Dead Simple

'Hello?' Michael said. 'Are you still there?'

'Ma friend, I ain't going nowhere.'

'Who are you?'

'Maybe I'm the Man With No Name.'

'Listen, Davey, this joke's gone on too long, OK? Too fucking long. Please get me out of here.'

'You gotta be impressed with two hundred rabbits, right?'

Michael stared at the walkie-talkie. Had everyone gone totally insane? Was this the lunatic who had just taken out the breathing tube? Michael tried desperately to think clearly.

'Listen,' he said. 'I've been put here as a joke by some friends. Can you get me out of here, please?'

'You in some kind of bad shit?' the American voice said.

Still unsure whether this was some kind of game, Michael said, 'Bad shit, you got it.'

'What do you think about two hundred rabbits?'

'What do you want me to think about two hundred rabbits?'

'Well dude, what I want you to think is that any dude wastes two hundred rabbits, he's gotta be an OK kind of a dude, know what I'm saying?'

'Totally,' Michael said. 'I totally agree with you.'

'OK, we're on the same page, that's cool.'

'Sure is. Cool'

'Don't get much cooler, right, dude?'

'You got it,' Michael said, trying to humour him. 'So maybe you could lift the lid off for me and we could have a discussion about this face to face?'

'I'm kinda tired now. Think I'm going to hunker down, get me some shut-eye, know what I'm saying?'

Panicking, Michael said, 'Hey, no, don't do that, let's keep talking. Tell me more about the rabbits, Davey.'

'Told ya, I'm the Man With No Name.'

'OK, Man With No Name, you don't happen to have a couple of Panadols, because I've one mother of a headache?'

'Panadols?'

'Yes.'

There was silence. Just the crackle of static.

'Hello?' Michael said. 'You still there?'

There was a chuckle. 'Panadol?'

'Come on, please get me out of here.'

After another long silence the voice said, 'Guess that depends where here is.'

'I'm in the goddamn coffin.'

'You're shittin' me.'

'No shit.'

Another chuckle. 'No shit, Sherlock, right?'

'Right! No shit, Sherlock.'

'I have to go now, it's late. Shuteye!'

'Hey, please wait - please--'

The walkie-talkie went silent.

In the fading beam of the flashlight Michael saw that the water had risen considerably just in the past hour. He tested the depth again with his hand. An hour ago it had reached the knuckle of his index finger.

Now it covered his hand completely.

25

Roy Grace, in a white short-sleeve shirt and sombre tie, his collar loose, stared at the text message on his phone, and frowned:

Can't stop thinking about you! Claudine xx

Claudine?

Sitting in his office shortly after 9 a.m., in front of his computer screen, which was pinging with new emails every few moments, feeling dog tired and with a blinding headache, he was cold. It was tipping down with rain outside and there was an icy draught in the room. For some moments he watched it running down his window, staring at the bleak view of the alley wall beyond, then he unscrewed the cap of a bottle of mineral water he'd bought at a petrol station on his way in, rummaged in a drawer of his desk and took out a packet of Panadol. He popped two capsules from the foil, swallowed them, then checked the time the message had been sent: 2.14 a.m.

Claudine.

Oh God. Now it registered.

His cop-hating, vegan blind date from U-Date of Tuesday night. She'd been horrible, the evening had been a disaster, and now she was texting him. Terrific.

He held his mobile phone in his hand, toying with whether to reply or just delete it, when his door opened and Branson walked in, dressed in a crisp brown suit, a violent tie and two-tone brown and cream correspondent's shoes, holding a capped Starbucks coffee in one hand and two paper bags in the other.

'Yo, man!' Branson greeted him, breezily, as usual, plonking himself in the chair opposite Grace and setting the coffee and paper bag down on his desk. 'Still own a shirt, I see.'

'Very funny,' Grace said.

'You win last night?'

'No, I did not sodding well win.' Grace was still smarting at his

loss. Four hundred and twenty quid. Money wasn't a problem for him, and he had no debts, but he hated losing, especially losing heavily.

'You look like shit.'

'Thanks.'

'No, I mean, really. You look like absolute shit.'

'Nice of you to come all this way to tell me.'

'You ever see The Cincinatti Kid?'

'I don't remember.'

'Steve McQueen. Got wiped out in a card game. Had a great ending - you'd remember, the kid in the alley challenging him to a bet, and he tosses his last coin at him.' Branson peeled the lid off, spilling coffee onto the desk, then removed an almond croissant, dropping a trail of icing sugar next to the coffee spill. He proffered it to Grace. 'Want a bite?'

Grace shook his head. 'You should eat something more healthy for breakfast/

'Oh really? So I get to look like you? What did you have? Organic wheat grass?'

Grace held up the Panadol packet. 'All the nourishment I need. What are you doing here in the sticks?'

'Got a meeting in ten minutes with the Chief. I've been drafted onto the Drugs Performance committee.'

'Lucky you.'

'It's all about profile, isn't that what you told me? Stay visible to your chiefs?'

'Good boy, you remembered. I'm impressed.'

'But actually that's not why I'm here to see you, old-timer.' Branson pulled a birthday card out of the second bag and laid it in front of Grace. 'Getting everyone to sign - for Mandy'

Mandy Walker was in the Child Protection Unit in Brighton. At one time Grace and Branson had both worked with her.

'She's leaving?' Grace said.

Branson nodded, then mimed a pregnant belly. 'Actually, thought you'd be in court today.'

'Adjourned to Monday.' Grace signed alongside a dozen other names on the card; the coffee and pastry suddenly smelled good. As

Branson took a bite of croissant he reached out a hand, took the other croissant from its bag and tore a mouthful off, savouring the instant hit of sweetness. He chewed slowly, peering at Branson's tie, which had such a sharp geometric pattern it almost made him dizzy, then handed back the card.

'Roy, that flat we went to on Wednesday, right?'

'Down The Drive?

'There's something I don't get. I need the wisdom of your years. You got a couple of minutes?'

'Do I have any choice?'

Ignoring him, Branson said, 'Here's the thing.' He took another bite of his croissant, icing sugar and crumbs falling onto his suit and tie. 'Five guys on a stag night, right? Now--'

There was a rap on the door, then it opened, and Eleanor Hodgson, Grace's management support assistant, brought in a sheaf of papers and files. A rather prim, efficient middle-aged woman, with neat black hair and a plain, slightly old-fashioned face, she always seemed nervous of just about everything. At the moment she looked nervous of Glenn Branson's tie.

'Good morning, Roy,' she said. 'Good morning, DS Branson.'

'How you doing?' Glenn replied.

She put the documents down on Roy's desk. 'I've got a couple of forensics reports back from Huntingdon. One's the one you've been waiting for.'

'Tommy Lyde?'

'Yes. I've also got the agenda and briefing notes for your budget meeting at eleven.'

'Thanks.' As she was leaving the room he quickly sifted through the pile and pulled the Huntington report to the top. Huntingdon, in Cambridge, was one of the forensic centres that Sussex Police used. Tommy Lytle was Grace's oldest 'cold case'. At the age of eleven, twenty-seven years ago, Tommy had set out from school on a February afternoon, to walk home. He'd never been seen again. The only lead at the time had been a Morris Minor van, seen by a witness who had had the presence of mind to write down the number. But no link to the owner, a weirdo loner with a history of sex offences on minors, had ever been established. And then, two months ago, by complete coincidence, the van had showed up on Grace's radar, when a classic car enthusiast who now owned it got stopped for drunken driving.

The advances in forensics from twenty-seven years back were beyond quantum. With modern DNA testing, police forensic scientists boasted, not without substance, that if a human being had ever been in a room, no matter how long ago, given time, they could find evidence. Just one skin cell that had escaped the vacuum cleaners, or a hair, or a clothing fibre. Maybe something one hundred times smaller than a pinhead. There would be a trace.

And now they had the van. And the original suspect was still alive. And forensics had been through that van with microscopes!

Despite his fondness for Branson, suddenly Grace could not wait for him to leave, so he could read the report. If he solved this, it would be the oldest cold case ever solved in the country.

Popping the remains of the croissant in his mouth and talking while he chewed, Branson said, 'Five guys go on a stag night, right? The groom is a real joker - he's pulled a stunt on each of the guys in the past - handcuffed one poor sod to a seat on the night train to Edinburgh when he was meant to be getting married in Brighton the next morning.'

'Nice guy,' Grace said.

'Yes, just the kind of fun bloke you want for your best friend. So. Let's look at what we have: Five of them start out. Somewhere along the line they lose the groom, Michael Harrison. Then they are in an RTA, three of them dead at the scene, the fourth in a coma and he died last night. Michael has vanished, no one has heard a word. It is now Friday morning and he's due to be married in a little over twenty-four hours.'

Branson sipped some coffee, stood up for a moment and walked around the office. He stopped and stared for a moment at the SASCO flip chart, on which a draft rota for something had been written in blue ink. He flipped it over, then picked up a pen and drew on the board.

'We got Michael Harrison.' He wrote his name and drew a circle around it. 'We got the four dead mates.' He drew a second circle. 'Then we have the fiancee, Ashley Harper.' He drew a third circle around her. 'Then the business partner, Mark Warren.' He drew a fourth circle. 'And ...'

Grace looked at him quizzically.

'We have what we dug out of his computer yesterday, yeah?'

'A bank account in the Cayman Islands.'

Still holding the pen, Branson sat down in front of Grace again.

Grace continued. 'The business partner wasn't at the stag do, you said.'

