by Peter James
Michael suddenly gripped the walkie-talkie with deep intensity. 'What was it, Davey? What was the car?'
'Ford Transit. Boy was it trashed!'
'Tell me more, Davey.'
'There was one guy sticking right out through the windshield, half his head missing. Jeez, could see his brains coming out. Knew right away he was a goner. Only one survivor, but he died too.'
Michael began shaking uncontrollably. 'This guy who is missing. Do you know who he is?'
'Uh huh!'
'Tell me who he is?'
'I have to go in a minute, help my dad.'
'Davey, listen to me. I may be that guy.'
'You shittin' me?'
'What's his name, Davey?'
'Uh - dunno. They're just saying he's meant to be getting married tomorrow.' Michael closed his eyes. Oh no, oh Christ, oh no. 'Davey, was this accident - ah - this auto wreck - about nine o'clock on Tuesday night?'
'That's about the size of it.'
With new urgency, Michael held the walkie-talkie up close to his mouth. 'Davey, I'm that guy! I'm that guy who is getting married tomorrow!'
'You shittin' me?'
'No, Davey. Listen to me carefully.'
'I have to go - can talk to you later.'
Michael shouted at him, 'DAVEY, DON'T GO, PLEASE DON'T GO. YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN SAVE ME.'
Silence came back at him. Just the crackle of static to tell him Davey was still on the other end.
'Davey?'
'I have to go, know what I'm saying?'
'Davey, I need your help. You are the only person in the world who can help me. Do you want to help me?'
Another long silence. Then, 'What did you say your name was?'
'Michael Harrison.'
'They just said your name on television!'
'Do you have a car, Davey? Can you drive?'
'My dad has a truck.'
'Can I speak to your dad?'
'Uh -I dunno. He's pretty busy, you know, we have to go out and tow in a wreck.'
Michael thought, desperately hard, how to get through to this character. 'Davey, would you like to be a hero? Would you like to be on television?'
The voice became giggly. The on television? You mean like, me be a movie star?'
'Yes, you could be a movie star! Just get your dad to speak to me and I'll tell him how you could be a movie star. Why don't you get him, put him on the walkie-talkie? How about that?'
'I dunno.'
'Davey, please get your dad.'
'Like here's the problem. My dad don't know I have this walkietalkie, you see he'd be pretty mad at me if he knew I had this.'
Humouring him, Michael said, 'I think he'd be proud of you, if he knew you were a hero.'
'You reckon?'
'I reckon.'
'I have to go now. See ya! Over and out!'
The walkie-talkie fell silent again.
Pleading with all his heart, Michael was calling: 'Davey, please, Davey, don't leave me, please get your dad, please, Davey!'
But Davey had gone.
27
Ashley, sitting bleakly in an old, deep armchair in the tiny sitting room of Michael's mother's bungalow, stared blankly ahead through a blur of tears. She looked with no appetite at the untouched plate of assorted biscuits on the coffee table, then across at the colour photograph, on the mantelpiece above the fake-coal electric fire, of Michael, aged twelve, on a bicycle, then out through the net curtains at the view across the rain-lashed street to playing fields just below Brighton racecourse.
'I have the dressmaker coming at two,' she said. 'What do you think I should do?' She sipped her coffee then dabbed her eyes with a tissue. Bobo, Gill Harrison's tiny white shih-tzu dog with a bow on its head, looked up at Ashley and gave a begging whine for a biscuit. She responded by stroking the soft hair of its belly.
Gill Harrison sat on the edge of the sofa opposite her. She was dressed in a shapeless white T-shirt, shell-suit trousers and cheap white trainers. A thin ribbon of smoke trailed from a cigarette gripped between her fingers. Light glinted off a diamond engagement ring that was far too large to be real, next to a thin gold wedding band. A bracelet hung loose on her wrist.
She spoke in a gravelly voice, tinged with a coarse Sussex accent, and her strain showed through it. 'He's a good boy. He never let anyone down in his life - that's what I told the policeman what came round. This is not him, not Michael.' She shook her head and took a heavy drag on her cigarette. 'He likes a joke--' She gave a wry laugh. 'When he was a kid he was a terror at Christmas with a flippin' whoopee cushion. Always giving people a fright. But this is not him, Ashley'
'I know.'
