One decision he had not yet made was his own funeral. Sandy had said she wanted a woodland burial, in an environmentally friendly coffin, but he had always shied away from dwelling on the subject: it disturbed him too much to think about it. Although, after a case he had been on some months back involving the trafficking of human organs, he had finally taken the plunge and done something that Sandy had urged him to do years ago. He’d signed up as an organ donor. But that was as far as he’d got with confronting his own mortality.
He looked out at the scene through the driving rain that conveniently turned his windscreen opaque, concealing him. A black hearse and a cortège of limousines waited some distance from one chapel, like planes stacked on a runway.
A sudden chill rippled through him, making him jump. Someone walking over your grave, his mother used to tell him. He smiled, sadly and fondly for a moment at her memory, and felt a guilty twinge that he had not been to either of his parents’ graves for a long time.
People were coming out of the chapel from the previous service. The usual mix of ages. No one hung around in the late afternoon rain. One group climbed into the back of an undertaker’s limousine, the rest all hurried off to their cars.
The waiting hearse, followed by the cortège, moved to the chapel door. The doors of the first limousine were opening. People stepping out, ducking under umbrellas that the undertakers held for them. He gave the wipers a quick flick to clear the screen – and saw him almost immediately. Stepping out of the first limousine.
Amis Smallbone was here, just as Terry Biglow had predicted.
He would have recognized the runt from a hundred miles away, he reckoned. Smallbone’s ramrod straight posture and his elevator heels made him seem a bit taller than his five feet, one inch. Although masked a little by the rain, he didn’t seem to have changed much in the past twelve and a bit years since Grace had last seen him, across a courtroom, where he had given the evidence that had played a crucial role in putting him away.
Evil was too big a word to use for Amis Smallbone. To have called him evil would have been to flatter him. He wasn’t smart enough to be truly evil. He was just nasty. A very nasty little man.
After a few minutes, the pall-bearers opened the rear door of the hearse and slid out the coffin containing, Grace presumed, the body of the dead fence Tommy Fincher. He grinned irreverently at the thought that the old rogue might have some last stolen item with him, that he planned to offer to God at a knockdown price.
He saw Terry Biglow emerge from the second limousine, a frail-looking figure, heavily reliant on a stick, and couldn’t help feeling sad for the man. It wouldn’t be long before the former racketeer’s funeral would be taking place, and he must be thinking about that now, very acutely, Grace thought. At least Biglow had something endearing about him, despite being a total scumbag, which was more than he could say about Smallbone. Biglow was a man he had always been able to do business with when he wanted information, and he would miss him.
An entire rogue’s gallery of Brighton’s underworld hurried by in front of him, through the rain, and in through the chapel entrance. Grace recognized almost all of the faces. Most of them were male, but there were a couple of significant females, too, notably brothel queen Gloria Jouvenaar, and alongside her an elderly lady on a stick, Betty Washington, who in her time had been the wiliest of all the city’s madams.
While he waited in his car for the cremation service to be over, he called Glenn Branson to wish him luck at the Crimewatch recording. The DS sounded nervous as hell. Grace did his best to calm him down.
‘Can I ask you a favour?’ Branson said.
‘Try me.’
‘The movie with Gaia. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of my getting a few days off – like – taking some annual leave – so I can take my kids – and be extras? I’ve no idea if we could even get to become extras, but it would mean an awful lot to them.’
‘Matey, just think that through, will you? You’re the deputy SIO in the early days of a brutal homicide enquiry, and you’re suddenly stepping away to become a film extra? Hello?’
There was a long silence. ‘Yeah, thought you’d say that,’ he replied finally.
Grace felt his friend’s pain. He knew just how shitty life had been for him this past year, but if you wanted a career in Major Crime, your work was always going to have to come first. ‘Look, tell you what I’ll do – no promises – but I imagine I’ll be meeting her sometime in the next couple of days to review her security here. I’ll see if she’d be willing to meet you and your kids for a couple of minutes. What do you think?’
Branson sounded elated. ‘You know, old timer, sometimes you’re not at all bad – for a white man.’
‘Sod off!’ Grace replied with a grin.
Then people began to emerge from the chapel. The service was over fast. Clearly not too many eulogies for Tommy Fincher. He ended the call and sat watching, waiting. Smallbone came out holding the arm of a woman he did not recognize.
He watched them climb back into the black limousine, then after some moments the car moved off. Grace started his engine and began to follow, keeping a safe, discreet distance behind.
38
He couldn’t believe it! They were calling him back from the production office of The King’s Lover, less than an hour after he had phoned. A young woman with an irritatingly cheerful voice, like she wanted to give him the impression she was his new best friend.
‘Jerry Baxter?’
He did not like her tone one bit. He was tempted to ask her if she had seen the news today on television, about the famine in Africa. Heard it on the radio? Read it in a newspaper? He wanted to ask her how she could sound so happy with the knowledge of that terrible thing happening out there in the world.
Our world. Everyone’s world. Was she totally stupid?