Branson never failed to be impressed by Grace's memory for detail. He always seemed to retain everything. 'Correct.'

'Because he was stuck out of town on a delayed flight.'

'That's the story so far.'

'So what does he say? Where does he think Michael Harrison went? Did he fuck off to the Cayman Islands?'

'Roy, you have seen his bird. And we agreed no bloke in his right mind would ditch her and run away- she is drop-dead gorgeous, and smart with it. And ...' Branson pursed his lips.

'And what?'

'She lies. I did your NLP stuff on her, the eye trick. I asked her if she knew about the Cayman Islands account and she said she didn't. She was lying.'

'She was probably just being protective. Covering her boss - and fiance's arse.' Grace was distracted for an instant by the ping of another incoming email. Then he thought hard. 'What is your take so far?'

'The following possible scenarios: Could be his mates have been paying him back and they've tied him up somewhere. Or he might have had an accident. Or he's got cold feet and done a runner. Or the Cayman Islands features in this somewhere.'

Grace clicked open one of the emails that was flagged as urgent and was from his boss, Alison Vosper. She asked if he was free for a brief meeting at 12.30. He typed back that he was, while he talked to Branson. 'The guy's business partner, Mark Warren, he'd know if they had been planning a prank, like tying him to a tree, or something.' 'Ms Harper says he knows they were planning something, but doesn't know what they decided on.'

'Have you checked out the pubs they visited?'

'Doing that today.'

'CCTV footage?'

'Starting on that, too.'

'Have you checked out the van?'

From the look of sudden panic on Branson's face, Grace saw he hadn't. 'Why the hell not? Isn't that the first place to look?'

'Yeah, you're right. I haven't got fully into gear on this yet.'

'Have you done an all-ports?'

'Yeah, his picture's being circulated this morning. We've put out a missing persons alert.'

Grace felt as if a dark cloud had slipped overhead. Missing persons. Every time he heard the phrase it affected him, brought it all right to the front of his mind again. He thought of this woman, Ashley, Branson had described. The day before her wedding and her man gone missing. How must she feel?

'Glenn, you said this guy is a joker - any chance this a prank he's pulling and he's about to turn up, with a big grin on his face?'

'With four of his best mates dead? He'd have to be pretty sick.' Branson looked at his watch. 'What you doing for lunch?'

'Unless I get a call from Julia Roberts, I may be free - oh - subject to No. 27 not detaining me for more than half a hour.'

'How is the delightful Alison Vosper?'

Grace gave him a bleak stare and raised his eyebrows. 'More sour than sweet.'

'Ever thought of shagging her?'

'Yes, for about one nano-second - or perhaps even a femtosecond - isn't that the smallest unit of time that exists?'

'Could be a good career move.'

'I can think of a better one.'

'Like?'

'Like not trying to shag the Assistant Chief Constable.'

'Did you ever see Susan Sarandon in Moonlight MileV

'I don't remember it.'

'She reminds me of Susan Sarandon in that movie. I liked that movie, it was good. Yeah. Want to take a ride out to the car pound

with me, lunchtime - talk some more on the way? I'll buy you a pint and slap-up sandwich.'

'Lunch at the car pound? Wow, proves what I thought the moment I saw that tie. You really do have style.'

26

The water was still rising, Michael calculated, at one inch every three hours. It was now just below his ears. He was shivering from cold, getting feverish.

He had worked frantically through the night, sawing with the glass, and he was now on the last fragment of the whisky bottle and his arms ached with exhaustion. He had made a deep groove in the lid, but had still not yet broken through to the outside of it.

He was pacing himself now, two hours on, half an hour off, imagining he was sailing. But he was losing. The water was rising faster than the hole was widening. His head would be underwater before the hole was wide enough to get through.

Every fifteen minutes he pressed the talk button on the walkietalkie. Each time all he got was static back.

It was now 11.03 a.m. Friday.

He ground away, powdered glass and wet soil pouring steadily down, the last fragment of glass shrinking with every minute he worked, thinking, all the time thinking. When the glass was finished he still had the belt buckle. And when that was finished what other instruments did he have to grind away at the wood with? The lens of the torch? The batteries?

A sharp hiss as the walkie-talkie came to life, then a phoney American accent again. 'Hi, buddy, how ya doin'?' This time he recognized it.

Michael pressed the talk button. 'Davey?' he said. 'Is that you?'

'Just watching the news on TV,' Davey informed him. 'They're showing an auto wreck I went to with my dad on Tuesday! Boy that was some accident! All of 'em dead - and there's one guy missing!'

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. Oblivious 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.

'OK,' he said. 'Sure.'

Branson ate his salad, and left the rest of his fish untouched, while Grace tucked into his steak and kidney pudding with relish. 'I read a while ago,' he told Branson, 'that the French drink more red wine than the English but live longer. The Japanese eat more fish than the English, but drink less wine and live longer. The Germans eat more red meat than the English, and drink more beer, and they live longer, too. You know the moral of this story?'

'No.'

'It's not what you eat or drink - it's speaking English that kills you.'

Branson grinned. 'I don't know why I like you. You always manage to make me feel guilty about something.'

'So let's go find Michael Harrison. Then you can enjoy your weekend.'

Branson pushed his fish to the side of his plate and drained his Diet Coke.

Tilled with Aspartame, that stuff,' Grace said, looking disapprovingly at his glass. I read a theory on the web that it can give you Lupus.'

'What's Lupus?'

'It's far worse than mercury'

'Thanks, Big Boy'

'Now you're just jealous.'

As they entered the tired-looking, six-storey building that housed Brighton police station from the parking lot at the rear, Grace felt a pang of nostalgia. This building had a reputation as being the busiest police station in Britain. The place hummed and buzzed and he had loved his time - almost fifteen years - working here. It was the buzz that he missed most about his recent posting to the relatively quiet backwater of the CID headquarters building on the outskirts.

As they climbed up the cement stairs, blue walls on either side of them, the familiar noticeboards with events and procedures pinned to them, he could smell that he was still in a busy police station. It wasn't the smell of hospitals, or schools, or a civil service building, it was the smell of energy.

They went on up past the third floor, where his old office had been, and then along a corridor on the fourth floor, past a large sign dominating an entire noticeboard, with the wording 'OVERALL CRIME DETECTION RATE. APRIL 2004. 27.8%'. Then he followed Branson into the long, narrow office his colleague was setting up as

the incident room for Michael Harrison. Six desks, each with a computer terminal. Two of them were occupied, both by detectives he knew and liked - DC Nick Nicholl and DS Bella Moy. There was a SASCO flip chart on an easel and a blank whiteboard on the wall, next to a large-scale map of Sussex, on which was a pattern of coloured pins.

'Coffee?' Branson offered.

'I'm fine for the moment.'

They stopped at Bella's desk, which was covered in neat wodges of paper, among which stood an open box of Maltesers. Pointing at the papers, she said, 'I have Michael Harrison's Vodafone log from Tuesday morning up until nine o'clock this morning. I also thought it would be a good idea to get the ones of the other four with him.'

'Good thinking,' Branson said, impressed with her initiative.

She pointed at her computer screen, on which there was a map: 'I've plotted here all the masts of the mobile networks the five of them used, Orange, Vodaphone and T-Mobile. Orange and TMobile operate on a higher frequency than Vodafone - which Michael Harrison is on. The last signal from his mobile came from the base station at the Pippingford Park mast on the A22. But I've found out we cannot rely on the fact that this is the nearest, because if the network is busy it will hand off signals to the next available mast.'

She was going to go far, this young lady, Grace thought. Studying the map for a moment, he asked, 'What's the distance between the masts?'

'In cities it is about five hundred metres. But out in the country, it is several miles.'

From previous experience, Grace knew that the mobile phone companies used a network of radio masts that acted as beacons. Mobiles, whether on standby or talkmode, sent constant signals out to the nearest beacon. It was a simple task to plot the movements of any phone user from this information. But this was obviously a lot easier in cities than in the countryside.

Bella stood up and walked across to the map of Sussex on the wall. She pointed at a blue pin in the centre of Brighton, surrounded by green, purple, yellow and white pins. 'I've marked Michael

Harrison's phone with blue pins. The other four with him have different colours.'

Grace followed her finger as she talked. 'We can see all five pins remained together from seven in the evening until nine.' She pointed to three different locations. 'There is a pub in each of these places,' she said. 'But this is where it gets interesting.' She pointed to a location some miles north of Brighton. 'All five pins close together here. Then we only have four. Here.'

Branson said, 'Green, purple, yellow and white. No blue.'

'Exactly,' she said.

'What movement on the blue pin after that?'

'None,' she said, emphatically.

'So they parted company,' Grace said, 'at - about - eight forty five?'

'Unless he dropped his phone somewhere.'

'Of course.'

'So we're talking about a radius of five miles, about fifteen miles north of Brighton?' Glenn Branson said.

'Is his phone still giving off signals?' Grace said, distracted by Bella's combination of smart mind and good looks. He'd met her before but had never really noticed her before. She had a really pretty face, and unless she was wearing rocks inside her bra, she had seriously large breasts - something that had always turned him on. He switched his mind off her and back to business. Then he shot a glance at her hand to see if she was wearing any rings. One sapphire band, but not on the marriage finger. He filed it away.

'The last signal was at eight forty-five Tuesday night. Nothing since.'

'So what's your view, Bella?' Grace asked.

Bella thought for a moment, fixing him with alert blue eyes. But her expression bore nothing more than businesslike deference to a superior. 'I spoke to a technician at the phone company. He says his mobile is either switched off, and has been since Tuesday night, or it is in an area of no signal.'

