by Peter James
There were a number of framed photographs, which Susi Holliday looked at with interest. One showed a good-looking young couple, both in cycling gear, posing with muddy bikes against a rugged, mountainous landscape. Another was of the same couple lying on a beach, looking up and grinning at the photographer. Another showed them in ski gear. There were several large, colourful abstract prints depicting deckchairs on the beach, the skeletal remains of the old West Pier and a row of beach huts, and a spaniel which looked like it was by an artist she really liked, a Lewes-based painter called Tom Homewood.
They checked the bedroom, which contained a double bed with a neatly folded duvet and plumped pillows, a television and a table with a lamp either side of the bed. A stack of books lay on one table and a woman’s magazine and a partially empty water glass on the other. Susi Holliday noted a boot lying on the floor, and then saw what looked like a small bloodstain at the bottom of the en-suite bathroom door, and some tiny drops on the floor.
The bathroom was tidy and dry, with a wicker laundry basket, on top of which lay Lycra cycling shorts and a vest. The shelves were lined with shower gel, shampoo, body cream and other unguents, male and female razors and several bottles of perfume, cologne and aftershave. It seemed as though no one had been here for a few hours, at the very least.
Susi Holliday radioed in her report, and stated that whilst there was no sign of a struggle, she had seen a small amount of blood.
The controller told them that the woman’s fiancé was now just minutes away and to wait at the scene.
8
Thursday 11 December
Jamie Ball, normally a careful driver, tore like a man possessed along Edward Street, peering through the windscreen blurred by the pelting rain, weaving in and out of the heavy rush-hour traffic, flashing his lights and hooting, and ignoring the angry horns and waved fists that came back at him. His entire body was pulsing with fear.
A speed camera flashed him and he didn’t care. He was oblivious to everything but the desperate need to get home, to make sure Logan was OK. He turned sharp left, the car skidding on the wet surface, the tyres juddering for traction as he accelerated up the hill, then made a right into their street. Ahead he saw a police patrol car parked close to the entrance to their apartment block.
He pressed the clicker, waited impatiently for the electronic gates to swing open, then started to drive down the ramp. Almost straight away he was stopped by a uniformed police officer who ran up out of the car park. He identified himself and was directed into an empty bay.
Immediately he jumped out of the car, leaving the door open, and to his immense relief saw her little white Fiat neatly parked in its usual space. She was OK! Thank God, thank God! Then he turned to the police officer and asked, ‘Where’s Logan, my fiancée, what’s happened? Is she OK?’
‘I think it would be best if you go and speak to my colleague who’s gone up with the caretaker.’
He felt a sudden chill of fear. ‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘They’ll be able to update you upstairs, sir.’
Jamie raced along to the lift, and rode it up to the ninth floor. As the doors opened he stepped out, and saw a uniformed police officer, accompanied by Mark, the caretaker, emerging from their flat.
‘Hi!’ he called out. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Hello Jamie!’ the caretaker greeted him.
‘Logan? Is she OK, Mark? She phoned me – she said she saw an intruder in the car park.’
‘I haven’t seen her,’ Mark said. ‘She’s not home yet, Jamie.’
‘Yes she is, her car’s downstairs!’ He looked at the police officer, ignored her quizzical stare and eased his way past her and into the flat. He strode down the hallway, past their mountain bikes leaning against the wall, turned left into the small anteroom which they had lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, housing his entire collection of Lee Child novels and many of their other favourite crime, horror and sci-fi writers, and into the large, untidy, square living/dining room. No sign of her.
‘Logan!’ he called, hurrying back into the hallway. He checked their bedroom, the boot Logan had tripped over earlier still lying by the bed, the en-suite bathroom, the tiny guest bedroom, the kitchen, the guest loo and shower room. He went back into the living/dining room and opened the door to the small balcony. Sometimes she went out there for a cigarette, despite his attempts at getting her to quit. But the two plastic chairs and little white table sat there, forlornly drenched in the rain, the soggy stub of a cigarette lying in the ashtray in a pool of water.
