Left You Dead

by James, Peter

  When the DI had finished, Grace asked him, ‘Who were the officers who attended at the Paternosters’ house?’

  When he heard one of them was John Alldridge, he immediately took what he had heard even more seriously. ‘Alldridge was on my team for a while, Bryce – he’s sound, a very good copper.’

  ‘I agree with you, sir.’

  ‘It’s good to raise this,’ Grace said. He asked the DI to recap on a few points on which he wasn’t clear, then he sat thinking for some moments. ‘I wouldn’t ordinarily be worried after someone was missing for such a short time, but there’s something about this that feels wrong. You’ve done the right thing, calling me.’

  Robinson was one of the diminishing number of senior officers in the force who remembered that Roy Grace’s own wife, Sandy, had disappeared, well over a decade ago now. And he was glad it was Grace who was the on-call SIO – some might have been dismissive, but from his own past experience, he clearly wasn’t.

  ‘Leave it with me, Bryce, I’ll have it looked into right away. You’ve circulated her photograph?’

  ‘I have, sir.’

  ‘Good work.’

  Ending the call, Roy Grace thought for a short while. Ordinarily, he would have delegated a routine suspicious misper enquiry to one of his team, but something about this one intrigued him. And besides, he’d been deskbound for several weeks. One thing he’d always promised himself, each time he had been promoted further up the ranks, was that he would never end up as a desk jockey, as so many of his colleagues had, and that he would always try to remain hands-on whenever he could.

  But there was something else here that resonated powerfully. The memory of that day, on his thirtieth birthday, when he’d come home, looking forward to a romantic celebratory dinner with Sandy, only to discover she had vanished off the face of the earth. And the years of hell that had followed, during which, while continuing to function as a homicide detective, he’d spent every spare second of his life searching for her and wondering what might have happened to her. If Eden Paternoster had done a ‘Sandy’ on her husband, Niall, then he really felt for the poor bastard.

  He called Glenn Branson.

  ‘Boss?’ the DI answered.

  ‘I’m just calling to see if you need any groceries?’

  ‘What? You’ve taken up moonlighting for Ocado to supplement your income?’

  ‘Haha.’

  Grace brought him up to speed on the Paternoster situation and the DI immediately became serious. ‘Doesn’t sound good, boss, but one thing doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Tell me?’

  ‘Well, if I’d disappeared my wife why would I call the police and get them crawling all over me – rather than give it a few days?’

  ‘Who’s to say he hasn’t already given it a few days?’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘What if he’s planned it all carefully?’ Grace posited. ‘He’s murdered and disposed of his wife already and now he’s faking her vanishing, by way of an explanation?’

  ‘I guess that’s a possibility,’ Branson replied.

  ‘Speed is of the essence, I think we’re going to need to get on this one straight away, it really doesn’t feel right. Meet me in the car park. We’re going to Tesco Holmbush.’

  ‘Great! I’ll bring my shopping list with me.’

  18

  Monday 2 September

  As Roy Grace and Glenn Branson walked across the busy Tesco car park, the DI cast an eye up and down his boss – something he did frequently, to Grace’s irritation – before nodding approvingly. ‘Nice whistle,’ he said. ‘New?’

  ‘Cleo took me shopping – it’s nothing special. I picked up a couple of lightweight work suits in the sales.’

  Branson reached out a hand and felt his jacket lapel. ‘Quality threads? Bespoke tailor?’

  ‘On my salary?’

  Then Branson frowned disapprovingly at his tie. ‘Too conservative. You should go bolder.’

  Grace gave him a sideways look. ‘Are we done on the sartorial inspection?’

  The DI shook his head. ‘Nah, you need me to take you shopping again.’

  ‘I remember the last time you did. It took three months for my credit card to stop smouldering.’

  ‘Yeah? And look what you pulled from wearing that gear – Cleo! And did I get any credit? Nope, just you whinging on about the cost! So, anyhow, Niall Paternoster – strange name.’

  ‘Strange name?’

  Branson nodded.

