Not Dead Enough

by Peter James

  ‘Same characteristics, one significant difference: sociopaths can keep themselves under control, psychopaths can’t.’

  ‘So,’ Branson said. ‘Bishop is a successful businessman, ergo he must be a sociopath, ergo he killed his wife. Bingo! Case closed. Let’s go and arrest him?’

  Grace grinned. ‘Some drug dealers are tall, black, with shaven heads. You are tall, black, with a shaven head. Ergo you must be a drug dealer.’

  Branson frowned then nodded. ‘Of course. Get you anything you want.’

  Grace held out his hand. ‘Good. Let me have a couple of those little babies I gave you this morning – if you’ve got any left.’

  Branson handed him two paracetamols. Grace popped them from their foil wrapper and washed them down with a swig of mineral water from a bottle in the glove locker. Then he climbed out of the car and walked swiftly, purposefully, over to the small blue front door with its frosted glass panel and pressed the bell.

  Branson stood by his side, crowding him, and for a moment he wished the DS could just sod off for a few minutes and give him some privacy. After almost a week since seeing Cleo, he had a deep longing just to have a few private minutes with her. To know that she still felt the same about him as she had last week.

  Moments later she opened the door, and Grace did exactly what he always did each time he saw her. He went into a kind of internal meltdown of joy.

  In the new-speak devised by one of the political-correctness politburo that Grace detested, Cleo Morey’s official title had recently been changed to Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician. In the old-fashioned language that ordinary folk spoke and understood, she was the Chief Mortician.

  Not that anyone who didn’t know her, who saw her walking down a street, would have guessed that in a gazillion years.

  Five feet ten inches tall, in her late twenties, with long blonde hair, and brimming with confidence, she was, by any definition – and it was probably the wrong one for this particular place she worked in – drop-dead gorgeous. Standing in the tiny lobby of the mortuary, her hair scraped up, draped in a green surgical gown, with a heavy-duty apron over the top and white wellington boots, she looked more like some stunning actress playing a role than the real thing.

  Despite the fact that the inquisitive, suspicious Glenn Branson was standing right beside him, Grace couldn’t help himself. Their eyes locked, for more than just a fleeting moment. Those stunning, amazing, wide, round, sky-blue eyes stared straight into his soul, found his heart and cradled it.

  He wished Glenn Branson would vaporize. Instead the bastard continued standing beside him, looking at each of them in turn, grinning like an imbecile.

  ‘Hi!’ Grace said, a little tamely.

  ‘Detective Superintendent, Detective Sergeant Branson, how very nice to see you both!’

  Grace desperately wanted to put his arms around her and kiss her. Instead, restraining himself, clicking back into professional mode, he just smiled back. Then, barely even noticing the sickly sweet reek of Trigene disinfectant that permeated the place, he followed her into the familiar small office that doubled as the reception room. It was an utterly impersonal room, yet he liked it because it was her space.

  There was a fan humming on the floor, pink Artexed walls, a pink carpet, an L-shaped row of visitor chairs and a small metal desk on which sat three telephones, a stack of small brown envelopes printed with the words Personal Effects and a large green and red ledger bearing the legend Mortuary Register in gold block lettering.

  A light box was fixed to one wall, as well as a row of framed Public Health and Hygiene certificates, and a larger one from the British Institute of Embalmers, with Cleo Morey’s name inscribed beneath. On another wall was a CCTV, which showed, in a continuous jerky sequence, views of the front, the back, then each side of the building, followed by a close-up on the entrance.

  ‘Cup of tea, gentlemen, or do you want to go straight in?’

  ‘Is Nadiuska ready to start?’

  Cleo’s clear, bright eyes engaged with his for just a fraction longer than was necessary for the question. Smiling eyes. Incredibly warm eyes. ‘She’s just nipped out for a sandwich. Be starting in about ten minutes.’

  Grace felt a dull ache in his stomach, remembering they hadn’t had anything to eat all morning. It was twenty past two. ‘I’d love a cup of tea. Do you have any biscuits?’

