Looking Good Dead

51

The emergency vet, who had introduced herself as Dawn, a rather butch-looking Australian woman in her mid-thirties, was kneeling beside Lady, who was still very drowsy. She pulled down the Alsatian’s left eyelid and examined it with the aid of a pencil torch. Max and Jessica watched anxiously. Tom stood with an arm around each of them.

The detective, Glenn Branson, had gone outside to make a phone call.

Tom stared down at the dog, his mind in turmoil. Yesterday morning he had gone to the police, defying the email warning that had been sent to him. Now Kellie was missing and the car had been found, burned out.

Oh Christ, my darling, where are you?

Standing in the brilliant morning sunshine out in the street, Branson held his mobile phone to his ear, talking to a family liaison officer, WPC Linda Buckley, arranging for her to come straight over to the Bryces’ house.

Almost immediately after he ended the call, the phone rang. It was an officer from British Transport Police, PC Dudley Bunting, returning Branson’s call. Glenn told him what he was looking for and that it was very urgent. Bunting promised to come back to him as quickly as he could.

‘Today is what I need,’ Branson said. ‘Not three weeks time. That possible?’

Bunting sounded hesitant. ‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Yeah, I know, I should be in church. And I’m with a geezer who would quite like to spend the day with his wife, and I’m with his two kids who’d quite like to spend the day with their mother – except it looks like someone abducted her in the middle of the night. So maybe you’d like to sacrifice the Sunday roast with your in-laws and pull your fucking finger out for me?’

Bunting assured him he would exert maximum digital extraction.

While he was talking, another call came in – from Ari. Branson ignored it. When he finished his call, a message signal appeared on the phone’s display, accompanied by two sharp beeps.

The DS stared at the sign on the windows of the gym on the other side of the road. Gym and Tonic. It was a good name, he thought. Yeah, he liked that. With a balled fist he tested his own stomach muscles. He still had a six-pack, but he needed to get back into the gym soon; there had been a time when he went to the gym every single day; now, he thought guiltily, he did well to make it twice a week.

But there was something else making him feel a lot more guilty, as he looked up at the clear blue sky and felt the glorious warmth of the sun on his face.

Ari, his wife – and his kids.

Sammy was just eight and Remi was three; he missed both of them every minute of the day he wasn’t with them. Yet these days he hardly ever was with them. Work was increasingly consuming his life.

He pressed the message retrieval button and listened to the voicemail Ari had just left – in a tone that was short and sarcastic, and growing shorter and more sarcastic by the day. ‘Glenn, going to take Sammy and Remi onto the beach; be nice if you joined us as it was your suggestion. They’d quite like to see their father for at least one hour over the weekend. Perhaps you can call me back. My name’s Ari, in case you’ve forgotten. I’m your wife.’

He sighed heavily. They rowed increasingly frequently about his hours. Ari seemed to have forgotten already that he’d taken the whole of last weekend off to drive up to Solihull for her sister’s thirtieth birthday, dumping his work onto a broad-shouldered Grace.

Glenn Branson’s problem was that he was ambitious; he wanted to rise through the ranks, like Roy Grace had done. But that meant long hours were not a temporary thing. This was the way it was going to be for the next twenty years.

A lot of his colleagues found the job tough on their marriages; it often seemed only those officers married to other police officers, who understood each others’ crazy hours, had happy marriages. At some point he was going to have to make a decision about which was more important to him, his job or his family.

That was pretty ironic, really. Soon after Sammy was born, when Glenn Branson had been working as a nightclub bouncer, he had decided he wanted to have a career his son would be proud of, and that was when he had joined the Sussex force.

He was about to dial Ari when a voice behind him startled him. It was Tom Bryce, and the man looked in bad shape, his face pale, his eyes spooked.

‘Could I have a quiet word with you, Sergeant Branson?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

They climbed into Branson’s pool Mondeo and closed the doors.

‘What I want to ask you is if you think we’re in danger – whether I should take my children somewhere? Go into hiding?’

The detective wasn’t sure how to respond. He was quiet for some moments, thinking about Janie Stretton’s vicious murder and the warning that Bryce said he had received on his email. Then his missing wife. He could not answer because he just did not have enough information yet. But what if this had happened to him and Ari had vanished? Could he honestly look Tom Bryce in the eye and tell him to stay put?

But what were the alternatives? A round-the-clock police guard? He doubted that could be swung unless there was much stronger evidence to persuade Alison Vosper to stand the cost. Move them to a safe house? Roy Grace had rung him half an hour ago to tell him about Reggie D’Eath. So much for safe houses.

‘I think we need to consider the possibility that your wife has been abducted, Mr Bryce.’

This was what Tom had feared, although there was just one small nagging doubt in his mind. The words of Jessica came back to him repeatedly.

She’ll probably just want to drink vodka. I saw her. I promised I wouldn’t tell.

‘I’ve arranged for a detective from the Family Liaison Unit,’ the detective was saying. ‘She’s very competent – she’ll move in here, if you agree. She’ll organize a roster of herself and a colleague to give you and your children round-the-clock protection.’

‘Is that what you would do in my situation, DS Branson?’

‘Yeah,’ he replied, hesitantly. ‘Yeah. For the moment anyhow. Let’s see what we learn today.’

Glenn Branson looked down, not able to look the man in the eye for more than a second. And as he said the words he was thinking to himself, If this was me, would I want to have Sammy and Remi remain in the house?

And he simply did not know the answer.