Dead Simple

by Peter James

  Then he sat bolt upright, held the string over the map between his forefinger and thumb, and let the lead weight swing backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. Then, pursing his lips in concentration, he swung it vigorously in a tight circle, steadily covering the map inch by inch.

  'Uckfield?' he said. 'Crowborough? Ashdown Forest?' He looked quizzically at each man. Both nodded.

  But Harry Frame shook his head. 'No, I'm not being shown anything in this area, sorry. I'll try another map, smaller scale.'

  'We're pretty sure he is in this area, Harry,' Roy Grace said.

  Frame shook his head determinedly. 'No, the pendulum is not telling me that. We need to look wider.'

  Grace could feel Branson's scepticism burning like a furnace. Staring at the new map, which showed the whole of East and West Sussex, he saw the pendulum swinging in a narrow arc over Brighton.

  'This is where he is,' Frame murmured.

  'Brighton? I don't think so,' Grace responded.

  Frame produced a large-scale street map of Brighton and set the pendulum swinging over it. Within moments it began to make a tight circle over Kemp Town. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, this is where he is.'

  Grace stared at Branson now, as if sharing his thoughts. 'You are wrong, Harry,' he said.

  'No, I don't think so, Roy. This is where your man is.'

  Grace shook his head. 'We've just come from Kemp Town - we've been to talk to his business partner - are you sure you aren't picking up on that?'

  Harry Frame picked up the copper bracelet. 'This is his bracelet? Michael Harrison?'

  'Yes.'

  'Then this is where he is. Mypendulum is never wrong.'

  'Can you give us an address?' Branson asked.

  'No, not an address - the housing is too dense. But that's where you must look, that is where you will find him.'

  38

  'Fucking weirdo/ Branson said to Grace as they drove away from Harry Frame's house.

  Grace, deep in thought, did not say anything for a long while. In the past hour the rain had finally stopped, and streaks of late evening sunlight pierced the net of grey cloud that sagged low over the sea. 'Let's assume he's right for a moment.'

  'Let's get a drink and something to eat,' Branson said. 'I'm starving; I'm about to keel over.'

  The clock read 8.31 p.m.

  'Good idea.'

  Glenn called his wife on his mobile. Grace listened to Branson's end of the conversation. It sounded pretty heated and finished with him hanging up in mid-call. 'She's well pissed off.'

  Grace gave him a sympathetic smile. He knew better than to make an uninformed comment on someone else's domestic situation. A few minutes later, in the bar of a cliff-top pub called the Badger's Rest, Grace cradled a large Glenfiddich on the rocks, noticing that his companion was making short work of a pint of beer, despite the fact he was driving.

  'I went into the Force,' Branson said, 'so I'd have a career that would make my kids proud of me. Shit. At least when I was a bouncer, I had a life. I'd get to bath my Sammy and put him to bed and had time to read him a story before I went off to work. Do you know what Ari just said to me?'

  'What?' Grace stared at the specials on the blackboard.

  'She said Sammy and Remi are crying 'cause I'd promised to be home and read them stories tonight.'

  'So go home,' Grace said gently, meaning it.

  Branson drained his pint and ordered another. 'I can't do that, you know I can't. This isn't a fucking nine-to-five job. I can't just walk out of the office like some dickhead civil servant, and do a Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday stunt. I owe it to Ashley Harper and to Michael Harrison. Don't I?'

  'You have to learn when to let go,' Grace said.

  'Oh really? So when exactly do I let go?'

  Grace drained his whisky. It felt good. The burning sensation first f In his gullet, then in his stomach. He held his glass out to the barman, Ordered another double, then put a twenty-pound note down and , I8ked for change for the cigarette machine. He hadn't had a cigarette for several days, but tonight his craving for one was too strong.

  The pack of Silk Cut dropped into the tray of the machine. He tore off the cellophane and asked the barman for some matches. Then he lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deeply, gratefully, down into his lungs. It tasted beyond exquisite.

  'I thought you'd quit,' Branson said.

  'I have.'

  He received his new drink and clinked glasses with Glenn. 'You don't have a life and I'm destroying mine. Welcome to a career in the police.'