Grace nodded. 'This Michael Harrison is an ambitious and busy businessman. He's due to get married tomorrow morning to a very beautiful woman, by all accounts. Twenty minutes before a fatal car

smash that killed four of his best friends, his phone went dead. During the past year he has been stealthily transferring money from his company to a Cayman Islands bank account - at least one million pounds that we know about. And his business partner, who should have been on that fatal stag night, for some reason was not there. Are my facts right so far?'

'Yes,' Glenn Branson said.

'So he could be dead. Or he could have pulled a smart vanishing act.'

'We need to check out the area Bella has ring-fenced. Go to all the pubs he might have visited. Talk to everyone who knows him.'

'And then?'

'Facts,' Glenn. 'Let's get all the facts first. If they don't lead us to him, then we can start to speculate.'

The phone on Bella's desk rang. She answered it, and almost instantly her expression conveyed that it was significant.

'You're certain?' she said. 'Since Tuesday? You can't be sure it was Tuesday? No one else could have taken it?' After a few moments, she said, 'No, I agree. Thank you, that could be very significant. May I take your number?'

Grace watched while she wrote down on a pad 'Sean Houlihan', followed by a number. 'Thank you, Mr Houlihan, thank you very much, we'll get back to you.'

She hung up and looked at Grace then Branson. 'That was Mr Houlihan, the owner of the undertakers where Robert Houlihan, his nephew, worked. They've just discovered that they are missing a coffin.'

30

'Missing a coffin?' Glenn Branson said.

'Not something people ordinarily steal, is it?' Bella Moy said.

Grace was silent for a moment, distracted by a bluebottle that buzzed noisily around the room for a moment, then batted against a window. Forensics was on the floor below. Bloodstained clothes and artefacts were a magnet for bluebottles. Grace hated them. Bluebottles - or blowflies - were the vultures of the insect world. 'This character, Robert Houlihan, borrowed the undertaker's van without permission. Seems possible he might have borrowed a coffin without permission too.' He looked quizzically at Branson then Bella, then at Nick Nicholl. 'Do we have one very sick prank on our hands?'

'Are you suggesting his mates might have put him in a coffin?' Glenn Branson said.

'Do you have a better theory?'

Branson smiled, edgily. 'Work on the facts. Right?'

Looking at Bella, subconsciously thinking how attractive she was, Grace said, 'How sure is this Houlihan fellow that his coffin has been taken and they haven't just misplaced it?'

'People misplace their front door keys -1 don't think people misplace coffins,' Branson said, a tad facetiously.

Bella interrupted, 'He's very sure. It was the most expensive coffin in his range, Indian teak, says it would last for hundreds of years - but this one had a flaw - the wood had warped or something - wasn't sealing tight at the bottom - he was having a ding-dong with the manufacturers in India about it.'

'I can't believe we have to import coffins from Indial Don't we have carpenters in England?' Branson said.

Grace was staring at the map. He traced a circle with his finger. 'This is a pretty big area.'

'How long could someone survive in a coffin?' Bella asked.

'If the lid was on properly it would depend on if they had air, water, food. Without air, not long. A few hours, maybe a day,' Grace replied.

'It's now three days,' Branson said.

Grace remembered reading about a victim who had been pulled out alive from the ruins of his home twelve days after an earthquake in Turkey. 'With air, at least a week, maybe longer,' he said. 'We'd have to assume if they have done some damned stupid prank on him they would have left him with air. If they didn't, then we're looking for a body'

He looked at the team. 'Presumably you've talked to Mark Warren, the business partner?'

'He's also his best man,' Nicholl said. 'Says he has no idea what happened. They were going on a stag-night pub crawl and he was stuck out of town and missed it.'

Grace frowned, then glanced at his watch, acutely aware of time slipping away. 'There's one thing going on a stag-night pub crawl, there's another thing taking a coffin with you. You don't decide to take a coffin with you on the spur of the moment - do you?' He stared pointedly at each of them in turn.

All three shook their heads.

'Someone's talked to all the girlfriends, wives?'

'I did,' Bella said. 'It's hard because they're in shock, but one of them was very angry - Zoe . . .' She picked up her notepad and flipped over some pages. 'Zoe Walker - widow of Josh Walker. She said that Michael was always playing stupid pranks, and she was certain they had been planning revenge.'

'And the best man didn't know anything about it? I don't buy that,' Grace said.

'I'm pretty convinced he didn't know anything. Why would he have any reason to lie?' Nicholl said.

Grace was worried by the young detective's naivety. But he always believed in giving juniors opportunities to show their abilities. He let it ride for the moment, but logged it firmly in his mind to come back to later today.

'This is one hell of an area to search,' Branson said. 'It's heavily wooded; it could take a hundred people days to comb this.'

'We have to try to narrow it down,' Grace responded. He picked up a marker pen from Bella's desk, and drew a blue circle on the map, then turned to DC Nicholl. 'Nick, we need a list of every pub in this circle. This is where we need to start.' He turned to Branson. 'Do you have photographs of the lads in the van?'

'Yes.'

'Good boy. Two sets?'

'I have a dozen sets.'

'We'll divide in two, DS Branson and I will take one half of the pubs, you two take the other. I'll see if we can get the helicopter to cover the area - although it's very wooded, they've a better chance of seeing something from the air.'

An hour later, Glenn Branson pulled his car up on the deserted forecourt of a pub called the King's Head, on the Ringmer Road, on the perimeter of the circle. They climbed out of the car and went up to the door. Above it was a sign saying, 'John and Margaret Hobbs, landlords'.

Inside, the saloon bar was deserted and so was the drab restaurant area off to the left. The place smelled of furniture polish and stale beer. A fruit machine flashed and winked away in a far corner, near a dartboard.

'Hello?' Branson called out. 'Hello?'

Grace leaned over the bar and saw an open trap door. He lifted a flap in the counter, went behind it, kneeled and shouted down into the cellar, which was illuminated by a weak bulb. 'Hello? Anyone there?'

A gruff voice came back. 'Be up in a moment.'

He heard a rumbling sound, then a grey beer barrel, with 'HARVEY'S' stamped on the side, gripped by a pair of massive, grimy hands, appeared, followed by the head of a burly, red-faced man, in a white shirt and jeans, sweating profusely. He had the bulk and the broken nose of an ex-boxer. 'Yes, gents?'

Branson showed him his warrant card. 'Detective Sergeant Branson and Detective Superintendent Grace of the Sussex Police. We're looking for the landlord. Mr Hobbs?'

'You've found him,' he wheezed, climbing out, then hauling

himself up on to his feet and staring at them warily. He stank of body odour.

'Wonder if you'd mind taking a look at these photographs and see if you recognize any of the faces. They might have come in here last Tuesday night.' Branson laid the photographs on the counter.

John Hobbs studied each of the photographs in turn. Then he shook his head. 'No, never saw them before.'

'Were you working here on Tuesday night?' Grace asked him.

'I'm here every sodding night,' he said. 'Seven days a week. Thanks to your bloody lot.'

'Our lot?' Grace said.

'Your Traffic Division. Not easy to make a living running a rural pub, when your chums in Traffic sneak around outside, breathalysing all my customers.'

Ignoring the comment, Grace said, 'Are you absolutely sure you don't recognize them?'

'I get ten people in here on a mid-week night, it's Fat City. If they'd been here, I'd have seen them. I don't recognize them. Any reason why I should?'

It was moments like this that made Roy Grace very angry at the Traffic Division. For most people, being stopped for speeding, or to take a breathalyser check, was the only contact they ever had with the police. As a result, instead of viewing the police as their friends and guardians of the peace, they regarded them as an enemy.

'Do you watch television? Read the local papers?' Grace asked.

'No,' he said. 'I'm too busy for that. Is that a crime?'

'Four of these boys are dead,' Glenn Branson said, riled by the man's attitude. 'They were killed in a traffic accident on Tuesday night.'

'And you walk in here with your big swinging dicks, looking for some poor sodding landlord to blame for plying them with drink?'

T didn't say that,' Grace replied. 'No, I'm not. I'm looking for this lad who was with them.' He pointed at Michael's photograph.

The landlord shook his head. 'Not in here,' he said.

Looking up at the walls, Branson asked, 'Do you have CCTVT

'That meant to be a joke? Like I have money to buy fancy

security gizmos? You know the CCTVI use?' He pointed at his own eyes. 'These. They come free when you're born. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a barrel to change.'

Neither of them bothered to reply.

31

Michael shivered. Something was crawling through his hair. It was progressing steadily, determinedly, towards his forehead. It felt like a spider.

In panic, dropping the belt buckle, he jerked his hands up, sweeping furiously at his hair, fingers raw and bloody from scraping away at the lid.

Then it was on his face, crossing his cheek, mouth, chin.

'Jesus, get off, you fuckwit!' He smacked at his face with both hands, then felt something small and sticky. It was dead, whatever it had been. He wiped what remains he could feel off the thick, itchy growth of his stubble.

He had always been fine with most creatures, but not spiders. When he was a kid, he'd read a story in the local newspaper about a greengrocer who got bitten by a tarantula that was concealed in a bunch of bananas and had nearly died.

The beam of the torch was very faint now, giving a dark amber glow to the interior of the coffin. He was having to hold his head up to stop the rising water washing over his cheeks and into his eyes and mouth. Something else had bitten him on the ankle a while back, some insect, and it was stinging.

He shook the torch. For a moment the bulb died altogether. Then a tiny strip of filament glowed for a few seconds.

