Looking Good Dead

by Peter James

  ‘I could have happily killed my mother-in-law,’ Potting said.

  ‘Thank you, Norman,’ Grace said, silencing him before he could go on. Then he turned to Glenn Branson. ‘Tom Bryce left his house in the middle of the night in a Renault Espace. There can’t have been much traffic on the road. We don’t know where he was going. We don’t know how much fuel there was in the vehicle. I want you to call off the search for Janie Stretton’s head and redeploy every single officer, all the Specials and all the CSOs to cover every CCTV camera – police, civic, petrol station, the lot – within a thirty-mile radius of this city.’

  ‘Right away.’

  Then, turning back to DS Barker, he said, ‘Don, I want someone to go through all of Reggie D’Eath’s personal records – bank statements, credit card statements—’

  ‘Someone’s already on to that.’

  ‘Good.’

  Grace checked his watch. He had a nine thirty with Alison Vosper, then somehow had to get to a 10.00 a.m. appointment he had made on the other side of town. ‘I’ll see you all back here at six thirty p.m. Everyone know what they’ve got to do? Any further questions?’

  Usually there would be plenty. This morning there were none.

  Then a phone rang. It was answered by the secretary, who handed it after a few moments to Glenn Branson. Everyone watched him as if sensing there was some important news coming.

  Branson asked the caller to hold for a moment, covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and said, ‘The Bryces’ Renault Espace has been found down a farm track off the A23 at Bolney,’ he said.

  ‘Empty?’ Grace said, knowing the answer to the question, but asking it anyway.

  ‘Burned out.’

  73

  Alison Vosper was power-dressed, as usual, when he entered her office on the dot of 9.30 a.m. And as usual he had an attack of butterflies. She scared him, he couldn’t help it; the bloody woman’s corrosive manner – and the power she wielded over him – affected him. And it didn’t help that he knew she was out to get him with her new secret weapon, Detective Superintendent Cassian Pewe.

  Sitting at her immaculate desk, exuding a pungent but unsexy perfume, she was dressed in a black jacket that made her shoulders look massive and an ivory-coloured blouse with a lace collar. Expecting a face of thunder, the Assistant Chief Constable surprised Grace by greeting him with a smile. Unscrewing the cap from a bottle of mineral water, she took a rather dainty sip. ‘Good morning, Roy,’ she said, her voice even more cordial than her smile. She gestured him to take one of the handsome Georgian carver chairs in front of her desk. ‘Have a seat.’

  Another good sign? he wondered. She rarely asked him to sit at these meetings. Or was this a very bad sign?

  Still smiling, very definitely in sweet rather than sour mode today, she said, ‘So, Operation Nightingale seems to be a bit of a fiasco, so far.’

  ‘I – I wouldn’t go so—’

  She raised a hand to silence his defence. ‘You still have no suspect. You haven’t located the victim’s head. One potential witness has been murdered and two others are missing. And last night, again, your team engaged in a high-speed pursuit which resulted in a serious accident.’ Miraculously she was still smiling, but the warmth had gone and was replaced with apparent bemusement.

  Grace nodded. ‘It’s not going our way,’ he said. ‘We need a lucky break.’

  She replaced the cap on the bottle. It was a fine morning outside but the room felt dark and oppressive. ‘You are tying up a massive amount of resources. It would be one thing if you could give me a result but all I seem to get is aggravation. Where are we at?’

  Grace brought her up to speed. When he had finished, he waited for what he knew was coming: at best she was going to stick Cassian Pewe on this case with him, at worst she was removing him and replacing him with Pewe. To his surprise she did neither.

  She pulled a slim black pen from the ammonite holder on her desk and tapped it thoughtfully on her blotter. ‘You haven’t got until nine fifteen tomorrow night, realistically, have you? If these people are going to kill Mr and Mrs Bryce and broadcast it to whoever their customers are, they’re going to do it well in advance. They could be already dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  There was a brief silence. Grace looked down, feeling Vosper’s eyes fixed on him. When he looked up he saw understanding in them. Despite her antipathy to him, she was at least professional enough to recognize – and accept – that the problems he was facing with this case were not necessarily of his making. But he was puzzled that she had not yet mentioned Cassian Pewe. Why was she holding back?