He stepped back into the living room and closed the door against the elements. The police officer had returned, with the caretaker standing behind her. ‘I’m PC Holliday,’ she said. ‘My colleague and I attended at the underground car park of this building following your call, earlier. So far we haven’t found anything suspicious – Logan’s Fiat is parked and locked in its allocated space downstairs, and there’s no sign of any disturbance in your flat.’
‘She phoned me from the car park as she drove in. Then she screamed, and her phone went dead.’
‘Have you tried her again, sir?’
‘Yes, I’ve been calling her constantly all my way here.’ He tugged his phone out of his trouser pocket and dialled her number again. Six rings and it went to voicemail. ‘Darling,’ he said. ‘Call me, please, as soon as you pick this up, I’m really worried.’ He ended the call and looked back at Susi Holliday. ‘She always calls me back within minutes. It doesn’t matter what she’s doing – she always calls me back – and I always call her back.’
‘She definitely drove to work herself, sir? She didn’t get a lift from a colleague, which could explain why her car is here?’
‘No, for God’s sake! She called me from her car, down in the car park. She said she’d seen a man down there and screamed. It was a terrible sound. It wasn’t like her. Can we go back down to the car park and take a look?’ Jamie pleaded.
The officer’s radio crackled. Jamie heard a disembodied female voice say something he couldn’t discern.
‘Charlie Romeo Four,’ Susi Holliday answered. ‘We’re still attending at Chesham Gate.’
‘Thank you, Charlie Romeo Four. Let me know when you stand down.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she replied. Then she turned to Jamie Ball.
‘Did you and your fiancée have any kind of an argument today, sir?’ Susi Holliday asked.
‘Argument? No, why?’
‘I noticed blood on the bottom of your bathroom door, earlier.’
‘Oh, that. She tripped getting out of bed and gashed her toe on it. She was going to go to the hospital this morning to get it looked at.’
‘The hospital would be able to verify that, would they, sir?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Then Jamie Ball hesitated and stared at the officer. ‘Oh God, you think I did something to her? For Christ’s sake!’
‘I’m afraid we have to ask these questions, sir.’
Jamie grabbed the spare keys to Logan’s car and then they took the lift back down to the car park to join Kyrke, and the three of them headed over to the Fiat.
‘One thing I should add,’ Ball said, ‘is that Logan’s diabetic. She’s Type-2 – needs to keep her sugar levels up, otherwise she can risk a hypo.’
The officer nodded. ‘Where do you work, Mr Ball?’
‘In Croydon, Condor pet foods.’
‘We’ve got two Rhodesian Ridgebacks,’ PC Kyrke said, walking over and joining them. ‘The wife swears by Condor – Condor Vitalife.’
‘Good to hear that,’ Jamie said, without enthusiasm. ‘It’s an excellent product.’
‘Better than raw meat?’
He shrugged. ‘From what I know it’s more of a balanced diet than raw meat.’
They reached the Fiat.
‘She was down here when she called you?’ PC Holliday asked. She held up her iPhone. ‘It’s a very poor signal.’
Jamie nodded. He pulled out his phone again. The s
ignal veered from one dot, to zero, to two. He dialled Logan’s number again, and moments later heard it ringing. Very faintly.
They all could.
For an instant, the caretaker and two officers looked at him. Frowning, he fumbled with the key then opened the car door. Instantly the ringing was louder.
Her phone was lying in the footwell almost under the passenger seat.
He started to lean across to pick it up, but was held back by PC Holliday, who reached past him with a gloved hand. The ringing stopped. Holliday knew that recovered phones were normally retained for forensic digital evidence, but as a life was potentially at risk she decided to check the phone immediately. She held it up and asked him for the code, which he gave her. She tapped it in and stared at the display, and saw nine missed calls from ‘Jamie Mob’. She asked if it was him and he confirmed it was.
He looked at the two police officers. ‘She’d never – she’d never leave her phone. She wouldn’t go anywhere without it.’
