Dead at First Sight

28 Monday 1 October

After ending his call with Panicking Anakin, Roy Grace sat at the kitchen table in silence, toying with his food. ‘I just don’t know what to do about Bruno’s rudeness.’

‘We have to give him time,’ Cleo replied after a short while.

‘That’s what you keep saying.’ He drank some water. ‘It’s over six months now he’s been with us, and he hasn’t made a single friend — that we’re aware of. You heard what the headmaster said last week.’

‘I’m still thinking about what the headmaster told us about Bruno’s ambitions,’ she said.

Humphrey nuzzled Grace’s leg. ‘I might find it funny’ — he leaned down and rubbed the dog’s head and neck — ‘if I didn’t think he was actually serious about it.’ Mimicking Bruno’s broken English, he said, ‘I’m going to be either a chemist or a dictator.’ He shook his head. ‘Did any kid you ever met in your life have that ambition?’

‘Well, he’s thinking big!’

‘Really? Are you happy to know we have a budding Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi or Kim Jong-un living under our roof?’

‘Darling, I think you are reading too much into it. Probably just Bruno having a laugh. Anyhow, what were your ambitions when you were his age? Did you know what you wanted to do when you grew up?’

Grace drank some more water, wishing again it could be something stronger. ‘Yes, I did — kind of. I just felt I wanted to do something to help make the world a better place.’

Cleo laid her hand over his. ‘I love that about you — that that is important to you.’

He shrugged. ‘My dad inspired me. He’d come home in his uniform and enthral me with stories of what had happened during the day — or the night before — when he’d been out on the beat. How he’d found a missing kid, or helped calm down a fight in a pub, or chased and arrested a burglar. Or went in the sea and saved someone’s life. And the time he’d been shot at. I kind of knew I wanted to go into the police, but for a while before then I had an ambition to be an eye surgeon and help people who had become blind to see again. But I was rubbish at all the sciences — and flunked biology, as you know — so going into medicine was never an option.’ He shrugged. ‘When you were at your posh school, did you ever think one day you would be a mortician?’

She shook her head. ‘Never, in my wildest dreams, although I was always fascinated by death. Mum and Dad definitely thought I was pretty weird. We were on holiday in Ireland one time and we came across this graveyard which had all these grand Catholic mausoleums. I ran around, getting down on my knees and peering through the holes in them to see if I could spot any bones lying at the bottom of the graves!’

‘So you never thought of trying to qualify as a doctor?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘God, no. After Roedean, the traditional route was uni or college. Mum and Dad encouraged me to go into the City and become a high-flyer. I couldn’t see myself as a hedge-fund gazillionaire, so I took my nursing degree!’

‘And you ended up married to an impoverished copper, and helping dismember dead bodies for a living. Funny how life turns out.’

She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Who was it who said, “Start with big dreams and make life worth living”?’

‘I dunno, who?’

‘I don’t remember. But that’s what my job does, and it’s what being married to you does.’

‘So I guess I lucked out!’ he said.

‘Remember that. Don’t ever let any creep — like Cassian Pewe — persuade you otherwise.’

He stood up and kissed her on the lips. ‘I’m going up to see if Bruno’s gone to bed.’

‘OK! But be understanding if he’s still up. Imagine yourself in his situation.’

He climbed the stairs. At the top he trod along dust sheets on the carpets, towards Bruno’s room. Work on the bathroom conversion had begun. A smell of dust and sawn timber hung in the air.

As he entered, Bruno, wearing headphones, was lounging on his bed, dressed in the red-and-white shirt of Bayern Munich football club. He was holding a gaming control box in his hand, focused with such concentration he did not turn round as his father entered.

A virtual football game was in progress and Bruno was intensely involved, his fingers dancing on the keys of the box, moving his players around. Grace worked out, from the 2–1 score in the left-hand corner, that his son’s team was winning.

‘Bruno!’ he said. ‘You know the rules, it’s nine on a school day. You should have been asleep an hour ago. Turn it off now!’

Bruno did not react to his presence in any way. As he carried on, focused on the machine, Grace felt his earlier anger rising again. Anger at his son’s total lack of interest in him.

You do not know what a nice life lies ahead for you, do you, lad?

None too gently, he lifted the headphones off Bruno’s ears. ‘Hello!’ he said.

Bruno did not react. He kept staring, rigidly, at the screen. As if he was playing some separate game with his father — Who Blinks First.

