Not Dead Yet

  Branson removed the plastic evidence bag from his pocket and held it up for Farrier to see. ‘These pieces of fabric were found yesterday in the vicinity of a body we need to identify. We’re wondering if you might be able to tell us something from them.’

  ‘Can I take them out of the bag?’ Farrier asked.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Branson said. He handed the bag over. ‘Sorry, we didn’t get a chance to take them to the dry cleaners.’

  Farrier grinned awkwardly, as if uncertain whether Branson was joking, then studied the contents carefully. ‘It’s a suit fabric,’ he said. ‘A tweed of some kind.’

  ‘Would it be possible to tell which tailor made it from what you have?’ Grace asked.

  Ryan Farrier studied the material again, with a frown, for some seconds. ‘These samples are really too small. If you are trying to find out who made the jacket or suit these pieces originated from, I think you’d have a better chance from the cloth itself. It’s very high quality, heavy tweed.’

  ‘A winter fabric?’ Grace said.

  ‘Very definitely. Quite a bit heavier than the material I’m wearing myself. It’s the sort of fabric you might have a suit made in for wearing for outdoors pursuits in the countryside – perhaps for going on a formal shoot – except, not in this colour! It really is a bit bold, you’d have to be a bit of a show-off to wear this.’

  Heavy fabric meant it was likely the victim was killed during the winter months, Grace thought.

  ‘I think it’s a Dormeuil cloth,’ Farrier added. ‘I can check with them on Monday. Are you able to leave me the tiniest cutting?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said. ‘We can’t risk contaminating the evidence – we’ve brought you photographs we can leave with you.’

  ‘How many tailors would a company like Dormeuil supply cloth to?’ Branson asked him.

  Farrier thought for a moment. ‘Gosh, hundreds, maybe thousands. Any good tailor will have swatches of their material – they are top quality – but also top prices. But this is quite flamboyant material – I can’t imagine too many people having a suit made out of this. Dormeuil should be able to give you the names of all the tailors they’ve supplied bolts of this cloth to in recent years.’

  ‘This is very helpful,’ Branson said, then turned to Grace. ‘Although of course the victim’s not necessarily the person this was originally made for. He could have bought it second-hand,’ he said, mindful of the number of second-hand clothes shops in Brighton.

  Farrier looked pained. ‘I don’t think many people go to the expense of buying a suit made from Dormeuil cloth and then give it away or sell it. A quality suit tends to be for life.’

  And in this case, death, Grace nearly added.

  25

  He sat in semi-darkness, in his cramped seat in coach, with the constant faint thrashing roar of air in his ears, feeling the occasional judder as the plane bumped through a patch of turbulence. Most people were asleep. Like the shithead beside him who’d drunk four disgusting Coke and whisky mixes and now had fits of snoring loudly every few minutes.

  People shouldn’t snore on planes. It was like people who let babies cry on planes. Those babies should be flushed down the toilets. He was tempted, very tempted, to pull a plastic bag down over the man’s head. No one would see in the darkness.

  But he had to control his anger.

  Which was why he had the book open on his lap. It was titled Managing Your Inner Anger.

  The problem was that just reading the book was making him angry. It was written by some fuckwit psychologist. What did any psychologist know about anything? They were all nuts themselves.

  Chapter 5. Develop your personal Action Plan (Devised by Lorraine Bell)

  Develop your own personalized plan for managing and reducing anger, and carry it around with you, he read.

  Right, carry it around with me. In what? A carrier bag? A suitcase? A bowl on my head? An appendage to my scrotum?

  Write down the times you are likely to get angry, such as after a stressful day at work, or an alcoholic drink.

  Or after life craps on you yet again, from a great height?

  He felt his rage building again now. The man beside him was snoring again, as loud as a chainsaw. The noise was so damned deafening he could not think. He jabbed him hard, really hard, in the ribs and turned to him, glowering. ‘Shut the fuck up, you hear me?’

  The man blinked at him, dazed and bewildered.

