Dead Simple

  Then he fondled the two unspent cartridges. 'They've got your name on them/ he informed Sean Penn, who was walking towards him. But Sean Penn wasn't in the mood for conversation either.

  Then Davey remembered. There was someone who would talk to him. He knelt down on the floor, reached under the bed for the walkie-talkie, then pulled out the aerial as far as it would go. Kerloink!

  He pressed the listen button and heard the crackle of static. Then he tried the talk button.

  Michael, wide awake, was crying. He did not know what to do, he felt 0 utterly helpless. It was after two in the morning, Friday morning, he was meant to be getting married tomorrow. There were a million things that needed to be done.

  Who or what the hell had taken the breathing tube? Could it have been a badger taking something to its lair? What would a badger want with a length of rubber tubing? Besides, the footsteps had been too heavy. It had been a human, for sure.

  Who?

  Why?

  Where was Ashley, his beloved, darling, gorgeous, caring Ashley? What was she thinking right now, what was going through her mind?

  He kept hoping, every moment, that this was some terrible nightmare and in a minute he would wake and be in his bed with Ashley beside him. It just did not make any sense.

  There was a sudden sharp hiss, stark and clear. The walkietalkie!

  Then a voice, in a thick Southern drawl said: 'You have any idea how much damage they do? Huh? You got yourself any idea?'

  Frantically, Michael scrabbled in the darkness for his torch.

  The voice continued, 'Y'know, most folk ain't got no idea. You git them durn conservationalists talking 'bout protecting the wildlife, but them guys, they don't know shit, know what I'm saying?'

  Michael found the torch, switched it on, located the walkietalkie and pressed the talk button. 'Hello?' he said. 'Hello? Davey?'

  'Uh huh, I'm talking to ya! Bet you don't have no idea, right?'

  'Hello, who are you?'

  'Hey dude, you don't need to worry 'bout who I am. Thing is five danged rabbits eat near enough the same amount of grass as one sheep. Go figure.'

  Michael gripped the black box, totally confused, wondering if he

  was hallucinating. What the hell was going on? 'Can I speak to Mark? Or Josh? Or Luke? Or Pete? Robbo?'

  There was silence for some moments.

  'Hello?' Michael said. 'Are you still there?'

  'Ma friend, I ain't going nowhere.'

  'Who are you?'

  'Maybe I'm the Man With No Name.'

  'Listen, Davey, this joke's gone on too long, OK? Too fucking long. Please get me out of here.'

  'You gotta be impressed with two hundred rabbits, right?'

  Michael stared at the walkie-talkie. Had everyone gone totally insane? Was this the lunatic who had just taken out the breathing tube? Michael tried desperately to think clearly.

  'Listen,' he said. 'I've been put here as a joke by some friends. Can you get me out of here, please?'

  'You in some kind of bad shit?' the American voice said.

  Still unsure whether this was some kind of game, Michael said, 'Bad shit, you got it.'

  'What do you think about two hundred rabbits?'

  'What do you want me to think about two hundred rabbits?'

  'Well dude, what I want you to think is that any dude wastes two hundred rabbits, he's gotta be an OK kind of a dude, know what I'm saying?'

  'Totally,' Michael said. 'I totally agree with you.'

  'OK, we're on the same page, that's cool.'

  'Sure is. Cool'

  'Don't get much cooler, right, dude?'

  'You got it,' Michael said, trying to humour him. 'So maybe you could lift the lid off for me and we could have a discussion about this face to face?'

  'I'm kinda tired now. Think I'm going to hunker down, get me some shut-eye, know what I'm saying?'

  Panicking, Michael said, 'Hey, no, don't do that, let's keep talking. Tell me more about the rabbits, Davey.'

  'Told ya, I'm the Man With No Name.'

  'OK, Man With No Name, you don't happen to have a couple of Panadols, because I've one mother of a headache?'

  'Panadols?'

  'Yes.'

  There was silence. Just the crackle of static.

  'Hello?' Michael said. 'You still there?'

  There was a chuckle. 'Panadol?'

  'Come on, please get me out of here.'

  After another long silence the voice said, 'Guess that depends where here is.'

  'I'm in the goddamn coffin.'

