself. Her name is Aileen McWhirter. The address is 146 Withdean Road, Brighton. Please check this out, Grade Two.’

  All Control Room calls were graded One to Four. Grade One was immediate response, with a target time of within fifteen minutes. Grade Two was prompt response, with a target time of within one hour. Grade Three was a planned response, by appointment, which could be made several days later. Grade Four was no attendance by police, but dealt with over the phone.

  ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Three, we’re on our way.’ Then, doing a quick calculation, Dave Roberts said, ‘We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.’

  Both officers looked at each other. They’d not had a G5 in several weeks, until this morning. One of their colleagues had joked they were like buses. You had none for ages then two came along together.

  11

  Sarah Courteney lay back nervously on the blue reclining couch in the doctor’s clinic. It wasn’t the needle or the pain that scared her; it was a whole bunch of other stuff. Some of it was to do with her hitting forty in two weeks’ time, and all the unwelcome shit that went with that particular milestone. Such as the wrinkles that were becoming increasingly persistent; the grey hairs that were starting to appear. Her career as a local TV news presenter was constantly under threat from younger, fresher faces.

  But what scared her most of all was her husband, Lucas. More and more every day. He was losing the plot and blaming everything on her, from his increasing gambling debts, his bouts of impotence – not entirely unrelated to his heavy drinking – and his rages. One constant target of his rages was her inability, after eight years of constant trying – including four of IVF hell – to go to term with a baby. She had a son by her previous marriage, but his relationship with his stepfather was disastrous – and not much better with her. There was constant friction in the house.

  Royce Revson stood in his small, sterile clinic, studying a monitor displaying an array of turquoise symbols, amid a bank of technical apparatus. Nudging fifty-six, he could have passed for someone in his mid-forties. A stocky, energetic man with short, jet-black hair, who exuded charm, he was wearing a purple short-sleeved shirt, collegiate tie, black trousers, blue surgical gloves, and had an infrared goggle headset clipped to his forehead. He turne
d from the machine and beamed down at his patient, his winning, boyish smile filled with all the genuine enthusiasm and confidence of a man on a mission.

  And he was indeed on a mission: to help women – and frequently men, too – ward off the cruelties of ageing with a little help from cosmetic chemicals. Such as the woman who lay back at this moment on his blue reclining couch. A raven-haired beauty, wearing a black tunic dress over black leggings and black suede sandals with large buckles.

  Her husband, she had confided in Revson, the way many of his patients did, was a bully who often hit her. One of the city’s prominent antiques dealers, he had a constantly roving eye and a vile temper, which had got progressively worse as the antiques trade had diminished – partly due to the financial climate, but more because of the change in fashion. People wanted a modern look in their homes these days.

  Why Sarah did not leave the brute was a mystery that, in Royce Revson’s long experience, was repeated by women many times over. He hoped to keep her looking young and attractive enough so when the day finally came that her marriage was over, she’d be able to attract someone new and hopefully kinder. Maybe even himself? But he pushed that thought away almost before it had even entered his head. Fancying his patients was not an option. However tempting. And Sarah Courteney was very tempting indeed.

  Unlike some of his clientele, which numbered a high percentage of the city’s richest, spoilt bitches, Sarah was a genuinely nice and kind person. For the past two years since she’d become a patient, he’d done a good job of keeping her looking youthful, through Botox, collagen and the lasering away of the occasional unwelcome vein that popped on her cheeks.

  To inspire client confidence, it helped, of course, that he’d had a fair amount of non-surgical intervention himself. And a bit of actual surgery that he omitted to talk about – reducing the wrinkles on his neck, and raising his drooping eyelids. He loathed what he called ‘the tyranny of ageing’, and had devoted much of his life to, if not halting or reversing it, at least cheating it of some of its worst ravages.

  ‘You’re looking very tanned, Sarah,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve just got back from Dubai.’

  ‘Holiday?’

  She nodded.

  ‘With your husband?’

  ‘No, with a girlfriend – we go every year. I love it there. I do my annual clothes shopping there.’

  Revson was relieved that she got some time away from the monster. He noticed the shiny Cartier Tank watch on her wrist. ‘Is that new?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, got that there. I found a little jewellery place a few years ago that makes really good-quality copies – not like most of the rubbish. He’s a proper craftsman, can get anything you want copied in just a few days.’

  ‘My wife wants one of those Cartier bracelets,’ he said, then frowned. ‘A Tennis bracelet, is it? They cost a fortune.’

  ‘He’d be able to make one for you – she’d never know the difference.’

  ‘Is it legal?’

  She shrugged. ‘I can give you his email address. You can send him a photo of what you want and he’ll send you a quote.’

  ‘Hmm, thanks, I might well do that.’ Pulling his goggles down over his eyes, he accepted the hypodermic needle from one of his two assistants dressed in identical navy tunics, and stepped forward across the grey and white speckled floor. ‘Okay, ready?’

  Sarah nodded. It would hurt, she knew. But the pain was a small price to pay for the difference she felt it would make to her lips. ‘No gain without pain’ was one of her favourite sayings. She said it now.

  Royce slid the slender needle through her upper lip.

  She winced.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  She nodded with her eyes. No gain without pain … No gain without pain … No gain without pain. She repeated the mantra continuously, silently.

  Steadily, he worked his way along her upper, then lower lips.