He was freezing cold. Working away at the lid was the only thing stopping him from getting even colder. He still hadn't broken through. He had to, had to, before the water - he tried to shut the unthinkable from his mind, but he couldn't. The water kept rising, it covered his legs and part of his chest. With one hand he was having to cradle the walkie-talkie in the gap between his chest and the lid to prevent it from getting immersed.

Despair, like the water, was steadily enveloping him. Davey's words went round and round inside his mind.

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.

A Transit van in a smash at a time and place that fitted. Pete, Luke, Josh, Robbo - could they really all be dead? And that was the reason no one had come to find him? But Mark must have known what they were planning, he was his best man, for Christ's sake! Surely Mark was out there, leading a team looking for him? Unless, he thought bleakly, something had happened to him, too. Maybe he'd joined them at the next pub and been in the van with them?

It was ten past four, Friday afternoon. He tried to imagine what was happening right now. What was Ashley doing? His mother? Was everything still going forward for tomorrow as planned?

He raised his head, so his mouth was up a few precious inches closer to the lid, and shouted, as he did regularly, 'Help! Help me! Help!'

Nothing but numbing silence.

I have to get out.

There was a fizz, then a crackle that for a moment Michael thought was splintering wood, until he heard the familiar hiss of static. Then a disembodied Southern drawl: 'You mean that, what you said, 'bout me being on television?'

'Davey?'

'Hey pal, we just got back - that was a real wreck, boy! You didn't want to be in that automobile, I tell you. Took 'em two hours to cut the driver out, he was in pretty bad shape. Better shape than the woman in the other car, though, you know what I'm saying?'

'Yes I do,' Michael said, trying the tack of humouring him.

'Not sure about that. I'm saying she's dead. Y'all understand?'

'Dead? Yes, I understand that.'

'You can tell y'know, just by looking, who the dead ones are and who the ones gonna survive are. Not all the time. But wow, I'm tellin' you something!'

'Davey, that wreck you went to on Tuesday night, can you remember how many young men were in it?'

After some moments of silence, Davey said, 'Just counting the

ambulances. Bad accidents you get one ambulance for each person. There was one leaving when we arrived, one still there.'

'Davey, you don't by any chance know the names of the victims?'

Almost instantly, surprising Michael, Davey rattled them off to him. 'Josh Walker, Luke Gearing, Peter Waring, Robert Houlihan.'

'You have a good memory, Davey,' Michael said, trying to encourage him. 'Was there anyone else? Was someone called Mark Warren in that wreck, also?'

Davey laughed. 'Never forget a name. If Mark Warren had been in that wreck, I'd have known about it. Remember every name I ever heard, remember where I heard it, and the time. Ain't ever been a shitload of use.'

'Must have been good for history at school.'

'Mebbe,' he said noncommittally.

Michael fought the temptation to shout at him from sheer frustration. Instead, keeping his patience, he said, 'Do you remember where the accident happened?'

'A26. Two point four miles south of Crowborough.'

Michael felt a ray of hope brightening inside him. 'I don't think I'm very far from there. Can you drive, Davey?'

'You mean like an automobile?'

'Yup, that's exactly what I mean.'

'Guess that would depend on how you define drive.'

Michael closed his eyes for some moments. There had to be some way to connect properly with this character. How? 'Davey, I need help, really badly. Do you like games?'

'You mean like computer games? Yeah! Do you have a Play Station-2?'

'No not here, not actually with me.'

'We could connect online maybe?'

Water slopped into Michael's mouth. He spat it out, panicking. Christ it was rising quickly now. 'Davey, if I give you a phone number, could you dial it for me? I need you to tell someone where I am. Could you get someone on the line while you are talking to me?'

'Houston, we have a problem.'

'Tell me the problem?'

'The phone's in my dad's house, you see. He doesn't know I have this walkie-talkie -1 shouldn't have it. It's our secret.'

'It's OK, I can keep a secret.'

'My dad would be pretty mad at me.'

'Don't you think he'd get even madder if he knew you could have saved my life and you let me die? I think you might be the only person in the world who knows where I am.'

'It's OK, I won't tell anyone.'

More water lapped into Michael's mouth; filthy, muddy, brackish water. He spat it out, his arms, shoulders, neck muscles all aching from trying to keep his head clear of the rising level. 'Davey, I'm going to die if you don't help me. You could be a hero. Do you want to be a hero?'

'I'm going to have to go,' Davey said. 'I can see my dad outside he needs me.'

Michael lost it, and screamed at him. 'No! Davey, you are not fucking going anywhere. You have to help. YOU HAVE TO FUCKING HELP ME.'

There was another silence, a very long one this time, and Michael worried he'd pushed too far. 'Davey?' he said, more gently. 'Are you still there, Davey?'

'I'm still here.' Davey's voice had changed. His voice suddenly was meek, chastised. He sounded like a small, apologetic boy.

'Davey, I'm going to give you a phone number. Will you write this down and make the call for me? Will you tell them that they need to speak to me on your walkie-talkie - and that it is very, very urgent. Will you do that for me?'

'OK. Tell them it's very, very urgent.'

Michael gave him the number. Davey told him he would go and make the call then radio him back.

Five agonizingly long minutes later, Davey's voice came back on the walkie-talkie. T just got voicemail,' he said.

Michael clenched his hands in frustration. 'Did you leave a message?' 'No. You didn't tell me to do that.'

32

The landlady of the Friars, in Uckfield, was a tall, blowsy lady in her late forties, with spiky blonde hair, who looked like she'd been around the block a few times. She greeted Grace and Branson with a friendly smile and studied the photographs Grace laid on the counter carefully.

'Uh huh,' she said. 'They were in here, all five of them. Let me think... About eight o'clock on Tuesday.'

'You're sure?' Glenn Branson said.

She pointed at the photograph of Michael. 'He was looking a bit wrecked, but was very sweet.' She pointed at Josh's photograph. 'He was the one buying the drinks. He ordered a round of beers, I think, and some chasers. This chap' - again she pointed at Michael - 'told me he was getting married on Saturday. He said I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and if he'd met me sooner, he'd have been marrying me.'

She grinned at Branson, then gave Grace a distinctly flirtatious smile. She clearly knew how to play the police, he thought. No doubt she had the local law in her pocket. No problems over staying open beyond closing time here.

'Did you by any chance hear them talking about their plans?' Grace asked.

'No, love. They were all in a sunny mood. We weren't busy, they were all sitting in that corner.' She pointed across the empty lounge to an alcove table and chairs, above which hung several horse brasses. 'I didn't pay much attention, had one of my regulars talking about his marital problems. You know how it is.'

'Yep,' said Grace.

'So you don't know where they were going next?' Branson asked.

She shook her head. 'Seemed like they were on a bender. Downed their drinks and were off.'

'Do you have closed-circuit television here?'

She gave Grace another deeply flirtatious smile. 'No, love. Sorry.'

As they left the pub, and hurried across the forecourt to their car, ducking against the teeming late-afternoon rain, Grace heard the distant sound of a helicopter. He looked up but could see nothing, as Branson unlocked the car. He sat inside and slammed the door shut against the elements, then called up Bella and Nick.

'How are you guys doing?'

'Goose eggs/ Nicholl said. 'No joy. We've two pubs to go. You?'

'Three more,' Grace said.

Branson started the car. 'Bit of a tasty old slapper/ he said to Grace. 'Think you could be in there.'

'Thanks,' Grace said. 'After you.'

'I'm a happily married man. You ought to go with the flow a bit.'

Roy Grace looked down at his mobile. At the text messages from Claudine, the cop-hating vegan from Guildford. 'You're lucky,' he said. 'Seems to me that half the women who aren't married are insane.'

He fell silent for some moments, then he said, 'The accident happened just after nine. This might have been the last pub they went to before they put him in the coffin.'

'They could have fitted in one more.'

They went to the next three pubs, but no one remembered the boys. Nick and Bella had found one more publican who recognized them. They left at around 8.30. All apparently very drunk. That pub was about five miles away. Grace was despondent at the news. From the information they had received, they were no nearer to pinpointing where Michael Harrison might be than when they had started.

'We should go and talk to his business partner,' Grace said. 'If he's the best man he has to know something. Don't you think?'

'I think we should organize a search of the area.'

'Yes, but we need to narrow it down.'

Branson started the car. 'You said to me some while back that you know a geezer who does some kind of thing with a pendulum?'

Grace looked at him in surprise. 'Yes?'

'Don't remember his name. You said he can find things that are lost, just by swinging a pendulum over a map.'

'I thought you didn't believe in that? You're the one who always

tells me I'm an idiot for dabbling in that terrain. Now you are suggesting I go and see someone?'

'I'm getting desperate, Roy. I don't know what else to do.'

'We press on, that's what we do.'

'Maybe he's worth a try.'

Grace smiled. 'I thought you were the big sceptic'

'I am. But we have a guy meant to be walking down the aisle in church tomorrow at two - and we have - ' he checked his watch ' - just twenty-two hours to get him there. And about fifty square miles of forest to search, with about four hours of daylight left. What say you?'

Privately, Grace believed that Harry Frame was worth a try. But after the fiasco in court on Wednesday, he wasn't sure it was worth risking his career over it, if Alison Vosper were to find out. 'Let's exhaust all our other avenues, first, then we'll see, OK?'

'Worried what the boss might say?' Branson taunted.

'You get to my age, you start thinking about your pension.'

'I'll bear that in mind, in about thirty years' time.'