  Very hesitantly, he asked, ‘Is . . . ah . . . is this meeting with Cassian on? You wanted me to see him this morning.’

  ‘Actually no, it isn’t,’ she said. Then she began tapping the pen harder and faster on the blotter, without seeming to be aware she was doing this.

  ‘OK,’ he said, feeling a little relieved, but wondering what had changed her mind. Then he found out.

  ‘Detective Superintendent Pewe was involved in a road traffic accident last night. He’s in hospital with a fractured leg.’

  Not only could Grace barely believe his ears, he could barely believe his eyes, either. She was smiling again. Just the very faintest of smiles, to be fair, but a smile nonetheless. Smiling as she conveyed the information that her protégé was in a bad way after a car crash.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was a passenger in a taxi in the centre of Brighton, late last night. It was in collision with a van being pursued by a police car.’

  And the next moment Grace was smiling too; he couldn’t help it. Gallows humour. It got to everyone in this job, eventually.

  As he drove away from Alison Vosper’s office, Grace phoned the Royal Sussex County Hospital to find out if the van driver from last night had come round yet. Right now that man was their best hope of getting to the Bryces’ captors.

  Just about their only damned hope.

  Except for one long shot.

  He drove to the Bryces’ house, where DC Linda Buckley had just taken over from DC Willingham. She asked Grace if there was much point in her staying on in the house. After all, there was nothing to do except feed the dog. He suggested she wait a few more hours in case Tom Bryce turned up – which, he thought grimly, was unlikely.

  He went upstairs and into the Bryces’ bedroom, then hurried back downstairs. The Alsatian was standing in the hallway giving him a strange look, as if she knew he was the man who could bring her master and mistress home.

  Despite his rush, Grace paused for a moment, knelt beside the dog and stroked her forehead. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry; I’ll bring them back. Somehow. OK?’ He stared into the dog’s large, brown eyes and felt for an instant, just a fleeting instant, that the fine-looking creature had actually understood what he’d said.

  Maybe it was his tiredness, or the stress, or whatever, addling his brain, but as he left the house and drove quickly away, heading for the eastern extremity of the city, the expression on that dog’s face stayed with him, haunting him. She had looked so sad, so full of trust. And for a moment he wasn’t doing any of this just for Mr and Mrs Bryce, and for their children. He was also doing it for their dog.

  74

  Tom woke with a start, with a blinding headache, badly in need of a pee, thinking there must have been a power cut. It was never this dark, normally; there was always the neon glow of the street lights, tinging the bedroom orange.

  And what the hell was he lying on? Rock hard . . .

  And then, as if a sluice had released cold water into his belly, he remembered something indistinct but bad.

  Oh shit, bad.

  His right arm hurt. He tried to raise it but it would not move. Must have been lying on it, he thought, made it go to sleep. He tried again. Then he realized he couldn’t move his left arm either.

  Nor his legs.

  Something was digging into hi
s right thigh. His jaw ached and his mouth was parched. He tried to speak and found to his shock he couldn’t. All he could hear was a muffled hum, as he felt the roof of his mouth vibrate. Something was clamped over his mouth, bound tight around his face, pulling his cheeks in. Then a shiver ripped through him as he remembered the words last night. On his computer screen: . . . get out of the house, take Kellie’s car, head north on the A23 London Road and wait for her to call you . . .

  That’s exactly what he had done. It was coming back now. Driving up the A23. The phone call telling him to pull over into the lay-by.

  Now here.

  Oh Christ, oh God, oh sweet Jesus Christ, where was he? Where was Kellie? What the hell had he done? Who the hell had—

  Light suddenly appeared, an upright rectangle of yellow some distance away. A doorway. A figure coming through it, holding a powerful torch, the beam glinting like a mirror.