  Branson shook his head. 'Your friend Harry Frame is one weird dude. What a flake!'

  'Remember Abigail Matthews?'

  'That kid a couple of years ago? Eight years old, right?'

  'Right.'

  'Kidnapped outside her folks' home. You found her in a crate in a hangar at Gatwick Airport.'

  'Nigerian. She'd been sold into a child sex ring in Holland.'

  'That was great detective work. Wasn't that part of the reason you got promoted so fast?'

  'It was. Except I never told anyone the truth about how I found her.' The whisky was talking now, rather than Roy Grace. 'I never told anyone, because--'

  'Because?'

  'It wasn't great detective work, Glenn, that's why. It was Harry Frame who found her, with his pendulum. OK?'

  Branson was silent for some moments. 'So that's why you believe in him.'

  'He's been right in other cases, too. But I don't shout about him. Alison Vosper and her brass cronies don't like anything that doesn't fit into their boxes. You want a career in the police, you have to be seen to play by the rules. You have to be seen, OK? You don't actually have to play them, just so long as they thinkyou are playing by them.' He drained the second whisky far faster than he had intended. 'Let's get some grub.'

  Branson ordered scampi. Grace chose a distinctly unhealthy gammon steak with two fried eggs and French fries, lit another cigarette and ordered another round of drinks.

  'So what do we do next, old wise man?'

  Grace squinted at Branson. 'We could get smashed,' he said.

  'That's not exactly going to help us find Michael Harrison, is it? Or have I missed something?'

  'You haven't missed anything - not that I can see. But it is now about...' Grace checked his watch. 'Nine on a Friday night. Short of heading out into Ashdown Forest with a shovel and a flashlight, I'm not sure what else we can achieve.'

  'There must be something that we're missing.'

  'There's always something, Glenn. What very few people understand is the importance of serendipity in our job.'

  'You mean luck?'

  'You know the old joke about the golfer?'

  'Tell me.'

  'He says, "It's a strange thing... the more I practise, the luckier I get."'

  Branson grinned. 'So maybe we haven't practised enough.'

  'I think we've practised enough. Tomorrow's the big day. If Mr Michael Harrison is playing the joke of all jokes, then tomorrow will be the moment of truth.'

  'And if he's not?'

  'Then we go to Plan B.'

  'Which is what?'

  'I have no idea.' Grace squinted at him across the top of his glass. 'I'm just your lunch date. Remember?'

  39

  Ashley, in her white towelling dressing gown, was slouched on her bed watching a Sex in the City repeat playing on the plasma television screen, when the telephone rang. She sat up with a start, nearly spilling some of the Sauvignon Blanc in the glass she was holding. Her alarm clock said 11.18 p.m. It was late.

  She answered it with a nervous, nearTbreathless, 'Yes hello?'

  'Ashley? I hope I haven't woken you, love?'

  Ashley put her wine glass down on her bedside table, grabbed the remote and muted the sound. It was Gill Harrison, Michael's mother. 'No,' she said. 'Not at all. I can't sleep anyhow. I haven't slept a wink since - Tuesday. I'm going to take a pill in a little while - the doctor gave me some - said they would knock me out.
' In the background she heard Bobo, Gill's little white shih-tzu, barking.

  'I want you to think again, Ashley. I really think you must cancel the reception tomorrow.'

  Ashley took a deep breath. 'Gill - we discussed it all yesterday and today. We can't get anything refunded cancelling this late; we have people coming from all over the place - like my uncle from Canada who's giving me away.'

  'He's a nice man,' Gill said. 'Poor fellow's come all this way.'

  'We adore each other,' Ashley said. 'He took the whole week off just so he could be at the rehearsal on Monday.'

  'Where's he staying?'

  'In London - at the Lanesborough. He always stays at the best.' She was quiet for a moment. 'Of course, I've told him, but he said he would come down anyway to give me support. I've managed to stop my other girlfriends in Canada - four of them were coming over and I have other friends in London I've convinced not to come - the phone's been ringing off the hook for the past couple of days.'

  'Here, too.'

  'The problem is Michael has friends and colleagues invited from

  all over England - and the Continent. I've tried to contact as many people as possible, and so has Mark - but - we need at least to look after those who do turn up. And I still think Michael might.'