33

Ashley Harper's address was a tiny Victorian terraced house close to a railway line in an area that had once been a working-class area of Have, but now was an increasingly trendy - and expensive - enclave for singles and first-time buyers. The quality of the cars parked in the street and the smart front doors were the giveaway.

Grace and Branson climbed out of the car, walked past a Golf GTI and a convertible Renault, and rang the doorbell of number 119, which had a silver Audi TT parked outside.

After a few moments the door was opened by a very beautiful woman in her mid-twenties. She gave Branson a sad smile of recognition. 'Hello, Ashley,' Branson said. 'This is my colleague, Detective Superintendent Grace. Can we have a chat?'

'Of course, come in. Do you have any news?' She looked at Grace.

Grace was struck by the contrast of the interior of the house with the outside. They had entered an oasis of cool minimalism. White carpet, white furniture, grey metal Venetian blinds, a large framed Jack Vettriano print of four dudes in sharp suits on the wall, which Grace recognized, pin-pricks of coloured lights jigging on a wall mounted sound system. The hands of a faceless clock on a wall read 6.20 p.m.

She offered them drinks. Branson was given a mineral water in a smart glass tumbler and Grace, seated beside him on a long sofa, a black coffee in an elegant white mug.

'There were three confirmed sightings of your fiance on Tuesday night at pubs in the Ashdown Forest area,' Glenn Branson told her. 'Each of them also confirmed he was with four companions - the ones you know. But we have no information on what they were up to, other than getting drunk.'

'Michael isn't a drinker,' she said bleakly, holding a large glass of red wine in both hands.

'Tell me about Michael,' Grace asked, watching her intently.

'What sort of things?'

'Anything. How did you meet him?'

She smiled, and for an instant visibly relaxed. 'I came for a job interview to his firm. Michael and his partner.'

'Mark Warren?' quizzed Grace.

A fleeting hesitation, so small it was barely noticeable. But Grace had seen it. 'Yes.'

'Where did you work before? he asked.

'I was working for a real estate firm in Toronto, Canada. I only came back to England just before I got this job.'

'Back?'

'I'm from England originally - my roots are here.' She smiled.

'What firm in Toronto?'

'You know Toronto?' she asked, a little surprised.

'I did a week there with the RCMP about ten years ago - at their murder lab.'

'Right. It was a small firm - part of the Bay group.'

Grace nodded. 'So Michael Harrison and Mark Warren hired you?'

'Uh huh, that was last November.'

'And?'

'It was a great job - good pay -1 wanted to learn about the property business, and they seemed like really nice guys. I - um -1' - she blushed - 'I thought Michael was very attractive, but I was sure he was married or had a girlfriend.'

'Excuse me for being personal,' Grace said, 'but when did you and Michael become an item?'

After a brief pause she said, 'Very quickly - within a couple of months. But we had to keep it secret, because Michael was concerned about Mark finding out. He thought it would be difficult for Mark if he was - you know - having a thing with me.'

Grace nodded. 'So when did Mark find out?'

She reddened. 'He came back to the office one day when we weren't expecting him.'

Grace smiled. He felt for her, she had a vulnerability about her that he knew would make almost all men feel protective towards her.

He felt the same way himself, already, and he'd only known her for a few minutes. 'And then?'

'It was a little bit awkward for a while. I told Michael I thought I Should quit, but he was very persuasive.'

'And Mark?'

Grace noticed the minutest flinch. A barely visible tightening of her facial muscles. 'He was OK about it.'

'So it didn't affect your business relationship?'

'No.'

Watching her eyes closely, Grace asked, 'Did you know they have a business offshore, in the Cayman Islands?'

Her eyes shot to Branson then back to Grace. 'No - I - I don't know about it.'

'Did Michael ever talk to you about tax shelters for himself and Mr Warren?'

Anger flashed in her face, so harshly and so suddenly that Grace was startled. 'What is this? Are you policemen or are you from the Inland Revenue?'

'If you want to help us find your fiance, you have to help us get to know him. Tell us everything, even the stuff you think is totally irrelevant.'

'I just want you to find him. Alive. Please God.'

'Your fiance didn't talk about his stag night with you?' Grace questioned, thinking back to his own stag night, when he'd given Sandy a detailed itinerary and she'd rescued him, in the early hours of the following morning, when he'd been abandoned in a back street of Brighton, stark naked apart from a pair of socks, on top of a pillar box.

She shook her head. 'They were just going out for a few drinks, that's all he told me.'

'What are you going to do if he hasn't turned up by the time of your wedding tomorrow?' Branson asked.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. She went out of the room and returned holding an embroidered handkerchief, which she used to dab her eyes. Then she started sobbing. 'I don't know. I really don't know. Please find him. I love him so much, I can't bear this,'

After waiting for her to calm down, and watching her eyes again

intently, Grace asked, 'You were secretary to both of them. Didn't Mark Warren tell you what they had planned?'

'Just a boys' night out. I was having a girls' night out, you know, a hen party. That was all.'

'You know that Michael has a reputation as a practical joker?' Grace asked.

'Michael has a great sense of humour - that's one of the things I love about him.'

'You don't know anything about a coffin?'

She sat bolt upright, almost spilling her wine. 'A coffin? What do you mean?'

Gently, Branson explained. 'One of the boys, Robert Houlihan you knew him?'

'I met him a few times, yes. A bit of a loser.'

'Oh really?'

'That's what M - Michael said. He sort of hung on to their crowd but wasn't really part of it.'

'But part of it enough to be included in the stag night?' Branson persisted.

'Michael hates to hurt anyone. I think he felt Robbo had to be included. I suppose because he'd made the other guys ushers, but not Robbo.'

Grace drank some coffee. 'You didn't have any falling-out with Michael? Nothing to make you think he might have got cold feet about the wedding?'

'Christ,' she said. 'No. Absolutely not. I - he--'

'Where are you going on your honeymoon?' Grace asked.

'The Maldives. Michael's booked a fantastic place - he loves water - boats, scuba diving. It looks like paradise.'

'We have a helicopter out looking for him. We have drafted in one hundred special constables, and if he hasn't turned up by tonight we are going to start a full search of the area where he was last seen. But I don't want to tie up hundreds of valuable police man-hours only to find he's sunning himself in the Cayman Islands, courtesy of the British taxpayer. Do you understand?'

Ashley nodded. 'Loud and clear,' she said bitterly. 'This is about money, not about finding Michael at all.'

'No,' Grace said, softening his tone. 'This is not about money. I'm prepared to authorize whatever it costs to find Michael.'

'Then please start now.' Hunching her thin shoulders, she stared pitifully down at her glass of wine. 'I recognize you, from the Argus piece on you. And the Daily Mail yesterday. They were trying to ridicule you for going to a medium, right?'

'Yes.'

'I believe in all that. Don't you know somebody? You know - with your contacts? Aren't there mediums, psychics - who can locate missing people?'

Grace shot a glance at Branson, then looked at Ashley. 'There are, yes.'

'Couldn't you go to someone - or put me in touch with someone you can recommend?'

Grace thought carefully for a moment. 'Do you have anything belonging to Michael?' He was aware of Glenn Branson's eyes boring into him.

'Like what?'

'Anything at all. Some object. An item of clothing? Jewellery? Something he would have been in contact with?'

'I can find something. Just give me a couple of minutes.'

'No problem.'

34

'Are you out of your tree?' Branson said as they drove away from Ashley's house.

Holding the copper bracelet Ashley had given him in his hand, Grace replied, 'You suggested it.' There was a deep bass boom, boom, boom from the radio. Grace turned the volume down.

'Yeah, but I didn't mean for you to ask her.'

'You wanted us to nick something from his pad?'

'Borrow. Man, you live dangerously. 'What if she talks to the press?'

'You asked me to help you.'

Branson gave him a sideways look. 'So what do you make of her?'

'She knows more than she's telling us.'

'So she's trying to protect his arse?'

Grace turned the bracelet over in his hands. Three thin bands of copper welded together, each ending in two small roundels. 'What do you think?'

'There you go again - your usual, answering a question with a question.'

Grace said nothing for a while, thinking. In his mind he was recalling the scene inside Ashley Harper's house. Her anxiety, her answers to the questions. Nineteen years in the Police Force had taught him many lessons. Probably the most important one was that the truth is not necessarily what was immediately apparent. Ashley Harper knew more than she was saying, of that he was certain. The reading of her eyes told him that. Probably, he assessed, in her grief-stricken state she was concerned about whatever tax scam Michael Harrison might be involved with in the Cayman Islands getting out in the open. And yet he felt this was not the whole story.

Twenty minutes later they parked on a yellow line on the Kemp Town promenade, elevated above the beach and the English Channel, and climbed out of the car.

Rain was still pelting down, and, apart from the grey smudge of a tanker or freighter on the horizon, the sea was empty. A steady stream of cars and lorries sluiced past them. Over to the right, Grace could see the Palace Pier with its white domes, tacky lights and the helter-skelter rising like a pillar at the end.

Marine Parade, the wide boulevard that ran along a mile of handsome Regency facades with sea views, teemed with traffic sluicing past in both directions. The Van Allen was one of its few modern apartment buildings, a twenty-first-century take on Art Deco. A beady voice answered the bell of apartment 407 on the high-security entry panel within moments. 'Hello?'

'Mark Warren?' Glenn Branson said.

'Yes, who is this?'

'The police - may we have a word with you about Michael Harrison?'

'Sure. Come up - the fourth floor.' There was a sharp buzz and Grace pushed the front door open.

