Not Dead Enough

33

Roy Grace stood in the empty hotel room and dialled Brian Bishop’s mobile phone number. It went straight to voicemail. ‘Mr Bishop,’ he said. ‘This is Detective Superintendent Grace. Please call as soon as you get this message.’ He left his number. Then he rang Linda Buckley down in the lobby. ‘Did our friend have any luggage?’

‘Yes, Roy. An overnight bag and a briefcase – a laptop bag.’

Grace and Branson checked all the drawers and cupboards. There was nothing. Whatever he had brought here, Bishop had taken away with him. Grace turned to the duty manager. ‘Where’s the nearest fire escape?’

The man, who wore a name tag which said Roland Wright – Duty Manager, led them along a corridor to the fire escape door. Grace opened it and stared down the metal steps into a courtyard filled mostly with wheelie bins. A strong aroma of cooking rose up. He closed the door, thinking hard. Why the hell had Bishop left again? And where had he gone to?

‘Mr Wright,’ he said, ‘I need to check if our guest, Steven Brown, made or received any phone calls while he was here.’

‘No problem – we can go down to my office.’

Ten minutes later, Grace and Branson sat down in the lobby of the hotel with Linda Buckley. ‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘Brian Bishop received a phone call at five twenty.’ He checked his own watch. ‘Approximately two and a half hours ago. But we have no information who it was from. He made no outgoing calls from the hotel phone. Maybe he used his mobile – but we won’t know that until we get his records – which will be Monday at the earliest, from past experience with the phone companies. He’s slunk out, with his luggage, probably down the fire escape, deliberately avoiding you. Why?’

‘Not exactly the actions of an innocent man,’ Glenn Branson said.

Grace, deep in thought, acknowledged the somewhat obvious comment with a faint nod. ‘He has two bags with him. So did he walk somewhere or take a taxi?’

‘Depends where he was going,’ Branson said.

Grace stared at his colleague with the kind of look he normally reserved for imbeciles. ‘So where was he going, Glenn?’

‘Home?’ Linda Buckley said, trying to be helpful.

‘Linda, I want you to get on to the local taxi companies. Call all of them. See if anyone picked up a man matching Bishop’s description in the vicinity of this hotel some time around five twenty, five thirty this afternoon. See if anyone called a cab to come here. Glenn, check the staff. Ask if anyone saw Bishop get into a taxi.’

Then he dialled Nick Nicholl. ‘What are you doing?’

The young DC sounded in something of a state. ‘I’m – er – changing my son’s nappy.’

How fucking great is that? Grace thought but restrained himself from saying. ‘I hate to drag you from your domestic bliss,’ he said.

‘It would be a relief, Roy, believe me.’

‘Let’s not run it by your wife,’ Grace said. ‘I need you to get down to Brighton station. Brian Bishop’s done another disappearing act on us. I want you to check the CCTVs there – see if he turns up on the concourse or any platforms.’

‘Right away!’ Nick Nicholl could not have sounded more cheerful if he had just won the Lottery.

Ten minutes later, terrified out of his wits, Roy Grace sat belted into the passenger seat of the unmarked police Ford Mondeo.

Having recently failed his Advanced Police Driving course – which would have enabled him to take part in high-speed chases – Glenn was now preparing to take it again. And although his head was full of the words of wisdom his driving instructor had imparted, Grace did not think that they had permeated his brain. As the speedometer needle reached the 100-mph mark on the approach to a gentle left-hander, on the road out of Brighton towards the North Brighton Golf Club, Grace was thinking ruefully, What am I doing, letting this maniac drive me again? This tired, hung-over, deeply depressed maniac who has no life and is suicidal?

Flies spattered on the windscreen, like red-blooded snowdrops. Oncoming cars, each of which he was convinced would wipe them out in an explosion of metal and pulped human flesh, somehow flashed past. Hedgerows unspooled on each side at the speed of light. Vaguely, out of the furthest reach of his retina, he discerned people brandishing golf clubs.

And finally, in defiance of all the laws of physics that Grace knew and understood, they somehow arrived in the car park of the North Brighton, intact.

And among the cars still sitting there was Brian Bishop’s dark red Bentley.

Grace climbed out of the Mondeo, which reeked of burning oil and was pinging like a badly tuned piano, and called the mobile of Detective Inspector William Warner at Gatwick airport.

Bill Warner answered on the second ring. He had gone home for the night, but assured Grace he would put an alert out for sightings of Brian Bishop at the airport immediately.

Next Grace rang the police station at Eastbourne, as it was responsible for patrolling Beachy Head, and Brian Bishop could now be considered a possible suicide risk. Then he called Cleo Morey, to apologize for having to blow out their date tonight, which he had been looking forward to all week. She understood, and asked him over for a late drink when he was finished instead, if he wasn’t exhausted.

Finally he got one of the assistants in the office to ring each of his team, in turn, telling them that because of Brian Bishop’s disappearance, he needed them all back at the conference room at eleven p.m. Following that, he rang CG99, the call sign for the duty inspector in charge of the division, in order to update him and get extra resources. He advised that the scene guard at the Bishops’ home in Dyke Road Avenue should be vigilant, in case Bishop attempted to break in.

As he returned to the Mondeo, he figured his next plan of action was to call the list of friends that Brian Bishop had been playing golf with that morning, to see if any had been contacted by him. But just as he was thinking about that, his phone rang.

It was the controller from one of the local taxi companies. She told him a driver of theirs had picked up Brian Bishop from a street close to the Hotel du Vin an hour and a half ago.