'Something's happened to him. Them boys done something to him. Or he's had an accident as well. He hasn't run out on you. He was round here Sunday evening, we had tea together. He was telling
me how much he loved you, how happy he was, bless him. You've made him so happy. He was telling me about this house you've found Out in the country that you want to buy, all his plans for it.' She took another drag on her cigarette, then coughed. 'He's a resourceful boy. Ever since his dad--' She pursed her lips, and Ashley could see this Was really difficult for her. 'Ever since his dad - he told you?'
Ashley nodded.
'He stepped into his dad's shoes. I couldn't have coped without Michael. He was so strong. A rock, to myself and Early - you'll like Early. He sent her the money for her ticket back from Australia so she could be here for the wedding, bless him. She should be arriving here any minute. She phoned me from the airport a couple of hours ago.' She shook her head, in despair.
Ashley, in baggy brown jeans and a ragged white shirt, smiled at her.
'I met Early just before she went to Australia - she came into the office.'
'She's a good girl.'
'If she's your daughter she must be!'
Gill Harrison leaned forward and stubbed out her cigarette. 'You know, Ashley, all his life Michael has worked so hard. Doing a newspaper round when he was a child to help me and Early, and then his business with Mark. Nobody ever appreciates him. Mark's a nice boy but--'
'But what?'
Gill shook her head.
'Tell me?'
'I've known Mark since he was a child. Michael and he were inseparable. But Mark's always hung on to his coat tails. I sometimes think Mark's a bit jealous of him.'
'I thought they made a good team,' Ashley said.
Gill pulled a pack of Dunhills from her handbag, shook another cigarette out and stuck it in her mouth. 'I've always told him to watch out for Mark. Michael's innocent, he trusts people too easily.'
'What are you saying?'
She pulled a cheap plastic lighter from her bag and lit the cigarette. 'You have a good influence on Michael. You'll make sure he's all right, won't you?'
Bobo started whining again for a biscuit. Ignoring it, Ashley responded, 'Michael's strong. He's all right, he's fine.'
'Yeah, course he is.' She shot a glance across at the telephone on a table in the corner. 'He's all right. He'll call any time now. Those poor boys. They were so much a part of Michael's life. I can't believe--'
'I can't either.'
'You have your appointment with your dressmaker, dear. You should keep it. The show must go on. Michael will turn up, you do believe that, don't you?'
After a brief hesitation, Ashley said, 'Of course I do.'
'Let's speak later.'
Ashley stood up, walked over to her future mother-in-law, and hugged her hard. 'It's all going to be OK.'
'You're the best thing that ever happened to him. You are a wonderful person, Ashley. I was so happy when Michael told me that -that--' She was struggling now, emotion choking her words. 'That you-the two of you--'
Ashley kissed her on the forehead.
28
Grace sat, tight-lipped, in the blue Ford, holding the edges of his seat, watching the unfolding country road ahead nervously through the wipers and the heavy rain. Obl
ivious to his passenger's fear, Glenn Branson swept tidily through a series of bends, proudly demonstrating the skill he had recently acquired from a high-speed police driving course. The radio, tuned to a rap station, was far too loud for Grace.
'Doing it right, aren't I?'
'Uh - yep,' Grace said, deciding the less conversation, the less distraction to Branson, which in turn meant longer life expectancy for both of them. He reached forward and turned the volume down.
'Jay-Z,' Branson said. 'Magic, isn't he?'
'Magic'
They entered a long right-hander. 'They tell you to keep hard to the left, to open up the view; that's a good tip, isn't it.'
A left-hander was coming up and in Grace's view they were going too fast to get round it. 'Great tip,' he said, from somewhere deep in his gullet.
They got round it, then down into a dip.
'Am I scaring you?'
'Only slightly.'
'You're a wuss. Guess it's your age. Do you remember BullittV
'Steve McQueen? You like him, don't you?'
'Brilliant! Best car chase ever in a movie.'
'It ended in a bad car smash.'
'Brilliant, that film,' Branson said, missing his point - or more likely, Grace thought, deliberately ignoring it.
