You Are Dead

9

Thursday 11 December

Roy Grace arrived home shortly after 6.45 p.m. on Thursday night. The Detective Superintendent had three and a half more days to go as the on-call Senior Investigating Officer for Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, before the buck got passed to another senior detective at 7 a.m. on Monday for the following seven days.

The county of Sussex averaged twelve homicides a year, and it was around ten in Surrey. In the whole of the UK there were about six hundred and fifty a year. Every homicide detective hoped to get a challenging murder. Not that they were bloodthirsty people, but it was what they trained for, and what challenged them the best. And it had to be said that a high-profile homicide raised your own profile, and promotion prospects.

Not that Roy Grace ever wished anyone dead.

Over the past few years, weekends had been jinxed for him. On each occasion that he had hoped for a quiet one, because of a social engagement, or more recently wanting to spend time with his wife, Cleo, and their five-month-old son, at the last minute he had been called to a homicide investigation. He was really hoping for a peaceful weekend so that he could focus his energies on helping Cleo to sort her possessions, in preparation for the move next week from Cleo’s house, which they were sharing, to the cottage they had bought together, near the village of Henfield, eight miles north of Brighton.

Cleo stood up, carefully removing a large book of fabric swatches from her lap and placing it on the coffee table, on top of a pile of other fabric and wallpaper sample books.

Grace turned to his eleven-year-old goldfish, Marlon. ‘You’re going to be moving to the country next week. How do you feel about that? We’re going to have hens. You’ve never seen a hen, have you? Other than on television. But you’re not that big on watching television, are you?’

Cleo slipped an arm around his waist and kissed him on the neck. ‘If someone had told me, a few years ago, that one day I would be jealous of a goldfish, I wouldn’t have believed them. But I am. Sometimes I think you care more about Marlon than me!’

Marlon opened and shut his mouth, looking as ever like a grumpy, toothless old man, on his never-ending circumnavigation of his round tank, passing through the fronds of green weed and over the submerged remains of a miniature Greek temple, which Roy had bought some years ago after reading an article in a magazine on the importance of giving goldfish things to interest them in their bowls. But nothing Roy had ever bought seemed to interest this lonesome creature. Over the years he had attempted on several occasions to provide Marlon with a mate. But every companion he had bought had ended up either gulped down by this mini-monster or floating dead on the surface, while Marlon continued, day in, day out, his eternal circular motion.

He had won the fish at a fairground stall all those years back with his long-missing first wife, Sandy, who after ten years’ absence had recently been declared legally dead, allowing him and Cleo to marry. He’d carried the fish home in a water-filled plastic bag, and according to Sandy’s research, the life expectancy of fairground goldfish was less than a year.

Now eleven years on, Marlon was still going strong. In the Guinness World Records, which Roy had recently consulted, the longest-lived goldfish in the world achieved forty-three years. Still some way to go, but for sure Marlon showed no signs of pegging out anytime soon. And secretly, Roy was glad about that. In a strange way — one he would never tell Cleo about — Marlon provided a link back to Sandy. He knew that he would be sad when he eventually died. And indeed, every morning when Roy came downstairs, the first thing he did was to look at the bowl, hoping that Marlon would not be floating lifelessly on the surface.

‘As we’re moving, darling, I think Marlon should move too. I’ve just read, on the internet, that goldfish need a bigger tank than people realize.’

‘Oh? How big? Like an Olympic-size pool?’ Cleo said.

He grinned. ‘No, but big enough to stretch their legs — or rather, fins.’

‘Just so long as it’s not bigger than our new house — or I would be getting extremely jealous. And in which case, sushi, my love?’

He looked at her, quizzically. ‘Don’t even go there!’

‘Love me, love my fish, right?’

He put his arms around her. ‘God, I adore you.’

She stared into his eyes. ‘And I adore you. I love you more than anything I could ever have imagined, Detective Superintendent Grace.’

She kissed him.

Then his work phone rang.

It was Andy Anakin, the Golf 99 — the term for the divisional duty uniformed inspector at Brighton’s John Street police station — which had the somewhat unwelcome reputation as the second busiest police station in England. Unlike most of his colleagues, who had the ability to remain calm in any situation, this particular inspector had acquired the nickname of ‘Panicking Anakin’. He sounded like he was panicking now.

