by Peter James
Grace was gloomily aware of not being a magician. He couldn’t always make things happen the way he wanted them to. All he could do was his best. To try to lock up the killers who took people’s lives. He despised murderers with all his heart and soul. A thief could pay back some or all of what they had taken. But a murderer could never undo what he – or she – had done. And murderers didn’t just destroy the lives of the victims, they destroyed the lives of all their victims’ loved ones, too. For ever.
In general, homicide detection rates in the UK were high. Year on year, around eighty-five per cent of killers were caught. That compared, he knew, to just fifty-five per cent in America. But he would never be complacent. There had been a room at the old CID HQ, in Sussex House, occupied by the cold case squad, who carried out continual reviews on unsolved murders.
For Roy Grace, ‘unsolved’ was a euphemism for failure. There were thirty unresolved murders in the counties of East and West Sussex. Thirty, that was, of which the police were aware. How many more people were murdered every year that the police never found out about, was something never far from his thoughts.
Homicide investigations were never closed. Not so long as there was anyone still alive who was connected to the victim. And in some cases, beyond even that.
When Roy Grace had first joined the Major Crime Branch, he had made a pledge to himself. He was going to raise that bar from eighty-five per cent of homicides solved to as close as possible to one hundred per cent.
In his view, every killer made one mistake. Somewhere.
You just had to find it.
17
Wednesday 20 April
He could, of course, set fire to the flat. That was the surest way to destroy all forensic evidence, he thought. But he was mindful of the dangers of doing this. The whole decrepit building was a fire trap, and unlike modern apartment blocks a fire wouldn’t be contained to a single flat. It could end up killing others in the building.
Not an option he wanted to consider.
Shortly before 9 p.m., after the longest three hours of his life, it was finally dark enough outside. He put on his coat, took one final, careful look around using his phone torch, slipped the laptop and the photograph frame in the crook of his arm, and picked up the bunch of flowers he had brought and the two bin bags containing the other items he was removing from the flat. The last things he dropped in were the rubber gloves he had been wearing, then he walked to the front door.
In all the time they’d been meeting here, he could only ever remember seeing another resident on two occasions. One was an elderly lady in a dressing gown, who had looked half batty and wondered if he had seen her cat. The other was a young Chinese couple, who had looked like students and were so wrapped up in each other he doubted they had even noticed him.
All the same, he opened the door carefully, again using his handkerchief, listening for any sound on the landing before stepping out.
His heart seemed to be thudding even more loudly now, a steady boof . . . boof . . . boof, and his ears were popping. Ignoring the lift, he hurried down the three flights of stairs, then again hesitated as he reached the ground floor of the building.
As he did so, his phone began to ring.
He stood still in the small, dimly lit entrance hall of the apartment block, in the growing darkness, and pulled out his phone to see who was calling. In front of him was the constant roar of passing traffic along Kingsway. But although he could hear ringing, his phone display was dark and blank.
Then he realized. It was Lorna’s phone.
He tugged it out of his pocket and stared at the display. No caller ID.
For an instant, his reaction was to answer it. To find out who was calling, and why. Then he realized that would be too dangerous.
Was it Roxy?
Had to be. No one else had the number, did they?
He let it ring on.
Two more rings then it stopped.
He waited, rooted to the spot. Waiting for it to ping with a voicemail. But instead, after some moments, the message Missed Call appeared.
He continued to wait, in case it rang again, puzzled as he remembered something. Some while back, when Lorna had been in the bathroom, her phone had rung. She’d asked him to see if it was Roxy on the display and if so to tell her she would call her back. Studying the buttons on the unfamiliar Samsung pay-as-you-go phone, he accessed the address book. As he had guessed, it contained just one name and number: Roxy.
If it had been Roxy calling just now, why would she have withheld her identity? But if it had not been her, then who? A wrong number? A telesales call? Unlikely on a pay-as-you-go. Could it have been her husband?
He’d never met this bastard, but from all Lorna had said about him, he wouldn’t put it past him to have found the phone by searching her things when she was asleep or out. He was in the computer technology world, and probably knew how to track her movements on this phone, too.
Putting the phone back in his pocket, his head bowed, coat collar turned up and the peak of his baseball cap pulled low, he slipped out of the side door onto Vallance Street, turned right and hurried down the short distance to Kingsway, where he turned right again, passed the front entrance to the apartment block, then turned right yet again into Hove Street and headed up the busy road, past a line of parked cars, to his own elderly BMW. Starting the engine, his brain was racing. He needed to get rid of the laptop, phone and SIM card, photograph and its frame and the bin bags. But not around here. When Lorna’s body was found – perhaps as soon as tomorrow, if the electrician came – they might well do a search of all bins in the area.
He drove off, down to the seafront, and turned right, heading away from Hove towards Shoreham, passing Hove Lagoon to his left. He needed bins. A mile or so on, outside an old warehouse, he saw a builder’s skip. He stopped and, after a careful look around for any CCTV cameras, dumped one bag into it.
