Left You Dead

84

Half an hour after the seventh briefing of Operation Lagoon had ended, Roy Grace, accompanied by Polly Sweeney, turned the silver, unmarked Mondeo estate off Dyke Road Avenue into Barrowfield Drive, an exclusive residential enclave of smart, detached houses. The entrance road was narrow, more like a country lane than somewhere in the middle of a city. The only giveaway was the yellow lines down each side at the start of the drive.

A wide mix of houses could be seen, Edwardian, mock Tudor, ultra-modern, colonial with columned porticos and a few old-fashioned, country-cottage style. Several had expensive motors in the driveways, adding to the air of moneyed exclusivity.

‘They ought to have a sign at the entrance to this estate,’ Polly observed. ‘No riff-raff here.’

Grace, following the car’s satnav, smiled thinly as he made a left into Barrowfield Drive. ‘Nor anyone on a copper’s salary,’ he added.

A man in his fifties, wearing orange earbuds, jogged past in the opposite direction.

‘Any of these fit your idea of a dream home, sir?’ Polly asked.

Grace shook his head. ‘Houses too close together. They’re beautiful, but if I had the kind of money to buy one of these, I’d get something in the country. Rolling acres, that kind of thing.’

‘Fancy yourself as Lord Grace of Grace Towers, do you, sir?’

Grace shook his head. ‘Nope. Never had any desire for that kind of money. Did you ever read the novel Catch-22?’

‘No — is it good?’

‘Brilliant, a classic. I read that its author, Joseph Heller, was at a party in New York thrown by some billionaire for a bunch of writers. Someone asked him how it made him feel that, no matter how successful he was as an author, he would never make the kind of money his host did. Know what Heller replied?’

Polly shook her head.

‘He said, “I have something he will never have. And that’s the knowledge that I have enough.”’

Polly, smiling, checked the numbers, then said, ‘Here, boss, number seventeen.’

Grace pulled up outside a fancy, mock-Georgian mansion, with a Grecian-columned porch. A Range Rover Evoque and a matt-black McLaren were parked ostentatiously in the curved driveway out front.

Grace, automatically clocking their licence plates, smiled too. It was good to be back properly on the job — it was helping him so much to escape, however fleetingly, from his grief over Bruno.

They climbed out and walked up the path to the front door. Polly glanced enviously at the McLaren. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of those,’ she said.

‘What colour?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘I’m not fussed.’