  'You're shittin' me.'

  'No shit.'

  Another chuckle. 'No shit, Sherlock, right?'

  'Right! No shit, Sherlock.'

  'I have to go now, it's late. Shuteye!'

  'Hey, please wait - please--'

  The walkie-talkie went silent.

  In the fading beam of the flashlight Michael saw that the water had risen considerably just in the past hour. He tested the depth again with his hand. An hour ago it had reached the knuckle of his index finger.

  Now it covered his hand completely.

  25

  Roy Grace, in a white short-sleeve shirt and sombre tie, his collar loose, stared at the text message on his phone, and frowned:

  Can't stop thinking about you! Claudine xx

  Claudine?

  Sitting in his office shortly after 9 a.m., in front of his computer screen, which was pinging with new emails every few moments, feeling dog tired and with a blinding headache, he was cold. It was tipping down with rain outside and there was an icy draught in the room. For some moments he watched it running down his window, staring at the bleak view of the alley wall beyond, then he unscrewed the cap of a bottle of mineral water he'd bought at a petrol station on his way in, rummaged in a drawer of his desk and took out a packet of Panadol. He popped two capsules from the foil, swallowed them, then checked the time the message had been sent: 2.14 a.m.

  Claudine.

  Oh God. Now it registered.

  His cop-hating, vegan blind date from U-Date of Tuesday night. She'd been horrible, the evening had been a disaster, and now she was texting him. Terrific.

  He held his mobile phone in his hand, toying with whether to reply or just delete it, when his door opened and Branson walked in, dressed in a crisp brown suit, a violent tie and two-tone brown and cream correspondent's shoes, holding a capped Starbucks coffee in one hand and two paper bags in the other.

  'Yo, man!' Branson greeted him, breezily, as usual, plonking himself in the chair opposite Grace and setting the coffee and paper bag down on his desk. 'Still own a shirt, I see.'

  'Very funny,' Grace said.

  'You win last night?'

  'No, I did not sodding well win.' Grace was still smarting at his

  loss. Four hundred and twenty quid. Money wasn't a problem for him, and he had no debts, but he hated losing, especially losing heavily.

  'You look like shit.'

  'Thanks.'

  'No, I mean, really. You look like absolute shit.'

  'Nice of you to come all this way to tell me.'

  'You ever see The Cincinatti Kid?'

  'I don't remember.'

  'Steve McQueen. Got wiped out in a card game. Had a great ending - you'd remember, the kid in the alley challenging him to a bet, and he tosses his last coin at him.' Branson peeled the lid off, spilling coffee onto the desk, then removed an almond croissant, dropping a trail of icing sugar next to the coffee spill. He proffered it to Grace. 'Want a bite?'

  Grace shook his head. 'You should eat something more healthy for breakfast/

  'Oh really? So I get to look like you? What did you have? Organic wheat grass?'

  Grace held up the Panadol packet. 'All the nourishment I need. What are you doing here in the sticks?'

  'Got a meeting in ten minutes with the Chief. I've been drafted onto the Drugs Performance committee.'

  'Lucky you.'

  'It's all about profile, isn't that wha
t you told me? Stay visible to your chiefs?'

  'Good boy, you remembered. I'm impressed.'

  'But actually that's not why I'm here to see you, old-timer.' Branson pulled a birthday card out of the second bag and laid it in front of Grace. 'Getting everyone to sign - for Mandy'

  Mandy Walker was in the Child Protection Unit in Brighton. At one time Grace and Branson had both worked with her.

  'She's leaving?' Grace said.

  Branson nodded, then mimed a pregnant belly. 'Actually, thought you'd be in court today.'

  'Adjourned to Monday.' Grace signed alongside a dozen other names on the card; the coffee and pastry suddenly smelled good. As

  Branson took a bite of croissant he reached out a hand, took the other croissant from its bag and tore a mouthful off, savouring the instant hit of sweetness. He chewed slowly, peering at Branson's tie, which had such a sharp geometric pattern it almost made him dizzy, then handed back the card.

  'Roy, that flat we went to on Wednesday, right?'

  'Down The Drive?

  'There's something I don't get. I need the wisdom of your years. You got a couple of minutes?'

