Looking Good Dead

39

‘A vodka and tonic, please,’ Cleo Morey said.

The waiter turned to Roy Grace.

‘I’ll have a Peroni.’ Then he changed his mind, suddenly deciding he was in need of a stronger alcohol hit than beer, despite the fact that he was driving. He would worry about that later. ‘Actually, no, make that a large Glenfiddich on the rocks.’

They were seated at a table towards the back of Latin in the Lanes, an Italian restaurant just off Brighton seafront. There were newer, hipper restaurants he could have chosen, like the Hotel du Vin; smarter, more inventive ones, like Blanche House; there were a load of restaurants that he had never been to with Sandy.

So why had he chosen the one that had been his and Sandy’s favourite?

He wasn’t sure of the answer. Perhaps because the place was familiar to him he thought he might feel comfortable there, know the ropes. Or was it a further laying of her ghost to rest?

He recognized some familiar faces from way back among the staff, and a couple of them seemed to remember him – if not his name – welcoming him back like a long-lost friend. The place had a lively Saturday evening buzz to it, and at nine o’clock – later than Grace had planned on being here – every table was occupied.

The six thirty briefing had taken longer than he had anticipated, and he’d needed to stay on after, doing follow-ups, although there had really been only one development during the day.

Bella had tracked down Janie Stretton’s previous boyfriend Justin Remington and discovered he had just flown back this morning from his honeymoon in Thailand. She had gone to see him, and it was now her opinion, supported by the visa stamps in his passport, that he could be crossed off the suspects list.

DC Nicholl’s trawl of the bars, pubs and clubs in the Brighton and Hove area with a photograph of Janie Stretton had so far yielded nothing. It was Jon Rye in the High Tech Crime Unit who seemed to have come up with their first real lead.

DS Rye’s examination of the computer belonging to the witness who had made a statement to Branson that morning had revealed that this witness – apparently unwittingly – had followed a complex internet routing to a server in Albania. This was the same routing, the same IP addresses and protocols found on the computer seized from a suspect in a major child porn ring investigation, which DS Rye had recently examined. Its owner, Reginald D’Eath, was already on the Sex Offenders List, with past convictions for a violent sexual assault and for trafficking child pornography.

D’Eath, now a key prosecution witness in a child pornography case being prepared against a Russian syndicate operating in the UK, was currently in hiding for his own protection in a safe house provided by the Witness Protection Scheme. Grace had spent a frustrating hour on the phone after the briefing, dealing with a jobsworth WPS duty officer, politely at first then losing his rag with her, trying to get the damned woman to put him through to someone who would sanction the release to him of Reggie D’Eath’s address. In the end he’d had to settle for a grudging undertaking from the jobsworth that someone would call him in the morning by ten o’clock.

Cleo, facing him across the table, across the gleaming cutlery and the sparkling glasses, looked simply stunning. Her hair was shimmering in the flickering candlelight, and her eyes were the colour of sunlight on ice. She was wearing a perfume which was tantalizing Grace. It wafted over him, overpowering the tempting smells of hot olive oil, frying garlic and searing fish coming from the kitchen. He breathed it in, getting increasingly turned on.

In truth he was aroused by everything about her. By her cute turned-up nose, her rosebud lips, her dimpled chin. By her stylish cream jacket, the loose, low-cut silky grey T-shirt, the ocelot scarf slung around her slender neck, by her two huge, funky but classy silver earrings. He noticed more rings on her fingers: a gold signet ring with a crest on it, an ornate antique with a large ruby set in a clasp of diamonds, and a modern-looking silver one with a square, pale blue stone.

She was a classic, English-rose beauty in every way. And she was here, on a date with him! The butterflies in his stomach were out of control. The waiters were all eyeing her. So were other diners. She was the most beautiful woman in this restaurant by a thousand miles. She was looking absolutely, bloody, drop-dead gorgeous!

There was just one problem. Suddenly he could think of absolutely nothing to say to her.

Not one word.

His mind was a blank, as if some geek had hacked into his brain and removed every thought from it. Smiling at her, trying to think of something that would not sound totally inane, he leaned forward to reach a packet of breadsticks and knocked an empty wine glass over in the process; it struck Cleo’s side plate and shattered.

He felt his face reddening. Cleo immediately put her hand out to help pick up the larger shards, before a waiter intervened.

‘Sorry about that,’ Grace said to her.

‘It’s meant to be lucky, to break a glass,’ she said.

‘I thought that was at Greek weddings.’

‘It’s plates at Greek weddings. Glasses at Jewish weddings.’

He loved her voice; it was just so plummy and posh and confident. It was a voice that belonged to a different world to the one he had come from. The world of private schools, money, privilege. Society. She was way too upmarket to be working in a mortuary. Yet Janie Stretton had been posh too, judging from her family home. And she had worked for a sleazy escort agency.

