Dead Letter Drop

by Peter James

  ‘There’s more to come,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Whisky?’

  I nodded assent and we sat down with hefty tumblers of Scotch: Glenfiddich, what else?

  ‘I received a telephone call from a gentleman with whom you are familiar,’ he said, ‘one Harold Wetherby. He’s involved in this whole thing up to his neck and wants to bargain a lot of knowledge he claims to have in return for a pardon. He’s terrified he’s about to be bumped off at any moment. I’ve had a word with the Prime Minister; no one’s happy about granting any pardons since all the flak of that business of the Blunt affair, and I’ve told him so. Anyhow, he’s flying over to London tonight to tell all and to throw himself at our mercy.

  ‘This is really the most extraordinary affair. The one man I just do not understand is Unwin: I can’t believe he’s mixed up in this but the way the muck’s going to hit the fan during the next few days we’re all going to have to brace ourselves for a lot more shocks yet.’

  ‘Unwin’s innocent,’ I said. ‘He was murdered. I’m certain of that; and I’m responsible. I knew there was at least one mole in Washington but I didn’t know who for sure. I suspected both Wetherby and Hicks. I telephoned Unwin and gave him a message that wouldn’t have made much sense to him. I told him I was going to reveal the identity of the Pink Envelope to the press unless I was paid 100,000 dollars in cash at a secret rendezvous. I figured that Unwin would be bound to discuss this message with Hicks and Wetherby, along with the other members of his senior staff. To make sure, I leaked the news of my message to Moscow. I knew that the mole in Washington was in regular communication with the Pink Envelope and I was sure that in the light of everything that had been going on, the Pink Envelope wouldn’t leave it to anyone else to deal with the matter this time, but would come over himself. The Envelope obviously instructed someone at Washington to bump off Unwin before he could have a chance to talk too much and to ensure he didn’t show up in New York himself. I was certain that the Envelope was Scatliffe and I don’t understand what Lines was doing in New York.’

  ‘Lines and Scatliffe went over together. They took different flights but met up when they got there. Both were scared witless and wouldn’t let the other out of sight any more. Wetherby told me. You’ll also be interested to learn that Hicks has disappeared. Scatliffe, Wetherby and Lines went to a call box together to call the blackmailer – presumably you – and then Lines insisted ongoing off to the meeting with the blackmailer alone. When Lines didn’t return, Scatliffe got scared and bolted.’ He paused. ‘Why did you kill Lines?’

  ‘I thought he was Scatliffe. I set the trap for Scatliffe and Lines walked into it. I could have stopped him but I’d gone so far I felt I had to go on.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Fifeshire.

  ‘Somebody’s tried to kill me most days for the past couple of weeks – I told you that when we met in the Clinic. I was certain that Scatliffe was at the back of it but I had no evidence. I was certain too that Wetherby was involved, and others, possibly many others, but I didn’t know who. After I left you I found out more evidence; you were the only person I could trust to tell it to but if I’d gone back to you, your next step would have been to have reported the matter to your superior: and that would have been Lines, and you and I would be 6 feet under right now – unless Lines was innocent.’

  ‘Both Scatliffe and Lines have the sterling equivalent of 50,000 dollars each missing from their bank accounts. Both withdrawals were made on Friday. Lines wasn’t innocent. Go on.’

  ‘Right, the only thing I could do was to try and flush out the Pink Envelope, get him to turn up with some evidence to implicate him. Having done that, I would have to kill him if I was to have any chance of ever getting back alive to tell the tale. And in my heart of hearts I felt that by killing him I might just start off a chain reaction.’

  ‘That you have certainly done. But you took one hell of a risk.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me, sir,’ I smiled – for the first time in a long time.

  ‘The next few days are going to be interesting, very interesting,’ said Fifeshire.

  ‘There are two mysteries I want to resolve: the first concerns Orchnev; and the second, the girl I was going out with who just suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth.’

  ‘Could her name be Mary-Ellen Joffe?’ Fifeshire grinned.

