by James, Peter
Ten minutes later, he opened the front door, knelt and scooped up the bits of the unicorn’s white fluffy innards, then led the dog through into the kitchen, and opened the treats tin. He took a bone-shaped one out and held it up. Obediently, Humphrey jumped into his basket and Grace gave him his biscuit. ‘Night, boy!’ Then he turned the light out and headed upstairs as quietly as he could.
As he switched the landing light off outside their bedroom, he turned on his phone torch at the same time in the hope of not waking Cleo. But he could see she was awake.
‘Hi, darling!’ she said as he crept into the room, her voice only very slightly sleepy. An instant later her bedside light came on and she peered at him, blinking.
‘Sorry to wake you, darling,’ he said.
‘You didn’t, don’t worry, I’ve only just come to bed.’
‘You stayed up late. Everything OK?’
‘Not really. Some issues with Bruno – tell you tomorrow.’
He sat down on the bed and kissed her. ‘You can tell me now, if you want?’
Looking down ruefully at her swollen midriff, she said, ‘What I really want is a glass of wine. Or two. Or three.’
Alarmed, he said, ‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘Your sweet little boy.’
Grace had noticed over the past months that whenever Bruno was well-behaved, Cleo referred to him as our son. But when he’d behaved like a little shit, he suddenly became your boy.
‘Tell me?’
‘I had a crazy day in the mortuary, didn’t get home until nearly 7 p.m. Kaitlynn collected him from school much earlier. You’ll never guess what he did?’
‘Try me?’
‘He’d let out all the hens.’
‘He always does that.’
‘Yes, in the garden. But this evening he’d let them out into the field – he said he’d decided it was cruel to keep them cooped up in such a small garden as ours. It must have been that fox, the one we’ve seen in the garden, right? It got Bella while they were out there.’
‘Bella?’
She nodded.
‘No, not poor Bella.’ He felt really upset.
Bella was their favourite hen, named after one of Roy’s team, Bella Moy, Norman’s fiancée, who had sadly lost her life two years ago. She was the smallest and the most affectionate of all the hens they had, always coming running towards them and the only one that would let them pick her up and cuddle her.
Cleo had tears in her eyes. Grace kissed her again. ‘How bloody stupid of him. What did he say?’
She shook her head, signalling disbelief. ‘That it would be wrong to blame the fox. That it was probably hungry.’
‘He didn’t accept any blame himself?’
‘I don’t think he knows the concept of blame.’
Before he could respond, she went on. ‘That’s not all. I had Mr Hartwell on the phone for half an hour.’
Hartwell was the headmaster.
‘What did he say?’
‘He’s a nice man and he really wants to help, but he said they’re at their wits’ end with Bruno. Apparently his behaviour hasn’t improved over the summer: he still won’t engage with any of his fellow pupils and has already been rude to all his teachers, and it’s only the first day back. Mr Hartwell says that unless Bruno’s attitude improves before the end of this term, he is very sorry but he won’t be able to return next year.’
Grace said nothing for some moments, reflecting. Bruno was the son he never knew he had. He had learned, only on her deathbed, that his long-missing wife, Sandy, had left him soon after discovering she was pregnant with this boy. He’d subsequently found out that, in those years after she’d left, she’d led a wayward life, joining first the Scientologists, then another cult in Germany. She got bigamously married to a rich guy, then they separated after just two years. Unbelievably, at some point she’d become a heroin addict, before getting clean and working to help addicts, first in Frankfurt and then Munich.
Grace wasn’t sure at what point it had all gone wrong for her, but from what Sandy had told him, she had drifted into a hedonistic lifestyle while in the company of the persuasive, charismatic cult leader, and she’d found it nearly impossible to pull herself out of it. He’d tried to get Bruno to talk about this time without much success, and he could only guess at what impact this peripatetic life with an unstable, erratic single parent had had on him.
And he was well aware that uprooting Bruno from his roots in Germany and bringing him to England at the age of ten was again disruptive for him. But he’d hoped that introducing him into a stable, loving and welcoming family environment might have helped him settle down. So far, it seemed not. Whatever Sandy – the woman he had once considered his soulmate – had instilled in their son, she’d left him with strange values and a seriously skewed moral compass.
‘I’d be happy to go and speak to Ted Hartwell. Maybe we’ve never explained Bruno’s background fully enough to him. What do you think?’
‘It’s worth a try. I’ll come with you. I’m sure there is good inside Bruno – maybe we just have to dig deeper to mine it out.’
‘I’ve got it in my diary that I’m taking him to school tomorrow, is that right?’
‘Please. I’ve got eight postmortems. I’ve got to be in at 7 a.m.’
‘No probs, I’ll take him and have a chat with him in the car.’
‘Good luck with that.’
He cocked his head. ‘Meaning?’
Cleo gave him a sleepy smile. ‘I do think he responds to you better than he does to me. But . . .’