Maybe being brought up posh gave you a veneer of being different. Scott Fitzgerald, a writer he liked, had written that the rich were different. But maybe they weren’t so very different.

‘I, er – love your rings,’ he said lamely. It was all he could think of to say.

She looked genuinely delighted, holding her long, elegant and finely manicured fingers up one at a time, showing her seriously upmarket bling to him. ‘You don’t wear any?’ she said. Then almost immediately she blushed, realizing she had put her foot in it. ‘I’m sorry, that wasn’t very sensitive.’

Grace shook his head. ‘I never did wear one,’ he said. Then he almost added, when I was married. But of course he was still married. Technically.

The drinks arrived. He raised his glass and chinked Cleo’s. ‘Cheers!’ he said, and something about her smile just suddenly, inexplicably, gave him a boost. ‘You don’t look bad for something that came out of a mortuary,’ he added.

‘Thanks a lot!’ She sipped her drink, then after a few moments retorted, ‘You know, you really look quite cool yourself – for a copper.’

Grace grinned, but for the second time today he suddenly had big doubts about the gear he had on. The first doubts had been in the trendy clothing store, Luigi’s, which Glenn had insisted on taking him to this afternoon. The Detective Sergeant had gone mad, hauling stuff off the shelves like a deranged bargain-hunter on the first day of the January sales, and wheeling him in and out of the changing room.

Tonight he was wearing the outfit Branson had put together specially for this date: an unlined brown suede blouson from Jasper Conran, the most expensive black T-shirt he had ever bought, beige Dolce & Gabbana trousers, an insanely pricey belt, brown loafers and even brand new yellow socks – which Branson insisted added a hip touch.

In addition he now had an entire new wardrobe for just about every occasion. The bill had come to over two and a half thousand pounds. He had never spent more than a hundred quid in a clothing shop in his life before.

But what the hell, he thought; these last few years he had barely bought any items of new clothing at all. Get it all over with in one big hit. And anything he didn’t like he could go back and change.

‘For a copper? Do I take that as a compliment?’ he asked with a quizzical grin.

She smiled warmly, searching his face with her eyes. ‘If you want…’

He gave what he hoped came over as a nonchalant shrug. ‘Just some things I threw on. I-’

She was staring at his right shoulder. ‘Is the price tag part of the design?’

He clamped his left hand onto his shoulder; immediately his fingers touched stiff card, attached to string. Under Cleo’s wickedly amused gaze he traced the string back under the jacket collar, cursing his carelessness. ‘Part of the design.’ He nodded. ‘Totally part of the design; it’s the new thing in jackets, that – umm, sort of – umm, off-the-shelf look.’

She laughed, and he found himself laughing back. His nerves had disappeared, and suddenly his head was full of stuff he wanted to talk to this woman about. But she got in first, as he tugged the tag free, balled it and dropped it in the ashtray.

Swirling her drink in her glass, she said, ‘I’m curious, Roy. About your wife; is it something you talk about? Tell me if I’m being nosey and it’s none of my business.’

He reached hesitantly into his pocket for his cigarettes. Technically he had given up, but there were moments when he still needed one. Like now.

A waiter appeared with menus, two massive folded cards. Grace put his down without glancing at it, and Cleo did the same. ‘No, you’re not being nosey.’ He raised his hands a moment, a little helplessly, unsure where to begin his reply. ‘I’ve always talked about it openly, maybe too openly. I just want people to be aware – you know. I’ve always thought that if I talk about it to enough people, maybe one day I will jog someone’s memory.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Sandy.’ He offered the pack to Cleo but she shook her head. He took a cigarette out.

‘Is it true what – what people say? She just disappeared?’

‘On my thirtieth birthday.’ He fell silent for a moment, all the pain returning.

Cleo waited patiently, then prompted, ‘On your thirtieth birthday…?’

‘I went to work. We were going to go out with some friends for dinner in the evening, to celebrate. When I left home, Sandy was in a great mood; we’d been planning a summer holiday – she wanted to go to the Italian lakes. When I came back in the evening she wasn’t there.’

‘Had she taken her things?’

‘Her handbag and her car were gone.’ He lit the cigarette with the Zippo lighter Sandy had given him then gulped some more of his drink. Talking about Sandy didn’t seem right on a date. Yet at the same time he felt he really wanted to be honest with Cleo – to tell her everything, to give her as much detail as possible. Not just about Sandy but about his entire life. Something about her made him feel he could be open with her. More open than with anyone he could remember.

He took a long drag on his cigarette, then blew the smoke out. It tasted so damned good.

Frowning, Cleo asked, ‘Her handbag and her car? Were either of them ever found?’

