Not Dead Yet

22

Grace had noticed throughout his career that the more senior the rank of his fellow officers, the tidier their offices seemed to be. Perhaps there was a clue here: to rise successfully to the elevated status of Chief Constable, you must be adept at managing your paperwork, or was it just that you had more people, like a Staff Officer as well as an assistant, to manage it for you?

His own office was a perpetual tip, his desk, floor and shelves stacked with bundles of files. Earlier in his career, when all he’d had was a desk in the Detectives’ Room, its surface was permanently invisible beneath the sprawling paperwork. His untidiness had been one of the things that frequently annoyed Sandy, who had been almost obsessively neat and had a taste for minimalism in her home. Curiously, since Glenn Branson had left his wife Ari and moved into Roy’s now empty house as his permanent lodger – and caretaker of Marlon, his goldfish – he had gone through something of a role reversal, constantly irritated at the mess Glenn left the place in – especially his CD collection. Although recently, since he had put the house on the market, Glenn had started being a lot tidier.

One of the things he loved about Cleo was that she was almost as naturally untidy as he was. And having a boisterous pet added to the sense of permanent chaos in her home.

But there was nothing out of place in the Chief Constable’s spacious office as he entered now. The huge, polished wood L-shaped desk was uncluttered, apart from a leather blotter, some silver-framed photographs, including one of the Chief Constable flanked by sports presenter Des Lynam and another local celebrity, a pen set in a leather holder, and a solitary sheet of paper, that looked like an email printout. Two black sofas were arranged in a corner with a coffee table, and there was an eight-seater conference table. On the walls hung photographs of sports stars, a map of the county and several cartoons. The huge sash windows gave magnificent views out across Sussex. The whole room gave off an air of importance, but at the same time felt comfortable and warm.

Tom Martinson shook his hand firmly and asked him to come in, speaking in a cheery Midlands accent. The Chief, who was forty-nine, was slightly shorter than himself, a strong, fit-looking man, with thinning, short dark hair, and a pleasant, no-nonsense air about him. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt with epaulettes, a black tie and black trousers.

‘Take a seat, Roy,’ he said, indicating one of the chairs at the coffee table. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘I’d love a coffee, sir.’ Roy Grace was trying very hard to put, temporarily, what Cleo had just told him out of his mind and focus entirely on this meeting, and trying to impress Martinson.

‘How do you take it?’

‘Muddy, please, sir, no sugar.’

The Chief smiled, raised the phone on his desk and ordered it, then sat down beside Roy and folded his arms – distancing body language, Grace thought warily, despite Martinson’s cheery demeanour.

‘I’m sorry to drag you over here on a Saturday.’

‘It’s no problem, sir. I’m working today anyway.’

‘The Stonery Farm enquiry?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything I need to know?’

Grace quickly brought him up to speed.

‘I have to say,’ Martinson replied, ‘that when I heard you were the SIO on this I felt very confident the investigation was in good hands.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Grace said, pleasantly surprised and somewhat relieved.

Then Martinson looked more serious. ‘The reason I asked you to come and see me is a rather delicate situation.’

Shit, Grace thought. This is going to be about the Sussex-Surrey Major Crime branches merger.

He then had to wait for some moments while the Chief’s assistant, Jean, who was, unusually, working this weekend, came in with his coffee and a plate of biscuits. As she left, he continued.

‘Gaia,’ Martinson said, then fell silent for a moment.

‘Gaia?’

‘You know who I mean? The rock singer and actress? Gaia Lafayette.’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

You’d have to have been living under a rock in this city to have missed all the media coverage during the past couple of weeks, Grace thought.

‘I personally think she’s a better singer than she is actress, but who am I to judge?’

Grace nodded. ‘I’d probably agree with you. I’ve never been a great fan, but I know someone who is.’

‘Oh?’

‘Detective Sergeant Branson.’

‘You’re aware she’s coming to Brighton next week, to star in a film about the love affair between King George the Fourth and his mistress Maria Fitzherbert?’

‘I knew her visit was imminent. DS Branson’s very excited, hoping to get a chance to meet her! Presumably the producers know that Mrs Fitzherbert was English, not American?’ Grace said.

Martinson smiled and raised a finger. ‘Ah, but did you know that Gaia was born in Brighton?’

‘Indeed, in Whitehawk.’

Martinson nodded. ‘The girl done good, as they say.’

Whitehawk had for many years been one of the city’s poorest areas. ‘She has.’

‘But we have a big problem, Roy. Over the past two days I’ve had conversations with a senior homicide detective from the Threat Management Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department, as well as her personal head of security, the head of Tourism and Leisure, Adam Bates, and the Chief Executive of Brighton Corporation, John Barradell. A few days ago, apparently, one of Gaia’s assistants was shot dead leaving Gaia’s house in Bel Air. The police view it as a case of mistaken identity, and that the true target was Gaia herself.’

‘I didn’t hear about that.’

‘I don’t think it’s made much impact in the UK press. She received an email warning her not to take the Maria Fitzherbert part. Apparently her security advisers weren’t too concerned about it at the time – it was just one of a number of crank emails she gets constantly. But their concerns are that, if they are right in their assumption, she could be targeted again. This email was sent to Gaia the next day.’ He then handed Grace the sheet of paper from his desk. The Detective Superintendent read the words with a chill.

I made a mistake, bitch. You were lucky. But that changes nothing. Next time I’ll be the lucky one. I will get you anywhere in the world that you go.