  ‘How the hell do you know?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in a minute. Tell me what you want to know about Orchnev; he started this whole damn thing off, or so it seems.’

  ‘He did, certainly. What I haven’t told you accurately, sir, is how he died.’

  ‘I understand you shot him – thought he was an intruder – that’s what you told the New York police at any rate.’

  ‘Right. But I didn’t shoot him. He shot himself.’

  Fifeshire looked puzzled and I told him the story of exactly what did happen. At the end of it he nodded his head. ‘It makes sense,’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad it does to someone,’ I replied, ‘because it’s been baffling the hell out of me. He came to see me because someone must have told him to come and see me – but that’s as far as I can get. Going back historically, Orchnev originally wrote to you. Scatliffe, Hicks and Wetherby between them intercepted these letters and they never reached you. They didn’t want you to know Orchnev wanted to defect because they didn’t want him spilling any beans and blowing open the whole communications system between the KGB and the US. So they tried to kill you to get you out of the way; they didn’t succeed in killing you but they disabled you sufficiently so that you were no longer a threat. But why did they send Orchnev along to me and why did he kill himself in front of me?’

  ‘Orchnev was in New York eighteen months ago. He went over on a holiday; being a senior Party member he was trusted enough to be allowed to holiday alone. He had access to information vital to an operation MI6 were planning so they thought they’d have a go at him while he was in the States. They set a girl up as bait and he went for her. They dated a few times, she seduced him, but instead of her getting anything out of him, he went and fell madly in love with her. The only thing that stopped him defecting in order to live with her right there and then was his wife and three children in Russia. So very reluctantly he returned to Russia.

  ‘Six months later his wife and children were wiped out in a car crash. It appears to have been a genuine accident – we don’t think he fixed it. A couple of months passed, then this girl started to receive passionate love letters from him. She was instructed to respond equally passionately. She did. Her letters prompted Orchnev to make his decision to defect. He had nothing to live for in Russia any more; he had this gorgeous girl who was head-over-heels in love with him in New York. So he wrote to the head of the Soviet division of the CIA and sent the letter via a courier friend at the British Embassy, who passed it to MI6.

  ‘Having got their hands on the letter, MI6, who wanted Orchnev themselves, faked a reply to Orchnev from the CIA telling him that the CIA were not interested in his deal because they were scared of damaging some delicate negotiations they were having with Moscow, but said they had discussed the matter with the British who would be prepared to accept him, subject to being satisfied that he could and would provide worthwhile information. He agreed to this on the proviso that he could firstly come to New York and that there was some hope that at a later date the US might permit him residency. So MI6 wrote him a fairly standard letter offering him a new life in exchange for worthwhile information and agreeing to his visiting New York prior to coming to England. It was at this point that the Home Secretary was informed, since when Orchnev arrived in England he would be placed in the hands of MI5. Lines should of course have then immediately instructed me to handle the matter. Lines and Scatliffe should have told the Russians what was happening so that the Russians could prevent Orchnev from leaving, but this would have given the game away that there was a leak our end. It would be much easier
for them if I was out of the way and they saw this as a good time to get rid of me. They would let Orchnev reach New York then bump him off before he had a chance to talk to anyone.

  ‘Then they had an even better idea: rather than have the problems of a dead Russian at all, they would try and get him to return to Russia of his own free will. They thought that if between the last love letter she wrote and the time he arrived in New York the girl had acquired a new lover and was no longer interested in him, he might decide there was no point in defecting after all and return to Russia.

  ‘So his defection was arranged as an innocent holiday to the States to get away from the bad memories of his wife and family for a while – all perfectly plausible. He was to be met in New York when he arrived by a Russian expatriate who was an old friend, who worked, incidentally, as a double agent for Wetherby. The Russian was to take him round to the girl’s flat. Orchnev was to go in and surprise her late at night but to his horror he would find her in bed with her new lover. He would leave in disgust and his friend waiting outside would persuade him that the most sensible thing he could do would be to go straight back to the airport and take the first plane he could back to Russia.

