Looking Good Dead

  It wasn’t the beer or the fags or the fast-food diet or the crazy work schedule that got you in the end, it was gravity, he decided. Gravity made you a little bit shorter every day. It slackened your skin a little more, pulling it relentlessly downward. Half your waking life was a struggle against gravity but it always got you. It would be gravity that banged the lid down on top of you in your coffin. And if you had your ashes scattered to the winds, gravity would eventually bring them back down, every single bit of them.

  He worried about his thoughts sometimes, which were becoming increasingly morbid of late. Maybe his sister was right; maybe he was spending too much time alone? But after all this time he was used to solitude. It was what he knew as normality.

  It wasn’t the kind of life he’d planned, nor the kind he’d ever remotely imagined he would be living, seventeen years back, when he had proposed to Sandy on a warm September day on the end of the Palace Pier, telling her that he’d taken her there because if she had said no, he would have jumped off. She’d smiled that beautiful, warm smile, tossed her blonde hair from her eyes, and told him – with her typical gallows humour – that she’d have considered it a much stronger test of their love if he had taken her to Beachy Head.

  He downed a glass of tap water, screwing up his face at the taste of the fluoride, which seemed heavier than usual this morning. Drink more plain water, his fitness instructor, Ian, at the police gym told him repeatedly. He was trying, but the stuff just didn’t taste as good as a Starbucks latte. Or a Glenfiddich on the rocks. Or just about anything else. He hadn’t really worried about his appearance until now.

  Until Cleo.

  These years since Sandy’s disappearance had taken a heavy toll on him. Police work was hard, but at least most coppers had someone to go home to at the end of their shift, and talk to. And Marlon, although company of sorts, just didn’t do it for him.

  He put on his jogging kit, gave Marlon some breakfast in case he forgot later, and eased himself out of the front door into the deserted street. It was a deliciously cool summer morning, with a clear sky holding all the promise of the day being a corker. And suddenly, despite his hangover and lack of sleep, he felt energized. With his heart humming, he set off down the street at a brisk pace.

  Roy Grace lived in Hove, a residential district that had until recent years been a separate town to Brighton, although joined at the hip. Now both came under the joint umbrella of the City of Brighton and Hove. The Greek, from which the name Hove came – or Hove, Actually, as it had been nicknamed – was rumoured to translate as ‘burial ground’.

  This was not entirely inappropriate, as Hove was the quieter, more residential sister to the once brash, racy Brighton. The border began on the seafront at a spot marked by a war memorial obelisk and a coloured line across the promenade, but after that became increasingly obscure, with many people along its zigzag pathway north finding it ran through their houses.

  Grace’s own modest three-bedroom semi was in a street that went directly down to the Kingsway, the wide dual carriageway on the far side of which was the seafront. He crossed over, then ran across the dewy grass of the lawns, past the children’s playground and the two boating ponds of Hove Lagoon where his dad, who enjoyed building model motor boats, used to take him as a child and let him hold the remote controls.

  The Lagoon had seemed such a huge place to him then, now it looked so small and run-down. There was a worn-out-looking roundabout, a rusting swing, a slide in need of paint, and the same ice cream kiosk that had always been there. The boats were still locked away for the night, and several ducks drifted on the smaller of the two ponds, while a group of swans sat on the edge of the larger one.

  He skirted the ponds and hit the promenade, just as deserted as it had been at this hour yesterday, and passed along a long row of blue bathing huts. As he ran, the landscape on his left changed. At first there was a row of drab post-war blocks of flats and a stretch of equally uninteresting houses. Then, after the King Alfred Leisure Centre, at the moment a major construction site, the view on his left turned into the one he loved: the long esplanade of grand, terraced Regency town houses, mostly painted white, many with bow windows, railings and grand porches. A lot of them had once been single dwellings, weekend homes for rich Regency and Victorian Londoners, but now, like most of the buildings in this city with its sky-high property prices, they had been carved up into flats or converted into hotels.