He drove on, thinking of another suitable location. He saw the slip road down to the harbour coming up to his left. Ideal, it would be totally dark down there, he thought. He took it and turned left again at the bottom, then right into a deserted parking area surrounded by warehouses on the wharf.
Looking around him, again making sure there were no cameras, he took Lorna’s laptop out of the car, carried it across to the edge of the quay and tossed it into the black water. Making a small splash, it vanished, the water closing over it.
For some moments he considered losing the mobile phone here, too. But maybe it would be smarter to separate them, just in case. Highly unlikely they’d ever be found by divers, but why take the risk?
Back in the car, he headed through a small industrial estate along one side of the harbour and tossed his butts out of the window. Then, pulling out onto the main road, he saw another skip a short way ahead in front of a derelict building and pulled over, putting two wheels on the pavement.
Before getting out of the car he opened the back of the photograph frame and took the picture of Lorna and himself out, and – he couldn’t help himself – sat and looked at it for some moments in the glow of a street light from above. He felt a lump in his throat. He stared at her long, blonde hair, strands of it lifted by the breeze; her beautiful face; her terrific, sometimes impish, sometimes incredibly sexy smile. High up on Wolstonbury Hill, on that glorious clear summer day, it had seemed the entire world was stretched out before them.
She was wearing a white halter-neck top and blue jeans, and had one long brown arm slung round his neck, pulling him tight so that their cheeks were pressed together for the photograph. The countryside close by was vast and pretty much deserted; it was one place where they felt safe to go when they wanted to be outside on a summer’s day.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
He carefully ripped the photo into shreds. When he had finished he looked around for any sign of CCTV cameras, but could not see any. Good. He opened the door, taking the second bin bag, waited for a lorry to rumble past then stepped out and wa
lked towards the skip. A car came by and he waited for that to pass. Then another. Then a man on a bicycle. God, he felt so conspicuous, as if all the eyes of the world were on him.
He dropped the bag in, then sprinkled the strips of photograph around the skip and shoved the photo frame beneath a sofa cushion; then returned to his car and was about to drive off when he realized there was a gutter right by the car. Perfect. He removed the SIM card from the Samsung and dropped the card down through the grille. Then, shit – a close call – he remembered the note from the electrician in his pocket. He tore that up and dropped it through the grille, too. He drove off quickly, still shaking, his thoughts jumping all over the place. Trying to figure out where to go.
He turned right up into the network of streets of Southwick, then saw a bin a short way ahead, at the end of a small shopping parade. Across the road was a row of terraced houses. Many shops these days had CCTV cameras inside and out. Before getting out of the car he checked carefully, but could see only one, outside a trophy and engraving shop in the middle of the parade, but no sign of one down this end. And no sign of one on any of the houses. Nor of anyone peering out of a window.
He carefully wiped the phone and, holding it wrapped in his handkerchief, opened the car door and deliberately dropped it onto the road. As he climbed out he stamped on it, pressing down as hard as he could with his heel, then again, hearing the crack and crunch of the outer case breaking. He stamped on it several more times for good measure, scooped it up with the handkerchief, dropped it in the bin, and sat back in the car.
So far so good. He did a quick check. Laptop. Phone. SIM card. Photograph. Frame. Cigarette butts in pocket. The next step might be trickier.
Just as he was about to start the engine, his phone rang.
On the caller display he saw it was his wife. He took a deep breath and answered.
‘Hi, darling.’
‘Where are you?’ she asked. ‘I was expecting you hours ago.’
‘I’m stuck at work, I told you I wouldn’t be home until late.’
‘I’ve got problems with the television in the kitchen again. Sky’s not working. I can’t get any of my programmes that I’ve recorded.’
‘OK – well, I can’t do much from here, can I? I’ll take a look when I get home.’
A motorbike was approaching with a loud rasping exhaust. He clamped his hand over the receiver until it had passed.
‘Look, I’ve got the remote in my hand. I press “Sky” right? Straight after switching on the television?’
‘Darling, I can’t deal with it now.’
‘Huh. Do you want me to leave you something for your dinner?’
‘No – I’m – I’m OK, I’ll grab something.’
‘Are you all right? You sound very strange.’
‘I’m fine. Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll sort the Sky out—’
‘Oh – hey – the picture’s just come on! I’m all right! Got it!’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘That’s great.’
As he ended the call, he realized he was dripping with perspiration. All over. Almost as wet as if he had stepped out of a shower. God, what a mess. How on earth had he let this happen? He hardly ever lost his temper and he’d never hurt a woman before, ever. Just what had got into him? The enormity of what he had done was dawning more and more. The potential devastation to his own life. It wouldn’t just be his career and marriage that would be finished. Imagine his daughter knowing her father was a murderer. A life sentence. Not just years in prison, but the knowledge that was going to haunt him always of what he had done.
Am I a killer?
He needed to think it all through carefully, one step at a time.
The first priority was to cover his tracks and he had begun that process. He had to get this right, every step. Every damned tiny step. And first and foremost he had to calm down, stop sweating, stop looking guilty. Not make a mistake.