The snakes were rising. Stuff was getting all tangled up inside his head as it often did when he got angry. He needed to focus, remember why he was here, why he had phoned the production office in the first place.
‘That’s me!’ he said.
‘Thanks for calling us. We’re casting for extras now. We start shooting on Monday and we’d need you every day next week until Saturday evening. Would you be free?’
‘Absolutely,’ he replied.
‘We’re shooting crowd scenes outside the Pavilion, weather permitting. I’ll give you the address to come for costume fitting.’
‘Are you filming inside the Pavilion, too?’
‘Yes, a lot, but there won’t be any requirement for extras there.’
‘Ah, right,’ he said, slightly disappointed. But the information was helpful, he decided, although he wasn’t sure why. He filed it away. Sometimes his brain felt like a junk room where the light bulb had blown and no one had replaced it. You had to root around with a torch for stuff you wanted; and each year as he got older the torch got smaller and the batteries dimmer. There was stuff he’d filed away in there that he had long forgotten about and probably never would retrieve now. Mostly the place was guarded by the snakes that rose, their tongues flicking, each time he looked in there.
After he ended the call, he went down into the lobby of the hotel and approached the reception desk. He asked for information about the Brighton Pavilion: what time did it open and close, were there guided tours, did you have to book?
The man behind the desk, who was wearing a smart grey uniform, opened a leaflet and showed him the hours of opening, and the times of the guided tours.
Drayton Wheeler thanked him. It was pelting with rain outside; he decided this would be a good afternoon to spend doing something cultural indoors. What could be better than a visit to Brighton Pavilion?
39
‘Goddamn rain! Goddamn English weather. Shit!’ Larry Brooker, huddled beneath an umbrella, stood on the lawn of the Royal Pavilion, his Gucci loafers sodden from the wet grass. He checked the weather forecast on his iPhone for the tenth time today, as if somehow, miraculously,
at any moment the grey images of rain that filled all six days were suddenly going to turn to sunshine. The cameras didn’t start rolling until next Monday, but they were on a tight schedule for these final days of pre-production and this lousy weather was not a help.
The film’s director seemed impervious to the stuff plummeting down from the sky. Unshaven, with a shoulder-length mane of white hair and a perpetual worried frown, Jack Jordan was wearing a long-peaked baseball cap and an old flying jacket over jeans and sneakers. The two-times Oscar nominee, as well as a BAFTA winner, stood like some ancient soothsayer who had just foretold the end of the world, staring up at one of the onion domes framed by minarets, with his group of acolytes around him – the Location Manager, the Line Producer, the Production Secretary, the Production Designer, the Director of Photography, the First Assistant Director, his Personal Assistant – who it was an open secret he had been shagging for years – and two other people Larry Brooker didn’t know, but had no doubt he was paying for.
Jack Jordan pointed out something on the rooftop; the DP nodded and his PA wrote herself a note. Jack Jordan raised a small camera and took a picture.
Brooker hadn’t slept last night. There was another big hiccup with the production finance. Gaia was arriving in town tomorrow from London, so was their male star, Judd Halpern; they were in full pre-production, building sets up at Pinewood for some of the interiors, ninety-three people on the payroll burning through cash. His partner Maxim Brody had called him from Los Angeles last night, very kindly at 1 a.m., to tell him about the new problem.
Quite a big problem, actually.
The whole production was going to fall over in three days’ time if their backer, Californian internet billionaire Aaron Zvotnik, didn’t come up with the money he had promised. And Zvotnik, it was all over the news, was in trouble himself, with a big lawsuit launched against his company by Google for some infringement; his stock had plunged. He had warned Brody he was facing cash calls for his own stock purchases and could no longer guarantee to honour his commitment.
And just how great was that, thought Brooker? At this late stage his and Maxim’s only option was to dig into their own pockets to save the production until they could find a replacement for Zvotnik’s cash. Brooker was almost broke, but Maxim Brody, luckily, had deep enough pockets to keep them going for a few weeks. Long enough, with a star of Gaia’s stature on board, to find someone to bail them out, but it would almost certainly mean going cap in hand to one of the major studios, and being royally screwed.
He stared moodily at the building. It was one of the most extraordinary places he’d ever seen, and as an inveterate traveller, he’d seen a lot. It was the only building that measured up, in his memory, to the Taj Mahal. Although, to be fair, he’d only seen that at 6 a.m. with a blinding hangover and stomach-cramps from diarrhoea.
The Pavilion was designed in the style of an ornate Indian temple, completely over the top, like some vast, garish wedding cake. Yet it worked, it was quite stunning and majestic, and the interior, decorated with an equally exotic and lavish chinoiserie, was even more extravagant. Developed from a farmhouse in 1787 by the Prince Regent as a seaside retreat for trysts with his mistress – and later his secret wife – Mrs Maria Fitzherbert, the Royal Pavilion was designed and expanded for several decades afterwards by John Nash. It was the defining icon of the city of Brighton and Hove, and one of England’s most famous landmarks.