  Pulling a tin out from under her desk, she prised off the lid. ‘Digestives. Kit-Kats. Marshmallows? Dark or plain chocolate Leibniz? Fig rolls?’ She offered the tin to him and Branson, who shook his head. ‘What kind of tea? English breakfast, Earl Grey, Darjeeling, China, camomile, peppermint, green leaf?’

  He grinned. ‘I always forget. It’s a proper little Starbucks you run here.’

  But it elicited no hint of a smile from Glenn Branson, who was sitting with his face buried in his hands, sunk back into depression suddenly. Cleo blew Grace a silent kiss. He took out a Kit-Kat and tore off the wrapper.

  Finally, to Grace’s relief, Branson said suddenly, ‘I’ll go and get suited.’

  He went out of the room and they were alone together. Cleo shut the door, threw her arms around Roy Grace and kissed him deeply. For a long time.

  When their lips parted, still holding him tightly, she asked, ‘So how are you?’

  ‘I missed you,’ he said.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How much?’

  He held out his hands, about two feet apart.

  Feigning indignation, she said, ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Did you miss me?’

  ‘I missed you, a lot. A lot, a lot.’

  ‘Good! How was the course?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Try me?’ He kissed her again.

  ‘Tell you over dinner tonight.’

  He loved that. Loved the way she took the initiative. Loved the impression she gave that she needed him.

  He had never felt that with a woman before. Ever. He’d been married to Sandy for so many years, and they had loved each other deeply, but he’d never felt that she needed him. Not like this.

  There was just one problem. He’d planned to create dinner at home tonight. Well, to buy stuff in from a deli, at any rate – he was useless at cooking. But Glenn Branson had put the kibosh on that. He could hardly have a romantic evening at home with Glenn moping around, blubbing his eyes out every ten seconds. But there was no way he could tell his friend to get lost for the night.

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ he said.

  ‘Bed. With a Chinese takeaway. Sound like a plan?’

  ‘A very good plan. But it will have to be at your place.’

  ‘So? You have a problem with that?’

  ‘No. Just a problem with my place. Tell you later.’

  She kissed him again. ‘Don’t go away.’ She went out of the room and came back moments later, holding a green gown, blue overshoes, a face mask and white latex gloves, which she handed to him. ‘These are all the rage.’

  ‘I thought we’d save the dressing up for later,’ he said.

  ‘No, we undress later – or maybe after a week you’ve forgotten?’ She kissed him again. ‘What’s up with your friend Glenn? Looks like a sick puppy.’

  ‘He is. Domestic situation.’

  ‘So go and cheer him up.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  Then his mobile phone rang. Irritated by the distraction, he answered it. ‘Roy Grace.’

  It was the family liaison officer, Linda Buckley. ‘Roy,’ she said, ‘I’m at the Hotel du Vin, where I checked Bishop into a room an hour ago. He’s disappeared.’

  �

  15

  Sophie’s mother was Italian. She had always taught her daughter that food was the best cure for shock. And at this moment, standing at the counter of the Italian deli, unaware of the man in the hoodie and dark glasses watching her from behind the opaque window of the Private Shop across the road, Sophie was clutchin
g her mobile phone to her ear, in deep shock.

  She was a creature of habit, but her habits changed with her mood. For several months, day after day, she had taken an Itsu box of sushi back to her office for lunch, but then she had read an article about people getting worms from raw fish. Since then she had been hooked on a mozzarella, tomato and Parma ham ciabatta from this deli. A lot less healthy than sushi, but yummy. She’d had one for lunch almost every day for the past month – maybe even longer. And today, more than ever, she needed the comfort of familiarity.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘My darling, what’s happened? Please tell me?’

  He was babbling, incoherent. ‘Golf . . . Dead . . . Won’t let me into the house . . . Police. Dead. Oh, Jesus Christ, dead.’

  Suddenly the short, bald Italian behind the counter was thrusting the steaming sandwich, wrapped in paper, towards her.

  She took it and, still holding her phone to her ear, stepped out into the street.

