by Peter James
‘OK,’ Nick Nicholl said, sitting back down at the workstation and putting his phone back in his pocket. ‘We have something of interest.’ He put his notepad on the surface in front of him.
Everyone looked at him with intensity.
‘Gatwick airport’s on security alert. ANPR cameras have been installed on the approach bridges either side of the M23. A Bentley Continental car, registered to Brian Bishop, was picked up by one at eleven forty-seven last night. He was on the south-bound carriageway, heading towards Brighton. There was a technical problem with the north-bound camera, so there is no record of him returning to London – if he did.’
ANPR was the automatic number plate recognition system increasingly used by the police and security services to scan vehicles entering a particular area.
Glenn Branson looked at Grace. ‘Seems like he failed your blink test, Roy. He told us a porky. He said he was tucked up in bed in London at that time.’
But Grace wasn’t upset about this. Suddenly his spirits lifted. If they could force a confession out of Brian Bishop, tonight perhaps, then with luck the investigation would be over almost before it had begun. And he could go straight to Munich – perhaps as early as tomorrow. Another option would be to leave Kim Murphy running the inquiry, but that wasn’t the way he operated. He liked to be fully hands on, in charge of everything, overseeing every detail. It was when you had someone working with you, at almost your level, that mistakes happened. Important things could easily fall between the cracks.
‘Let’s go and have a word with the FLOs,’ he said. ‘See if we can find out more about his car. See if we can jog Bishop’s memory for him.’
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30
At a quarter past seven, the sun was finally starting to quit the Sussex coast. The Time Billionaire sat at a table at a crowded outdoor caf�sipping his third Coke Zero and occasionally scraping out more remains of pecan ice cream from the glass in front of him, to help pass the time. Spending some of his time dollars, his time pounds, his time euros. Might as well spend it, you couldn’t take it with you.
He brought his right hand up to his mouth and sucked for some moments. That stinging pain was still there and, he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, the row of tiny red marks, surrounded by faint bruising the colour of a nicotine stain, seemed to be looking steadily more livid.
A steel band was playing a short distance away. ‘Island in the Sun’.
He’d been going to go to an island in the sun once. Everything had been all set and then the thing had happened. Life had pissed on him from a great height. Well, not life exactly, no, no, no.
Just one of its inhabitants.
The air tasted salty. It smelled of rope, rust, boat varnish and, every few minutes, a sudden faint but distinct reek of urine. Some time after the sun had gone, the moon would rise tonight. Men had pissed on that too.
The receipt for his bill, already paid, lay pinned under the ashtray, flapping like a dying butterfly in the light sea breeze. He was always prepared, always ready for his next move. Could never predict what that would be. Unlike the sun.
He wondered where that ochre disc of dumb, broiling gases was heading next and tried to calculate some of the world time zones in his head. Right now, thirteen and a half thousand miles away, it would be a crimson ball, slowly creeping up towards the horizon in Sydney. It would still be blisteringly bright, high in the afternoon sky in Rio de Janeiro. No matter where it was, it never had any sense of its power. Of the power it gave to people. Not like the way he could feel the power in himself.
The power of life and death.
Perspective. Everything was about perspective. One man’s darkness was another man’s daylight. How come so many people did not realize that?
Did that dumb girl, sitting on the beach just yards in front of him, staring across the bodies laid out on the beach, at the flat, shifting mass of ocean? Staring at the slack sails of dinghies and windsurfers? At the distant grey smudge of tankers and container ships sitting, motionless, high up on the horizon, like toys on a shelf? At late, stupid bathers splashing about in the filthy lavatory they imagined to be pure, clean seawater?
Did Sophie Harrington know it was the last time she would see any of this?
The last time she would smell tarred rope, boat paint or the urine of strangers?
