Looking Good Dead

16

Glenn Branson’s driving had always made Grace uneasy, but since Branson had taken his advanced police driving course, as part of his application to transfer to the National Crime Squad, it scared him witless. To make things worse, his colleague always had the car radio tuned to a rap station, with the volume loud enough to make Grace’s brain feel like it was inside a blender.

The APD course enabled drivers to take part in high-speed pursuits, so in order to show off his prowess, Branson had chosen the only route that took them along a stretch of road where it would be possible to have a really bad high-speed smash without trying too hard. It was a mile-and-a-half-long stretch of two-lane tarmac, which ran like a spine across the open Downland countryside that lay between the industrial estate where CID headquarters was and central Brighton.

It was like a racetrack. Grace could see the road for a mile ahead: the two gentle bends, the straight, the sharp right-hander at the end of it, and then half a mile on the sharp left-hander where there had last been a fatal smash less than a week ago. He eyed a lorry heading towards them and then looked at Branson, hoping he had noticed that they would probably hit the right-hander at about the same time. But Branson was concentrating on the fast, sweeping left-hander coming up.

The speedometer showed an illegal 95 mph and was climbing. Drops of drizzle flecked the windscreen. ‘See, man!’ Branson shouted above the hammering voice of Jay-Z. ‘You move out to the right, gives you the best view around the bend, then you clip the apex. That’s how they do it in Formula One.’

Grace whistled through his teeth as they clipped the apex as well as a chunk of mud, grass and nettles from the verge. The car lurched alarmingly. His shirt felt clammy.

The lorry was getting nearer.

Grace checked the tensioning on his seat belt, then the speedometer. The unmarked police Vectra was now doing 110 mph. He considered asking whether his colleague was going to brake at all before they reached the ninety-degree right-hander now only a few hundred yards ahead, but he was nervous that any conversation might distract Branson. Up on a windy knoll to his left, Grace saw two men pulling golf trolleys.

He wondered if his last moments on earth would be spent in the mangled wreckage of a police Vauxhall that smelled of stale burgers, cigarettes and someone else’s sweat, being gawped at through the busted windscreen by two helpless old geezers in golfing gear while a rapper he had never met shouted abuse at him.

‘So, my hunch,’ Branson said, right on the apex of the bend, the front of the massive truck just a hundred yards in front of them.

Grace gripped both sides of his seat.

Defying all the laws of physics, the car somehow made it around the bend, still pointing in the right direction. Now there was just one more dangerous bend and then they would be in a 40 mph zone and relative safety.

‘I’m all ears.’

‘All I can hear is your heartbeat,’ Branson said with a grin.

‘I’m lucky to still have one.’ Grace turned the radio down. As if in response, Branson slowed the car down.

‘Teresa Wallington, she’s living with her fiancé, right. So they plan an engagement party at Al Duomo restaurant for Tuesday night – has to be midweek cos he works strange shifts. Got relatives and friends from all over the country to come down, right?’

Grace said nothing. Although they were in the calmer waters of a 40 mph limit they were not out of danger yet. While Branson was talking, and fiddling with the radio at the same time, the car was drifting steadily across the road into the path of an oncoming bus. Just as Grace was about to grab the wheel in panic, Branson appeared to notice the bus and unhurriedly manoeuvred the car back on to the left-hand side of the road.

‘Then she doesn’t show,’ Branson said. ‘No phone call, no text, nada.’

‘So the fiancé murdered her?’

‘I’ve got him coming in this afternoon. Thought we’d put him in the suite, take a look at him.’

There was a small Witness Interview Suite at Sussex House, which could be monitored through a camera from an adjoining room. Its main purpose was to talk to vulnerable witnesses. By watching and filming them officers were able to study their body language and generally assess their credibility. But sometimes Grace found it a helpful place to perform the first interview on someone who might turn out to be a suspect – often as not the husband or lover of a murder victim.

In the comfortable red armchairs of the Witness Interview Suite people were more likely to give something away than on the hard old upright chairs in the grim interview rooms at Brighton police station. The videotapes could be given to a psychologist for profiling in some cases. It was for this same reason that spouses, partners or lovers of murder victims were sometimes put on television as quickly as possible – to see what body language they used.

‘So you’ve gone off your trainee solicitor? I thought you were sweet on her,’ Grace teased.

‘Spoke to her best friend. She told me she’s done this before – vanishing off the radar for a couple of days, without explanation. The only thing different is she’s never been absent from work before.’

‘You’re saying she’s flaky?’

Branson, fiddling with the radio again, said, ‘Sounds to me.’