  Grace looked at him quizzically. ‘So that makes him a suspect?’

  ‘Just saying – Paternosters are a kind of lift, with no doors. You jump into them, onto a moving platform.’

  ‘They have one at Munich Police HQ, I’ve been in it,’ Grace said. ‘A bit weird.’

  ‘They sound bloody dangerous.’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘The name – it’s odd.’

  They walked through the automatic doors of Tesco into the cool, air-conditioned interior.

  A red-haired employee, with the name Tim on his badge, was adjusting a display advertising a special offer for wines. Grace approached him and showed him his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace and my colleague, Detective Inspector Branson, of Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. We’d like to speak to your Head of Security, please.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, sir. May I tell her what it’s about?’

  ‘A lady has been reported missing by her husband. He believes she came into this store yesterday afternoon, but he has not seen her since. We’d like to view the CCTV footage from between 3 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. yesterday, and we would like to talk to any members of staff who were present then who might have seen her.’ He showed him, on his tablet, the photograph of Eden Paternoster that Robinson had emailed.

  The man frowned. ‘Ah, yes, this rings a bell. I think her husband came in just before we closed yesterday. I spoke to him at one point and we searched the store thoroughly.’

  ‘And you didn’t find her?’

  ‘No, we didn’t. She certainly wasn’t in here.’ He hesitated. ‘If you’ll just wait here a moment, officers?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He hurried off.

  ‘With the amount of security in this place we must be able to find something to help with this,’ Branson said, looking around, trying to spot the cameras. Following his gaze, Grace nodded, then out of the corner of his eye saw Tim hurrying back towards them, alongside a woman he was surprised to recognize.

  In her late fifties, with a mane of side-parted silver hair, she wore a chalk-striped trouser suit and high-heeled shoes that made her taller than he remembered. As she approached with an outstretched hand, she gave him a broad grin of recognition. ‘My God, Roy! I keep reading about you all the time in the Argus – so happy to see you got promoted to where you deserve! I understand you wanted to see the Head of Security – that’s me!’

  He shook former Detective Inspector Corinne Edgerton’s hand warmly. Corinne had been one of his team when he was first promoted to Major Crime. He could not believe – and was so happy to see – that she had landed here, in this role.

  He introduced Glenn Branson, who had been a uniformed PC at the time when she’d retired, then briefly outlined the situation. ‘What I would like to see is video confirmation of Eden Paternoster leaving her husband’s car at the time he has stated.’

  Corinne Edgerton nodded, a little dubiously. ‘We can take a look at the car park CCTV, but we don’t have a lot of coverage there. Our main cameras are above the aisles, looking down for shoplifters – and monitoring our staff, too.’ She smiled. ‘Let’s go up to the CCTV room and see what we have from yesterday, both outside and inside. We should certainly pick up this lady inside the store, if not outside also.’

  For the next thirty minutes, Grace and Branson sat with Edgerton in front of the bank of monitors, in the small room one floor up from the public area of the store. They watched all recordings from each camera, firs
tly those covering outside, and then those covering the aisles, from fifteen minutes before the time that Niall Paternoster had claimed he’d driven into the car park and his wife had jumped out of the car to dash into the store, until half an hour after the store had closed.

  The exterior cameras scanning a limited area of the car park had recorded no sign of the Paternosters’ black BMW entering. But that did not mean it hadn’t – it was a vast area and with only limited CCTV coverage. Grace had been hoping to see footage of Eden Paternoster getting out of the car, which would have established that her husband had been telling the truth.

  The cameras covering the front entrance of the store had not shown her either, neither entering nor leaving. And she had not appeared on any of the cameras that were strategically sited to monitor the aisles in the store. There were a dozen cameras covering the vast interior space. With Edgerton operating the control sticks, they forwarded slowly through each of them in turn, occasionally zooming in on anyone who remotely fitted Eden’s description and freezing the image while they checked against her photograph. But finally they were satisfied, supported by the fact that no one working in the store had seen her, that there was no evidence she had been here at the time her husband had said.

