Looking Good Dead

56

Roy Grace, sitting at the workstation in MIR One alongside most of his team, was running his eye over the latest incident reports log on the Vantage screen in front of him. It was a quarter to eight on Sunday evening, and although he still wasn’t feeling hungry, he could feel himself getting shaky from lack of sugar or too much caffeine – or both, and was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate on his tasks.

Cleo Morey did not help either. Every few minutes his thoughts returned to her text of this morning.

He was checking the latest updates on Reggie D’Eath when he felt a thump on his back.

‘Yo, old timer!’

He looked up. Branson, who had popped out of the room a short while ago, and had returned with a massive carton of doughnuts from the supermarket across the road. He doled out one to each of the team members.

Grace took his and stepped away from the desk, deciding he needed to stretch his legs. Branson joined him as he walked across the room and out into the hallway. ‘You OK, old man? You look like shit.’

Grace took a bite, licking the sugar off his lips. ‘Thanks.’

Lowering his voice Branson said, ‘So, a little birdie told me that you and Cleo Morey were cosying up to each other in Latin in the Lanes last night.’

Grace stared at him in surprise. ‘Oh yes?’

‘She’s the one yanking your chain?’

‘God, this is a small town!’

‘It’s a small planet, man!’

‘How did you know who it was?’

The DS tapped the side of his face with his finger. ‘Something you taught me – one of the first rules of being a good detective – build up your network of informants.’

Grace shook his head, half amused, half annoyed. ‘That was before the regulations changed. Sterile corridors. All that crap.’

‘Ever see that movie Police? Gerard Depardieu was a cop who leaned on his informants to get a drugs bust. Great movie.’

‘I didn’t see it.’

‘It’s well good. He reminded me of you. Bigger nose, though.’

‘I look like Gerard Depardieu?’

Branson gave him a pat. ‘Na, you’re more like Bruce Willis.’

‘That’s better.’

‘You sort of look like Bruce Willis’s less fortunate brother. Or maybe his father.’

‘You really know how to make a man feel good about himself. You look like-’

‘Like who? Will Smith?’

‘In your fucking dreams.’

‘So tell me more about you and Ms Morey?’

‘Nothing to tell. We had dinner.’

‘Business, of course?’

‘Totally.’

‘Even in the back of your cab?’ Branson pressed.

‘Jesus! Is every fucking taxi driver in Brighton and Hove informing for you?’

‘Nah, just a couple. I got lucky. Anyhow, they’re not informants. They just keep their eyes open for me.’

Grace didn’t know whether to be proud of his protégé for becoming such a proficient detective, or angry at him.

Interrupting his thoughts, Branson asked, ‘So did she like your new gear?’

‘She said I needed a new dresser and that you were total crap.’

Branson looked so hurt, Grace felt sorry for him. ‘Don’t worry – actually she didn’t comment.’

‘Shit, that’s even worse!’

‘We have two homicides and a missing woman; can we change the subject?’

‘Don’t change the subject! Cleo Morey! She’s well gorgeous. Like, if I wasn’t happily married, know what I mean? Except like – how do you stop thinking about what she does, man?’

‘She didn’t bring any of her cadavers with her to the restaurant, so it was easy.’

Branson shook his head, suppressing a grin. ‘So, come on. Chapter and verse. Don’t go all coy on me – tell me?’

‘I don’t have anything to be coy about. She has a boyfriend, OK? Actually, a fiancé. She somehow neglected to mention him.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

Grace pulled out his mobile phone and showed Branson the text he had received this morning.

Can’t speak to u at moment. My fiancé just turned up. Will call later. CXXX

After some moments Branson declared, ‘He’s history.’

‘That was midday. She still hasn’t called.’

‘Three kisses – trust me, he’s toast.’

Grace crammed the rest of the doughnut into his mouth. Despite his lack of appetite, it was so good he could have eaten a second one. ‘This another of your hunches?’