  A few minutes later, approaching the boundary between Brighton and Hove, he could see, ahead of him to the right, the sad, rusting spars rising from the sea which were all that remained of the West Pier. It had once been as lively and garish as its counterpart, the Palace Pier exactly half a mile further east, and visiting it had been one of the constant highlights of his childhood.

  His dad, who was a keen fisherman, had taken him to the Palace Pier often, walking down to the exposed fishing platform at the far end, from where on a Saturday afternoon – out of the football season or when the Albion was playing away – they could come home with a good haul of whiting, bream, plaice and, if they were lucky, the occasional sole or even bass, depending on the tide and weather.

  But it wasn’t the fishing that had been the big lure of the pier for Roy as a child, it was the other attractions, particularly the bumper cars and the ghost train, and most of all the old wooden glass-fronted slot machines that contained moving tableaux. He had one favourite and was forever cajoling his father into giving him more pennies for the slot. It was a haunted house, and for a full minute, as gears cranked and pulleys whined, doors would fly open, lights would go on and off, and all kinds of skeletons and ghosts would appear, as well as Death itself, a hooded figure all in black holding a scythe.

  Coming up on his left now – and his energy was starting to sag a little – was the hideous monstrosity of the Kingswest building, a grim, 1960s leisure structure totally out of keeping with the rest of the seafront. A few hundred yards further on and the handsome facade of the Old Ship Hotel loomed. He sprinted up the steps onto the upper promenade, crossed the almost deserted road, kept up his pace along the side of the hotel, and then entered the car park and glanced at his watch.

  Shit. He realized he had badly miscalculated. If he was going to make the 8.30 a.m. briefing on time – and it was vital to his team’s morale that he did – he had less than half an hour to get home, change and be out of the door.

  He also now had a raging thirst, but there was no time even to think about stopping and grabbing a bottle of water from somewhere. He inserted his ticket in the machine followed by his credit card, then hurried down the concrete staircase to the level he had left his car on, crinkling his nose at the smell of urine, wondering why it was that someone had pissed in the stairwell of every single car park he had ever been into in his life.

  45

  At 8.29 a.m., with just a minute to spare, Grace approached MIR One, eating his breakfast, a Mars bar from a vending machine, and clutch-ing a scalding cup of coffee.

  He hurriedly finished his Mars, and popped a stick of mint chewing gum into his mouth to mask any residual alcohol from last night. Putting the rest of the packet back in his pocket, he was about to enter the room, when he heard footsteps behind him.

  ‘Yo, old timer, so how was the date?’

  He turned to see Glenn Branson, in a leather jacket as glossy as a mirror, holding a cappuccino. He had a rim of its froth, like a white moustache, around his mouth.

  ‘Fine,’ he replied.

  ‘Fine? That’s all. Just fine?’ His eyes searched Grace’s mischievously.

  Grace chewed on the gum and gave a coy smile. ‘Well, probably a bit better than fine, I think.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I’m trying to remember; I drank too much.’

  ‘Did you get laid?’

  ‘It wasn’t that kind of date.’

  Branson looked at him strangely. ‘Man, you’re weird sometimes! I thought that was the purpose of dates?’ Then
he broke into a broad grin. ‘I want a blow-by-blow account later. Did she admire your gear?’

  Grace glanced at his watch, conscious it was now past eight thirty. ‘All she said was that my tailor must have a terrific sense of humour.’ He pushed the door open and entered the room, with Branson following.

  ‘She didn’t say that? Are you serious? Old timer? Hey, come on!’

  The whole team was seated around the workstation, all dressed casually except for Norman Potting, who appeared to be in his Sunday best – attired in a crisply pressed beige suit with a brightly coloured tie, and an even brighter handkerchief sprouting jauntily from his breast pocket.