  ‘They agreed on this plan and set it in motion. Unfortunately it backfired horribly on them. Orchnev had a gun and instead of leaving the girl’s flat, he was so shocked by what he saw that, on top of all the tragedy of his wife and children and the strain of all the planning he had done, his mind became unbalanced and he shot himself. The girl was the one you called Sumpy and you were the lover. Have another Scotch.’

  I couldn’t see any point in refusing.

  DEAD SIMPLE

  Four bodies. One suspect. No Trace.

  It was meant to be a harmless stag night prank. A few hours later four of his best friends are dead and Michael Harrison has disappeared.

  With only three days to the wedding, Detective Superintendent Grace – a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife – is contacted by Michael’s beautiful, distraught fiancée, Ashley Harper.

  Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know Michael Harrison’s whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot to gain – more than anyone realizes. For one man’s disaster is another man’s fortune . . . Dead simple . . .

  ‘James has got the gift for turning mind-stretching subjects into novels that are irresistibly readable as well as utterly believable’

  Robert Goddard

  ‘A brilliant idea, superbly crafted. A terrific page-turner’

  James Herbert

  Read on for an extract from Dead Simple, the first novel in Peter James’ number one bestselling Roy Grace series . . .

  1

  So far, apart from just a couple of hitches, Plan A was working out fine. Which was fortunate, since they didn’t really have a Plan B.

  At 8.30 on a late May evening, they’d banked on having some daylight. There had been plenty of the stuff this time yesterday, when four of them had made the same journey, taking with them an empty coffin and four shovels. But now, as the white Transit van sped along the Sussex country road, misty rain was falling from a sky the colour of a fogged negative.

  Are we nearly there yet?’ said Josh in the back, mimicking a child.

  ‘The great Um Ga says, “Wherever I go there I am,” responded Robbo, who was driving, and was slightly less drunk than the rest of them. With three pubs notched up already in the past hour and a half, and four more on the itinerary, he was sticking to shandy. At least, that had been his intention; but he’d managed to slip down a couple of pints of pure Harvey’s bitter – to clear his head for the task of driving, he’d said.

  ‘So we are there!’ said Josh.

  Always have been.’

  A deer warning sign flitted from the darkness then was gone, as the headlights skimmed glossy black-top macadam stretching ahead into the forested distance. Then they passed a small white cottage.

  Michael, lolling on a tartan rug on the floor in the back of the van, head wedged between the arms of a wheel-wrench for a pillow, was feeling very pleasantly woozy. ‘I sh’ink I need another a drink,’ he slurred.

  If he’d had his wits about him, he might have sensed, from the expressions of his friends, that something was not quite right. Never usually much of a heavy drinker, tonight he’d parked his brains in the dregs of more empty pint glasses and vodka chasers than he could remember downing, in more pubs than had been sensible to visit.

  Of the six of them who had been muckers together since way back into their early teens, Michael Harrison had always been the natural leader. If, as they say, the secret of life is to choose your parents wisely, Michael had ticked plenty of the right boxes. He had inherited his mother’s fair good looks and his father’s charm and entrepreneurial spirit, but without any of the self-destruct genes that had eventually ruined the man.

  From the age of twelve, when Tom Harrison had gassed himself in the garage of the family home, leaving behind a trail of debtors, Michael had grown up fast, helping his mother make ends meet by doing a paper round, then when he was older by taking labouring jobs in his holidays. He grew up with an appreciation of how hard it was to make money – and how easy to fritter it.

  Now, at twenty-eight, he was smart, a decent human being, and a natural leader of the pack. If he had flaws, they were that he was too trusting and on occasions, too much of a prankster. And tonight that latter chicken was coming home to roost. Big time.

  But at this moment he had no idea of that.