  Tom held his breath, watching as the figure moved nearer. In the swinging beam of the torch he could see he was in some kind of storeroom stacked with massive plastic and metal drums that looked as if they contained fuel or chemicals.

  As the figure came closer, Tom made out a very fat man in a loose-fitting open-necked shirt, his hair gelled back and squeezed into a short pigtail. A large medallion swung on a chain from his neck. There wasn’t enough light to see his face clearly but Tom put him in his late fifties to early sixties.

  Then the savage beam shone straight in his face; it felt like it was burning the backs of his retinas and he squeezed his eyes shut.

  In a Louisiana drawl, and sounding sincere, as if it were a genuine question to which he was expecting an answer, the man said, ‘So you think you’re a bit of a hero, do you, Mr Bryce?’

  Unsure how to respond and in any case unable to speak Tom kept silent.

  He felt the beam move away and opened his eyes. The man squatted down in front of him, put out his hands until they were touching Tom’s face, and then jerked them back, hard. Tom screamed. The pain was unreal. For several seconds he was convinced that half his face had been ripped clean off.

  A length of gaffer tape dangled in front of his eyes. He could move his jaw again, open his mouth, speak. ‘Where’s my wife?’ Tom said. ‘Where is Kellie? Please tell me where she is.’

  The man swung the beam across the room. And Tom’s heart nearly broke as he saw, a short distance away, what at first he thought was a rolled-up carpet, then realized was Kellie. She was lying on the floor, trussed up, a manacle on her ankle, with a chain running from it up to a hoop on the wall, gaffer tape across her mouth, pleading at him with her eyes.

  Tom’s first instinct was to scream at the fat creep in fury, but somehow he managed to hold himself in check, trying to think clearly, to work out what had happened, just what the hell this nightmare really was. ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  ‘You ask too many questions,’ the man responded dismissively. ‘You want water?’

  ‘I want to know why I’m here. Why my wife is here.’

  For an answer the man turned and walked away, back into the shadows.

  ‘Kellie!’ Tom called. ‘Kellie, are you OK?’

  He couldn’t see her any more. Or hear her. ‘Kellie, my darling!’

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ the fat man said.

  No, I won’t shut up! Tom nearly shouted out. One second his insides were squirming with fear, the next blind anger seized him. How dare this bastard keep Kellie tied up? Or himself.

  Got the most important presentation of my career in the morning. It could save my business. And I’m missing it because of you, you fat—

  In the morning?

  Was it morning?

  It was coming back to him, unevenly, like trying to put sheets of paper strewn across a room by a gust of wind back into their proper order.

  Kellie had gone. Her car had been burned out. Then he had responded to the email. And now she was lying across the room, all trussed—

  He thought of the young woman on his computer screen, in her evening dress, the hooded man, the stiletto blade.

  Pain welled in his bladder. ‘Please,’ he called out, ‘I need to pee.’

  ‘No one’s stopping you,’ the American said from the shadows.

  Tom wriggled round. The man was stooped over Kellie. He ripped the tape away from her mouth. Tom winced at the sound.

  Instantly she screamed at the man, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, you bastard!’

  ‘Just be a little more ladylike; people will want to see you looking ladylike. Would you like a little more vodka?’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  Oh, God, Kellie! It was so good to hear her voice, to know she was alive, that she was OK, that she had fight in her. Yet this wasn’t the way to deal with this situation.

  He clenched his thighs together, and his abdomen, fighting the surge of pain from his bladder. Surely the man didn’t mean him to relieve himself where he lay?

  ‘Kellie, my darling!’ Tom called out.

  ‘Get this fucking bastard to get us out of here. I want Jessica and Max. I want my children. LET ME FUCKING GO!’

  ‘Do you want the tape back over your face, Mrs Bryce?’

  She rolled over onto her stomach and lay still, sobbing hysterically, deep, gulping sobs. And Tom felt wretched, useless, so utterly, utterly useless. There had to be something he could do. Something. Oh God, something.