He started the engine.
People talked about the fragility of life. How it could turn on a sixpence, that was the old expression. And, boy, had it turned today. He badly needed a Plan B.
The problem was, just a few hours ago he’d never even had a Plan A.
18
Wednesday 20 April
As the BMW headed east along the Old Shoreham Road, the showers had stopped. With the cruise control set at 30 mph, he was taking no chances of being pinged by a speed camera or being clocked in a radar trap. A short distance along he turned left, threaded around the side of Hangleton and joined the A27, where he reset the cruise control to 70 mph.
He stayed on the dual carriageway to the Hollingbury turn-off at the northern extremity of the city. Then he drove round a long crescent, past a parade of shops – a newsagent, an off-licence, a community centre – and up a hill.
He knew were Lorna lived, he’d been there a few times in their early days, when they had first met. It was before they’d got the flat, and had risky lunchtime meetings here while her husband was at work, and on a couple of occasions in the evening, when Corin had been away on business. But that had been a while ago and he sometimes lost his bearings in this complex network of streets.
Each of the houses he passed had rubbish bins pushed out to the front, many of them bulging, their lids partially raised. Good. Very good. That meant, to his relief, that the bin men had not been today. Tomorrow probably. Perfect timing. Please.
Then he recognized exactly where he was. The house was to his right, set back from the road behind two brick pillars, each topped with a stone ball, giving it the pretentious grandeur of a miniature faux-stately home. It used to make him smile, it looked so ridiculous. Lorna told him the pillars embarrassed her but Corin had insisted on them.
Their bin had, dutifully, been put out.
Good girl! Or perhaps, Good, diligent Corin!
He drove a short distance on, pulled into a space between a plumber’s van and an elderly Shogun, switched off the engine and killed the lights. He sat in silence for some moments, checking all around him. It was completely dark now, and there was no sign of anyone. He raised his hand and deactivated the dome light, pulled on a pair of gloves, then opened the door and climbed out.
His sodden shirt, under his coat, felt cold on his skin and he shivered as he looked around. Closed curtains. Flickers of televisions behind some. He strode quickly back towards Lorna’s house and stopped when he reached the bin. Again he looked all around him, furtively, then he switched on the torch on his phone, opened up the lid of the stuffed bin and shone the light in. Thinking. Thinking. What would fool the police?
Sitting on the top was a copy of yesterday’s Sun newspaper. Beneath was what appeared to be a tiny printed circuit board from the inside of an electronic device. Perfect. From out of his pocket he tugged an empty plastic bin bag he’d taken from the flat, shook it open and dropped in the newspaper and the circuit board.
Underneath that the bin was rammed with empty tins of dog food, cartons of fish food and oxygenating tablets. Chinese takeaway cartons. He rummaged through them and came across a set of hair curling tongs.
He glanced around again, checking the coast was still clear, then delved further. The stench was vile. Fish bones. Prawn shells. The rotting remnants of a chicken. An empty tin of Brasso. What else?
He found a scooped-out tin of tuna but ignored it. Then, nestling in what looked like vacuum cleaner fluff, near the bottom, he saw an empty cigarette pack, and dropped that in the bag. Rummaging further, he found an assortment of cigarette butts and two Carlsberg beer cans. They went in as well.
Continuing to look around vigilantly, he reached right down, checking all the items in the bin. But he decided he had enough now.
He walked swiftly back to his car, climbed in and drove away.
It was going to be fine, he thought. Fine. Everything was going to be fine.
It had to be. Nothing else was an option. It was all going to fall into his lap. He’d get through this. Think; plan; one step at a t
ime. Just keep calm. And right now, that’s how he felt. Calm.
It would be fine.
Really.
He headed off to his next destination, continuing to watch his speed like a hawk. Killers often got caught by the most stupid mistakes. Panic clouded their brains. Red mist. He wasn’t panicking any more. He was thinking clearly, perhaps more clearly than ever before in his life.
Maybe that was because he had more at stake than ever before.
But that was fine.
He knew how to handle this.
He really did. And, just possibly, Lady Luck might hitch a ride alongside with him.
19
Wednesday 20 April
The sign on the green machine read: BRIGHTON AND HOVE COUNCIL. PAY & DISPLAY PARKING. CONTROLLED PARKING 9 A.M. – 8 P.M. ALL DAYS.
It was now 10.23 p.m. A heavy shower was coming down. Good. Another sign that Lady Luck was with him. And a further sign was that he still had his golf bag in the boot of his car, from his regular game on Sunday. He tugged out the old black umbrella with one broken spoke, the one that lived in the golf bag, and put that up.
Keeping the umbrella down low over his head, clutching the bin bag, he hurried from the side street where he had parked, headed down to the seafront, turned left and made his way along to the apartment block. He let himself in through the side entrance on Vallance Street, listened carefully for any of the other occupants, then closed the umbrella, sprinted up the three flights of stairs, unlocked the front door of the flat and stepped into the semi-darkness.