'Weird coincidence,' he said to Branson as they entered the lift. 'I was here last night on one of my poker nights.'

'Who do you know here?'

'Chris Croke.'

'Chris Croke - that git in Traffic?'

'He's all right.'

'How can he afford a pad in a place like this?

'By marrying money - or rather, by divorcing money. He had a rich missus - her dad was a lottery winner he told me once - and a good divorce lawyer.'

'Smart bastard.'

They stepped out on the fourth floor, walked down a plushly blue carpet and stopped outside 407. Branson pressed the bell.

After a few seconds the door was opened by a man in his late twenties, dressed in an open-neck white business shirt, pinstripe suit trousers and black loafers with a gold chain. 'Gentlemen,' he said, affably, 'please come in.'

Grace looked at him with faint recognition. He had seen this man before, somewhere, recently. Where? Where the hell had he seen him?

Branson dutifully showed him his warrant card, but Mark Warren barely glanced at it. They followed him through a small hallway into a huge open-plan living area, with two red sofas forming an Lshape and a long, narrow black lacquer table acting as a border for a kitchen and dining area.

The place was similar in its minimalistic style, Grace noted, to Ashley Harper's, but considerably more money had been lavished here. An African mask sat on top of a tall black plinth in one corner. Classy, if impenetrable, abstract paintings lined the walls, and there was a picture window looking directly out at the sea with a fine view of the Palace Pier. A news programme, muted, played on a flat screen Bang and Olufsen television.

'Can I get you a drink?' Mark Warren asked, wringing his hands.

Grace observed him carefully, watching his body language, listening to the way he spoke. The man exuded anxiety. Unease. Hardly surprising, considering what he must be going through. One of the biggest problems for survivors of any disaster, Grace knew from past experience, was coping with guilt.

'We're fine, thanks,' Branson said. 'We don't want to keep you long - just a few questions.'

'Do you have any news of Michael?'

Grace told him about their trawl of pubs, and about the missing coffin. But there was something about the way he responded that ran up a flag in Grace's mind. Just a small flag, barely more than a minuscule fluttering pennant.

'I can't believe they'd do anything like taking a coffin,' Mark Warren said.

'You should know,' Grace retorted. 'Isn't it the role of the best man to organize the stag night?'

'So I read in the stuff I downloaded from the net,' he replied.

Grace frowned. 'So you weren't involved in the plans? At all?'

Mark looked flustered. His voice was awkward as he started speaking, but rapidly calmed. 'I - no, that's not what I'm saying. Like I mean - you know - we - Luke - wanted to organize a stripper

gram, but that's kind of so yesterday - we wanted something more original.'

'To pay back Michael Harrison for all his practical jokes?'

Flustered again for a moment, Mark Warren said, 'Yes, we did discuss that.'

'But you didn't talk about a coffin?' Roy Grace asked, locked on to his eyeballs.

'Absolutely not.' There was indignation in his voice.

'A teak coffin,' Grace said.

'I -1 don't know anything about any coffin.'

'You're saying to me that you were his best man, but you didn't know anything about the plans for his stag night?'

A long hesitation. Mark Warren shot long glances at each of the police officers in turn. 'Yes,' he answered finally.

'I don't buy that, Mark,' Grace said. 'I'm sorry, but I don't buy it.' Instantly he detected the flash of anger.

'You're accusing me of lying to you? I'm sorry, gentlemen, this meeting is over. I need to talk to my lawyer.'

'That's more important to you than finding your business partner?' Grace quizzed. 'He's meant to be getting married tomorrow. You are aware of that?'

'I'm his best man.'

Watching Mark Warren's face closely, Grace suddenly remembered where he had seen him before. At least, where he thoughthe had seen him before. 'What car do you drive, Mark?' he asked.

'A BMW.'

'Which model? A 3-Series? 5-Series? 7Series?'

An X5,' Mark said.

'That's a four-wheel drive?'

'Yes, it is.'

Grace nodded and said nothing; his brain was churning.

Standing in the corridor, waiting for the lift, Branson watched Mark Warren's front door, making sure it was shut, then he said, 'What was that about - the business with the car?'

As they stepped inside the lift, Grace pressed the bottom button, marked 'B'. Still deep in thought, he didn't reply.

Branson watched him. 'Something's not right with that dude. You read that?'

Still Grace said nothing.

'You should have pressed "G" for the ground floor - that's the way we came in.'

Grace stepped out into the underground garage and Branson followed. The place was dry, dimly lit, with a faint smell of engine oil. They walked past a Ferrari, a Jaguar saloon, a Mazda sports car and a small Ford saloon, then a couple of empty bays until Grace stopped in front of a gleaming silver BMWX5 off-roader. He stared hard at the car. Droplets of rainwater still lay on the paintwork.

'Cool machines, these,' Branson said. 'But they don't have much room in the rear. Much more in a Range Rover or a Cayenne.'

Grace peered at the wheels, then knelt down and looked under a door sill. 'When I was here last night,' he said, 'and came down here for my car about quarter to one in the morning, this BMW drove in, covered in mud. I noticed it because it seemed a little unusual - you don't often see a dirty four-wheel drive in the centre of Brighton, they're mostly used by mothers doing the shopping run.'

'You sure it was this car.'

Grace tapped the side of his own head. 'The number plate.'

'Your photographic memory - still working at your advanced age...'

'Still working.'

'So what's your take?'

'What's yours?'

'A missing coffin. A forest. A mud-caked car. A best man who is the only survivor, who wants to speak to his lawyer. A bank account in the Cayman Islands. Something smells.'

'It doesn't smell, it stinks.'

'So what happens next?'

Grace pulled the copper bracelet out of his pocket and held it up. 'This happens next.'

'Is that what you really think?'

'You have a better idea?'

'Take Mark Warren in for questioning.'

Grace shook his head. 'The guy's smart. We need to be smarter.'

'Going to a flaky pendulum dowser is smarter?'

'Trust me.'

You had to stay awake. That was how you survived. Hypothermia made you sleepy, and when you fell asleep you would sink into a coma and then you died.

Michael was shivering, near-delirious. Cold, so, so cold; he heard voices, heard Ashley whispering into his ear; reached up to touch her and his knuckles struck hard teak.

Water slopped into his mouth and he spat it out. His face was squashed tight against the lid of the coffin. The flashlight didn't work any more, he tried keeping the walkie-talkie above the water, but his arm was hurting so much it was not going to be possible for much longer.

He wedged his mobile phone, which was useless, into the back pocket of his jeans. It made it uncomfortable, but it gave him another inch and a half height. For whatever good that would do. He was going to die; he did not know how much longer he had but it wasn't long.

'Ashley,' he said weakly. 'Ashley, my darling.'

Then more water filled his mouth.

He rubbed away at the ever-widening and deepening groove in the lid with the casing of the flashlight. He thought of the wedding tomorrow. His mum showing him the dress she had bought, and the hat and the shoes and the new handbag, wanting his approval, wanting to know she looked good for his special day, wanting him to be proud of her, wanting Ashley to be proud of her. He remembered the phone call from his kid sister, from Australia, so excited by the ticket he had paid for. Early would be here now, staying with his mother, getting ready.

His neck hurt so badly, he didn't know how much longer he could stand the pain; every few minutes he had to relax, sink back, holding his breath, let the water wash over his face, then push himself up. Soon that would not be possible any more.

Crying with frustration and terror he lashed out at the lid, pummelled it. He pressed the talk button again. 'Davey! Davey! Hey, Davey?'

He spat more water out.

Every molecule in his body shivered.

Static came back at him.

His teeth clicked in his mouth. He swallowed a mouthful of the muddy water, then another mouthful. 'Please, oh please, somebody, please, please, oh please, help me.'

He tried to calm himself down, to think about his speech. Had to thank the bridesmaids. Propose a toast to them. Must remember to thank his mother first. Finish with the toast to the bridesmaids. Tell funny stories. There was a great joke Pete had given him. About a couple going on honeymoon and--

Honeymoon.

It was all booked. They were flying tomorrow night, at nine o'clock, to the Maldives. First class - Ashley didn't know about that bit, that was his secret treat.

Oh get me out of here, you idiots. I'm going to miss my wedding, my honeymoon. Come on! Now!

The clock on the dash of the Ford read 7.13 p.m. as Branson drove Grace along past the elegant Regency townhouse faces of Kemp Town, then onto open road, high above the cliffs, past the vast neoGothic buildings of Roedean girls' school and then past the Art Deco building of St Dunstan's Home for the Blind. The rain lashed down and the wind buffeted the car, crazily. It hadn't stopped for days now. Branson turned the radio up, drowning out the intermittent crackle of the police two-way radio, swaying to the beat of a Scissor Sisters track.

Grace tolerated it for some moments, then turned the volume down again.

'What's the matter, man - this group is so cool,' Branson said.

'Great,' Grace said.

'You want to pull a bird, yeah? You need to get with the culture.'

'You're my culture guru, right?'

Branson shot him a sideways glance. 'I ought to be your style guru, too. Got a great hairdresser you should go to - Ian Habbin at The Point. Get him to sharpen up your hair - I mean, like, you are looking so yesterday.'

'It's starting to feel like yesterday,' Grace responded. 'You asked me to have lunch with you. It's now past teatime and heading for supper. At this rate we'll be having breakfast together.'

'Since when did you have a life?' Almost as the words came out, Branson regretted saying them. He could see the pain in Grace's face without even turning to look at him. 'Sorry, man,' he said.