But although he could see sympathy in their expressions, he could also see they were a tad sceptical.
‘I’m afraid all of us leave our phones behind sometimes,’ PC Holliday said. ‘Done it myself.’
‘Me too,’ the caretaker chipped in. ‘I couldn’t find the thing for two days.’
‘Something’s happened to her. Please believe me. Something’s happened. I heard her scream, for God’s sake!’
Their radios crackled again and once more he heard a female voice.
‘Charlie Romeo Four,’ PC Kyrke said, tilting his head and speaking down into the radio clipped to the left of his chest.
‘Serious RTC at the A23–A27 junction. RPU need some assistance. Can you advise me when you’re free to attend, Charlie Romeo Four?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Kyrke said. ‘But I think we’re going to be a while.’ Then he turned to Jamie Ball. ‘Excuse me being personal, sir, but was everything all right between you and your fiancée? No arguments or anything like that?’
‘Nothing. We’ve bickered like every couple, but we’ve never had a real argument in all the time we’ve been together. We love each other so much.’
Susi Holliday stepped away from the others, feeling increasingly concerned about what she had heard. She radioed Control and requested that the Duty Inspector attend urgently.
9
Thursday 11 December
Roy Grace arrived home shortly after 6.45 p.m. on Thursday night. The Detective Superintendent had three and a half more days to go as the on-call Senior Investigating Officer for Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, before the buck got passed to another senior detective at 7 a.m. on Monday for the following seven days.
The county of Sussex averaged twelve homicides a year, and it was around ten in Surrey. In the whole of the UK there were about six hundred and fifty a year. Every homicide detective hoped to get a challenging murder. Not that they were bloodthirsty people, but it was what they trained for, and what challenged them the best. And it had to be said that a high-profile homicide raised your own profile, and promotion prospects.
Not that Roy Grace ever wished anyone dead.
Over the past few years, weekends had been jinxed for him. On each occasion that he had hoped for a quiet one, because of a social engagement, or more recently wanting to spend time with his wife, Cleo, and their five-month-old son, at the last minute he had been called to a homicide investigation. He was really hoping for a peaceful weekend so that he could focus his energies on helping Cleo to sort her possessions, in preparation for the move next week from Cleo’s house, which they were sharing, to the cottage they had bought together, near the village of Henfield, eight miles north of Brighton.
Cleo stood up, carefully removing a large book of fabric swatches from her lap and placing it on the coffee table, on top of a pile of other fabric and wallpaper sample books.
Grace turned to his eleven-year-old goldfish, Marlon. ‘You’re going to be moving to the country next week. How do you feel about that? We’re going to have hens. You’ve never seen a hen, have you? Other than on television. But you’re not that big on watching television, are you?’
Cleo slipped an arm around his waist and kissed him on the neck. ‘If someone had told me, a few years ago, that one day I would be jealous of a goldfish, I wouldn’t have believed them. But I am. Sometimes I think you care more about Marlon than me!’
Marlon opened and shut his mouth, looking as ever like a grumpy, toothless old man, on his never-ending circumnavigation of his round tank, passing through the fronds of green weed and over the submerged remains of a miniature Greek temple, which Roy had bought some years ago after reading an article in a magazine on the importance of giving goldfish things to interest them in their bowls. But nothing Roy had ever bought seemed to interest this lonesome creature. Over the years he had attempted on several occasions to provide Marlon with a mate. But every companion he had bought had ended up either gulped down by this mini-monster or floating dead on the surface, while Marlon continued, day in, day out, his eternal circular motion.
He had won the fish at a fairground stall all those years back with his long-missing first wife, Sandy, who after ten years’ absence had recently been declared legally dead, allowing him and Cleo to marry. He’d carried the fish home in a water-filled plastic bag, and according to Sandy’s research, the life expectancy of fairground goldfish was less than a year.