  ‘They think I did it. I mean . . . Oh, God. Oh, God.’

  ‘Darling, can I do something? Do you want me to come down?’

  There was a long silence. ‘They were asking me – grilling me,’ Bishop blurted out. ‘They think I did it. They think I killed her. They kept asking me where I was last night.’

  ‘Well, that’s easy,’ she said. ‘You were with me.’

  ‘No. Thank you, but that’s not smart. We don’t need to lie.’

  ‘Lie?’ she replied, startled.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I feel so confused.’

  ‘What do you mean, We don’t need to lie ? Darling?’

  A police car was roaring down the street, siren screeching. He said something, but his voice was drowned out. When the car had passed she said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t hear. What did you say?’

  ‘I told them the truth. I had dinner with Phil Taylor, my financial adviser, then I went to bed.’ There was a long silence, then she heard him sobbing.

  ‘Darling, I think you missed something out. What you did after dinner with your financial adviser guy?’

  ‘No,’ he said, sounding a little surprised.

  ‘Hello! I know you are in shock. But you came down to my flat. Just after midnight. You spent the night with me – and you shot off about five in the morning, because you had to get your golf kit from your house.’

  ‘You’re very sweet,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to have to start lying.’

  She froze in her tracks. A lorry rumbled past, followed by a taxi. ‘Lying? What do you mean? It’s the truth.’

  ‘Darling, I don’t need to invent an alibi. It’s better to tell the truth.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, suddenly feeling confused. ‘I’m not with you at all. It is the truth. You came over, we slept together, then you went off. Surely that’s the best thing, to tell the truth?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. It is.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ he echoed.

  ‘So you came to my flat some time after midnight, we made love – pretty wildly – and you left just after five.’

  ‘Except that I didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘I didn’t come to your flat.’

  She lifted the phone away from her ear for a moment, stared at it, then held it clamped to her ear again, wondering for a moment if she was going mad. Or if he was.

  ‘I – I don’t understand?’

  ‘I have to go,’ he said.

  �

  16

  A small card, with a seductive photograph of an attractive-looking Oriental girl, was printed with the words ‘Pre-op transsexual’ and a phone number. Next to it was another card depicting a big-haired woman in leather, brandishing a whip. A stench of urine rose from a damp patch on the floor that Bishop had avoided standing in. It was the first time he had been in a public phone booth in years and this one didn’t exactly make him feel nostalgic. And apart from the smell, it felt like a sauna.

  A chunk of the receiver had been smashed off, several of the glass panes were cracked and there was a chain with some fragments of paper attached, presumably belonging to the phone directory. A lorry had halted outside, its engine sounding like a thousand men hammering inside a tin shed. He looked at his watch. Two thirty-one p.m. It already felt like the longest day of his life.

  What the hell was he going to say to his children? To Max and Carly. Would they actually care that they had lost their stepmother? That she had been murdered? They had been so poisoned against him and Katie by his ex-wife that they would probably not feel that much. And how, logistically, was he going to break the news? Over the phone? By flying to France to tell Max and Canada to tell Carly? They were going to have to come back early – the funeral – oh, Jesus. Or would they? Did they need to? Would they want to? Suddenly he realized how little he knew them himself.

  Christ, there was so much to think about.

  What had happened? Oh, my God, what had happened?

  My darling Katie, what happened to you?

  Who did this to you? Who? Why?

  Why wouldn’t the damn police tell him anything? That up-his-own-backside tall black cop. And that Detective Inspector or Superintendent or whatever he was, Grace, staring at him as if he was the only suspect, as if he knew he had killed her.

  His head spinning, he stepped out into the searing sunlight of Prince Albert Street, opposite the town hall, totally confused by the conversation he had just had, and wondering what he was going to do next. He had read a book in which it talked about just how much a mobile phone could give away about where you were, who you called and, for anyone who needed to know, what you said. Which was why, when he slipped out of the kitchen entrance of the Hotel du Vin, he had switched off his mobile and made for a public phone kiosk.