They drove through the smart, cliff-top village of Rottingdean, then along a sweeping rise, dip, followed by another rise, past the higgledy-piggledy suburban sprawl of post-war houses of Saltdean, then Peacehaven.

'Take the next left,' Grace said. Then he continued to direct Branson through a maze of hilly streets, crammed with bungalows and modest detached houses, until they pulled up outside a small, rather shabby-looking bungalow, with an even shabbier-looking camper van parked outside.

They hurried through the rain into a tiny porch, with wind chimes pinging outside, and rang the doorbell. After a few moments it was answered by a diminutive, wiry man well into his seventies, with a goatee beard, long grey hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing a kaftan and dungarees, and sporting an ankh medallion on a gold chain. He greeted them effusively in a high-pitched voice, a bundle of energy, taking Grace's hand and staring at him with the joy of a long-lost friend. 'Detective Superintendent Grace! So good to see you again.'

'And you, my friend. This is DS Branson. Glenn, this is Harry Frame.'

Harry Frame gripped Glenn Branson's hand with a strength that belied both his years and his size and stared up at him with piercing green eyes. 'What a pleasure to meet you. Come in, come in.'

They followed him into a narrow hallway lit by a low-watt bulb in a hanging lantern and decorated in a nautical theme, the centrepiece of which was a large brass porthole on the wall, and through into a sitting room, the shelves crammed with ships in bottles. There was a drab three-piece suite, its backs covered in antimacassars, a television, which was switched off, and a round oak table with four wooden chairs by the window, to which they were ushered. On the wall Branson clocked a naff print of Anne Hathaway's cottage and a framed motto which read, 'A mind once expanded can never return to its original dimensions.'

'Tea, gentlemen?'

'Thank you,' Grace said.

Looking at Grace for his cue, Branson said, 'That would be very nice.'

Harry Frame hurried busily out of the room. Branson stared at a lit, solitary white candle in a glass holder on the table, then at Grace, giving him a What is this shit? expression.

Grace smiled back at him. Bear with it.

After a few minutes a cheery, dumpy, grey-haired lady, wearing a heavy-knit roll-neck, brown polyester trousers and brand new white

trainers, carried out a tray containing three mugs of tea and a plate of Bourbon biscuits, which she set down on the table.

'Hello, Roy,' she said familiarly to Grace, and then to Branson, with a twinkle in her eye she said, 'I'm Maxine. She Who Must Be Obeyed!'

'Nice to meet you. Detective Sergeant Branson.'

She was followed by her husband, who was carrying a map.

Grace took his mug, and noticed the tea was a watery-green colour. He saw Branson eyeing his dubiously.

'So, gentlemen,' Harry said, seating himself opposite them, 'you have a missing person?'

'Michael Harrison,' Grace said.

'The young man in the Argus? Terrible thing, that accident. All so young to be called over.'

'Called over?' Branson quizzed.

'Obviously the spirits wanted them.'

Branson shot Grace a glance which the Detective Superintendent resolutely ignored.

Moving the biscuits and the candle over to one side, Frame spread out an Ordnance Survey map of East Sussex on the table.

Branson ate a biscuit. Grace fished in his pocket and gave the medium the copper bracelet. 'You asked me to bring something belonging to the missing person.'

Frame took it, held it tight and closed his eyes. Both police officers stared at him. His eyes remained closed for a good minute, then, finally, he started to nod. 'Umm,' he said, his eyes still closed. 'Umm, yes, umm.' Then he opened his eyes with a start, looking at Grace and Branson as if surprised to find them still in the room. He moved closer to the map, then pulled a length of string, with a small lead weight attached, from his trouser pocket.

'Let's see what we can find,' he said. 'Yes, indeed, let's see. Is your tea all right?'

Grace sipped his. It was hot and faintly sour-tasting. 'Perfect,' he said.

Branson sipped his too, dutifully. 'Good,' he said.

Harry Frame beamed, genuinely pleased. 'Now, now...' Resting

his elbows on the table, he buried his face in the palm of his hands as if in prayer, and began to mutter. Grace avoided Branson's eye.

'Yarummm,' Frame said to himself. 'Yarummmm. Brnnnn. Yarummm.'

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 going 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.'

'I'm not sure I agree; it could backfire.'

'How?'

'Well - they might think you're insensitive, insisting on going ahead - that you're not respecting Pete, Luke, Josh and Robbo. We both need to be seen to be acting as if we care about them.'

'You and I have been in touch with their families. We've both written them all letters, we're doing all the right things there. But we've been discussing the wedding for the past three days. We are going aheacU'We have to pay the bloody caterers whatever we do, so we might as well look after those people who make the effort to turn up. It probably won't be many - but surely that's the least we can do?'

Mark took the cigarette from her and drew hard, inhaling the smoke deep into his lungs. 'Ashley, people would understand. You've battered me with your logic for three days and you haven't listened to me. I think this is a huge mistake.'

'Trust me,' Ashley said. She gave him a fierce look. 'Don't start wimping out on me now.'

'Christ, I'm not wimping out -1 just--'

'Want to bottle out?'

'This is not about bottling out. Come on, partner, be strong!'

'I am being strong.'

She wormed her way down his body, nuzzling her face in his pubic hairs, his penis limp against her cheek. 'This is not what I call trong,' she said mischievously.

Grace started his weekend the way he liked, with an early-Saturday morning six-mile run along Brighton and Have seafront. Today it was again raining hard, but that did not matter; he wore a baseball cap with the peak pulled down low to shield his face, a lightweight tracksuit and brand new Nike running shoes. Powering along at a good, fast pace, he soon forgot the rain, forgot all his cares, just breathed deep, went from cushioned stride to cushioned stride, a Stevie Wonder song, 'Signed, Sealed, Delivered', playing over in his head, for some reason.

He mouthed the words as he ran past an old man in a trenchcoat walking a poodle on a leash, and then was passed by two Lycra-clad cyclists on mountain bikes. It was low tide. Out on the mudflats a couple of fishermen were digging lugworms for bait.

With the tang of salt on his lips, he ran alongside the promenade railings, on past the burnt-out skeleton of the West Pier, then down a ramp to the edge of the beach itself, where the local fishermen left their day boats dragged up far enough to be safe from the highest of tides. He clocked some of their names - Daisy Lee, Belle of Brighton, Sammy- smelled bursts of paint, tarred rope, putrefying fish as he ran on past the still-closed cafes, amusement arcades and art galleries of the Arches, past a windsurfing club, a boating pond behind a low concrete wall, a paddling pool, then underneath the girdered mass of the Palace Pier - where seventeen years back he and Sandy had had their first kiss, and on, starting to tire a little now, but determined to get to the cliffs of Black Rock before he turned round.

Then his mobile phone beeped with the message signal.

He stopped, pulled it from his zipped pocket and looked at the screen.

You can't tease a girl like this, Big Boy. Claudine XX

Jesus! Leave me alone. You spent the whole evening attacking me for being a cop, nowyou're driving me nuts. So far his only experience at internet dating wasn't working out too well. Were they all like Claudine? Aggressive, lonely women with a screw loose? Surely not, there had to be some normal women out there. Didn't there?

He pocketed the phone and ran on, knowing he owed her a reply, but wondering if it was better to just continue ignoring her. What could he say? Sod off and stop bothering me? It was nice meeting you but I've decided I'm gay?

Eventually he decided he would send her a text when he got back. He would take the coward's route: Sorry, I've decided I'm not ready for a relationship.

His relaxing mind turned to work, to the paper mountain that seemed to be forever building and building. The Nigerian trafficking of young women; the trial of Suresh Hossain; the cold case of little Thomas Lytle; and now the disappearance of Michael Harrison.

This really bugged him. And one thought in particular had woken him during the night and stayed with him. He reached the under-cliff walk, ran along below the white chalk bluffs, high above the Marina with its rows of pontoons and forest of masts, its hotels and shops and restaurants, and on for two more miles.

Then he turned, feeling the burn in his lungs, his legs high from the exertion, and ran back until he reached the point where he was near the Van Allen building. He ran up the ramp onto the promenade, waited for a gap in the busy traffic of Marine Parade and crossed over. He made his way down the narrow street along the side of the building, and stopped by the entrance to the underground car park.

His luck was in. Within moments, the gates swung open and a dark blue Porsche Boxter drove out, a predatory-looking blonde in dark glasses - despite the dull, wet day - at the wheel. He slipped in before the gates closed. It was good to be out of the rain.

He breathed in the dry, engine-oil-laced air as he ran down the hard concrete, past a red Ferrari he remembered from before, and several other cars he recalled, and then stopped in front of the gleaming, mint-clean BMWX5 offroader.

He stared at the number plate. W 796 LDY. Then he looked around, scanning the area. It was deserted. He walked up closer, knelt beside the front nearside wheel, then lay down on his back, wormed himself under the sill and peered up at the inside of the wheel arch. It was covered in mud.

He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, opened it out in the palm of his left hand, then with his right hand scraped at the dry mud until several pieces of it fell into his handkerchief.

Carefully he closed it, knotted it and replaced it in his pocket. Then he hauled himself back up, walked to the garage entrance and waved his hand across the infra-red beam. Moments later, with a loud clank and a busy whirr, the doors opened for him.

He walked out, checked the street in both directions, then resumed his homeward run.