‘Sir,’ he said, seemingly out of breath. ‘The DI’s dealing with another urgent situation, and asked me to call you to give you the heads-up that we have a possible kidnap or abduction. A young woman has gone missing after screaming down the phone to her fiancé that there was an intruder in an underground car park in Kemp Town.’

‘What information do you have on it?’ Roy asked, immediately concerned.

‘Very little, sir, you see, that’s the thing. Very little so far. I’ve units doing a house-to-house in the area, and a distraught boyfriend who believes his fiancée has been abducted. We’re doing all we can, but it’s not looking good, sir. Really it’s not. Ops-1 has alerted the duty Gold and Critical Incident Manager.’

Grace’s heart sank. It didn’t sound or feel good. ‘What do you know about the couple?’

‘Her name’s Logan Somerville. Twenty-four, recently qualified as a chiropractor, works at a practice in Portland Road, Hove. His name’s Jamie Ball. He’s a marketing manager for the pet food division of the Condor Food Group — works at their offices near Croydon. We’re checking him out further.’

With eighty per cent of victims of violence harmed or killed by an immediate member of their family or someone close to them, Grace was well aware that loved ones were always people who deserved close investigation. He had been called, he knew, not solely because he was the on-call Senior Investigating Officer, but because he was also a trained kidnap and hostage negotiator. But if this did become an active investigation he wouldn’t be carrying out both roles.

‘I think we need to seal off the county, sir,’ Anakin said. ‘Roadblocks on all major roads, sir. Put out an all-ports. I’ve requested NPAS 15 on standby.’

NPAS 15 was the call sign for the helicopter shared between Sussex and Surrey police forces and now based at Redhill.

‘Hold on,’ Grace said.

‘This is bad, Roy. I’m telling you, this is bad!’

‘Andy, calm down. Wind your neck in!’ Grace retorted. ‘What checks have you done to verify she is missing?’

‘Local?’

‘Presumably there’s CCTV in the car park?’

‘Yes, but it’s not working.’

‘Great.’ He grimaced. ‘Have you got any local officers searching around the immediate scene? Seeing if anyone’s seen or heard anything?’

‘I have two there.’

‘Not enough. Get more there right away. Have you spoken to the boyfriend?’

‘Officers are talking to him at the moment. I’m at the scene myself. I’ve asked for divisional CID to attend, and thought you needed to be aware, Roy. I understand the woman screamed, and mentioned a man lurking in the vicinity who has not been traced.’

Grace frowned. It didn’t look good, but equally Anakin seemed to be rushing in before he had all the facts. ‘What do we know about the missing woman, Andy? Does she have anything that would make her a potential kidnap target? Is she an heiress, or does she have rich parents?’

‘I’ll find out all that.’

‘Right. Update me in thirty minutes, please — if not before.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Roy Grace stared at Marlon’s bowl, his brain racing. Mobile phones dropped connections constantly and sometimes made odd noises. A squeal of car tyres or the scrape of a metal gate or just some interference on the line could have been misinterpreted as a scream. But twenty years as a police officer had given him a rich amount of that instinct they called ‘copper’s nose’. And this one did not smell good. And the grim truth was that in abduction cases the victim was often killed very quickly. With every hour that passed, the chances of finding the victim alive lessened.

He reflected on what he had been told so far. The man who called it in, Jamie Ball, worked at Croydon and was on his way home. That would be easy enough to verify. A combination of the ANPR — number plate recognition cameras — sited strategically along the M23, and triangulation of his mobile phone, would pinpoint his approximate position at the time he claimed to have received the call from his fiancée. Likewise it would be an easy job to verify that she had made the call and where she was at the time. But with luck it wouldn’t come to that. Maybe she’d arrive back with a load of grocery bags having gone foraging in the nearby Sainsbury’s Local. He hoped.

Noah began to cry. He saw Cleo rush dutifully up the stairs. Life was complicated. So damned complicated. He suddenly envied Marlon the simplicity of his existence. Did the fish have to worry about anything? Did he fret about food being put into his tank daily or did he assume its delivery?

Marlon would never be robbed; conned out of his life savings; abused. He was unlikely to be murdered or mutilated by a terrorist attack.

His mind drifted back to the evening before, when he had travelled to Worthing with Norman Potting to speak to Bella Moy’s mother. He had wanted to see her in advance of her daughter’s funeral, to discuss with her the details of the service and if there was anything in particular she wanted him to say. Bella, who had been engaged to Norman, and was one of his core team, had tragically died in a fire.

Then his phone rang again.