Need You Dead

68 Monday 25 April

Roy Grace heard gunshots as he stood outside the door. Several single shots in succession, then the rapid fire of an automatic weapon. He knocked on the door. There was no response. He knocked louder.

‘Ja?’

He entered Bruno’s small but cosy attic bedroom. The walls were painted red, with small white shelves artistically arranged around, all done by Cleo. On the walls were posters of a couple of Manchester United footballers, and another of a female rock singer Roy did not recognize. On one of the shelves was a white Star Wars stormtrooper with a clock in its stomach. Next to it sat a teddy bear wearing a Man U scarf. On another shelf was a row of Harry Potter and Anthony Horowitz books in German, and on another a Sonos player. Above it, a gangly stuffed toy monkey hung from its tail.

His son was lying back on his bed, with the bed linen also in the Man U strip. He was dressed in a red and white T-shirt, blue jeans and cream socks, holding a gaming controller in his hand. On the wall-mounted television screen in front of him a shadowy figure was darting through 3D alleyways in what looked like a Middle Eastern city. Bruno was aiming the sights of an AK47 at it, and as the figure jumped briefly into sight, he fired another burst, the bullets kicking up dust from the walls and ground. He glanced briefly at Roy, with a look of annoyance.

‘How are you doing?’ Grace asked.

Concentrating fiercely, waiting for his enemy to make his next move, Bruno said, ‘Erik is winning. He has thirty-two kills, I only have seventeen.’

‘It’s ten o’clock, maybe you should think about going to bed — you have your first day at school tomorrow.’

Ignoring him, Bruno fired another burst and this time bullets ripped through the figure, blood spurting from his back. It jumped in the air and then fell forward. At the bottom of the screen the digits 18 appeared, next to 33.

‘No!’ the boy shouted. ‘No, this is not fair! Erik just got another one!’

‘Bruno,’ Grace said, more insistently. He wasn’t really comfortable with his son playing these violent shooting games, but Bruno had been playing them at the Lipperts’ house, and clearly for some time, and now was not the moment to try to change that. It was something for another day.

Still focused on the screen, Bruno said, ‘It is eleven o’clock in Germany and Erik is not having to go to bed.’

‘You have your first day at school tomorrow.’

‘So?’

‘So maybe you should think about getting some sleep.’

‘Erik has school, too.’

Unsure for a moment how to respond, he asked, ‘So what time do Erik’s parents allow him to go to bed?’

Two more shadowy figures appeared out of a doorway. One turned, pointed a machine pistol and began firing at them, while the other zigzagged along the alley.

Suddenly the screen froze. The words got you! game over! appeared.

Bruno threw the console down onto his lap in anger. ‘Look what happened — you see — you distracted me. Now Erik has won again.’

‘Does he often win?’ Grace asked with a grin.

‘He’s good, he always beats me,’ he said, sulkily.

‘I think we can beat him!’

‘How?’

‘I was a firearms-trained police officer, Bruno. I know about gunfight tactics — would you like me to teach you sometime? There are techniques to shooting someone — and avoiding being shot yourself — in exactly the same situation as the game you are playing.’

He saw the glint of curiosity in his son’s eyes. ‘Can you teach me now?’

‘Not now, but perhaps after your mother’s funeral.’

‘Then I’ll beat Erik?’

‘I guarantee it. I’ll teach you to shoot like a policeman — and even more importantly, how to avoid getting shot.’

Bruno thought for some moments. Then he nodded, brightening a little. ‘OK.’

‘Then you and I will destroy Erik!’

For almost the first time since he had met him, his son grinned. Then he heard Cleo’s voice calling out from downstairs.

‘Roy — phone for you!’

‘Later in the week, OK?’ he said to his son.

‘Ja, OK.’

Wondering who was calling, and strongly suspecting that at this hour of the evening it wasn’t going to be great news, he went downstairs and picked up the phone. ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

He was right.

Some years ago, on a police management course, he had read a book called The Peter Principle. It was subtitled, Why Things Always Go Wrong. The central tenet of the book was that in many organizations sooner or later everyone gets promoted to the level of their incompetence. The man at the other end of the phone right now was testament to that.

Andy ‘Panicking’ Anakin, Duty Inspector of Brighton and Hove. It seemed to Roy Grace — and other officers he knew — that Anakin was unable to treat any situation calmly, and he sure wasn’t calm now. The man sounded on the verge of a heart attack.

‘Roy — oh shit, we have a situation.’

‘Tell me?’ Grace said, picking up the wine glass he had left on the living room coffee table, and taking a sip. He wasn’t on call this week, so he was perfectly at liberty to have a drink, but he’d been careful tonight, as he had to work, and had drunk just a half-glass of a delicious white Burgundy that Cleo had bought at a bargain price from their favourite wine merchant in the city, Butler’s Wine Cellar.

‘I understand that you are interested in a character called Seymour Darling, in connection with your current murder investigation?’

‘Correct, Andy, I am. Why?’

He told him, chapter and verse, his voice becoming increasingly hysterical with every detail.

‘Seymour Darling’s done this?’

‘That’s why I’m calling you — I thought you might want to pick this one up as you already have this charmer on your radar. Sounds like it was a domestic that escalated. He has past form — but not on this scale. What do you think — do you want this?’

Grace’s brain was racing. He was thinking about all the evidence already stacked against Seymour Darling.

‘Sure, Andy, it makes sense for me to take it on. I’ll assign my deputy SIO, DI Guy Batchelor, to pick this one up. I want to keep this all within the same team.’

‘Good, well, that’s what I thought, Roy.’

‘No flies on you, are there, Andy?’

‘Only dead ones, Roy,’ he said wryly.

As soon as he had all the details and ended the call, Roy Grace dialled Guy Batchelor.