  He drifted back again into a blissful stupor, thinking only happy thoughts, mostly about his fiancée, Ashley. Life was good. His mother was dating a nice guy, his kid brother had just got into university, his kid sister Carly was backpacking in Australia on a gap year, and his business was going incredibly well. But best of all, in three days time he was going to be marrying the woman he loved. And adored. His soul mate.

  Ashley.

  He hadn’t noticed the shovel that rattled on every bump in the road, as the wheels drummed below on the sodden tarmac, and the rain pattered down above him on the roof. And he didn’t clock a thing in the expressions of his two friends riding along with him in the back, who were swaying and singing tunelessly to an oldie, Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’, on the crackly radio up front. A leaky fuel can filled the van with the stench of petrol.

  ‘I love her,’ Michael slurred. ‘I sh’love Ashley.’

  ‘She’s a great lady,’ Robbo said, turning his head from the wheel, sucking up to him as he always did. That was in his nature. Awkward with women, a bit clumsy, a florid face, lank hair, beer belly straining the weave of his T-shirt, Robbo hung to the coat tails of this bunch by always trying to make himself needed. And tonight, for a change, he actually was needed.

  ‘She is.’

  ‘Coming up,’ warned Luke.

  Robbo braked as they approached the turn-off and winked in the darkness of the cab at Luke seated next to him. The wipers clumped steadily, smearing the rain across the windscreen.

  ‘I mean, like I really love her. Sh’now what I mean?’

  ‘We know what you mean,’ Pete said.

  Josh, leaning back against the driver’s seat, one arm around Pete, swigged some beer, then passed the bottle down to Michael. Froth rose from the neck as the van braked sharply. He belched. ‘’Scuse me.’

  ‘What the hell does Ashley see in you?’ Josh said.

  ‘My dick.’

  ‘So it’s not your money? Or your looks? Or your charm?’

  ‘That too, Josh, but mostly my dick.’

  The van lurched as it made the sharp right turn, rattling over a cattle grid, almost immediately followed by a second one, and onto the dirt track. Robbo, peering through the misted glass, picking out the deep ruts, swung the wheel. A rabbit sprinted ahead of them, then shot into some undergrowth. The headlights veered right then left, fleetingly colouring the dense conifers that lined the track, before they vanished into darkness in the rear-view mirror. As
Robbo changed down a gear, Michael’s voice changed, his bravado suddenly tinged, very faintly, with anxiety.

  ‘Where we going?’

  ‘To another pub.’

  ‘OK. Great.’ Then a moment later, ‘Promished Ashley I shwouldn’t – wouldn’t – drink too much.’

  ‘See,’ Pete said, ‘you’re not even married and she’s laying down rules. You’re still a free man. For just three more days.’

  ‘Three and a half,’ Robbo added, helpfully.

  ‘You haven’t arranged any girls?’ Michael said.

  ‘Feeling horny?’ Robbo asked.

  ‘I’m staying faithful.’

  ‘We’re making sure of that.’

  ‘Bastards!’

  The van lurched to a halt, reversed a short distance, then made another right turn. Then it stopped again, and Robbo killed the engine – and Rod Stewart with it. ‘Arrivé!’ he said. ‘Next watering hole! The Undertaker’s Arms!’

  ‘I’d prefer the Naked Thai Girl’s Legs,’ Michael said.

  ‘She’s here too.’

  Someone opened the rear door of the van, Michael wasn’t sure who. Invisible hands took hold of his ankles. Robbo took one of his arms, and Luke the other.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘You’re a heavy bastard!’ Luke said.

  Moments later Michael thumped down, in his favourite sports jacket and best jeans (not the wisest choice for your stag night, a dim voice in his head was telling him) onto sodden earth, in pitch darkness which was pricked only by the red tail lights of the van and the white beam of a flashlight. Hardening rain stung his eyes and matted his hair to his forehead.

  ‘My – closhes—’

  Moments later, his arms yanked almost clear of their sockets, he was hoisted in the air, then dumped down into something dry and lined with white satin that pressed in on either side of him.