  'I don't think so, love, not now.'

  'Gill, Michael played all kinds of pranks on his friends when they got married - two of them only made it to the church minutes before the wedding began, because of what he did to them. Michael could still be somewhere, locked up or tied up, not knowing anything about what has happened. He might still be planning - or trying - to make it.'

  'You're a lovely girl, and you are a kind person - it's going to be devastating for you to be at the church and he doesn't arrive. You have got to accept that something has happened to him. Four people are dead, love. Michael must have heard about them - if he is OK.'

  Ashley sniffed, then began to sob. For some moments she cried inconsolably, dabbing her eyes with a tissue she had plucked from a box on her bedside table. Then, sniffing hard, she said, 'I'm trying so damned hard, but I'm not coping. I just -1 - keep - praying he's going to turn up - every time the phone rings I think it's going to be him you know- that he'll be laughing, explaining it's all been some dumb joke.'

  'Michael's a good boy,' Gill said. 'He's never been cruel - this is too cruel. He wouldn't do this; it's not in him.'

  There was a long silence. Finally Ashley broke it. 'Are you OK?'

  'Apart from being worried sick about Michael, yes, I'm OK, thanks. I've got Early here.'

  'She's arrived?'

  'Yes, a couple of hours ago from Australia. I think she'll be a bit jet-lagged tomorrow.'

  'I should come over to say hello.' She was silent for a moment. 'You see what I mean - all these people coming from all over the place - we just have to at least be at the church to meet them - and offer them some food. Can you imagine if we weren't there and Michael then turned up?'

  'He would understand - that you cancelled out of respect for the boys who died.'

  Sobbing even harder, Ashley said, 'Please, Gill, please let's go to

  i church and see.'

  'Take that pill and get some sleep, love.'

  'I'll call you in the morning.'

  'Yes. I'll be up early.'

  'Thanks for calling.'

  'Night night.'

  'Night!' Ashley said.

  She replaced the receiver then, charged with a burst of energy, rolled over, her breasts spilling out of the open front of her dressing gown, and gazed down at Mark, who was lying naked under the bedclothes beside her. 'Stupid cow, doesn't have a clue!' Her lips burst Into a massive grin, her whole face alight with joy. 'Not a clue!'

  She put her arms around his neck, held him tightly and kissed him passionately, on the mouth at first, before working her way slowly, steadily, with maximum possible torture, further and further down his body.

  40

  He was sweating under the duvet. Too hot, far too hot, somehow it had worked its way right over his head and he could barely breathe. Rivulets of water ran down his face, down his arms, legs, the small of his back. He pushed the duvet off, sat up, felt a numbing crack to his skull, sank back.

  Splash.

  Oh Jesus.

  Water slopped all around him. And felt as if it were inside him too, as if the blood in his veins and the water in which he lay were interchangeable. Some word for it. Some word he grasped for, and it eluded him, slipped from his grasp each time he closed on it. Like soap in a bathtub, he thought.

  Cold now. Unbearably hot an instant ago, now cold. So cold. Oh so teeth-chattering-cold-cold-cold. His head was splitting. 'Just going to check and see if there are any paracetamol in the bathroom cabinet,' he announced. To the silence that came back at him he said, 'Won't be long. Just popping out to the chemist.'

  The hunger had gone away some hours ago, but now it was back with a vengeance. His stomach burned as if the acids had now turned on the lining for want of anything else to break down. His mouth was parched. He put a hand out and scooped water into his mouth, but despite his thirst it was an effort to drink it.

  Osmosis!

  'OSMOSIS!' in a burst of elation he shouted the word out at the top of his voice, repeating it over and over. 'Osmosis! Gotcha! Osmosis!'

  Then suddenly he was hot again. Perspiring. 'Someone turn the thermostat down!' he shouted out in the darkness. 'For Christ's sake, we're all boiling down here; what do you think we are, lobsters?'