  He curled his finger and thumb in front of the man’s face. ‘Snore again one more time, and I’m going to pull your tongue right out.’

  The man stared at him for a moment, was about to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He looked nervous now, as if he could sense it wasn’t an idle threat. After some moments of hesitation, he unbuckled his seat belt, stood up, and walked away down the aisle.

  He returned to his book.

  I know when I’m getting angry because of the following early warning signs. Such as feeling shaky, clenching my fists.

  He was feeling shaky now, and he was clenching his fists. The thing was, he knew, he would actually have liked to pull that snoring man’s tongue out, the way they did in olden days, with red-hot tongs. He deserved it. People had no right to snore like that.

  When I’m angry I have the following thoughts, or say to myself:

  There was a blank space for him to fill in. But he didn’t need to fill anything in. He knew what thoughts he had when he was angry.

  The reasons I would like to change are:

  The consequences of losing my temper?

  Because I feel bad after?

  Because I am unwell and my anger is not helping my recovery?

  He slammed the book shut, feeling the anger inside him. Once the anger was out there was nothing he could do until it settled again. It was like snakes, hundreds of dormant venomous snakes inside him that had woken, were uncoiling, flicking their tongues, waiting to strike.

  The thing was, he liked that feeling.

  His anger liberated him. It gave him power.

  Too many people listened to the words of that idiot Matthew in the Bible. Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

  That wasn’t the way, that was just a bully’s charter. He didn’t have any truck with all that namby-pamby New Age New Testament liberalism. He believed in the Old Testament. That was The Word.

  And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.

  No messing about.

  He’d promised to read the book and to fill in the questions. That was one of the suggestions his doctor had made. Try to refocus his anger into something positive. Ha! What was the point? He’d done bad things in the past, he knew that, but he couldn’t help it, that was the snakes. It wasn’t his fault if people woke the snakes.

  And they had been awake for several days now.

  26

  The predictability of some villains was one of the few things that made his job a little easier, Roy Grace thought. The old-school ones tended to be territorial, creatures of habit, sticking to their manors for their criminal activities, and their drinking.

  But like everything in life, nothing stayed still, he mused, and the old style of rogue, with whom canny police officers could develop some form of a trusting relationship over drinks in a pub, and glean invaluable intelligence, was fast becoming a relic, a dinosaur. They were being replaced with a nastier, meaner and altogether less sociable breed of crook.

  Grace found the particular relic he was looking for in the fourth pub he entered, shortly before midday. Terry Biglow was hunched alone at a table, studying a racing form, in the gloomy, empty establishment. An empty half-pint glass stood in front of him, and a walking stick was propped against the wall beside him. The only other occupant was a tattooed, shaven-headed man behind the bar, wiping glasses.

  Like Amis Smallbone, Biglow had been a scion of one of the city’s biggest crime fam
ilies. During the first three decades after the war, the Biglows carved up much of Brighton with the Smallbones. They ran one of the major protection rackets, controlled a large slice of Brighton and Hove’s drugs scene, as well as laundering money through a string of antique furniture and jewellery shops. Biglow wasn’t a man you messed with back in those days, if you wanted to avoid a razor scar on your cheek or having acid thrown in your face. He used to be a sharp dresser, with expensive tastes, but not any more – not for a long time.

  Roy Grace had last seen him some months ago, and Biglow had told him then he was terminally ill. He was shocked to see how much the old villain had deteriorated since. His face was almost skeletal, his hair, once so immaculate, was now wispy and unkempt, and his shabby brown suit and cream, tieless shirt buttoned to the top, looked like they belonged on someone three sizes bigger.

  He peered up with eyes like a frightened rodent as Grace loomed over him, then his moist, thin lips broke into an uneasy smile. ‘Mr Grace, Inspector Grace, nice to see yer again!’ His voice was weak and reedy, and he wheezed, as if the very effort of speaking had drained him. Grace noticed his tiny hands were so emaciated they looked more like birds’ feet, and the bracelet of his gold watch dangled loosely around his wrist.