‘Roy, I don’t think I need tell you the enormous PR value of having this film shot here, in terms of tourism and world exposure, obviously.’

‘I understand that, sir.’

The Chief gave him a worried smile.

Brighton had a criminal history dating back to the mid-1800s. After a series of particularly violent murders in the early 1930s, including two separate dismembered torsos being discovered in trunks in station left-luggage lockers, Brighton acquired the unwelcome sobriquet of ‘Crime Capital of the UK’ and ‘Murder Capital of Europe’. For years, the Tourist Board had been trying to shake off that reputation, and the police had been making good progress in reducing the crime rate.

‘If anything were to happen to Gaia while she was here, the damage to this city would be incalculable. You understand my drift, don’t you, Roy?’

‘Yes, sir. I get that completely.’

‘I thought you would. But there’s a problem. I’ve had a discussion with Scotland Yard’s Close Protection Unit. Under their mandate, only royals, diplomats and government ministers qualify for high-level protection. Rock stars – and movie stars – are not on the approved list – they’re expected to provide their own security.’

Grace shrugged. ‘That makes sense – they have the money to do that.’

Tom Martinson nodded. ‘Under normal circumstances, yes – to keep fanatical fans at bay. But they’re not permitted to carry firearms in this country. So that gives us the problem of how to protect them against someone with a gun.’

Grace took a sip of his coffee, thinking hard. Despite Brighton’s dark side, one blessing was that it had never had the kind of gun problem that afflicted some inner cities in the UK. Of all the murders in the county of Sussex in recent years, only a handful had involved guns. But that did not mean that guns were not readily available to anyone with intent, who knew where to ask. ‘We could make an exception with our own Sussex Close Protection Team, I would have thought, sir.’

Martinson nodded. ‘I want you to do a risk assessment and write a security strategy for Gaia while she’s in Brighton – knowing that there’s a possibility someone may try to kill her with a firearm. I’d like to meet again on Monday morning to go through it, and later on Monday with the team leaders we’ll need to implement it, including the ACCs and the Divisional Commander of Brighton and Hove. I’m sorry to throw this at you at the start of the weekend.’

‘It’s not a problem, sir.’ The Detective Superintendent tried not to show his excitement at the challenge. This was really going to give him the chance to shine in front of the Chief Constable. But equally, he knew, a massive burden of responsibility had just been dumped on his shoulders. Keeping Gaia alive while she was in Brighton was now interlinked with keeping his chosen career path alive. And the most recent case he had worked on, Operation Violin, showed that Brighton was easily within the reaches of a professional US hitman.

Martinson unfolded his arms, took a biscuit from the plate, then held it without taking a bite. He frowned, as if searching for the right way to say what was on his mind next. ‘Changing the subject totally, I also wanted to tip you off about something, Roy.’

‘Oh?’

‘I believe you had a bit of an unpleasant experience some time back, with a certain Brighton villain, name of Amis Smallbone?’

The creep’s name made Grace squirm. ‘I put him away on a life sentence, and he didn’t like it. Not that many of them do.’

Tom Martinson grinned, fleetingly. ‘That was twelve years ago?’

Grace did a quick calculation. ‘It would be, yes, sir.’

Amis Smallbone was, in Grace’s opinion, the nastiest and most malevolent piece of vermin he had ever dealt with. Five foot one inch tall, with his hair greasily coiffed, dressed summer and winter in natty suits too tight for him, Smallbone exuded arrogance. Whether he had modelled himself on some screen mobster, or had some kind of Marlon Brando Godfather fixation, Grace neither knew nor cared. Smallbone, who must now be in his early sixties, was the last living relic of one of Brighton’s historic crime families. At one time, three generations of Smallbones controlled protection rackets across Kemp Town, several amusement arcades, the drugs going into half the nightclubs, as well as much of the city’s prostitution. It had long been rumoured – a rumour circulated with much enthusiasm throughout the police – that Smallbone’s obsession with prostitution came out of his own sexual inadequacy.

When Grace had personally arrested Smallbone on a charge of murdering a rival drug dealer in the city, by dropping an electric heater into his bathtub, the villain had threatened retribution against him personally, and against his wife Sandy. Three weeks later, with Smallbone banged up in the remand wing of Lewes prison, someone had sprayed every plant in the garden of Grace’s home – Sandy’s biggest passion – with weedkiller, turning all the borders into an arid wasteland.

In the centre of the lawn had been burned two words.

UR DEAD .

Grace had been present in court when the jury had returned their guilty verdict. Amis Smallbone, in the dock, had curled his fingers around an imaginary gun, pointed it at Grace and mouthed the word bang!

‘I’ve got possibly worrying news for you, Roy,’ Tom Martinson said. He looked at his biscuit, but still did not touch it. ‘I thought I should warn you, as I doubt anyone from the prison service will bother. I’m an old university friend of the Governor of Belmarsh Prison, who kindly tipped me off. Amis Smallbone was freed from there, on licence, three days ago.’

A chill rippled through Grace, thinking of the phone conversation he’d just had with a very distressed Cleo. ‘Does he have a release address, sir?’

Grace knew that a prisoner serving a life sentence would have his release address set by his probation officer, with numerous reporting conditions attached.

‘He does, Roy, a hostel on Brighton seafront. But he’s in breach. I’m afraid he hasn’t been seen for two days.’