The whole damn beach was a sewer of bare flesh. Bodies in skimpy clothing. White, red, brown, black. Flaunting themselves. Some of the women topless, bitch whores. He watched one waddling around, straggly ginger hair down to her shoulders, tits down to her stomach, stomach down to her pelvis, swigging a bottle of beer or lager – too far away to tell which – fat arse sticking out of a skein of electric blue nylon, thighs dimpled with cellulite. Wondered what she’d look like in his gas mask with her straggly ginger pubes jammed against his face. Wondered what it would smell like down there. Oysters?
Then he switched his attention back to the stupid girl who’d been sitting on the beach for the past two hours. She was standing up now, stepping over the pebbles, holding her shoes in her hands, wincing with every step she took. Why, he wondered, didn’t she just put her shoes on? Was she really that dim-witted?
He would ask her that question later, when he was alone in her bedroom with her, and she had the gas mask on her face, and her voice would come at him all mumbled and indistinct.
Not that he cared about the answer.
All he cared about was what he had written in the blank section for notes at the back of his blue Letts schoolboy’s diary, when he was twelve years old. That diary was one of the few possessions he still had from his childhood. It was in a small metal box where he kept the things that were of sentimental value to him. The box was in a lock-up garage, quite near here, which he rented by the month. He had learned as a small child the importance of finding a space in this world, however small, that is your own. Where you can keep your things. Sit and have your thoughts.
It was in a private space he had found, when he was twelve years old, that the words he wrote in his diary first came to him.
If you want to really hurt someone, don’t kill them, that only hurts for a short time. It’s much better to kill the thing they love. Because that will hurt them forever.
He repeated those words over and over like a mantra, as he followed Sophie Harrington, as ever keeping a safe distance. She stopped and put her shoes on, then made her way along the seafront promenade, past the shops in the red-brick-faced Arches on Brighton seafront, one a gallery of local artists, past a seafood restaurant, the steel band, an old Second World War mine that had been washed up and was now mounted on a plinth, and a shop that sold beach hats, buckets and spades and rotating windmills on sticks.
He followed her through the carefree, sunburnt masses, up the ramp towards busy Kings Road, where she turned left, heading west, past the Royal Albion hotel, the Old Ship, the Odeon Kingswest, the Thistle Hotel, the Grand, the Metropole.
He was getting more aroused by the minute.
The breeze tugged at the sides of his hood and for one anxious moment it nearly blew back. He snatched it down hard over his forehead, then tugged his mobile phone from his pocket. He had an important business call to make.
He waited for a police car, siren wailing, to go past before dialling, continuing to stride along, fifty yards behind her. He wondered whether she would walk the whole way to her flat, or take a bus, or a taxi. He really did not mind. He knew where she lived. He had his own key.
And he had all the time in the world.
Then, with a sudden stab of panic, he realized he had left the plastic carrier bag containing the gas mask back in the caf�/p>
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31
Linda Buckley had positioned herself intelligently in a leather armchair in the large, smart and comfortable foyer of the Hotel du Vin, Grace thought, as he entered the building with Glenn Branson. She was close enough to hear anyone asking for Brian Bishop at the reception desk and had a good view o
f people entering and leaving the hotel.
The family liaison officer reluctantly put down the book she was reading, The Plimsoll Sensation, a history of the Plimsoll Line by Nicolette Jones, which she had heard serialized on the radio, and stood up.
‘Hi, Linda,’ Grace said. ‘Good book?’
‘Fascinating!’ she replied. ‘Stephen, my husband, was in the Merchant Navy, so I know a bit about ships.’
‘Is our guest in his room?’
‘Yes. I spoke to him about half an hour ago, to see how he was doing. Maggie’s gone off to make some phone calls. We’re giving him a break – it’s been fairly intensive this afternoon, particularly up at the mortuary, when he identified his wife.’
Grace looked around the busy area. All the stools at the stainless steel bar, on the far side of the room, were taken, as were all the sofas and chairs. A group of men in dinner jackets and women in evening dresses were clustered together, as if about to head off to a ball. He didn’t spot any journalists.