  ‘Would it be possible, Corinne,’ Grace asked, ‘for her to have entered the store any other way?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘The lady could have come in via the staff entrance at the rear, but she’d have had to have known the key code.’

  ‘How often do you change that?’ Branson asked.

  ‘God, probably not often enough. I’ve been here five years and we’ve only changed it a handful of times.’

  Grace gave her a reproachful look.

  She smiled. ‘I know, mea culpa!’

  ‘So that is a possibility?’ Grace asked.

  She shook her head adamantly. ‘If she was in this store, she would have been picked up on one of the cameras. No question. And you’ve seen the one almost directly above the cat litter – animal products – section.’

  Either, Roy Grace thought, Eden Paternoster had never entered the store at the time her husband claimed, or—

  Her husband had the time wrong?

  Or he was lying?

  A-B-C.

  That mantra from the Murder Manual replayed in his head as it did so often when confronting a potential crime scene. Assume nothing. Believe no one. Check everything.

  Grace’s phone rang. He saw on the display it was Norman Potting.

  ‘Need to take this,’ he said and stepped outside the office.

  The DS sounded upset. ‘It’s bad news, Roy,’ he said, his voice low, almost a growl.

  ‘I’ll come now. Meet you in Bill’s in Lewes in thirty minutes.’

  ‘No, please don’t worry, I just thought you should know – in case I have to take any time out.’

  ‘I’m meeting you at Bill’s in thirty minutes. That’s an order!’

  Roy put his head back through the door. ‘I’m sorry, mate, something’s come up. Can you deal with this and I’ll see you back at HQ.’

  After Grace apologized to Edgerton and left, Branson asked her to replay all the digital recordings from 3 p.m. to 3.30 p.m. yesterday, just for belt and braces.

  Half an hour later, they were still in the same place. Nothing.

  Branson then asked her to play again all the footage up to 4.30 p.m. They saw a man with tousled hair, dressed in a faded T-shirt – an old Pink Floyd one – and cut-off jeans approach the front entrance and speak to Tim outside, then go in.

  ‘That’s the husband,’ Corinne said. ‘He came in and questioned members of staff, after which they did a thorough search for her.’

  ‘Could you print me off an image of him?’ Branson asked.

  ‘Sure, though it won’t be great quality, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said.

  Next, they went to her office. Branson was conscious it was Monday lunchtime and the store was busy. But Corinne was anxious to help him. Over the following hour she had the entire staff of the store come in one by one and look at the photograph of Eden Paternoster.

  Each of them shook their head in turn. No one had seen this woman yesterday.

  19

  Monday 2 September

  Bill’s was a cafe-restaurant, occupying a corner site on cobbled Cliffe High Street in Lewes, the county town of East Sussex. It had a green-and-white frontage, flanked by outside tables beneath its awnings. As Roy Grace arrived there at 1.45, with the lunchtime rush tailing off, he was pleased to see several tables free. He chose an end one, well spaced from the next table, which was also unoccupied, and sat down.

  He pulled out his phone to check his messages, but before he had a chance, he saw the bulky figure of Norman Potting lumbering towards him. He stood to shake his colleague’s hand. Usually irrepressibly cheerful, Potting looked gloomy. ‘Thanks, chief,’ he said, pulling up the chair opposite and lowering his frame onto it.

  A waitress appeared. Potting ordered an Americano with hot milk and Grace a tuna sandwich and sparkling water. Potting didn’t want any food.

  ‘Tell me?’ Grace said.

  ‘Can you keep it confidential, chief?’

  ‘Of course.’ Grace noticed Potting’s voice was sounding more gruff than usual.

  The DS looked at him with baleful eyes, and for the first time in a long while Grace noticed he was looking his age – and more. ‘I might have the big C back,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Shit, I’m sorry, Norman. It’s not your prostate, you said?’