43

At 9.30, showered and after a relaxed breakfast of scrambled eggs and grilled organic tomatoes - organic was a current fad he was going through at home, to counteract all the junk food he often had to eat when working, along with drinking quantities of mineral water - he enjoyed a leisurely read of the Daily Mail, followed by a drool over a road test of the latest Aston Martin in Autocar. Then Grace went into the study he had created in a small back room of the house overlooking his tiny, increasingly overgrown garden, and the almost embarrassingly neat gardens of his neighbours on either side, sat down at his desk in front of his computer screen and rang Glenn Branson's home phone number. His handkerchief, containing the soil he had scraped from Mark Warren's car, lay on the desk inside a small plastic bag.

Ari, Branson's wife, answered. Although he had clicked with Glenn from the day he had met him, Grace found Ari quite hard to get on with. She was often brittle with him, almost as if she suspected that, because he was single, he might be trying to lead her husband astray.

Over the years Grace had worked hard to charm her, always remembering their kids' birthdays with cards and generous presents, and taking her flowers on the few occasions he had been invited round for a meal. There were moments when he thought he was making progress with her, but this morning was not one of them. She sounded less than pleased to hear him. 'Hi, Roy', she said curtly, 'you want to speak to Glenn?'

No, actually, I want to speak to the Man in the Moon, he nearly said, but didn't. Instead, a tad lamely, he asked, 'Is he around?'

'We're in rather a hurry,' she said. In the background he heard the sound of a kid screaming. Then Ari shouting, 'Sammy! Give it to her, you've had your turn, now give it to your sister!' Then the screaming got louder. Finally Branson came on the line.

'Yo, ole wise man, you're up early.'

'Very funny. What was it you said you were doing today?'

'Ari's sister's thirtieth birthday party - in Solihull. Seems I have the choice - find Michael Harrison or save my marriage. What would you do?'

'Save your marriage. Be grateful for your sad-old-git friends who have no life and can spend their weekends doing your work for you.'

'I'm grateful. What are you doing?'

'I'm going to a wedding.'

'You're such a sentimentalist. 'Top hat? Tails? All cleaned and pressed?'

'Anyone ever tell you what a bitch you are?'

'The wife I nearly don't have any more.'

Grace felt a twinge of pain. He knew that Glenn did not mean any malice, but the words stung. Every night, even if it was late, and even if it meant hassle, Glenn at least went home to loving kids and to a beautiful warm woman in his bed. People who had that were incapable of understanding what it meant to live alone.

Solitude.

Solitude could be crap.

Was crap.

Grace was tiring of it - but did not know what to do about it. What if he found someone? Fell in love with a woman, big time? And then Sandy turned up? What then?

He knew in his mind she wasn't ever going to turn up, but there was a part of his heart that refused to go there, as if it was stuck like some old-fashioned record needle, in an eternal groove. Once or twice every year, when he was low, he would go to a medium, trying to make contact with her, or at least trying to eke out some clue about what might have happened to her. But Sandy remained elusive, a photographic negative that lay for ever black and featureless in the hypo fluid of the developing tray.

He wished Branson a good weekend, envying him his life, his demanding wife, his gorgeous kids, his damned normality. He washed up his breakfast things, staring out of his kitchen window at Noreen Grinstead across the street, in a brown polyester trouser suit, apron and yellow rubber gloves, a plastic hat over her head to shield her from the rain, busily soaping her silver Nissan on the driveway. i A black and white cat darted across the road. On the radio the prei tenter, on Home Truths, was interviewing a woman whose parents I had not spoken one word to each other throughout her childhood.

Nineteen years in the police had taught him never to underestimate the weirdness of the human species. Yet barely a day went by when it didn't seem to be getting even weirder.

He went back into the study, dialled Brighton police station and asked if any of the Crime Scene Investigators were in. Moments later he was put through to Joe Tindall, a man he rated highly.

Tindall was meticulous, hard-working and endlessly resourceful. A short, thin, bespectacled, man, with thinning wiry hair, he could have been a mad professor drawn straight from Central Casting. Before joining the police, Tindall had worked for several years for the British Museum as a forensic archaeologist. Joe was the man he was working with on the Tommy Lytle cold case.

'Hey, Joe!' Grace said. 'No weekend off?'

'Ha! I'm having to do the ballistics testing on the jewellery shop raid - everyone else has buggered off. And I've got the stabbing on Wednesday to deal with, thank you very much.'

Grace remembered there had been a man stabbed to death in Brighton late on Wednesday night. No one knew yet whether it was a mugging or a tiff between two gay lovers.

'Joe, I need some help. I have a sample of soil I've taken from a suspect vehicle. How can I find out, very quickly, what part of Sussex this soil is from? How specific could anyone get for me?'

'How specific do you need?'

'Within a few square feet.'

'Very funny, Roy'

'I'm not smiling.' 'Do you have a sample from the suspect area? I could get tests run and see if they match. We have chalk, clay, gravel and sand in Sussex.'

'The suspect area is Ashdown Forest.'

'The soil there is predominantly sand and clay. We can get matches from pollen, fossils, seeds, animal droppings, grasses, water, all kinds of stuff. How specific can you get?'

'Within a few square miles.'

'You'd have to do a lot better than that. There are areas all over England that would match Ashdown Forest.'

'How long would it take you to get a match without a sample from the specific area?'

'We're talking weeks - and I'd need a huge team - and one hell of a budget.' 'But you could do it?'

'Given unlimited resources and enough time, I could give you a match in a small area.'

'How small?'

'That would depend. A few hundred square feet, perhaps.'

'OK, thanks. I have something I want to bring over to you - are you in the office for a while?'

'All day, Roy'

44

An hour later, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and a bright tie, Grace drove onto the sprawling, hilly Hollingbury industrial estate on the outskirts of Brighton, past an ASDA store, an ugly 1950s low rise, and then slowed as he reached the long, low Art Deco Sussex House, headquarters of Sussex CID.

Originally built as a factory, it had been bought by the police a few years back and transformed. If it wasn't for the dominant police insignia on the facade, a passer-by could have mistaken it for a swanky, hip hotel. Painted gleaming white, with a long, neat lawn running its full length, it wasn't until you passed the security guard and drove through the high, railed gates into the rear car park, filled with police vehicles, skips and with a formidable cell block beyond, that it became less glamorous.

Grace parked between a police off-roader and a police van, walked up to the rear entrance, held his ID card against the electronic panel to open the door and entered the building. He flashed his card at the security officer behind the front desk and made his way up the plushly carpeted stairs, past ancient truncheons in patterns mounted on blue boards and two more large blue boards halfway up the stairs on which were pinned photographs of some of the key police personnel working in this section of the building.

He knew all the faces. Ian Steel and Verity Smart, of the Specialist Investigations Branch, David Davison of the Crime Policy and Review Branch, Will Graham and Christopher Derricott in the Scientific Support Branch, James Simpson in the Operations and Intelligence Branch, Terrina Clifton-Moore of the Family Liaison Unit, and a couple of dozen more.

Then he walked through a wide open-plan area filled with desks, few of them attended today, and offices on either side labelled with their occupants' names and the Sussex Police badge.

He passed the large office of Detective Chief Superintendent

Gary Weston, who was the Head of Sussex CID. Reaching another door, he held his card up against the security panel and entered a long, cream-painted corridor lined with red noticeboards on either side, to which were pinned serious crime detection procedures. One was labelled 'Diagram - Common Possible Motives', another, 'Murder Investigation Model', another, 'Crime Scene Assessment'.

The place had a modern, cutting-edge feel, which he liked. He had spent much of his career in old, inefficient buildings that were like rabbit warrens; it was refreshing to feel that his beloved Police Force, to which he had dedicated his life, was truly embracing the twenty-first century. Although it was marred with one flaw that everyone here moaned about - there was no canteen.

He walked further along, past door after door flagged with abbreviations. The first was the Major Incident Suite, which housed the incident room for serious crimes. It was followed by the Disclosure Officers Room, the CCTV Viewing Room, the Intelligence Office Room, the Outside Enquiry Team Office, and then the stench hit him, slowly at first, but more powerful with every step.

The dense, cloying, stomach-churning reek of human putrefaction, which had become too familiar to him over the years. Much too familiar. There was no other stench like it; it enveloped you like an invisible fog, seeping into the pores of your skin, deep into your nostrils and your lungs and your stomach, and the fibres of your hair and clothes, so that you carried it away with you and continued on smelling it for hours.

As he pushed open the door of the small, pristine Scene of Crimes Office, he saw the cause: the Crime Scene Investigators' photographic studio was in action. A Hawaiian shirt, torn and heavily bloodstained, lay under the glare of bright lights, on a table, on a sheet of brown background paper. Nearby, in plastic bags, he could see trousers and a pair of camel loafers.

Peering further into the room, Grace saw a man, dressed in white overalls, who he did not recognize for a moment, staring intently into the lens of a Hasselblad mounted on a tripod. Then he realized Joe Tindall had had a makeover since he'd last seen him a few months back. The mad-professor hairstyle and large tortoiseshell glasses had gone. He now had a completely shaven head, a narrow strip of hair

running from the centre of his lower lip down to the centre of his chin and hip rectangular glasses with blue-tinged lenses. He looked more like a media trendy than a scientific boffin.

'New woman in your life?' Grace asked, by way of a greeting.

Tindall looked up at him in surprise. 'Roy, good to see you! Yes, as a matter of fact - who told you that?'

Grace grinned, looking at him more closely, almost expecting to spot an earring as well. 'Young, is she?'

'Actually - yes - how do you know?'

Grace grinned again, staring at his newly shaven pate, his trendy glasses. 'Keeping you young, isn't she?'

Then Tindall understood and grinned sheepishly. 'She's going to kill me, Roy. Three times a night every night.'

'You try three times a night or succeed?'