by Peter James
‘When do I get my share?’ the caller said sullenly.
‘Good boy, now we’re talking the same language! In time, you will get it, after I’ve concluded all the sales.’
‘You said you’d pay me based on your valuation.’
‘Did I really?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s not my style at all. I’m afraid you’ll just have to be patient, dear boy.’
‘You bastard, that’s not our deal!’
A youth in bright red trousers was taking a photograph of the car. Eamonn Pollock beamed obligingly. ‘So nice to hear from you!’ he said, and ended the call. He selected the Dr Hook track again. He was looking forward to his lunch. A grilled lobster today and a glass – or two – of Chablis. Nothing like a good meal before a nice round of golf.
Life was so good!
He checked the time on his gold Vacheron Constantin Patrimony watch, which really did cost more pound notes than a horse had hairs – or would have done had he acquired it honestly and paid the market price of two hundred thousand pounds.
But honest was not a word in his vocabulary, any more than conscience was. He patted his large pot belly. Yes, he was definitely in a lobster mood today.
And very contented. And about to be very much richer than just a week ago.
He turned the volume of the song up again, and sang happily along to the words, beaming at the world around him. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me! I’ve got all this money, and I’m a pretty ugly guy!’
34
In the sparsely furnished basement consulting room in Schwabing, close to Munich’s Isar river, the woman, with her brown hair cropped short with a boyish fringe, lay prostrate on the psychiatrist’s couch. She was in her thirties, with a slender figure, dressed appropriately for the sweltering Munich summer day in cut-off jeans, a white tank-top and Havaiana flip-flops.
‘So?’ Dr Eberstark said, at the end of one of Sandy’s habitual lengthy silences. ‘Is there anything you would like to say?’
Sandy shrugged.
‘More non-verbal communications with me? Maybe you would find talking easier?’
‘I don’t understand it,’ she said.
‘You don’t understand what, exactly?’
‘Why I hate him so much.’
‘You left him, yes?’ It was old ground, but the psychiatrist repeated it, as he did periodically.
‘Yes.’
‘When you were pregnant with his child?’
She said nothing.
‘And you never told him you were pregnant?’
‘We’d been trying for a child for several years.’
‘So why did you not tell him?’
‘Because . . .’ She drifted into a long silence, and then she said, ‘Because if I had . . .’ then she lapsed back into silence.
‘Because if you had?’ he prompted, sensing they were getting somewhere.
‘I would have had to stay.’
‘Would that have been so bad?’
She nodded.
‘Why?’
‘You should marry a cop, then you’d understand.’
‘What is so bad about marrying a cop?’
She was silent for some moments, then she said, ‘I always came second. Job first, me second – when he had time.’
‘Don’t you think having a child might have changed that?’
‘Actually, no I don’t.’ Then she hesitated. ‘There’s another thing about the baby.’ She fell silent and her face reddened.
The psychiatrist looked at his watch. ‘Okay, we’ll have to leave it there. I’ll see you again on Monday? You can tell me that other thing then. Okay?’
‘Montag,’ she said.
35
A nurse led the way along the maze of corridors at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, which smelled strongly of floor polish, to the High Dependency Unit where Ricky Moore was being treated. Instantly the air was fresher and smelled better. She led Bella Moy through the ward towards the bed at the far end. Its occupant was awake, staring blankly ahead, dressed in pale-blue hospital pyjamas, with a sheet partially covering him. An old-fashioned television on a swing arm was switched on but silent. A solitary greetings card lay on a table in front of the pale-looking man, who rested on a bed of pillows, next to a glass of water, some tablets in a small container and an unopened copy of the Argus newspaper. There was a chair beside the bed.
With the assistance of another nurse, the curtains were drawn around the bed to give them privacy. Then Bella Moy sat down. ‘Ricky Moore?’ she asked, to confirm.
He gave her a suspicious frown, but said nothing.
Her first impression of the man was that he was the very double of the television actor Dennis Waterman, former co-star of Minder and now of New Tricks.
She held up her warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Moy of Sussex CID – are you up to answering a few questions?’
He winced, painfully forcing one word out at a time. ‘If – you – want – the – capital – of – Peru – it’s – Lima.’
She smiled. ‘Very witty.’
He winced again.
‘I understand you were assaulted last Friday night, Ricky? Okay if I call you that?’
He stared at her for some moments. Then he nodded.
‘Do you know the people who did it?’
He shook his head.
‘Are you sure about that?’
He fell silent.
‘So, Ricky, you’re in the antiques business, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You look in pain – does it hurt you to speak?’
He nodded.
‘I’ll be brief. Someone hurt you quite badly – is that right?’
He stared into space.
‘How badly, Ricky?’
He continued staring into space.
‘I don’t get it, Ricky,’ she said. ‘So why did they hurt you?’
Nothing.
‘The doctors say you’ve suffered very serious internal damage. You have a perforated bowel, and permanently damaged nerves. How do you feel about that?’
Again he was silent.
‘I’d be pretty upset if that had happened to me. Are you upset?’
Again he said nothing.
She looked at the greetings card. ‘That from your wife?’