  He shook his head. ‘For some while my voice has been a bit – you know – hoarse, and I’ve been coughing a lot.’ He touched his throat. ‘And I’ve felt a lump on my neck. I ignored it for a while, but thought I’d better let the quack know so I rang the medical centre on Friday and told them. I had a call first thing this morning that he wanted to see me right away.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Well – he’s usually a pretty positive chap but he looked worried. He knows I smoked a pipe for years and that I’m overweight, drink a bit – don’t we all?’

  Grace smiled sympathetically. ‘Drink? In this job, yes.’

  ‘He ticked me off for not coming to see him sooner. Told me that with my lifestyle I’m high risk.’

  ‘What is he worried you might have, Norman?’ Grace probed gently.

  ‘Well, he wants to eliminate the possibility I might have laryngeal cancer.’ He put a hand to his throat again and stroked it absently.

  ‘So he thinks it’s only a possibility?’ Grace said, trying to reassure him.

  Potting nodded. ‘Apparently, from what he said, there are lots of symptoms that can mimic this. But he did point out at least twice that those at high risk from it are smokers, drinkers and those who live an unhealthy lifestyle.’ Potting gave him a shrug and an almost childish grin. ‘Guess I tick all those boxes. But if my number’s up, at least I can say I’ve had a bit of a life, eh?’

  Grace smiled and wagged a finger at him. ‘Stop it! You are only in your fifties, that’s no age, OK? He said you’re presenting symptoms, but he wants to eliminate cancer, not confirm it, right?’

  Potting nodded, a little sheepishly.

  ‘So, don’t talk yourself into an early grave.’ Grace tapped the side of his head. ‘I’m sure mental attitude has so much to do with fighting anything that’s wrong with us. Be positive, yes?’

  Potting nodded again.

  ‘What’s your doctor’s plan?’

  ‘He’s referring me to an ENT surgeon, who’ll do a biopsy, CT scans, chest X-ray, ultrasound and a laryngoscopy, I think it was, he said. But it’ll be about two weeks before I get the appointment.’

  Their drinks arrived and they waited until the waitress had moved away.

  ‘Two weeks?’ Grace said.

  ‘Two weeks in which I’m going to be, frankly, worried as hell.’

  ‘Listen, he said he wanted to eliminate the possibility of
cancer. Take that as a positive. Even if the news is bad, cancer treatment is getting better all the time.’

  Potting looked back at him bleakly. ‘I googled laryngeal cancer after I left the surgery. It has one of the worst survival rates of any cancer.’

  ‘Then stop googling it, OK? That’s an order. Think positive. That’s another order.’ Grace stared hard at him, their eyes meeting. ‘I know it’s easy for me to say, Norman, but really, please keep thinking positive.’

  ‘Understood, chief. I’d rather you didn’t – you know, tell anyone just yet.’

  ‘Of course.’

  20

  Monday 2 September

  Grace and Branson sat opposite each other at the small round meeting table in the Detective Superintendent’s office. They had mugs of coffee and Grace’s fast-emptying packet of chocolate digestives in front of them, as Branson, complaining he hadn’t had lunch, worked through them. Two photographic prints of Eden Paternoster, from the digital images they’d been emailed, also lay there, one with the background of the Parham House lake and the other in front of a Christmas tree.

  ‘Any more thoughts, Glenn – other than how many crumbs you can drop on my table?’

  ‘Sorry, boss!’ Branson swept them dismissively onto the floor with his hand and grabbed yet another biscuit. ‘The Amazing Disappearing Eden Paternoster!’ Then he looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, that was a bit insensitive.’

  Grace shook his head. ‘I’m over it – long over it.’

  ‘Doesn’t something like this bring it back?’

  He nodded, wistful for a moment. ‘Always. And if Eden has genuinely disappeared, then I’d feel something of the husband’s pain, yes. But this doesn’t smell at all right to me. The husband says she went into the store to get cat litter and disappeared. But his car isn’t picked up by any camera out in the car park, his wife isn’t picked up going into the store and she’s not been caught on any camera inside the store. We know from the staff that he was there, but no one can recall seeing her, although they must see hundreds of people every day. And in any case, my sense – hunch – is this is more than just a routine misper situation, especially with what John Alldridge noticed.’