Left You Dead

20

Grace and Branson sat opposite each other at the small round meeting table in the Detective Superintendent’s office. They had mugs of coffee and Grace’s fast-emptying packet of chocolate digestives in front of them, as Branson, complaining he hadn’t had lunch, worked through them. Two photographic prints of Eden Paternoster, from the digital images they’d been emailed, also lay there, one with the background of the Parham House lake and the other in front of a Christmas tree.

‘Any more thoughts, Glenn — other than how many crumbs you can drop on my table?’

‘Sorry, boss!’ Branson swept them dismissively onto the floor with his hand and grabbed yet another biscuit. ‘The Amazing Disappearing Eden Paternoster!’ Then he looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, that was a bit insensitive.’

Grace shook his head. ‘I’m over it — long over it.’

‘Doesn’t something like this bring it back?’

He nodded, wistful for a moment. ‘Always. And if Eden has genuinely disappeared, then I’d feel something of the husband’s pain, yes. But this doesn’t smell at all right to me. The husband says she went into the store to get cat litter and disappeared. But his car isn’t picked up by any camera out in the car park, his wife isn’t picked up going into the store and she’s not been caught on any camera inside the store. We know from the staff that he was there, but no one can recall seeing her, although they must see hundreds of people every day. And in any case, my sense — hunch — is this is more than just a routine misper situation, especially with what John Alldridge noticed.’

Branson studied the photographs for a moment. ‘Nice-looking lady. I agree, but maybe we should have a chat with Mr Paternoster — don’t you think?’ He reached over and rummaged in the now almost empty packet. ‘No passport smacks to me of someone doing a runner — with a lover — possibly?’

Grace looked thoughtful. ‘Possibly. How about we drop in on him, unannounced, and have a friendly, sympathetic chat?’

Holding up half a biscuit, with a cartoon-like bite shape missing, Branson replied, ‘Good plan, boss.’ The rest of the biscuit disappeared.

‘I do have a hypothesis.’

‘Yes?’ Branson asked.

‘Maybe she got too close to your chomping jaws and you mistook her for a chocolate digestive.’

‘That’s not even slightly funny.’

As Glenn pulled out onto the main road a few minutes later and accelerated ferociously, Grace said, subtly trying to make him slow down, ‘Um, you know how you often see flowers attached to trees at the scene of a fatal?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Biggsy in Traffic told me it’s because people always drive at what they’re looking at. You lose control on a bend and you see you’re skidding straight towards a tree, so you stare at the tree — and whoomph! You drive straight at it and hit it. If you’d stared past it instead, you’d have missed it.’

‘That so?’

Grace nodded. ‘Another thing a trauma specialist once told me is that the worst thing you can hit is a tree.’

‘Why’s that?’ Branson said, taking a sharp bend at a speed that nearly defied the laws of physics, as Grace warily eyed a very large beech ahead.

‘He said, always hit a wall, because that’ll collapse. But hit a tree and what that does is absorb the impact and then give it all straight back to you.’

‘You’d rather I hit a wall than a tree?’

‘Mate, can you just slow down, for Christ’s sake? I’d prefer neither.’

Fifteen minutes later, at a quarter to four, Glenn Branson pulled up the silver, unmarked Ford in Nevill Road, in front of the Paternosters’ house. Nodding at the Greyhound Stadium opposite, he asked, ‘Ever been to the dogs?’

Grace nodded. ‘Yep, last year Cleo and I went — I was asked to present the prizes for an evening that was fundraising for the Sussex Police Charitable Trust.’

‘Did you have a punt?’

‘I thought it would be polite — and it was for a good cause.’

‘How did you do?’

‘We were put at a table with a CSI who breeds racing greyhounds as a hobby. He gave me a tip — always bet on one you see having a dump before the race.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yep,’ Grace said.

‘Yeah? And?’

‘Lost every sodding race.’

Branson laughed. ‘Shit happens.’

‘Or maybe it didn’t.’