  But the response he had got from Sophie was so utterly bizarre. Well, that’s crazy, you were with me . . . You came down to my flat, we slept together . . .

  Except they hadn’t. He had parted with Phil Taylor outside the restaurant and the doorman had hailed him a cab, which he had taken back to his flat in Notting Hill, then collapsed, tired, straight into bed, wanting a decent night’s sleep before his golf game. He hadn’t gone anywhere, he was certain.

  Was his memory playing tricks? Shock?

  Was that it?

  Then, like a massive, unseen wave, grief flooded up inside him and drew him down, into a void of darkness, as if there had been a sudden, instant, total eclipse of the sun and all the sounds of the city around him.

  �

  17

  The post-mortem room at the mortuary was like nowhere else on earth that Roy Grace could imagine. It was a crucible in which human beings were deconstructed, back almost, it seemed sometimes, to their base elements. No matter how clean it might be, the smell of death hung in the air, clung to your skin and your clothes, and repeated on you wherever you were for hours after you had left.

  Everything felt very grey in here, as if death leached away the colour from the surroundings, as well as from the cadavers themselves. The windows were an opaque grey, sealing the room off from prying eyes, the wall tiles were grey, as was the speckled tiled floor with the drain gully running all the way round. On occasions when he had been in here alone, with time to reflect, it even felt as if the light itself was an ethereal grey, tinged by the souls of the hundreds of victims of sudden or unexplained death who suffered the ultimate indignity here within these walls every year.

  The room was dominated by two steel post-mortem tables, one fixed to the floor and the other, on which Katie Bishop lay – her face already paler than when he had seen her earlier – on castors. There was a blue hydraulic hoist and a row of steel-fronted fridges with floor-to-ceiling doors. Along one wall were sinks and a coiled yellow hose. Along another was a wide work surface, a metal cutting board and a macabre ‘trophy’ cabinet, a display case filled with grisly items – mostly pacemakers and replacement hip joints – removed from bodies. Next to it was a wa
ll chart itemizing the name of each deceased, with columns for the weights of their brain, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys and spleen. All that was written on it so far was: Katherine Bishop. As if she was the lucky winner of a competition, Grace thought grimly.

  Like an operating theatre, the room contained nothing that served any decorative purpose, nothing superfluous or frivolous, nothing to relieve the grimness of the work that took place in it. But at least in an operating theatre, people were driven by hope. In this room there was no hope, just clinical curiosity. A job that had to be done. The soulless machinery of the law at work.

  The moment you died, you ceased to belong to your spouse, your partner, your parents, your siblings. You lost all your rights and became the custodial property of your local coroner, until he, or she, was satisfied that it was really you that was dead and that it was clear what had killed you. It didn’t matter that your loved one didn’t want your body eviscerated. It didn’t matter that your family might have to wait weeks, sometimes months before burying or cremating you. You were no longer you. You were a biology specimen. A mass of decomposing fluids, proteins, cells, fibres and tissues, any microscopic fragment of which might or might not have a story to tell about your death.

  Despite his revulsion, Grace was fascinated. He always had to watch their seemingly tireless professionalism, and he was in awe of the painstaking care which these Home Office pathologists took. It wasn’t just the cause of death that would be established for certain on this slab; there were countless other clues the body might yield, such as the approximate time of death, the stomach contents, whether there had been a fight, sexual assault, rape. And with luck, perhaps in a scratch or in semen, the current holy grail of clues, the murderer’s DNA. Often, today, the post-mortem was really the place where a crime got solved.

  Which was why Grace, as Senior Investigating Officer, had to be present, accompanied by another officer – Glenn Branson – in case for any reason he had to leave. Derek Gavin from the SOCO team was also there, recording every stage on camera, as well as the coroner’s officer, a grey-haired former policewoman in her mid-forties, so quiet and unobtrusive she almost blended into the background. Also present were Cleo Morey and her colleague Darren, the Assistant Anatomical Pathology Technician, a sharp, good-looking young man of twenty, with spiky black hair, who had started life appropriately enough, Grace thought, as a butcher’s apprentice.