  Grace was dressed casually today also, partly because it was Sunday, partly because he was so damned tired he hadn’t felt like putting a suit on, but mainly because he had a date. It was with a very special young lady – his god-daughter Jaye Somers – and he did not want to look like a boring old fart by wearing a suit.

  So he’d put on some of the new kit he had bought yesterday – a white T-shirt, jeans that were too tight in the crotch but which Glenn Branson had assured him looked well cool, lace-up shoes that looked like football boots without studs, also apparently well cool, and a lightweight cotton jacket.

  Jaye Somers’ parents, Michael and Victoria, were both police officers and had been two of his and Sandy’s closest friends – as well as being hugely supportive in those difficult months immediately following Sandy’s disappearance. And they’d stayed just as supportive during the years that followed. With their four children, aged two to eleven, they had become at one time almost a second family to him.

  He had taken Jaye out the previous Sunday, intending to visit Chessington Zoo because she had a thing about wanting to see a giraffe. But their outing had been cut short within half an hour when he had been called to attend the scene of a murder. He had promised to take her out this Sunday instead.

  He liked Jaye a lot; she was the kind of daughter he would have loved to have had – extremely intelligent, pretty, interested in all and everything and wise for her years. He hoped he was not going to have to disappoint her a second time. Apart from anything else it would not give her a great deal of confidence in the reliability of adults.

  The first item on his agenda was Reginald D’Eath, the sex offender whose computer had been seized. Grace reported that DS Rye at the High Tech Crime Unit had discovered there were identical routings on this computer to the ones found on the computer belonging to Tom Bryce. These routings might have taken Bryce to the website where, Branson believed after questioning the man exhaustively, it seemed likely he really had witnessed the murder.

  Grace told the team he was expecting a call by 10.00 a.m. from someone from the Witness Protection Scheme with D’Eath’s address. He delegated Norman and Nick to come with him to interview the man; for some reason he couldn’t explain he had a bad feeling about this interview and thought that a show of strength might be needed.

  Nick Nicholl reported he had continued the sweep of all the bars, pubs and clubs in Brighton late into the night with the photograph of Janie Stretton, but had still drawn a blank.

  Norman reported on his trawl through the clients of the escort agency, BCE-247. So far, he told them, it had not yielded any client who admitted to knowing Janie and none who fitted the identity of the one called Anton. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I have discovered something from another escort agency – it would appear Ms Stretton was registered with both of them.’

  He held up a different, even raunchier, photograph of Janie Stretton to the one Grace had seen in the BCE-247 office. It showed her stark naked apart from tassels on her nipples, thigh-high patent leather black boots and studded leather wrist-cuffs, one hand on her hip, the other brandishing a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  Grace was surprised at this sudden efficiency. Maybe he had misjudged Potting. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘From the internet,’ Potting said. ‘I did a search of all the girls on offer in the local agencies and recognized her face.’

  Grace had imagined the net might be too much for an old-school detective like Potting to get his head around as a research tool. ‘I’m impressed, Norman,’ he said, quietly wondering whether Potting’s trawl through the agency girls had purely been research for this case.

  Blushing a little, the Detective Sergeant said, ‘Thank you, Roy. There’s life in the old dog yet, eh!’ He directed a lecherous wink at Emma-Jane, who responded by looking down at her paperwork.

  ‘Great pair on her,’ Potting said, passing the photograph on to DS Nicholl, seated next to him, who studiously ignored the comment.

  Apart from their workstation, MIR One had been almost empty when Grace arrived, but more people were coming in every few minutes, filling up the other two stations. Crime was no respecter of weekends. It would be business as usual for all the Major Incident Teams.

  Emma-Jane reported on the overnight task she had been given by Grace. She’d contacted every minicab firm in the Bromley area, in search of the driver of the cab who had picked up a box of scarab beetles from Erridge and Robinson. But so far she’d had no luck.

  They were interrupted by a loud burst of rap music. It was the new ringtone on Branson’s mobile. Looking up apologetically he said, ‘Sorry, my kid did that.’ Then he answered with a curt ‘DS Branson’.