  ‘It’s Detective Superintendent actually, Terry,’ Grace corrected him, and sat down in the chair opposite him. The man smelled musty, as if he had been sleeping rough.

  ‘Yes, you was promoted. Yeah, I remember now, you told me, yeah. Congratulations.’ He frowned. ‘I did congratulate yer, right?’

  Grace nodded. ‘Last time.’ Then he pointed at the beer mug. ‘Can I get you another?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be drinking. I’m sick, you see, Inspector – sorry – Detective Superintendent. Got the cancer. I’m on all this medication and stuff, not supposed to drink with it. But it ain’t going to make much difference, is it?’ He peered into Grace’s eyes as if hoping for some reassurance from his old adversary.

  Grace was not sure how to react. If he had to put money on it, Biglow had just weeks, or a month or two at best, to go. ‘They always say medicine’s a very inexact science, Terry. You never know.’ He gave him a wan smile. Biglow just stared back. He’s afraid, Grace thought. The man’s actually afraid.

  You weren’t afraid of much when you ruled the roost in this city, were you, Terry Biglow? he thought. What will you be thinking in those last moments as your life ebbs away? Will you be thinking about all those people whose lives you ruined by selling them drugs? The innocent shopkeepers whose premises you torched because they wouldn’t pay your protection money? The elderly, vulnerable people that your teams of knocker boys stole treasured heirlooms from? Are you going to feel happy heading off to meet your Maker with only that to show for your life?

  ‘So how can I help you, Mr Grace?’ Biglow wheezed. ‘You ain’t come in here for the quality of the beer or the congenial company.’

  As he spoke Grace watched the man’s eyes carefully for any tell-tale flicker. ‘I hear Amis Smallbone’s out.’

  There was no reaction from Biglow at all, for some moments. Then he said, ‘Released, is he? He’s been away a long time. Good riddance, I say.’

  Grace knew there’d never been any love lost between the two rivals. ‘I need to find him.’ Watching his eyes closely again he asked, ‘Don’t suppose you have any idea where he might be?’

  His eyes didn’t move, they stared rigidly ahead, the fear in them still palpable. ‘Did yer know Tommy Fincher?’

  Grace nodded. Fincher had plenty of past form in the Brighton underworld as a fence. ‘Haven’t heard of him in years.’

  ‘Yeah, good old Tommy. He just died. Had a stroke. His funeral’s next Tuesday, up at Woodvale. He and Smallbone was thick together.’

  ‘They were?’

  ‘Smallbone was married to his sister. She died of the cancer, years ago. He’ll be going to the funeral for sure. You’ll find him there.’

  ‘You’ve earned your half!’ Grace said.

  ‘Make it a whisky, will yer, Detective Insp—Superintendent. Not that Bell’s stuff, they got a nice Chivas, sixteen year, I’ll have one of them if yer buying.’

  For the information he had just been given, Roy Grace considered it a bargain. He made it a double.

  27

  Gaia Lafayette, dressed in blue jeans and a loose black top, sat numbly on the edge of the white sofa in her Bel Air home, as the two detectives left, then began crying again. It was her third interview with the police in the past three days. They had no suspect, but they had a fuzzy CCTV image which had been sent for enhancement. Ballistics tests had been carried out, but so far there was no match to any weapons on police files.

  The detectives had run through possible motives, and talked again with her about any possible enemies she might have. Among the list of motives for murder, they told her, were money, jealousy, vendettas or a random, crazy person. Their feeling on what little they had to go on so far was that this was not random. They felt there was a high probability she was the intended target, and it was mistaken identity.

  Her assistant Sasha came back from seeing the police officers out, her hair short and dyed black. There would be no more mistaking her assistants. She’d ignored the advice of her head of security Andrew Gulli, who felt that the murder of Marla was all the more reason to have her assistants dressed as doubles, and Todd, her current hunk, said the same thing.

  But Gaia refused to put them through that risk. Having them dressed like herself had been a joke, a bit of hubris. She had never intended it to end in death.