‘Girlfriend.’
‘Does it worry you that you might not be able to make love to her again? And that you might be incontinent for the rest of your life.’
He gave her a sullen glare.
‘You’ve been the victim of a very brutal attack. I understand you have severe rectal burns. Is that right?’
‘I never – touched – the – old – lady,’ he said. His voice was low and pained.
‘Is that why this happened to you?’
He did not reply.
‘Would you like to tell me who hurt the old lady? And who hurt you?’
‘No one hurt me.’
‘I’m told something very hot was pushed up your anus. With your perforated bowel you’re lucky not to be dead from septicaemia. Was someone torturing you?’
He shook his head. ‘Nah, I was doing some electrical repairs. I just sat down on my soldering iron. Dunno how I did it.’
‘You were doing electrical repairs in the nude, were you?’
He closed his eyes.
‘Is there anything you would like to tell me?’
He remained silent.
After ten minutes a doctor and a nurse opened the curtain and told Bella that Moore needed to sleep now.
As she walked out of the hospital, Bella dialled Roy Grace’s number.
36
‘You know the worst thing?’ Glenn Branson said through his tears, cradling his second pint in the booth at the rear of the pub a short distance down the road from the Royal Sussex County Hospital.
‘Tell me,’ Roy Grace said, one arm around his mate’s shoulder, his glass of a single Glenfiddich on the rocks on the table in front of them. He
should not be drinking on duty, he knew, and he still had work to do tonight. But for the moment he was making an exception. He was deeply shaken by Glenn’s news.
‘It’s knowing Ari’ll be having a post-mortem in the morning.’ He stared, heavy-lidded at Roy Grace. ‘We both know what that means.’
All Grace could do was nod.
‘They’re going to cut her open. They’re going to saw off her skull cap, and lift out her brains. Then they’re going to slice open her chest and then . . .’
He broke down, sobbing uncontrollably.
‘Don’t go there, mate,’ Grace said.
‘But they will, won’t they?’ Branson said, helplessly. ‘We’re talking about the woman I loved. The mother of my kids. I can’t bear that, Roy.’
‘They have to know what happened,’ Grace said, and immediately regretted it.
‘I know what happened. She was cycling along the cycle lane on the seafront. Someone, not looking where they were going, stepped out in front of her. She came off the bike, broke her arm in three places and dislocated her shoulder.’
Grace frowned. ‘Was she wearing a helmet?’
‘Always wore one. Made the kids, too.’
‘But she must have had a head injury, surely, to have died?’
‘No. They took her to the hospital, where she had to have corrective surgery on her arm – it needed metal pins putting in – and they had to reset her shoulder. They put her under anaesthetic and she had an allergic reaction to it – called something like malignant hyperthermia. Apparently it happens; one in a hundred thousand or a million or some statistic.’
Grace was silent for a moment. Then he touched his friend’s arm, and squeezed gently. ‘I’ve heard of things like that happening – allergic reactions to anaesthetics – but I never – you know. God, poor you, poor kids.’
‘How am I going to explain to them that their mummy’s never coming home again?’
‘Maybe you need some advice from a child counsellor. Take a few days off – compassionate leave.’
He shrugged. ‘Thanks, but I’ll see.’
‘You’ll have a lot of stuff to sort out.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, pensively.
He looked so helpless, Grace thought. Even when Ari had kicked him out, Glenn had coped, but he was all at sea now, overwhelmed.
‘It really is unbelievable,’ Grace said. ‘Talk about shit happens. She comes off her bike, the kind of accident every cyclist has, then dies in hospital from the anaesthetic. I – I know you weren’t together, but I’m sorry.’
Branson shrugged. ‘Yeah. I wish – you know – me and her – I wish we could at least have stopped disliking each other – that we could have been – at least – ’ he choked. ‘Friends, yeah?’
Grace had no answer.
‘Stupid woman who walked onto the lane in front of her probably won’t even get a fine. And I get to bury my wife, and the mother of my kids.’
‘You need to be strong for your kids,’ Grace said, trying to find a positive for his friend out of the tragedy. Glenn’s relationship with his tricky, demanding wife had hit the rocks nearly a year ago. Privately, Grace had never liked her. The DS had moved out and had been lodging at his house ever since. Meantime, to Glenn Branson’s chagrin, Ari’s new man had moved into their marital home.
Branson gulped down some of his pint and nodded bleakly.
‘What’s happening with the children?’
‘Ari’s sister’s staying over.’
‘What about the boyfriend?’
‘He’s packed up and gone. Out of there. Shows his moral fibre, right?’
‘Already?’
‘Speedy Gonzales.’
Grace shook his head. ‘They’re going to need their father. Have you seen them yet?’
‘No.’
‘I think you should go round there right now. It’s your house, your home. You need to take charge, mate.’
‘She’s poisoned them against me.’
Grace shook his head. He was out of his depth in a situation like this, he knew. But all his instincts told him that Glenn had to take charge. ‘I’ll drive you there.’
‘My car’s in the hospital car park.’
‘You’re not driving anywhere in your state. I’m going to take you.’