  The pain in his bladder was stopping him thinking and his head felt like it had been split open. The torch beam was moving. As it did, Tom saw hundreds of dark-coloured drums, stacked floor to ceiling, huge bloody things, many bearing hazard labels. It was cold in here. There was a slightly sour smell in the chilly air.

  Where the hell are we?

  ‘Oh Tom, please do something!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Do you want money?’ Tom called out to the man. ‘Is that what you want? I’ll rustle together whatever I can.’

  ‘You mean you’d like to subscribe?’

  ‘Subscribe?’ Tom said, pleased at last to get some sort of response to his questions. Engage the man in conversation, reason with him, try to find a—

  ‘You’d like to subscribe so you could watch yourself and your wife.’ The American laughed. ‘That’s rich!’

  Tom’s spirits lifted a fraction. ‘Yes, whatever, however much you want!’

  The beam shone straight into his eyes again. ‘You don’t get it, fuckwit, do you? How are you going to be able to see yourselves?’

  ‘I – I don’t – know.’

  ‘You’re even more stupid than I thought. You want to pay money so you and your vain little drunk of a wife can watch yourselves looking good dead?’

  75

  Roy Grace was on the phone non-stop as he drove in his Alfa, making one call after another: checking on Emma-Jane, then the progress of each of his team members in turn, driving them as hard as they could be pushed.

  He headed east along the coast road, leaving behind the elegant Regency facades of Kemp Town for the open country, high above the cliffs, passing the vast neo-Gothic pile of Roedean girls’ school and then the art deco building of the St Dunstan’s home for the blind.

  Nine fifteen tomorrow night.

  The time was lasered into his consciousness; it formed part of every thought that he had. It was now 10.15 a.m., Monday. Just thirty-five hours to the broadcast – and how long before then would the Bryces be killed?

  Janie Stretton had been late at the vet with her cat for a 6.30 p.m. appointment, and she hadn’t left until at least 7.40. In between then and approximately 9.15 p.m., when Tom Bryce claimed to have seen her on his computer, she had been murdered and the video of it broadcast. If the same pattern was followed now maybe they had until around 7.30 p.m. tomorrow. Just over thirty-three hours.

  And still no live leads.

  Thirty-three hours was no damn time at all.

  Then he allowed himself just the briefest smile at the thought of Cassian Pewe in hospital. The irony of it. The incredible coincidence
. And the fact that Alison Vosper had seen the funny side – showing him a rare side of herself, the human side. And the thing was – not a good thing, he knew, but he could not help it – he didn’t feel even the tiniest bit bad about it, or sorry for the man.

  He was sorry for the innocent taxi driver, but not for that little shit, Cassian Pewe, who had arrived in Brighton newly promoted and with every intention of stealing his lunch. The problem hadn’t gone away, but with the man’s injuries it was at least deferred for a while.

  He drove through the smart, historic, cliff-top village of Rottingdean, along a sweeping rise then dip, followed by another rise, past the higgledy-piggledy post-war suburban sprawl of Saltdean, then to Peacehaven, near where Glenn Branson lived and where Janie Stretton had died.

  He turned off the coast road into a maze of hilly streets crammed with bungalows and small detached houses, and pulled up outside a small, rather neglected bungalow with a decrepit camper van parked outside.

  He ended a call to Norman Potting, who seemed well advanced with his search for sulphuric acid suppliers, downed another Red Bull and two more ProPlus, walked up a short path lined with garden gnomes and stepped into a porch, past motionless wind chimes, and rang the doorbell.

  A diminutive, wiry man well into his seventies, bearing more than a passing resemblance to several of the gnomes he had just passed, opened the door. He had a goatee beard, long grey hair tied back in a ponytail, wore a kaftan and dungarees, and was sporting an ankh medallion on a gold chain. He greeted Grace effusively in a high-pitched voice, a bundle of energy, taking his hand and staring at him with the joy of a long-lost friend. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace! So good to see you again so soon!’