The Detective Sergeant gave him a sideways look. ‘They’re not all wrong.’

Cleo had not been on duty today. If she had, Grace would have attended Reggie D’Eath’s post-mortem this afternoon, although it would not have been necessary as another detective had been appointed SIO of that case. ‘We’ll see,’ he said.

Grace remembered an expression his mother used to use: Time will tell. Fate. She had been a great believer in fate but he had never totally shared that belief. It had helped her through her days dying from cancer. If you believed that some greater power was at work who had it all mapped out for you, then in some ways you were lucky. People who had deep religious faith were fortunate; they could abdicate all their responsibilities to God. Despite his fascination with the supernatural, Grace had never been able to believe in a God who had a plan for him.

He went back into the room and walked over to the workstation. On the large whiteboard was the photograph he had taken this morning of Reggie D’Eath in his bath, and a picture of Kellie Bryce – the photograph Branson had circulated to the press and to all UK police stations and ports.

Tomorrow morning Cassian Pewe, the arrogant shit of a Detective Inspector from the Met, was starting work with him on his cold case workload. And sure as hell if he did not have a result of some kind for her soon on Janie Stretton, the Assistant Chief Constable would have Pewe treading on the backs of his shoes.

Turning to Branson, Grace asked, ‘Glenn, just how confident are you that Tom Bryce hasn’t killed his wife?’

Whenever a woman went missing under suspicious circumstances, it was always the husband or boyfriend who was the prime suspect, until eliminated.

‘Like I told you in the briefing an hour ago, I’m very confident. I interviewed him on tape in here – before we went through the CCTV footage – and I can get the tape profiled, but I don’t think we need to. He’d have to have left his kids on their own in the house in the middle of the night, kill his wife, take her body somewhere, then drive to Ditchling Beacon, torch the car and walk five miles home. I don’t think so.’

‘So where is she? Do you think she might have done a runner with a lover?’

‘I don’t think she’d have torched her car, and I think she would have taken her handbag, some clothes, you know?’

‘Could be good cover, torching the car.’

Branson was adamant. ‘No. No way.’

‘I’d like to see this Mr Bryce. Let’s take a drive over.’

‘Now? Tonight? We could go over but he’s pretty distressed, trying to cope with his kids. I’ve got a rota of FLOs with him. I’d prefer to go back in the morning – if his missus hasn’t shown up.’

‘You’ve talked to the babysitter’s parents?’

‘Yeah. They were in bed when their daughter came home. She called out to them to say she was back, about 1.45 a.m. They heard a car drive off, that was all.’

‘Their neighbours?’

‘They don’t have many in that street – up on “Nob Hill”. I’ve been round them; no one saw or heard anything.’

‘You’ve checked all traffic CCTV cameras?’

‘I’m waiting – they’ve been looking through all the footage from one a.m. until the call-out came in. Nothing so far.’

‘Have you found out anything about them as a couple?’

‘Talked to their neighbours on one side – elderly couple. He’s about ten foot tall and she smokes so heavily I could hardly see her in the room. She seemed to have a bit of a friendship with Mrs Bryce – Kellie. Helps them out babysitting in emergencies, that sort of thing. What she said was that they have money troubles.’

Grace raised an eyebrow, his interest piqued. ‘Oh yes?’

‘You’d never know it from their house. They got a fuck-off barbecue that looks like Mission Control at Houston – must have cost thousands. They got a swanky kitchen, plasma telly, all the kit.’

‘Probably why they’ve got money problems,’ Grace said. ‘Could she have torched the car for the insurance?’

Branson frowned. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. Does anyone ever make money out of a car insurance claim?’

‘Worth finding out if they owned it or if it was on finance. Whether they’ve tried to sell it recently. The High Tech Crime Unit now have a copy of his laptop hard drive. Get them to check if he’s posted any ads for his car on a website anywhere – someone like Autotrader. They could be in on this disappearance together.’