  ‘Why are you crying, Mama?’

  Roan, a towel draped around him, his hair still wet from the pool, padded up to her.

  ‘Mama’s sad, honey.’

  ‘Are you sad because Marla’s not coming back?’

  She hugged him and kissed his forehead. Originally she had planned to leave him here, but now that was unthinkable. She wanted him with her in England, where she could see him and protect him.

  Her agent and her manager and Todd had all been trying hard to persuade her to pull out of the movie. How could she be properly protected in England, where her bodyguards couldn’t carry weapons, they argued? But that was the point, she told them, reversing her decision to quit the film. She would feel safer right now in a country that didn’t have a gun culture. And besides, her style had never been to hide away from her public. She was Gaia, the earth goddess! Mother Earth would protect her the same way she protected it.

  And on a more practical level, the production was all set and depending on her, ready to go next week. If she pulled out now, it would collapse. The producers had made it clear it would be impossible to relocate the production to LA. Besides, how long would she have to remain in hiding? If someone out there wanted to get her, they could wait. Weeks, months, maybe even years. She just had to get on with it.

  She hugged Roan. ‘You know Mama loves you more than anything in the world?’

  ‘I love you too, Mama.’

  ‘So we’re cool, right?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Looking forward to going to England?’

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ Then he frowned. ‘Is that a long way?’

  ‘It is. We’re going to a place by the seaside. They have a beach. You want to play on the beach?’

  His eyes brightened. ‘I guess.’

  ‘You guess?’

  ‘Will Marla be there?’

  ‘No, hon, she won’t. It will be you and me. Taking care of each other. Will you take care of Mama there?’

  He stared at her for some moments with round, trusting eyes. And in those moments she had never loved him more, nor felt more scared for him – and for herself. She hugged him tightly, tenderly, pressing her face against the soft young skin of his cheek, smelling the chlorine from the pool on his skin and in his hair. Tears rolled uncontrollably down her face.

  28

  Roy Grace had met a few coppers who were counting down the years to t
heir retirement day, and the lucrative pension package that came with it, particularly with all the recent budget cuts that were demoralizing much of the force. But he knew far more who, like himself, lived in dread of that day.

  With twenty years of service clocked up, he still had ten years in front of him, which might be extended to fifteen if the changes that were under discussion by the powers-that-be went through. But there were times when he worried just how fast time seemed to be passing.

  Those were the occasions when he cut a moment’s slack to take stock, and count his blessings, as he did now while waiting for the last of his team to file into MIR-1 for the Saturday evening briefing.

  Some days he couldn’t truly believe his luck, that he was doing a job he loved so much. Sure there were people he disliked, such as his former ACC, Alison Vosper, and there were bureaucratic processes that at times got him down, but when he looked back on his career so far, he could honestly say there had been no more than a handful of days when he had not looked forward to going to work. And one of the things he especially liked about his job was that few days were ever the same.

  And right now he was doing what he loved best of all, the thing that really got his adrenalin pumping: the early days of a murder enquiry.

  ‘The time is 6.30 p.m., Saturday, June the fourth,’ he read out from the notes in front of him, prepared by his trusted Management Secretary, Eleanor Hodgson. ‘This is our third briefing of Operation Icon. I’ll summarize where we are to date.’ He glanced down at his notes, then around at his team. Apart from the honeymooning Emma-Jane Boutwood, the only one who was absent was Bella Moy, still at the hospital with her mother. Then he gestured to Glenn Branson.

  ‘Could you bring us up to speed with the findings from the post-mortem?’

  ‘The information I have so far, chief, from the pathologist Dr Nadiuska De Sancha, and from the forensic archaeologist Joan Major, is that the victim is male, Caucasian, aged mid- to late forties. The broken hyoid and the cut mark further around the top vertebra indicate the likelihood of strangulation by a thin wire. There has been considerable degradation of the stomach contents, as would be expected. But chemical analysis reveals a fragment of oyster shell as well as the presence of ethanol, which indicates he had been drinking wine.’