‘Her car was found the next evening in the short-term car park at Gatwick Airport. But she never used any of her credit cards. The last transactions were on the morning she disappeared, one at Boots for £7.50, one for £16.42 from the local Tesco garage.’

‘She didn’t take anything else? No clothes, no other belongings?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What about CCTV?’

‘There weren’t so many around then; the only footage we got was on the forecourt at the Tesco garage – she was alone and she looked fine. The cashier was an old boy; he said he remembered her because he always noticed the pretty ones and he’d had a bit of a laugh with her. Said she didn’t seem under any duress.’

‘I don’t think a woman would just walk out of her life, leaving everything behind,’ Cleo said. ‘Unless…’ She hesitated.

‘Unless?’ he prompted.

Fixing her eyes on him she replied, ‘Unless she was running away from a wife-beater.’ Then she smiled and said gently, ‘You don’t look like a wife-beater to me.’

‘I think her parents still harbour a sneaking suspicion that I’ve got her buried under the cellar floor.’

‘Seriously?’

He drained his glass. ‘I suppose they figure every other avenue has been exhausted.’

‘They actually accused you?’

‘No, they’re sweet people; they wouldn’t do that. But I see it in their faces. They invite me over for the odd drink or Sunday lunch to keep in touch, but what they really want is an update. There’s never much to tell them, and I can see they are looking at me strangely, as if they’re wondering, How much longer can he keep up these lies about Sandy?’

‘That’s terrible,’ Cleo said.

Grace stared at the cluster of gleaming bracelets around Cleo’s wrist, thinking what great taste she had in everything. ‘She was their only child; their lives have been destroyed by her disappearance. I’ve seen it in other situations, from work. People need something to cling to, something to focus their emotions on.’ He took another drag on his cigarette and tapped the ash into the ashtray beside the price tag of his jacket. ‘So, enough about me. I want to know about you. Tell me about the other Cleo Morey.’

‘The other Cleo Morey?’

‘The one you change into when you clock off from the mortuary.’

‘Not yet,’ she teased. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet, not by a long way.’

He saw she had finished her drink also, and hailed the waiter, ordering another for each of them. Then he turned to Cleo. ‘I’m sorry, it’s your turn to answer a question.’

She pulled a face, which made him grin. ‘I want to know,’ he said, ‘why the most beautiful woman in the world is working in a mortuary, doing the most horrible job in the world.’

‘I was a nurse – I did a degree at Southampton University. I wasn’t a very good nurse. I don’t know – maybe I didn’t have the patience. Then I spent a couple of weeks working in the mortuary at the local hospital and I just found – I don’t know how to describe it – I just felt that – it was the first place I had been to in my life where I could make a difference. Have you ever read the writings of Chaung Tse?’

‘I’m just a dumb copper from the backstreets of Brighton. I never got to read anything fancy. Who he?’

‘A Chinese Taoist philosopher.’

‘Of course. Silly me for not knowing.’

She dug her fingers into the ice at the bottom of her glass, then flicked a droplet of water at him. ‘Stop being horrid!’

He flinched as it struck his forehead. ‘I’m not being horrid.’

‘You are!’

‘Tell me what this Chaung Tse geezer said!’

‘He said, “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly.”’

‘So you turn corpses into butterflies?’

‘I wish.’

They were the last to leave the restaurant. Grace was so engrossed in Cleo – and so drunk – he hadn’t noticed that the last customers had left a good half an hour before, and the staff were waiting patiently to close up.

Cleo made a grab for the bill, but he snatched it off the plate, adamant.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I get the next one.’

‘Deal,’ he said, tossing his card down, hoping he still had some credit on it. A few minutes later they staggered out into the blustery wind, and he held the door of the waiting cab for her, then climbed in, his head spinning.

He’d lost count of how much they had drunk. Two bottles of wine, then sambucas. Then more sambucas. And they’d had several drinks to start. He slid an arm over the seat, and Cleo nestled comfortably against him. ‘Ish been good,’ he slurred. ‘Like I shmean, really-’

Then her mouth was pressed against his. Her lips felt soft, so, so incredibly soft. He felt her tongue hungrily against his. It seemed just seconds later the taxi pulled up outside her flat, in the fashionable North Laines district in the centre of the city. Through the haze of alcohol he recognized the block, a recent conversion of an old industrial building. There had been a lot of publicity about it.

He asked the cab to wait while he got out and walked with her to the entrance gates, unsure suddenly when they got there, of the protocol. Then their mouths found each other again. He held her tight, a little unsteady on his feet, running his hands through her long, silky hair, breathing in her perfume, totally intoxicated by the night, by her scents, by her softness and warmth.

It seemed just moments later when he awoke with a start in the back of the cab, alone, to the beep of an incoming text. Shit, he thought. Work.

He fumbled with the keys to read the text. It was from Cleo. It read simply, X.