The more he thought about it, the more excited Grace got. Money troubles, he thought. Might be a red herring, but it needed to be explored. Sometimes people got up to ingenious tricks to reduce their debts. He watched Bella Moy reach for a Malteser; there was a trail of icing sugar from her doughnut to the edge of her keyboard. Nick Nicholl was on the phone, concentrating intensely.

Norman Potting was on the phone also, working his way through the client list of BCE-247, no doubt causing a few upsets, Grace thought a touch malevolently. Not that he took the moral high ground on prostitution – there had been a few occasions during the past nine years when he’d picked up the phone to call one of the numbers in the personal ads in the Argus himself. But on each occasion he had felt the shadow of Sandy over his shoulder.

The same thing had happened to him during a brief holiday romance on the one, disastrous, occasion he had gone on a singles holiday – to the Greek island of Paxos.

The door opened and the cheery face of Tony Case, the senior support officer for Sussex House, peered round. ‘Just thought I’d pop in to see if there was anything you needed, Roy,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Tony, I think we’re fine. I appreciate your coming in.’

Case raised a finger in acknowledgement. ‘All part of the service.’

‘Enjoy the rest of your weekend,’ Grace said.

Tony Case looked at his watch. ‘All four hours of it? That’s almost funny, Roy.’

As the support officer headed off down the corridor, Grace stared at the bright orange lettering on the Vantage screen, scanning down it for the latest activity logged on the D’Eath murder. It did not take him long to find something. The house-to-house enquiries had turned up a vigilant neighbour who had clocked a white van parked outside Reggie D’Eath’s house at around seven the previous evening. The neighbour had dutifully written down the van’s number.

He double-clicked on the log to read the details. The PC who had interviewed the neighbour had requested a vehicle registration check, and it had come back as clean. The SIO appointed for Reggie D’Eath’s murder was Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor, a considerably more experienced officer than himself. No doubt Gaylor’s team would be all over that van when they found it.

Nicholl came over and stooped beside him. ‘Roy, I’ve just had a call from a bar manager I saw yesterday, at a place called the Karma Bar, down at the Marina. They’ve just been watching some CCTV tapes going back a couple of weeks – they’re trying to stop a problem they have with a couple of drug dealers operating in the place – and he reckons he’s got some footage of Janie Stretton.’

Grace felt a sudden bolt of excitement. ‘How quickly can we get it here?’

‘He’d rather I went there – he needs the tapes. He said I could watch them right away.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

Grace thought for a moment. Nick Nicholl had not been in the CID long, and still had a lot to learn. The young DC was bright but he might miss something – and this promised to be the first lead they had in the case. If this was so, then it was crucial to get every possible piece of information from it.

‘Bring her photographs,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll come with you.’ Turning to Branson, he said, ‘We’ll see Mr Bryce as soon as I’m back.’

‘That’s going to make it well late for him.’ Glenn Branson was thinking, unprofessionally, he knew, but he couldn’t help it, about the remnants of his own Sunday night. He longed to see his kids, even if it was just for five minutes before they went to sleep.

‘Glenn, if Mr Bryce hasn’t murdered his wife, or pulled off some scam with her, he’s going to be wide awake all night long, trust me.’

Branson gave a reluctant nod, knowing Grace was right, and glanced at his watch. Grace would be an hour at the very least and probably much longer. By the time he was back and they’d gone to the Bryces’ house it would be eleven at the earliest. He wasn’t afraid of facing half a dozen knife-wielding thugs in a dark alley in Brighton, but at times he was bloody terrified of his wife, and at this moment he was terrified of picking up the phone to Ari and telling her he was unlikely to be home this side of midnight.

Grace was so fired up by the possible sighting in the Karma Bar that, running his eye down the rest of the incident reports log, he skipped over the report Sergeant Jon Rye had logged an hour earlier, headed War Driving, without even noticing it.