‘No press yet?’
‘So far, so good,’ she said. ‘I checked him in under a false name – Mr Steven Brown.’
Grace smiled. ‘Good girl!’
‘It might buy us a day,’ she said. ‘But they’ll be here soon.’
And with luck, Brian Bishop will be in a custody cell by then, he thought to himself.
Grace headed towards the stairs, then stopped. Branson was staring dreamily at four very attractive girls in their late teens, who were drinking cocktails on a huge leather sofa. He waved a hand to distract his colleague. Glenn walked over to him pensively.
‘I was just thinking . . .’ the Detective Sergeant said.
‘About long legs?’
‘Long legs?’
From his baffled look, Roy realized his friend hadn’t been looking at the girls at all; he hadn’t even clocked them. He had just been staring into space. He put an avuncular arm around Branson’s waist. Lean, and rock hard from weight training, it felt like a sturdy young tree inside his jacket, not a human midriff. ‘You’re going to be OK, mate,’ he said.
‘I feel like I’m in someone else’s life – know what I mean, man?’ Branson said, as they climbed the first flight of stairs. ‘Like I’ve stepped out of my life and into someone else’s by mistake.’
Bishop’s room was on the second floor. Grace rapped on the door. There was no answer. He rapped again, louder. Then, leaving Branson waiting in the corridor, he went downstairs and came up with the duty manager, a smartly suited man in his early thirties, who opened the room with a pass key.
It was empty. Stifling hot and empty. Closely followed by Branson, Grace strode across and opened the bathroom door. It looked pristine, untouched, apart from the fact that the lavatory seat had been raised.
‘This is the right room?’ Grace asked.
‘Mr Steven Brown’s room, absolutely, sir,’ the duty manager said.
The only clues that anyone had been in here during the past few hours were a deep indent in the purple bedcover, close to the foot of the bed, and a silver tray containing a stone-cold cup of tea, a teapot, a jug of milk and two biscuits in an unopened pack, in the centre of the bed.
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32
As she walked along the teeming, wide, promenade pavement of Kings Road, Sophie was trying to remember what she had in the fridge or the freezer to make some supper. Or what tins were in her store-cupboard. Not that she had much appetite, but she knew she must eat something. A cyclist pedalled past on the track in his crash helmet and Lycra. Two youths clattered by on skateboards.
In a novel some while ago she had read a phrase that had stuck in her mind: Bad things happen on beautiful days.
9/11 had happened on a beautiful day. It was one of the things that had most struck her about all the images, that the impact of those planes striking the towers might not have had quite the strength of emotional resonance if the sky had been grey and drizzly. You kind of expected shit to happen on grey days.
Today had been a double-shit or maybe even a triple-shit day. First the news of Brian’s wife’s death, then his coldness to her when she had phoned to try to comfort him. And now the realization that all her weekend plans were down the khazi.
She stopped, walked through a gap in the row of deckchairs and rested her elbows on the turquoise metal railings overlooking the beach. Directly below her, several children were lobbing brightly coloured balls in a gravel play area that had once been a boating pond. Parents chatted a few yards away, keeping a watchful eye. She wanted to be a parent too, wanted to see her own children playing with their friends. She had always reckoned she would be a good mother. Her own parents had been good to her.
They were nice, decent people, still in love with each other after thirty years of marriage; they still held hands whenever they walked together. They had a small business, importing handmade lace doilies, napkins and tablecloths from France and from China, and selling them at craft fairs. They ran the business from their little cottage on their smallholding near Orford in Suffolk, using a barn as a warehouse. She could take the train up to see them tomorrow. They were always happy for her to come home for a weekend, but she wasn’t sure she wanted that kind of weekend.