  'Do I have any choice?'

  Ignoring him, Branson said, 'Here's the thing.' He took another bite of his croissant, icing sugar and crumbs falling onto his suit and tie. 'Five guys on a stag night, right? Now--'

  There was a rap on the door, then it opened, and Eleanor Hodgson, Grace's management support assistant, brought in a sheaf of papers and files. A rather prim, efficient middle-aged woman, with neat black hair and a plain, slightly old-fashioned face, she always seemed nervous of just about everything. At the moment she looked nervous of Glenn Branson's tie.

  'Good morning, Roy,' she said. 'Good morning, DS Branson.'

  'How you doing?' Glenn replied.

  She put the documents down on Roy's desk. 'I've got a couple of forensics reports back from Huntingdon. One's the one you've been waiting for.'

  'Tommy Lyde?'

  'Yes. I've also got the agenda and briefing notes for your budget meeting at eleven.'

  'Thanks.' As she was leaving the room he quickly sifted through the pile and pulled the Huntington report to the top. Huntingdon, in Cambridge, was one of the forensic centres that Sussex Police used. Tommy Lytle was Grace's oldest 'cold case'. At the age of eleven, twenty-seven years ago, Tommy had set out from school on a February afternoon, to walk home. He'd never been seen again. The only lead at the time had been a Morris Minor van, seen by a witness who had had the presence of mind to write down the number. But no link to the owner, a weirdo loner with a history of sex offences on minors, had ever been established. And then, two months ago, by complete coincidence, the van had showed up on Grace's radar, when a classic car enthusiast who now owned it got stopped for drunken driving.

  The advances in forensics from twenty-seven years back were beyond quantum. With modern DNA testing, police forensic scientists boasted, not without substance, that if a human being had ever been in a room, no matter how long ago, given time, they could find evidence. Just one skin cell that had escaped the vacuum cleaners, or a hair, or a clothing fibre. Maybe something one hundred times smaller than a pinhead. There would be a trace.

  And now they had the van. And the original suspect was still alive. And forensics had been through that van with microscopes!

  Despite his fondness for Branson, suddenly Grace could not wait for him to leave, so he could read the report. If he solved this, it would be the oldest cold case ever solved in the country.

  Popping the remains of the croissant in his mouth and talking while he chewed, Branson said, 'Five guys go on a stag night, right? The groom is a real joker - he's pulled a stunt on each of the guys in the past - handcuffed one poor sod to a seat on the night train to Edinburgh when he was meant to be getting married in Brighton the next morning.'

  'Nice guy,' Grace said.

  'Yes, just the kind of fun bloke you want for your best friend. So. Let's look at what we have: Five of them start out. Somewhere along the line they lose the groom, Michael Harrison. Then they are in an RTA, three of them dead at the scene, the fourth in a coma and he died last night. Michael has vanished, no one has heard a word. It is now Friday morning and he's due to be married in a little over twenty-four hours.'

  Branson sipped some coffee, stood up for a moment and walked around the office. He stopped and stared for a moment at the SASCO flip chart, on which a draft rota for something had been written in blue ink. He flipped it over, then picked up a pen and drew on the board.

  'We got Michael Harrison.' He wrote his name and drew a circle around it. 'We got the four dead mates.' He drew a second circle. 'Then we have the fiancee, Ashley Harper.' He drew a third circle around her. 'Then the business partner, Mark Warren.' He drew a fourth circle. 'And ...'

  Grace looked at him quizzically.

  'We have what we dug out of his computer yesterday, yeah?'

  'A bank account in the Cayman Islands.'

  Still holding the pen, Branson sat down in front of Grace again.

  Grace continued. 'The business partner wasn't at the stag do, you said.'

  Branson never failed to be impressed by Grace's memory for detail. He always seemed to retain everything. 'Correct.'

  'Because he was stuck out of town on a delayed flight.'

  'That's the story so far.'

  'So what does he say? Where does he think Michael Harrison went? Did he fuck off to the Cayman Islands?'

  'Roy, you have seen his bird. And we agreed no bloke in his right mind would ditch her and run away- she is drop-dead gorgeous, and smart with it. And ...' Branson pursed his lips.

  'And what?'