Bruno had a midfielder with possession. Ignoring his father, he used the controls to have the player kick the ball out to the right, to a winger, who then ran down the touchline with it.

Roy Grace snatched the box out of his son’s hands. ‘Hey!’ Bruno said. ‘You just stopped—’

‘Don’t you hey me, ever,’ Grace said furiously. ‘You were very rude to your stepmother about the meal she prepared. That wasn’t very nice.’

‘She doesn’t know how to cook,’ Bruno retorted. ‘Vegetarian crap tonight. Last night I said I wanted schnitzel and she gave me some stupid chicken dish.’

Grace looked at him in astonishment. Thinking how his own father might have reacted if he’d behaved this way. His father would have given him a clip round the ear.

‘Bruno, you don’t talk to us like that, ever. Understand?’

They were going to have to be very much tougher with the boy, he decided. Equally, he was well aware how difficult it must be for Bruno, to have his life transplanted from Munich to here. All the time, he tried to bear that in mind, but the boy was constantly pushing him — and Cleo — to the edge of their patience. ‘This is not a hotel, Bruno, OK? Neither Cleo, nor I when I’m cooking, have a menu of options. If you tell us what you don’t like to eat, as Cleo said, we’ll make sure not to give you it. And if you give us time, and you want something specific, give us notice, all right?’

Bruno was staring at the screen, ignoring him again.

‘Did you hear me?’

Bruno turned reluctantly towards him.

Grace sat down on the edge of the bed, not facing him at first. ‘Look, I know it can’t be easy for you. You lost your mother, and then you got taken away from your homeland into a completely new country, with a different language. Your stepmother and I want to understand what we can do to make your life better.’

Some of the anger drained from the boy’s face and seemed, to Roy, to be replaced with sadness.

‘Bruno, we know so little — pretty much nothing — about the ten years of your life before you came to us. Perhaps we can talk about it — you know? You can tell us what kind of life you had — it might be helpful for all of us—’

At that moment, Grace’s job phone in his jeans pocket rang, interrupting them.

With an apologetic nod to Bruno, he answered it. ‘Roy Grace.’ It was Anakin, and he was definitely panicking.

Walking to the door, he mouthed to Bruno, ‘We’ll talk later.’

‘Boss, as I warned you, the situation has developed!’ Anakin said excitedly, half shouting.

‘Give me some details, Andy?’

He went out onto the landing and closed Bruno’s door.

‘That Liam Morrisey. He’s in his wife’s house in Hadden Avenue and he’s not coming out. He’s threatening to kill himself.’

‘Is his wife with him? Kerry, is that her name?’

‘Yes, Kerry. No, she got out, and has her two kids with her. She’s gone to her mother’s place in Hollingbury.’

‘So what exactly is the situation?’

‘Morrisey. Liam Morrisey. He’s in there and not coming out.’

Grace was rapidly thinking this through. ‘Morrisey’s in her house, on his own, no one else is in there — not his wife or kids?’

‘That’s right, Roy. Oh God, it’s a siege!’

‘Andy, just calm down, this is not a siege, OK?’

‘It is! He won’t come out. He’s locked himself inside and won’t come out.’

‘How does that make it a siege, Andy? Has he got a gun? Is he threatening to fire at your officers?’

‘No, chief, no threat — not yet, anyhow.’

‘So in what way, exactly, does this make it a siege?’

‘That’s what it is, Roy! He won’t come out, he’s locked the doors! What if he self-harms, Roy? I mean — what if he kills himself?’

‘I’ll have to take him off my Christmas card list.’

‘That’s really not funny.’

‘Listen to me very carefully, Andy. I want you to get the unit from the Public Order Team to go into the house. Can you see him?’

‘Yes-yes.’ Anakin’s voice was sounding even more tense. ‘I can see him, upstairs, looking out through the window!’

‘Right,’ Grace said, his patience running on empty. ‘This is what you are going to do. You’re going to put the front door in and show Liam Morrisey the back of a cell door within the next thirty minutes, do you understand?’

‘What do you mean, Roy? How, why?’

‘Why?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I’ll tell you exactly why, Andy, OK? You’re going to do it because I’m telling you to do it. This is our town, we’re the cops and tonight I’m the fucking sheriff.’

An hour later Grace was out in the garden, in the darkness, waiting for Humphrey to finish doing his business, when his job phone pinged with a text. He looked down at the screen. It was from Andy Anakin. The message was short and meek.