To his relief, Jack Jordan and his entourage were now moving inside, out of the rain. When Larry Brooker had put his first movie together, twenty-five years ago, he’d seen himself living the LA dream. Within a few years, he had planned, he would have his mansion in Bel Air, his fuck-off yacht on the French Riviera, and his private jet. But it hadn’t worked out that way. He’d made a decent living so far, and would be a rich man if such a big chunk hadn’t gone up his nose and an even bigger chunk to his ex-wives. He felt like he was on a constantly nerve-racking ride, but as yet he was not playing in the league he’d hoped for, and if this film did collapse his and Brody’s reputations would be in tatters. They had to keep it going somehow.
A security guard nodded at them. Brooker followed his director and crew along a corridor and into the Banqueting Room. As he looked around him, he decided that if this movie became the global smash hit they anticipated, he would build himself a dining room in that Bel Air mansion that was a replica of this one. It was on a scale that was even more opulent than it looked in the photographs, and so beautifully ornate. He stared in awe at the painted canvas walls, and up at the domed ceiling with its massive centrepiece of plantain leaves in bas-relief, from which hung several immense and fabulous chandeliers.
The central one, the biggest of all, reminded him of a sky-burst firework. It was a good thirty feet high, seemingly held in the claws of the dragon in the apex of the dome. It hung high above a dining table, laid for thirty people, with elaborate candelabra, gold vessels, fine china and crystal goblets.
‘I guess this is where George and Maria had their intimate little dinners,’ the Production Assistant said, with a grin, to Jordan.
Several of them laughed, but not Brooker who was too wrapped up in his thoughts. He was extremely glad they had decided to shoot here on location and that they hadn’t attempted to replicate this room in a studio.
‘Actually, no it isn’t!’ a tall man in a business suit said, walking across to them. ‘I’m David Barry, the Curator of this building. It’s very interesting, but George wasn’t at all happy sitting at this table – he was always terrified the chandelier was going to come crashing down.’
All of the team looked up at it. ‘I don’t think there’d be much left of anyone that landed on,’ Jordan said.
‘Quite!’ the Curator agreed. ‘It weighs just over a ton and a quarter!’
‘How do you keep it clean?’ someone asked.
‘It’s done every five years,’ he replied. ‘It has fifteen thousand individual glass drops, or lustres, each of which has to be removed, washed, polished and put back.’
‘Hope it’s – ah – well supported,’ Brooker said, only half in jest.
The Curator nodded. ‘It is indeed. Queen Victoria was concerned about its safety, and had new supports constructed in what was one of the first introductions of aluminium to this country – it was the strongest material in the world at that time.’
No one noticed the tall, gaunt man in a wet mackintosh, with a camera slung around his neck, carrying a small umbrella in one hand and a Royal Pavilion brochure in the other, who appeared to be admiring a painting on the wall. But he wasn’t remotely interested in the picture. He was listening to their conversation.
40
Tommy Fincher’s wake had been going on for over three hours now in the upstairs private room of the Havelock Arms. But Roy Grace didn’t mind the wait. He sat patiently in his car across the road from the pub, in the pelting rain and failing light, making calls and emailing on his BlackBerry. And watching. He hoped it would continue for a couple of hours yet. The darker the better.
It was no surprise this establishment had been chosen for the wake. It was one of the city pubs where villains were known to hang out. He’d recognized at least fifteen familiar faces arriving, all of them frequent fliers with Sussex Police. A couple were huddled half in and half out of the doorway now, having a smoke. Inside they’d be drinking their respects to Fincher – and no doubt networking. None of them trusted each other, but the turf wars of old, slugged out in the streets and alleyways of this city with knuckle dusters, razor blades and bottles of acid, had for decades now been a thing of the past. These days the local villains had bigger problems to worry about than each other. Encroachment by the Chinese triads and the Albanian and Russian Mafias was already hitting the pockets of British criminals hard. The drugs trade, prostitution, porn, contraband booze and cigarettes, fake designer goods, and the growing business in internet scams, were all markets being taken over by invisible poachers with even more brutal
reputations than their local counterparts, and mostly offshore bases.
In that respect, Brighton and Hove had been fortunate. The city did not have the gun and knife crime that blighted so many places in the UK. But Grace was ever wary that nothing stayed the same, and you could never afford to be complacent.
He couldn’t afford this time he was spending tonight either, but in truth he was rather enjoying himself. This was taking him back to his early days in the CID, when he’d spent two years on a surveillance team, much of that following and watching known local drugs dealers – several of whom were here today. He’d once spent thirty-six hours sitting inside a specially converted fridge in the back of a rusty old delivery van. It was made to look like it had been abandoned, but had actually been carefully sited a short distance along the street from a suspected drug dealer’s house in Moulsecomb. Grace had been there round the clock, with a supply of food and water, unable to step out, having to relieve himself into metal containers, filming the comings and goings through a spy hole in the side of the vehicle.
It was in that fridge that it had first occurred to him that being a detective was like fishing, that you needed a lot of patience to land a big fish, an analogy he used today whenever he did training work with student detectives.