  'She lies. I did your NLP stuff on her, the eye trick. I asked her if she knew about the Cayman Islands account and she said she didn't. She was lying.'

  'She was probably just being protective. Covering her boss - and fiance's arse.' Grace was distracted for an instant by the ping of another incoming email. Then he thought hard. 'What is your take so far?'

  'The following possible scenarios: Could be his mates have been paying him back and they've tied him up somewhere. Or he might have had an accident. Or he's got cold feet and done a runner. Or the Cayman Islands features in this somewhere.'

  Grace clicked open one of the emails that was flagged as urgent and was from his boss, Alison Vosper. She asked if he was free for a brief meeting at 12.30. He typed back that he was, while he talked to Branson. 'The guy's business partner, Mark Warren, he'd know if they had been planning a prank, like tying him to a tree, or something.' 'Ms Harper says he knows they were planning something, but doesn't know what they decided on.'

  'Have you checked out the pubs they visited?'

  'Doing that today.'

  'CCTV footage?'

  'Starting on that, too.'

  'Have you checked out the van?'

  From the look of sudden panic on Branson's face, Grace saw he hadn't. 'Why the hell not? Isn't that the first place to look?'

  'Yeah, you're right. I haven't got fully into gear on this yet.'

  'Have you done an all-ports?'

  'Yeah, his picture's being circulated this morning. We've put out a missing persons alert.'

  Grace felt as if a dark cloud had slipped overhead. Missing persons. Every time he heard the phrase it affected him, brought it all right to the front of his mind again. He thought of this woman, Ashley, Branson had described. The day before her wedding and her man gone missing. How must she feel?

  'Glenn, you said this guy is a joker - any chance this a prank he's pulling and he's about to turn up, with a big grin on his face?'

  'With four of his best mates dead? He'd have to be pretty sick.' Branson looked at his watch. 'What you doing for lunch?'

  'Unless I get a call from Julia Roberts, I may be free - oh - subject to No. 27 not detaining me for more than half a hour.'

  'How is the delightful Alison Vosper?'

  Grace gave him a bleak stare and raised h
is eyebrows. 'More sour than sweet.'

  'Ever thought of shagging her?'

  'Yes, for about one nano-second - or perhaps even a femtosecond - isn't that the smallest unit of time that exists?'

  'Could be a good career move.'

  'I can think of a better one.'

  'Like?'

  'Like not trying to shag the Assistant Chief Constable.'

  'Did you ever see Susan Sarandon in Moonlight MileV

  'I don't remember it.'

  'She reminds me of Susan Sarandon in that movie. I liked that movie, it was good. Yeah. Want to take a ride out to the car pound

  with me, lunchtime - talk some more on the way? I'll buy you a pint and slap-up sandwich.'

  'Lunch at the car pound? Wow, proves what I thought the moment I saw that tie. You really do have style.'

  26

  The water was still rising, Michael calculated, at one inch every three hours. It was now just below his ears. He was shivering from cold, getting feverish.

  He had worked frantically through the night, sawing with the glass, and he was now on the last fragment of the whisky bottle and his arms ached with exhaustion. He had made a deep groove in the lid, but had still not yet broken through to the outside of it.

  He was pacing himself now, two hours on, half an hour off, imagining he was sailing. But he was losing. The water was rising faster than the hole was widening. His head would be underwater before the hole was wide enough to get through.

  Every fifteen minutes he pressed the talk button on the walkietalkie. Each time all he got was static back.

  It was now 11.03 a.m. Friday.

  He ground away, powdered glass and wet soil pouring steadily down, the last fragment of glass shrinking with every minute he worked, thinking, all the time thinking. When the glass was finished he still had the belt buckle. And when that was finished what other instruments did he have to grind away at the wood with? The lens of the torch? The batteries?

  A sharp hiss as the walkie-talkie came to life, then a phoney American accent again. 'Hi, buddy, how ya doin'?' This time he recognized it.

  Michael pressed the talk button. 'Davey?' he said. 'Is that you?'

  'Just watching the news on TV,' Davey informed him. 'They're showing an auto wreck I went to with my dad on Tuesday! Boy that was some accident! All of 'em dead - and there's one guy missing!'