Branson smiled bleakly at him. ‘What am I going to do, Roy?’
‘I’ll tell you exactly what you are going to do. Do you remember, a few years back, telling me why you had become a copper?’
‘What did I say?’
‘You told me that you were a night club bouncer. When your son Sammy was born, you looked down at him and realized that one day someone at school would ask him what his dad did for a living. You didn’t want him having to say his dad was a bouncer. You wanted him to be proud of you. That’s why you joined up. Doesn’t matter how much Ari poisoned them against you. I’m going to drive you home in a few minutes, and you are going to walk in through the front door and hug them. And one day, very soon, they’re going to forget all the shit they’ve been told and they will be very proud of you indeed. Because you’re a very special guy, and they are damned lucky to have you as a dad.’
Branson gave him a bleak smile. ‘You know, after my second, Remi, was born I looked down at both of them one day – and I had this weird thought. I thought, one day you are going to think I’m a better person than I really am. So I’d better try to improve myself, in order to cushion their eventual disappointment!’
Roy Grace raised his glass and clinked it against Glenn’s. ‘You’re going to be okay. Know that? I love you, mate. I really love you.’
Branson squeezed his friend’s arm and blinked away tears. Then he took a deep breath. ‘Let me tell you something. It’s a warning, okay?’
Grace frowned. ‘A warning?’
‘I don’t want the same thing to happen to you that happened to me. You’ve been through enough shit in your life. You’ve got to realize that ever since Noah was born, your relationship with Cleo has changed for ever. You are no longer the most important thing in her life, and you never will be again. You’ll always take second place to your son, and to any other kids you might have. I’m just telling you that because I know you’re a decent, caring man, but you’re overloaded with work and it might take time to sink in – it did for me. Our kids didn’t bring Ari and me together, and I blame myself.’
Roy Grace shook his head. ‘You don’t have anything to blame yourself for. You’re a good man, mate.’ At that moment his phone rang. He answered, then looked at his watch. It was a quarter past eight. He had planned to take his work home and help Cleo, who was sounding stressed, by looking after Noah. But this was too important.
Reluctantly, he said to the caller, ‘Okay, I’ll meet you there at nine. Forty-five minutes.’
He ended the call and turned back to Glenn. ‘Drink up, you’re going home. Home. To your house and your kids!’
‘What – what do I say to them when I get there?’
Grace balled his fist and touched his friend’s cheek lightly with his knuckles. ‘You just say, “I’m your dad, and I’m home.”’
37
‘In your dreams,’ Amis Smallbone said, through his missing teeth. Seated in a booth in the busy pub, opposite a glass tropical fish tank that acted as a dividing wall, he cradled a whisky, feeling particularly ratty as he hadn’t had a smoke for over half an hour because it was pissing down with rain outside, waiting for this fuckwit who was late, and hurting all over from his beating. He was dressed in his regular summer rig of blue blazer, open-neck shirt with a paisley cravat, chinos and Cuban-heeled boots.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Gareth Dupont, with a pint of Diet Coke in front of him and a packet of cheese and onion crisps. He was feeling equally ratty because he was running very late for his date with Suki Yang. He sat there in a thin leather bomber jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans and flashy loafers. ‘And what the fuck happened to you?’
‘I walked into a doo
r.’
Dupont nodded, not expressing any interest in the details.
‘We made a deal,’ Smallbone said. ‘You don’t renege on a deal. And you don’t grass up people in this city.’
‘I don’t need to grass up anyone,’ Dupont said. ‘You weren’t straight with me. You didn’t tell me how much value was involved here – and you didn’t tell me I was going to be at the wrong end of a murder enquiry. I’m out on licence like you. You asked me to find a home for some paintings. You never told me I was going to be the driver for some psychos and ten million quid’s worth of gear.’
‘And you really think you can grass us all up and collect the reward? You’re fucking dreaming.’
Dupont shook his head. ‘You’ve been inside a long time, Amis. But don’t tell me you’ve been out of touch.’ He dug his hand into the crisp packet. ‘You must know about Crimestoppers?’
‘What about them?’
‘They’re a charity. Any member of the public can call them with guaranteed anonymity. They will never, ever reveal the caller’s identity to the police or to anyone else. But if that anonymous call results in arrest and conviction, the caller will get the reward. Are we on the same song sheet now?’
‘You’re forgetting that I know everyone, Gareth,’ Smallbone said. He spoke kindly, like an uncle to an errant nephew.
‘You’re forgetting you’ve been inside for over twelve years, Amis. Most of your contacts are inside or have gone away. That’s why you contacted me.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘You offered me ten grand for this deal, right?’
‘That’s what you accepted, and very gladly,’ Smallbone replied.
‘Yep, well, now I want one hundred grand. Or you’re going back inside.’
‘In your dreams.’
38
Grace sat outside Glenn Branson’s house in Saltdean, in his new – new to him at any rate – black Alfa Romeo Giulietta, which he had bought from the second-hand lot of Frost’s at a bargain price. Hard summer rain drummed on the roof. Cleo had sounded exhausted on the phone, and he wanted to get back to her, and to see Noah.