  ‘It’ll look like an allergic reaction for a couple of days,’ he said. ‘Before they settle down.’

  ‘I’m not on television again until Tuesday,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll be fine by then.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Aren’t you usually?’

  ‘Yep.’

  He smiled. Sure, it was clients like this that had helped make him a wealthy man, but money had never motivated him. Every time a beautiful woman like Sarah Courteney slipped off his couch with a smile on her face, he wanted to punch his fist in the air and give two fingers to whatever sadist that cruel god of ageing was.

  12

  Withdean Road was one of the city’s most exclusive addresses. Secluded houses were set well back behind high walls or screens of trees and shrubbery in a quiet, meandering, tree-lined street. Susi Holiday drove slowly as Dave Roberts called out the numbers. The even ones were on the right-hand side.

  ‘Here!’ he said.

  She turned in through old wooden gates that looked in bad repair and drove down a steep, winding, potholed tarmac drive. There were rhododendron bushes to the right, and to the left down below them, beyond a rockery and a steep lawn, the pebbledashed façade of a grand Edwardian house, with mock-Tudor features, leaded-light windows and high gables. Fixed high up on the wall was a red LanGuard alarm box.

  At the end of the drive, to the rear of the mansion, was a courtyard in front of two dilapidated garages. Susi stopped the car and they climbed out. A fence to their right, with tall trees behind, screening off the neighbouring house, was in a state of neglect, but the terraced lawns had recently been mown and there were sweet scents of cut grass and roses in the air. The property had a fine view across the valley where the London–Brighton railway line ran at the bottom of a steep chalk escarpment, to the houses on the far side of Withdean and Patcham and the playing fields of Varndean School.

  Close up, they could see the house was in poor repair, with the rendering badly in need of a lick of paint and some chunks missing; the paintwork around the window frames was peeling, the condition that often signalled an elderly occupant. A thrush was washing itself in a stone birdbath in a small rectangle of lawn bounded by rose trees.

  ‘Shame not to look after such a beautiful place,’ Dave Roberts said.

  Susi Holiday nodded, looking around, thinking how much her dog would love it here, and wondering how many millions it would cost to buy, even in its current state.

  They took the pathway around to the front, peering through each of the windows they passed for any signs of the occupant. They walked by a rose garden that needed some TLC, then reached a large, tiled porch. Rolled copies of the Daily Telegraph and the Argus were rammed into the letter box. More newspapers and some mail lay by the foot of the door. Not a good sign.

  Susi Holiday knelt and looked at the dates. ‘Yesterday – Wednesday – and today,’ she announced.

  Dave Roberts rang the doorbell. They waited. But there was no answer. Then he knocked on the door. It was a knock he had perfected, and one, he proudly boasted, that would wake the dead.

  It was greeted with silence.

  He rammed his hand through the letter box, and it plunged into a whole mass of correspondence. He pulled some out. A mixture of letters and advertising pamphlets. Among them a buff envelope with HMRC printed on it, addressed to Mrs Aileen McWhirter, appeared to confirm they were at the right address.

  He pressed his nose up against the letter box, and sniffed for that unmistakable leaden, clingy, rancid smell of death. Unlike at Ralph Meeks’ home earlier, he did not detect it, but that gave him no assurance that Mrs McWhirter was still alive. Even in these summer months it could take a week, at least, before a body started to smell.

  He gave one more knock, then dialled the phone number that the Controller had given them. They could hear it ringing, somewhere inside the house, but there was no answer. After some moments, it went to answerphone.

  They made a complete circuit around the exterior, peering intently through each window for signs of life. Th
e television was on in the kitchen. They saw a copy of the magazine Sussex Life on the table. Alongside it was a plate, with a knife and fork. A saucepan sat beside the Aga.

  ‘What do you think?’ PC Holiday asked.

  In reply, her colleague pulled on a pair of protective gloves, took out his weighted baton, and smashed a pane of the leaded-light window beside the front door. Then he pushed his hand through, careful to avoid the jagged glass, found the door latch and opened it.

  They walked through into a large, oak-panelled hallway, on which lay several fine, but worn, Persian rugs. Almost instantly they noticed dark rectangles on the bare walls, as if pictures had once hung there. And the entire hallway, for such a grand house, seemed strangely bare.

  As did most of the downstairs rooms they searched.

  Leaving his colleague to continue downstairs, Dave Roberts walked up the ornate circular staircase. Only a few moments later he shouted, ‘Susi, quick! Up here!’

  13

  Roy Grace was not due in court until sometime next week at the earliest. And it was a bank holiday weekend ahead of him. Hopefully time to spend with Cleo and Noah. He’d taken a bunch of paperwork home so he could relieve Cleo from baby duties for a while. And, so far so good! Although tomorrow, Friday, was normally a jinxed day for him. So often, just as he thought he was getting away with a quiet week as the duty Senior Investigating Officer, whenever he got to Friday, something seemed to happen. He was really hoping that, for once, he’d be left in peace. He had some great plans for this weekend, if he was.

  On Saturday afternoon he’d been invited by a colleague who had a pair of tickets to one of the first football games of the season at Brighton’s fabulous new Amex Stadium, which he had only been to once. He really hoped he’d be able to make it. Then in the evening he and Cleo planned to go out for a meal for the first time since Noah had been born.