Grace wondered if Branson had noticed the traffic backed up ahead at a red light – and that they were heading, far too rapidly, towards the back of a garbage truck. This time he did something. ‘GLENN!’

Branson’s response was to stamp on the brakes, prompting a screech of tyres from behind. Grace turned his head to see a small red car snaking to a halt, inches from rear-ending them.

‘What was that driving course thing you went on?’ Grace asked. ‘Remind me about it? Did they hand out the notes in Braille?’

‘Oh fuck off,’ Glenn replied. ‘You’re a wimp of a passenger, you know that? A real back-seat driver.’

Grace decided he would feel a lot safer in the back seat.

The engine stalled and Branson restarted it. ‘Remember the start of The Italian Job, when he drives that Ferrari into the tunnel and – boom!’

‘In the remake?’

‘No, tosspot, that was crap. The original. The Michael Caine one.’

‘I remember the coach at the end. Hanging over the edge of the cliff. That’s what your driving reminds me of.’

‘Yeah, well, you drive like an old woman.’

Grace took the copy of FHM out of his case. ‘Can you pull over for a sec; I need your advice.’

When the lights turned green, Branson drove a short distance then pulled into a bus stop. Grace opened the magazine and showed him a double-page spread of male models in different fashions.

Branson gave him a strange look. ‘You turning gay or something?’

‘I have a date.’

‘With one of these?’

‘Very witty. I have a date tonight, a serious date. You seem to be the Sussex Police style guru; I need some advice.’

Branson stared at the photographs for a moment. ‘I told you already, right, you should do something about your hair.’

‘Easy for you to say as you don’t have any.’

‘I shave my head, man, because it’s well cool.’

‘I’m not shaving mine.’

‘I told you before, I know a great hairdresser. Ian Habbin at The Point. Get some highlights put in, keep your sides short, but grow a bit on top and get it all gelled up.’

‘I don’t have time to grow it by eight o’clock tonight. But I do have time to get some kit.’

Branson suddenly gave his friend a really warm smile. ‘You’re serious, man; you really do have a hot date! I’m pleased for you.’ He squeezed Roy’s shoulder. ‘It’s about time you started getting yourself a life again. So who is she? Anyone I know?’

‘Maybe.’ Grace was touched by his friend’s reaction.

‘Cut the mystery crap. Who is she? Not that Emma-Jane? She’s well fit!’

‘No, not her – anyhow she’s far too young for me.’

‘So who? Bella?’

‘Just tell me what I should wear.’

‘Not the old git suit you’re wearing now.’

‘Come on, what do you think?’

‘So where are you taking her?’

‘Out for an Italian. Latin in the Lanes.’

‘That’s the old lady’s favourite restaurant! Ari loves the seafood mixed grill.’ He beamed. ‘Hey, you’re spending serious dosh on her!’

Grace shrugged. ‘What do you think I should do, take her to McDonald’s?’

Ignoring the comment, Glenn Branson said, ‘Watch how she eats.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You can tell from how a woman eats how she is going to be in bed.’

‘I’ll remember to watch.’

Then Branson was silent for some moments, studying the magazine. He flipped over a few pages. ‘For someone of your age, I wouldn’t try to look too young.’

‘Thanks.’

Branson pointed at a model wearing an unstructured casual beige jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans and brown loafers. ‘That’s you. Can see you in that. Mr Cool. Go to Luigi’s in Bond Street; they’ll have something like that.’

‘Want to come with me after the mortuary – help me choose something?’

‘Only if I get to date you afterwards.’

There was a loud blast on a horn. Branson and Grace both turned to see the nose of a bus filling the rear window.

Branson put the car in gear and drove on. A few minutes later they were driving downhill into the busy gyratory system, past a giant Sains-bury’s supermarket to their right and then a strategically placed undertaker’s. Then they turned sharp left in through wrought-iron gates attached to brick pillars bearing the small, unwelcome sign, brighton and hove city mortuary.

Grace had no doubt that there were worse places in the world, and in that respect he had led a sheltered life. But for him this place was about as bad as it got. He remembered an expression he had once heard, ‘the banality of evil’. And this was a banal place. It was a bland building with a grim aura, a long, single-storey structure with grey pebbledash rendering on the walls and a covered drive-in on one side high enough to take an ambulance.

The mortuary was a transit stop on the one-way journey to a grave or crematorium oven for those who had died suddenly, violently or inexplicably – or from some fast-onset disease like viral meningitis where a post-mortem might provide medical insights that could one day help the living. Normally he found himself shuddering involuntarily as he passed through these gates, but today was different.

Today he felt positively elated. Not because of the dead body he was coming to study, but because of the woman who worked here. His date for tonight.

But he wasn’t about to tell Glenn Branson that.