Now eleven years on, Marlon was still going strong. In the Guinness World Records, which Roy had recently consulted, the longest-lived goldfish in the world achieved forty-three years. Still some way to go, but for sure Marlon showed no signs of pegging out anytime soon. And secretly, Roy was glad about that. In a strange way – one he would never tell Cleo about – Marlon provided a link back to Sandy. He knew that he would be sad when he eventually died. And indeed, every morning when Roy came downstairs, the first thing he did was to look at the bowl, hoping that Marlon would not be floating lifelessly on the surface.
‘As we’re moving, darling, I think Marlon should move too. I’ve just read, on the internet, that goldfish need a bigger tank than people realize.’
‘Oh? How big? Like an Olympic-size pool?’ Cleo said.
He grinned. ‘No, but big enough to stretch their legs – or rather, fins.’
‘Just so long as it’s not bigger than our new house – or I would be getting extremely jealous. And in which case, sushi, my love?’
He looked at her, quizzically. ‘Don’t even go there!’
‘Love me, love my fish, right?’
He put his arms around her. ‘God, I adore you.’
She stared into his eyes. ‘And I adore you. I love you more than anything I could ever have imagined, Detective Superintendent Grace.’
She kissed him.
Then his work phone rang.
It was Andy Anakin, the Golf 99 – the term for the divisional duty uniformed inspector at Brighton’s John Street police station – which had the somewhat unwelcome reputation as the second busiest police station in England. Unlike most of his colleagues, who had the ability to remain calm in any situation, this particular inspector had acquired the nickname of ‘Panicking Anakin’. He sounded like he was panicking now.
‘Sir,’ he said, seemingly out of breath. ‘The DI’s dealing with another urgent situation, and asked me to call you to give you the heads-up that we have a possible kidnap or abduction. A young woman has gone missing after screaming down the phone to her fiancé that there was an intruder in an underground car park in Kemp Town.’
‘What information do you have on it?’ Roy asked, immediately concerned.
‘Very little, sir, you see, that’s the thing. Very little so far. I’ve units doing a house-to-house in the area, and a distraught boyfriend who believes his fiancée has been abducted. We’re doing all we can, but it’s not looking good, sir. Really it’s not. Ops-1 has alerted the duty Gold and Critical Incident Manager.’
Grace’s heart sank. It didn’t sound or
feel good. ‘What do you know about the couple?’
‘Her name’s Logan Somerville. Twenty-four, recently qualified as a chiropractor, works at a practice in Portland Road, Hove. His name’s Jamie Ball. He’s a marketing manager for the pet food division of the Condor Food Group – works at their offices near Croydon. We’re checking him out further.’
With eighty per cent of victims of violence harmed or killed by an immediate member of their family or someone close to them, Grace was well aware that loved ones were always people who deserved close investigation. He had been called, he knew, not solely because he was the on-call Senior Investigating Officer, but because he was also a trained kidnap and hostage negotiator. But if this did become an active investigation he wouldn’t be carrying out both roles.
‘I think we need to seal off the county, sir,’ Anakin said. ‘Roadblocks on all major roads, sir. Put out an all-ports. I’ve requested NPAS 15 on standby.’
NPAS 15 was the call sign for the helicopter shared between Sussex and Surrey police forces and now based at Redhill.
‘Hold on,’ Grace said.
‘This is bad, Roy. I’m telling you, this is bad!’
‘Andy, calm down. Wind your neck in!’ Grace retorted. ‘What checks have you done to verify she is missing?’
‘Local?’
‘Presumably there’s CCTV in the car park?’
‘Yes, but it’s not working.’
‘Great.’ He grimaced. ‘Have you got any local officers searching around the immediate scene? Seeing if anyone’s seen or heard anything?’
‘I have two there.’
‘Not enough. Get more there right away. Have you spoken to the boyfriend?’
‘Officers are talking to him at the moment. I’m at the scene myself. I’ve asked for divisional CID to attend, and thought you needed to be aware, Roy. I understand the woman screamed, and mentioned a man lurking in the vicinity who has not been traced.’