Need You Dead

111 Sunday 1 May

Nine eggs! Roy Grace stood in the hen coop in his cottage garden at a few minutes before 6 a.m., every muscle in his body aching. Last night’s rain had morphed into a stunning dawn. The air felt pleasantly warm. A red sun was rising and a mist lay across all the fields around the cottage. Humphrey sat patiently outside the hen run door.

Each morning he took a bowl of sweetcorn, kale, bread, grapes, blueberries, mealworms and ground oyster shells as well as other scraps, mostly of fruit that was on the cusp of going rotten, and scattered it around the run. There were two hen houses that their little brood used, and normally they produced anything up to six eggs. But today was a record!

Perhaps a good omen, he thought, placing them in the empty food bowl and taking them into the kitchen. Then he went back outside and took Humphrey for a brisk, thirty-minute jog across the fields. Thinking all the time about Guy Batchelor.

How had this hard-working, seemingly happily married detective gone so wrong? How did such a decent man as Guy turn into a monster?

Could it happen to any of us?

To me?

How much — or how little — did it take?

After the helicopter had brought Batchelor down, he’d accompanied him in the ambulance to the Royal Sussex County Hospital to be checked out. No bones were broken but he had a few bruises. Despite his discomfort, he wanted to be interviewed straight away.

Grace formally arrested him and took him to Worthing Custody Suite, where Batchelor wasn’t known. During the interview, in the presence of his solicitor and under caution, he’d opened up, as if all his guard had dropped, telling Grace about his affair with Lorna Belling. And then how she had turned on him when she discovered the truth.

He suspected the detective had left some details out. But it was clear Guy had acted in panic, his one thought in the aftermath of the row, ending up with Lorna dead, was to save his skin, regardless of the consequences to anyone else. He told Roy how he had tried to resuscitate Lorna after their fight, but had failed. And although he accepted his responsibility, he hadn’t been sure whether it was the head injury or the electrocution which had actually killed her.

A part of him did actually feel sorry for Batchelor, as a human being. But equally, he hated the idea of a rogue cop. The Sussex police force, to which he had dedicated his life, depended totally on trust. Officers who let the force down deserved all they got. And Guy Batchelor faced years of hell in prison.

Maybe they would meet again one day, when they were old men, and look back at what had been — and what might have been. All of us, he was so deeply aware, had the potential for both good and evil. Just how thin was that line between the two?

As he ran across a field, Humphrey came running towards him with a live pheasant in his mouth.

‘Drop!’ he yelled, aghast. ‘Humphrey, drop, drop, drop!’

Humphrey stood a few yards from him, defiant. The pheasant was flapping.

It was breeding time now for them.

‘Drop!’ he yelled.

Humphrey finally yielded the bird.

Grace ran over to it and picked it up. It gave him a look, out of one barely focusing eye, then it died as he held it.

‘Bad boy!’ he yelled. ‘Bad, bad boy!’

The dog gave him a quizzical look, and then ran off, disappearing into the tall green crop.

Roy Grace stood, holding the dead bird, feeling very upset for it. He laid it down under the hedgerow at the side of the field. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to it.

Then he continued on his run. But when he arrived back home, with Humphrey at his side, he was still feeling bad about the pheasant.

Upstairs in their bedroom, Cleo would still be asleep. Along the corridor, Noah would be asleep too. And up on the next floor, Bruno also.

Entering the kitchen, Humphrey nudged him, signalling he wanted his end-of-run treat. A chew stick.

‘You’re not having one, you’ve been a bad boy!’

Then he relented, and pulled a yellow one out of the pack, made him sit, then handed it to him.

The dog wolfed it down, greedily, in seconds.

Roy Grace went upstairs and showered with the water as hot as he could bear, helping to soothe his aching muscles. His whole body was sore from last night. Throughout his mostly sleepless night he’d thought constantly of Guy Batchelor.

What a mess.

He had not yet seen the video evidence against his colleague, ramming Weatherley’s car, but it sounded damning. The Super Recognizer had two broken ribs and severe bruising; the outcome could have been a lot worse. He was being kept in hospital for a few days, under observation. Batchelor could be facing an attempted murder charge — on top of any charge he would be facing over Lorna Belling’s death. Hopefully more would become clear after his computer and phone were examined, and maybe more would be revealed by the search of his home, which was already under way. Grace felt for Guy’s wife and their daughter.

A life ruined.

Jon Exton had been freed last night. Hopefully no mud would stick, and Roy Grace would do his best to make sure it didn’t. He would meet him at the office later this morning.

If Guy had somehow managed to get away with it, would he have let Exton go to trial on the evidence he had planted? Be convicted? Desperation was a dangerous spiral.

He dressed in a work suit, then ate a quick breakfast of cereal and fruit in the kitchen, with the television turned on, to see if there was anything about last night on the news. Then he stared wistfully at the empty glass tank on the end of the work surface, where until recently his companion of eleven years, his goldfish, Marlon, had lived. Neither he nor Cleo had had the heart to get rid of the tank, and they had talked, vaguely, about getting a replacement, maybe a selection of tropical fish. Cleo thought the boys might like them.

He went upstairs and she was still asleep. He kissed her on the cheek and she stirred, then winced suddenly.

‘Darling, what is it?’

‘My back,’ she said sleepily. ‘Must have slept awkwardly.’

‘That reminds me, I forgot to ask, how did it go with that new chair — weren’t you seeing someone about one?’

‘Really nice guy — he said he knows you!’

‘Oh?’

‘Played rugby against the police team once.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Ian — erm — someone. Erm — Fletcher-Price — owns a company called Posture something — Posturite.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘Rings a faint bell.’ He kissed her again. ‘Got to dash.’

‘Busy day?’

‘Yep, I’ve got a lot to do. Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.’

‘Try and come home early, darling. Maybe we could sit out in the garden — have a barbecue later? And don’t forget we’re going to the concert tonight.’

‘Yes, where is it again?’

‘The Hope and Ruin — Queens Road. I’ve got Kaitlynn booked.’

‘I promise I’ll do what I can.’

She took his hand and held it. ‘I know you always do what you can. Try doing something you can’t for once!’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Time with us, your family. Me.’ She turned her head and looked at the clock radio, then back at him. ‘White rabbits, white rabbits!’ she said suddenly.

‘What?’

‘It’s the first of the month!’

‘You’re right, it is.’

‘I always say it first thing, if I remember. This is the first time I’ve remembered in ages! Done it ever since I was a child — it’s meant to bring good luck.’

‘The first of May.’

She ran a finger provocatively down his stomach, over his belt and down his flies and smiled very knowingly at him. ‘The first of May. Hmmmn. Know that saying? Hooray, hooray, the first of May — outdoor bonking starts today. I think you should come home just as soon as you can, don’t you?’

He kissed her on the lips, and she put her arms round his neck. ‘I think it’s a good plan, don’t you? Bruno’s going to spend the day with Stan Tingley and I don’t think Noah’s going to bother us too much. We have the house to ourselves until this evening. I think it would be a shame to waste it.’

‘I like your thinking,’ he said.

She stroked the front of his trousers again, feeling him harden. ‘Mmmmm, Detective Superintendent, I think you’re liking it quite a lot.’