  A moment later, holding the phone to his ear, Branson stepped away from the workstation. ‘Mr Bryce,’ Grace heard him say, ‘what can I do for you?’

  Branson was quiet for some moments, listening, then he said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not a good line . . . Your wife, did you say? She didn’t come home last night? Still hasn’t? Can you give me a description of the car she was driving?’

  Branson came back to the workstation, sat down and began writing on his notepad. ‘All right, sir. I’ll check with Traffic. An Audi A4 estate, sport. I’ll call you back – on this number?’

  As he hung up, Nick Nicholl said, ‘An Audi estate, did you say?’

  ‘Yeah. Why?’

  Nicholl typed on his keyboard, then leaned forward, scrolling up through the crime log on the Vantage screen. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought so.’

  Grace looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Half past four this morning,’ Nicholl said, still staring at the screen. ‘An Audi estate was found torched up on Ditchling Beacon. The plates were burned off.’

  Branson looked at him, his face a picture of deep unease.

  46

  Jessica, in her pink dressing gown, squatted on the kitchen floor stroking an extremely drowsy Lady. Max, standing above his sister – in a Harry Potter T-shirt which he had on the wrong way round – said very seriously, as if he were a leading authority in such matters, ‘It’s Sunday. I think she is having a Sunday lie-in!’ Then for a few moments he turned his attention to a cartoon on the television.

  ‘She’s not going to die, is she, Daddy?’ Jessica asked.

  Tom, who had not slept a wink – unshaven, his hair a mess, barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans – knelt and put his arm around his daughter. ‘No, darling,’ he said, his voice shaky. ‘She’s just a little bit sick. She’s got a bug or something. We’ll see how she is in an hour or two. If she doesn’t seem better we’ll call the vet.’

  He had phoned Kellie’s parents, all her close friends and all his, just in case she had gone to one of them for the night. He had even phoned her sister Martha, who lived in Scotland. No one had seen her, or heard from her. He did not know who else to phone or what to do.

  Jessica laid her face against Lady’s and kissed her. ‘I love you, Lady. We’re going to make you better.’

  There was no response from the dog.

  Max knelt down also and laid his face against the Alsatian’s midriff. ‘We all love you, Lady. You’ll have to get up soon otherwise you’ll miss breakfast!’

  None of them had had any breakfast, Tom realized suddenly. It was half past nine.

  ‘When Mummy comes back she’ll know how to make her be
tter,’ Jessica declared.

  ‘Yes, of course she will,’ Tom said flatly. ‘You guys must be hungry – what would you like? French toast?’

  Kellie always made the kids French toast on Sundays.

  ‘You don’t make it very well,’ Max said. ‘You always burn it.’ He stood up, picked up the remote and began surfing the channels.

  ‘I could try not to burn it.’

  ‘Why can’t Mummy make it?’

  ‘She will do,’ he said, struggling. ‘I could make you some – to keep you going until she gets back?’

  ‘Not hungry,’ Max said grumpily.

  ‘You want some cereal?’

  ‘You always burn it, Daddy!’ Jessica said, echoing her brother.

  ‘Can we go to the beach today, Daddy?’ Max asked. ‘Mummy said we could if it was nice – and I think it is nice, don’t you?’

  Tom stared leadenly through the window. It looked glorious: blue sky, all the promise of a fine early summer’s day. ‘We’ll see.’

  Max’s face fell. ‘Awww. She promised!’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we’ll ask her when she comes home what she’d like to do today, shall we?’

  ‘She’ll probably just want to drink vodka,’ Jessica said without looking up.

  Tom wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly. ‘What did you say, darling?’

  Jessica continued stroking the dog.

  ‘Jessica, what was that you said?’

  ‘I saw her.’

  ‘You saw Mummy doing what?’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t tell.’

  Tom frowned. ‘You wouldn’t tell what?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said sweetly.