Sandy used to drive fast too. That was part of her natural recklessness. He used to be so scared that Sandy would have a bad accident one day, because she never seemed to be able to get her head around the natural laws of physics that determined when a car
would make it around a corner and when it would not. Yet in all the seven years they were together she never once crashed, or even scratched, her car.
Ahead of them, to his relief, he saw the sign - 'bolney car pound' - fixed to tall sheet-metal fencing, topped with barbed wire. Branson braked hard and turned in, past a guard dogs warning sign, into the forecourt of a large modern warehouse building.
Grabbing an umbrella from the boot, and huddling beneath it, they rang the bell on the entryphone beside a grey door. Moments later it was opened by a plump, greasy-haired man of about thirty, wearing a blue boiler suit over a filthy T-shirt, and holding a half eaten sandwich in a tattooed hand.
'Detective Sergeant Branson and Detective Superintendent Grace,' Branson said. 'I rang earlier.'
Chewing a mouthful, the guy looked blank for a moment. Behind him, several badly wrecked cars and vans sat in the warehouse. His eyes rolled pensively. 'The Transit, yeah?'
'Yup', Branson said.
'White? Came in Tuesday from Wheeler's?'
'That's the one.'
'It's outside.'
They signed in, then followed him across the warehouse floor and out through a side door, into an enclosure that was a good acre in size, Grace estimated, filled with wrecked vehicles as far as the eye could see. A few were under tarpaulins, but most were exposed to the elements.
Holding the umbrella high, just clearing the top of Branson's head, he looked at a Rentokil van that was burnt out after a bad frontal collision - it was hard to imagine anyone had survived in it. Then he noticed a Porsche sports car, compacted to little more than ten feet in length. And a Toyota saloon with its roof cut off.
The place always gave him the heebie-jeebies. Grace had never worked in the Traffic Division, but in his days as a beat copper he'd attended his share of traffic accidents and it was impossible not to be affected by them. It could always happen to anyone. You could set out on a journey, happy, full of plans, and moments later, in the blink of an eye, maybe through no fault of your own, your car was turned into a monster that smashed you to pieces, cut your limbs off and maybe even broiled you alive.
He shuddered. The vehicles that ended up in this place, under ecure lock and key, were the ones in the region that had been Involved in serious or fatal accidents. They were kept here until the Crash Investigation Unit and sometimes Crime Scene Investigators had obtained all the information they required, before going to a breaker's yard.
The fat man in the boiler suit pointed at a twisted mass of white, with part of its roof cut away, the cab, with the windscreen gone, sheared jaggedly away from the rest of the van, and much of the interior was covered in white plastic sheeting. 'That's the one.'
Both Grace and Branson stared at it in silence. Grace couldn't help his mind dwelling for several uncomfortable moments on the sheer horror of the image. The two of them walked around the van. Grace noticed mud caked on the wheel hubs, and more, heavy mud on the sills and splashes of it up the paintwork, slowly dissolving in the rain.
Handing the umbrella to his colleague, he wrenched open the buckled driver's door, and immediately was hit by the cloying, heavy stench of putrefying blood. It didn't matter how many times he experienced it, each new occasion was just as bad. It was the smell of death itself.
Holding his breath to try to block it out he pulled back the sheeting. The steering wheel had been hacked off and the driver's part of the front bench seat was bent right back. There were blood stains all over the front seat, the floor and the dash.
Covering them with the sheeting, he climbed in. It felt dark and unnaturally silent. It gave him the creeps. Part of the engine had come through the flooring and the pedals were raised in an unnatural position. Reaching across, he opened the glove compartment, then pulled out an owner's manual, a pack of parking vouchers, some fuel receipts and a couple of unlabelled tape cassettes. He handed the cassettes to Glenn.
'Better have a listen to these.'
Branson pocketed them.
Ducking under the jagged cut in the roof, Grace climbed into the
back of the van, his shoes echoing on the buckled floor. Branson pulled open the rear doors, letting more light in. Roy stared down at a plastic fuel can, a spare tyre, a wheel-wrench and a parking ticket in a plastic bag. He took the ticket out, and saw it was dated several days before the accident. He handed it to Branson for bagging. There was a solitary, left-foot Adidas trainer which he also passed to Branson, and a nylon bomber jacket. He felt in the pockets, pulling out a pack of cigarettes, a plastic lighter and a dry-cleaning ticket stub with an address in Brighton. Branson bagged each item.