She wasn’t sure at all what she wanted at this moment. Surprisingly, she just knew, for the first time since she had met him, that it wasn’t Brian. He was right not to see her today. And there was no way she could sit in the wings like a vulture, waiting for the funeral and a decent period of mourning. Yes, she liked him. Really liked him, actually. In fact, adored him. He excited her – in part, OK, it was the flattery of having this older, immensely attractive and successful man doting on her – but he was also an incredible lover, if a little bit kinky. Absolutely the best ever in her, admittedly limited, experience.
One thing she could just not get her head around was his denial that they had slept together last night. Was he worried that his phone was bugged? Was he in denial because of his grief? She guessed she was learning, as she grew older, that men were very strange creatures sometimes. Maybe always.
Sophie looked up, beyond the play area at the beach. It seemed filled with couples. Lovers kissing, nuzzling, walking arm in arm, hand in hand, laughing, relaxing, looking forward to the weekend. There were still plenty of boats out. Twenty past seven; it would be light for a while yet. Light evenings for a few more weeks, before the steady drawing in of the winter darkness.
Suddenly, for no reason, she shivered.
She walked on, past the remains of the West Pier. For so long she had thought it a hideous eyesore, but now she was starting to quite like it. It no longer looked like a building that had collapsed. Instead, to her the fire-blackened skeleton resembled the ribcage of a monster that had risen from the deep. One day people would gasp in shock as the whole of the sea in front of Brighton filled with these creatures, she thought for a moment.
Weird, the notions that sometimes came into her head. Maybe it was from reading too many horror scripts. Maybe it was her conscience punishing her for the bad thing she was doing. Sleeping with a married man. Yes, absolutely, totally and utterly, it was wrong.
When she’d confided to her best friend, Holly’s first reaction had been one of excitement. Conspiratorial glee. The best secret in the world. But then, as always happened with Holly – a practical person who liked to think things through – all the negatives came out.
Somewhere, in between buying a ripe avocado, some organic tomatoes and a tub of ready-made Atlantic prawn cocktail, and reaching her front door, she had made her mind up, very definitely, that she would end her relationship with Brian Bishop.
She would just have to wait for a more tactful time. Meanwhile, she remembered the text she’d had this morning from Holly, telling her about a party tomorrow night. That would be the sensible thing. Go to the party and hang out with some people her own age.
Her flat was on the third floor of a rather tired Victorian terrace, just north of the busy shopping street
of Church Road. The lock on the front door had worked so loose in its rotting surround that anyone could have opened it with just a sharp push to shear the screws out of the wood. Her landlord, a friendly, diminutive Iranian, was forever promising to get it fixed, the same way he kept promising to have the drip in the loo cistern fixed, and never did.
She opened the door and was greeted by the smell of damp carpets, a faint aroma of Chinese takeaway and a strong whiff of dope. From the other side of the door leading into the ground-floor flat came a frenetic pounding, rhythmic, bass beat. The post lay spread out on the threadbare hall carpet, untouched from where it had fallen this morning. She knelt and checked it. The usual decimated rainforest-worth of pizza menus, summer sale offers, fliers for concerts, home insurance and a whole ton of other junk, with a few personal letters and bills interspersed.
Naturally tidy, Sophie scooped it up into two piles, one comprising rubbish mail, one the proper post, and put them both on the shelf. Then she eased herself past two bicycles, which were blocking most of the passageway, and up the balding treads of the staircases. On the first-floor landing, she heard the sound of Mrs Harsent’s television. Raucous studio laughter. Mrs Harsent was a sweet old lady of eighty-five who, fortunately for her, with the noisy students she had underneath, was deaf as a post.
Sophie loved her top-floor flat, which although small was light and airy, and had been nicely modernized by the landlord with beige fitted carpets, creamy white walls and smart cream linen curtains and blinds. She had decorated it with framed posters of some of the films from Blinding Light Productions and with large, moody black and white sketches of the faces of some of her favourite stars. There was one of Johnny Depp, one of George Clooney, one of Brad Pitt, and her favourite, Heath Ledger, which had pride of place on the wall facing her bed.