Left You Dead

39

An hour and a half after the morning briefing meeting had ended, Roy Grace stood outside Cassian Pewe’s office. He’d long got used to this game the ACC played of making him wait, often for up to an hour, for no other reason Grace knew than he could. Power play. Childish, but he’d enjoyed keeping him waiting in turn. It had just gone 10.30 a.m. when he’d eventually arrived at his office, and now he’d been waiting close to half an hour.

Finally, just as Pewe’s staff officer came out of his own office and said, ‘The ACC says to go in,’ Grace’s job phone rang. He ignored it. Moments later, as he entered, his personal phone rang. Barely glancing at it, he hit the decline button.

Mr Immaculate sat behind his desk, studying something on his screen. There was no welcoming smile. Just, without looking up, a sharp, ‘So? You’d better have something good for me, Roy.’

‘I have — sir.’

And more than you bloody know. Clearly, the nuke hadn’t hit him yet. But it would be any day soon.

Closing the door behind him, he walked over and stood in front of Pewe. As he had anticipated, he was not invited to sit at either of the chairs in front of the large, shiny desk, but he sat down anyway.

‘Perhaps you’d care to update me?’ Pewe said, still apparently focused on his screen on something more important than his visitor.

To his joy, Pewe’s aggressive — and dismissive — demeanour faded fast as he recounted the events of the past twenty-four hours, and the evidence that had come to light. Saving the best to last.

Grace’s job phone rang again, and once more he rejected it.

‘I hope you’re not just virtue signalling, Roy,’ Pewe said when he had finished, using the corporate newspeak that constantly left Roy baffled — and wondering if Pewe had any idea what it meant, either. ‘This does change the optics.’

‘I had my eyes tested a couple of months ago,’ Roy retorted facetiously. His phone pinged with the voicemail tone.

Pewe stared at him for some moments. ‘I suppose you think that’s funny? You seem to be quite the comedian recently.’

‘I don’t find anything funny about murder — sir.’

‘Which is what you think we have here?’

Keeping his patience, Grace answered, ‘That’s how the evidence is pointing. Unless you have a better theory — something you feel I’ve missed, perhaps?’

Pewe, riled by Grace’s attitude and perhaps, Grace thought, by his own misjudgement of the situation, waved a dismissive hand. ‘Go, get on with it.’ The ACC tapped his keyboard and leaned forward dismissively, absorbed once more in whatever was on his screen.

Interview over.

As Roy Grace left the room, closing the door behind him and stepping onto the landing, he was anxious to check his phones and see who had been trying to contact him so persistently. With the offices of the Chief Constable, the Deputy CC and the two other ACCs around him, as well as those of Pewe’s shared staff officer and his PA, he was conscious of his total lack of privacy. Pulling out his job phone, he was about to press the voicemail button when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

Two uniformed officers, wearing the white caps of the Road Policing Unit, appeared with grave expressions. He recognized both of them. PCs Trundle and Edwards.

‘Sir,’ Trundle said. ‘We were told we’d find you here.’

Always friendly and respectful on the previous occasions they’d met, their demeanour now made his stomach churn with anxiety as if a barrel of icy water had been tipped over inside him. It was an old police saw that two officers in white caps, knocking on your door in the middle of the night, was never going to be good news. Nor in the middle of the morning.

‘Richard,’ he said, his voice trembling uncharacteristically. ‘Hi.’

Oh God, had something happened to Cleo on her way to work?

‘Pip — what... what brings you guys to these hallowed halls?’

‘We need to speak to you, sir,’ Trundle said. ‘Can we go somewhere private — downstairs perhaps?’

‘Yes... yes. Of course.’

He followed them back down the stairs and they stopped in the hallway. Closed doors lined the corridor along it.

Something was badly wrong.

Please God let Cleo be all right.

‘Sir,’ Trundle said. ‘I’m sorry to tell you... your son, Bruno, has been involved in a road traffic collision.’

It took some moments for the words to sink in.

‘What? I dropped him off at school. I saw him go in. You must be mistaken — I mean — there’s no way — he’s in class all day.’

‘He was identified at the scene, sir. We asked one of the teachers — we knew he was from the school because of his uniform.’

Roy leaned against a wall, feeling hollowed out. ‘Identified? At the scene? Teacher? What... is... I... what do you mean?’

‘It’s all very sketchy at the moment, sir.’

Grace choked on his words. ‘How... how... how is he?’

‘He was unconscious, sir, and has been taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.’

‘How the hell did he get out of school?’

‘I’m sorry — we don’t know. Inspector Biggs has been trying to contact you urgently. We’ve been trying to find you and your staff said you were at a meeting here.’

‘Bruno? You’re sure it’s him?’ Grace said, his voice barely a whisper, knowing the futility of that question.

‘Yes, I’m afraid he’s not good, sir, it looks very serious,’ Trundle said gently.

‘You said he was unconscious?’

Trundle and Edwards nodded. ‘That’s right,’ Trundle said. ‘The Air Ambulance attended and flew him to the hospital — that would have been just under an hour ago. We don’t know the extent of injuries, but we have been told it’s a life-threatening situation and we should take you to him urgently.’

Roy Grace felt like a drain plug had been pulled inside him. ‘What... what happened?’

‘All we know is that the driver was breathalysed and was negative. He is currently being interviewed by the RPU. Inspector Biggs has authorized us to blue-light you to the hospital. And your wife, if she is able to come, too?’

All his usual composure gone, Grace was shaking. He nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said weakly.

‘We have a car outside.’

He followed them numbly along the corridor and out into the light drizzle. Edwards opened the rear door of the car and Grace climbed in. The officer helped him with his belt, then they drove down the ramp to the barrier. As it lifted, with Trundle driving, Edwards switched on the blue lights and siren.

‘Do you have any more info on what happened, guys?’ Grace asked.

Pip Edwards turned to face him. A highly intelligent officer who had been an engineer before joining the police, he said, ‘It’s too early, sir. Apparently, one witness said he’d seen him looking at his mobile phone and stepping into the road. But eye-witness reports at RTCs are often unreliable, as I’m sure you know.’

Grace nodded, feeling his eyes welling up. He called Cleo, hoping to hell it wouldn’t go to voicemail as it normally did when she was busy. But, to his relief, she answered on the second ring.

As he ended the call, he asked Trundle to swing by the mortuary to collect her.