  He started giggling at his remark. Then, right above his face, the lid of the coffin began to open. Slowly, steadily, noiselessly, until he

  could see the night sky, alive with comets racing across it. A beam of light shone out from him, dust motes drifted lazily through it, and he realized all the stars in the firmament were projected there from the light. The sky was his screen! Then he saw a face drift across, through the beam, through the dust motes. Ashley. As if he were looking up at her from the bottom of a swimming pool, and she was drifting face-down over him.

  Then another face drifted over - his mother. Then Early, his kid sister. Then his father, in the sharp brown suit, cream shirt and red silk tie that Michael remembered him in best. Michael did not understand how his father could be in the pool but his clothes were dry.

  'You're dying, son,' Tom Harrison said. 'You'll be with us soon now.'

  'I don't think I'm ready yet, Dad.'

  His father gave a wry smile. 'That's the thing, son, who is?'

  'I found that word I was looking for,' Michael said. 'Osmosis.'

  'That's a good word, son.'

  'How are you, Dad?'

  'There are good deals to be had up here, son. Terrific deals. Heck of a lot better. You don't have to fart around trying to hide your money in the Cayman Islands up here. What you make is what you keep - like the sound of that?'

  'Yes, Dad--'

  Except it wasn't his father any more he was talking to, but the vicar, Reverend Somping, a short, supercilious man in his late fifties, with greying wavy hair and a beard that only partially masked the ruddy complexion of his cheeks - ruddy not from a healthy outdoors lifestyle, but from broken veins from years of heavy boozing.

  'You're going to be very late, Michael, if you don't haul yourself out of there. You do realize that if you don't reach the church by sunset, I cannot marry you, by law?'

  'I didn't, no -1--'

  He reached up to touch the vicar, to seize his hand, but he struck hard, impenetrable teak.

  Darkness.

  The slosh of water as he moved.

  Then he noticed something. Checking with his hands, the water was no longer up to his cheeks, it had subsided, to the top of his neck. 'I'm wearing it like a tie,' he said. 'Can you wear water like a tie?'

  Then the shivers gripped him, clenched his arms so that his elbows banged against his ribs, his feet knocked, his breathing got faster, faster until he was hyperventilating.

  I'm goi
ng to die, I'm going to die, here, alone, on my wedding day. They are coming for me, the spirits, they are coming down here into the box and--

  He put his jerking hands together over his face. He could not remember the last time he had prayed - it was sometime long before his dad had died. Tom Harrison's death had been the final confirmation to him that there was no God. But now the words of the Lord's Prayer poured into his head and he whispered them into his hands, as if not wanting to be overheard.

  A crackle of static broke his concentration. Then a burst of twangy country and western music. Followed by a voice. 'Well, good morning, sports fans, this is WNEB Buffalo bringing you the latest in sports, news and weather on this rainy ole Saturday morning! Now last night in the play-offs ...'

  Frantically, Michael fumbled for the walkie-talkie. He knocked it off his chest and into the water. 'Oh shit, no, oh shit, shit shit!'

  He fished it out, shook it as best he could, found the talk button and pressed it. 'Davey? Davey, is that you?'

  Another hiss and crackle. 'Hey, dude! You the dude with the friends in the wreck on Tuesday, right?'

  'Yes.'

  'Hey, good to talk to you again!'

  'Davey, I really need you to do something for me. Then you could make a big announcement on your radio station.'

  'Depends what other news there is on the day,' Davey said, dismissively. 'OK.' Michael fought the urge to snap at him. 'I need you either

  I to get someone on the phone that I can speak with via your walkieJ Ulkie, or for you and your dad to come and rescue me.'

  'I guess that would depend on whether y'all are in an area we fcover, know what I'm saying?'

  'I do, Davey. I know exactly what you are saying.'

  Later, lying naked in bed with a dozen scented candles burning around them in the room, and Norah Jones singing on the stereo, Ashley lit a cigarette, then held it up to Mark's lips. He took a deep drag.

  'Gill's right,' Mark said. 'I don't think you should go to the church, and you definitely should not ahead with the reception.'

  Ashley shook her head vigorously. 'We absolutely should. Don't you see? I'll turn up there at the church...' She paused to take a drag, then blew the smoke out slowly, deliriously, towards the ceiling. 'Everyone will see me, the poor abandoned bride, and they'll all feel so sorry for me.'