Need You Dead

42 Saturday 23 April

A few hours later, shortly before 7 p.m., Roy Grace sat in the passenger seat, as Guy Batchelor drove down Hove Street towards the seafront. They stopped at the red traffic lights, Batchelor indicating left. When the lights went green he turned, past the front of Vallance Mansions. Across the road from them was a cyclist heading west, a jogger heading east, towards Brighton, and a small man standing still in the shadows close to a street light.

‘That might be him,’ Batchelor said, making another left into Vallance Gardens, an upmarket street of elegant red-brick Victorian villas and one white art deco house. They looked for anyone else standing still, but saw only a man striding along with a small dog on a lead. At the top, Batchelor made a left, taking them back to Hove Street, and another left back down to the traffic lights at the seafront junction.

The man they had both clocked previously, diagonally across Kingsway, was still standing motionless, barely visible.

Then Grace hit the dial button on his phone, calling the number he had entered earlier.

Both detectives, holding their breath, watched the man suddenly bring the phone to his ear.

‘Seymour Darling?’ Grace asked.

‘Who is this?’

He ended the call, slipped out of the car and, dodging through Kingsway traffic, crossed the road, trying to look unobtrusive. As he reached the pavement on the far side he saw the man, still holding his phone to his ear.

Grace walked towards him, trying to look casual, like any Hove resident out for an evening stroll. He saw the man hold up his phone, looking at the display.

Showing his warrant card, Roy Grace said, ‘Seymour Darling?’

The man grunted. ‘No.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Freddie Man.’

‘Freddie Man? OK, what’s your date of birth?’

‘Er — erm — it’s — March 2nd — 1966.’

‘So, Freddie Man, what’s your star sign?’

‘Star sign?’

‘Yes, what’s your star sign?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I’m curious — I’m interested in people’s star signs.’

For a moment he looked bewildered, then he said, ‘It — it’s Taurus — I think.’

‘You think?’

Early on, when Grace had been a probationer on the beat, at the start of his career, and frequently had to stop suspicious people on the streets, he had memorized all the star sign dates. Everyone knew their star sign. It was always a reliable, quick test to find out if someone was lying to him by giving a false identity and date of birth.

‘Really, Freddie? March 2nd would make you a Pisces. I don’t think you’re Freddie Man, at all, are you?’

‘What of it?’

‘Are you Seymour Darling, of 29 Hangleton Rise?’

‘What if I am? Who the fuck are you?’

‘Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. I’m arresting you on suspicion of murdering Lorna Jane Belling. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

Seconds later Guy Batchelor joined them, proffering a pair of handcuffs.

‘Yeah?’ Seymour Darling said. ‘Well tell this to the court. Tell the fucking bitch’s heirs to give me my money back.’