Grace scanned the interior carefully, checking he had missed nothing, thinking hard. Then climbing back out and sheltering under the umbrella, he asked Branson, 'So who owns this vehicle?'
'Houlihan's - the undertakers in Brighton. One of the boys who died worked there - it was his uncle's firm.'
'Four funerals. Should get a nice quantity discount,' Grace said grimly.
'You're a real sick bastard sometimes, you know that?'
Ignoring him, Grace was pensive for a moment. 'Have you spoken to anyone at Houlihan's?'
'Interviewed Mr Sean Houlihan, the owner, himself yesterday afternoon. He's pretty upset as you can imagine. Told me his nephew was a hard-working lad, eager to please.'
'Aren't they all? And he gave him permission to take the van?'
Branson shook his head. 'No. But says it was out of character.'
Roy Grace thought for a moment. 'What's the van ordinarily used for?'
'Collecting cadavers. Hospitals, hospices, old folk's homes, places like that where they'd be spooked to see a hearse. You hungry?'
'I was before I came here.'
29
Ten minutes later they sat at a wobbly corner table in an almost deserted country pub, Grace cradling a pint of Guinness and Branson a Diet Coke, while they waited for their food to come. There was a cavernous inglenook fireplace beside them piled with unlit logs, and a collection of ancient agricultural artefacts hung from the walls. It was the kind of pub Grace liked, a genuine old country pub. He loathed the theme pubs with their phoney names that were insidiously becoming part of every town's increasingly characterless landscape.
'You've checked his mobile?'
'Should have the records back this afternoon,' Branson said.
'Number twelve?'
Grace looked up to see a barmaid holding a tray with their
food. Steak and kidney pudding for him, swordfish steak and salad for Glenn Branson.
Grace pierced the soft suet with his knife and instantly steam and gravy erupted from it.
'Instant heart attack on a plate that is,' Branson chided. 'You know what suet is? Beef fat. Yuk.'
Spooning some mustard onto his plate, Grace said, 'It's not what you eat, it's worrying about what you eat. Worry is the killer.'
Branson forked some fish into his mouth. As he started chewing, Grace continued. 'I read that the levels of mercury in sea fish, from pollution, are at danger level. You shouldn't eat fish more than once a week.'
Branson's chewing slowed down and he looked uncomfortable. 'Where did you read that?'
'It was a report from Nature, I think. It's about the most respected scientific journal in the world.' Grace smiled, enjoying the expression on his friend's face.
'Shit, we eat fish like - almost every night. Mercury1?'
'You'll end up as a thermometer.'
'That's not funny - I mean--' Two sharp beeps in succession silenced him.
Grace tugged his mobile from his pocket and stared at the screen.
Why no reply to my text, Big Boy? ClaudineXX
'God, this is all I need,' he said. 'A frigging bunny boiler.'
Branson raised his eyebrows. 'Healthy meat, rabbit. Free range.'
'This one isn't healthy and she doesn't eat meat. I mean bunny boiler as in that old movie with Glenn Close.'
'Fatal Attraction? Michael Douglas and Anne Archer, 1987. Great movie - it was on Sky on Sunday'
Grace showed him the text.
Branson grinned. 'Big Boy, eh?'
'It never got that far and it's never going to.'
Then Branson's mobile rang. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and answered. 'Glenn Branson. Yeah? OK, great, I'll be there in an hour.' He ended the call and left his phone on the table. Looking at Grace, he said, 'The Vodafone log from Michael Harrison's phone just came in. Want to come to the office and help me with it?'
Grace thought for a moment, then checked his diary on his Blackberry. He'd kept the afternoon clear, intending to clear up some paperwork relating to the Suresh Hossain trial that Alison Vosper had requested at their 12.30 meeting, then read the report on the Tommy Lytle case. But that had waited twenty-seven years, and another day would not make much difference either way. Whereas Michael Harrison's disappearance was urgent. Although he did not know the characters, he felt for them. Particularly for the fiancee; he knew just how wrenching it was when a loved one went missing. At this moment, if there was any way he could be of help, he should doit.