He kissed her on the forehead, undressed, hanging up his suit and his tie, then went through into the bathroom and dumped his underwear and shirt in the laundry basket. He picked up the tube of toothpaste and, as the electric brush whirred, tried to focus back on the Paternoster case, but it was Bruno at the forefront of his mind.
And it was Bruno that kept him awake for much of the night. When he did lapse into brief sleep, he repeatedly dreamed of the boy and woke each time with a feeling of dread.
31
Tuesday 3 September
‘Success is all about being ahead of the curve.’
An appropriate metaphor for a dealer in performance cars that his bank manager had used, ‘Lanky’ Larry Olson rued.
‘But sometimes,’ his bank manager told him, turning him down for a further business loan, ‘you can be too far ahead of the curve. Ever heard the saying, “It’s the second mouse that gets the cheese?”’
Larry had come in early this morning to open up his small showroom with its big name, Sussex Sporting E-Cars. The location, in a mews off Church Road, wasn’t helping, because there was hardly any through traffic. He should have been bolder and gone for a prime site when he’d opened, but he had worried that the rent would have stretched him too much.
The gangly fifty-five-year-old was dressed as he was every day of his working life, in a sharp suit, shirt and sober tie. He had a mop of thinning fair hair turning to grey, big blue eyes, a winning smile, and was charm personified. His first wife had told him he could sell fridges to Eskimos. His second that he could sell guano to bats. His future third wife had told him, three years ago, that he was nuts to give up his lucrative job as the top salesman for Jim Spatchcock Honda.
But hey, when he’d hit fifty he’d seen Jim Spatchcock in the Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of over £200 million from his chain of car dealerships around the UK. Sure, Larry knew he earned good money himself, but it was peanuts compared to that. With retirement looming too close for comfort, it was now or never if he was going to strike out and make his fortune.
The way forward, for sure, was in electric cars. He used his savings, remortgage money from his house and a decent bank loan to start this specialist business, trading in second-hand electric performance cars.
Except the business, which had started two years ago, wasn’t as of yet booming the way he had anticipated, and he was fast running out of cash – and
credit.
As he stared around the shiny, brand-new-looking stock of cars in his showroom, he was reflecting on just how poor business had been during these past months. The words from a record made by his favourite-ever comedians, the late Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, came to mind.
Moore was interviewing Cook in his persona of the world’s most unsuccessful entrepreneur, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, about his latest catastrophic venture, a restaurant serving only frogs and peaches, situated in a bog in the middle of the Yorkshire Moors. In response to the question about how business had been, Cook replied, ‘Business hasn’t been and there hasn’t been any business.’
Which was pretty much how he felt, Larry reflected.
So far he was surviving, just. But with the further loan he’d been hoping for now turned down, he needed to make some good sales – and quickly. And he had one very big prospect coming in this morning to test drive the most expensive car in the showroom. A top spec, two-year-old BMW i8 hybrid. New, it had cost close to £130,000. He’d managed to buy it at an auction of cars seized back by finance companies for a knock-down £37,000 and had it advertised at £89,500. If he got that price it would hand him a profit of more than £50,000, which would see him through for a good few months.
The potential customers, a young couple, Christopher Goodman and his fiancée, Sophia, had come in on Saturday and made a beeline for the car, both clambering in and sitting there, admiring it.
If there were two things, above all, Larry had learned in thirty-seven years as a car salesman, the first was that customers did not always end up buying the first car they sat in – mostly because they couldn’t afford it. And second, that it was usually the woman who made the decision on what car to buy.
He had left them alone for some while, then casually sauntered over, copy of the Argus in his hand, and knelt beside the passenger door so as not to intimidate them by looking down at them. ‘Hi!’ he said breezily. ‘I’m Larry. Are you Albion fans?’
Another of the things he’d learned was never to open a conversation talking about cars.
‘Not really,’ the young woman said, ‘but my fiancé is.’
‘What do you think of the latest signing?’ Olson asked, raising the paper, with the news being the headline item.
‘£14 million. A lot of money – let’s hope he does the magic, right?’ the guy said.
‘Oh yes. I’m right with you!’ Larry paused a moment. ‘If there’s anything in here you’d like to take a look at, just shout.’
‘We actually like this,’ the guy replied. ‘We’re getting married next month and we’re planning a motoring honeymoon through Europe – so we’re looking for something suitable.’
‘Congratulations!’ he said. ‘I’m Larry Olson, by the way.’
‘Chris Goodman, and this is my fiancée, Sophia.’
‘A delight to meet you, Chris and Sophia!’
This was definitely hopeful, he decided. ‘Are you looking to exchange anything?’ he asked, as the next step to drawing someone in.
‘We have a Lotus Elise, but we’re happy to sell that privately.’ Goodman held the wheel and fondled the gear shift, the smile on his face spreading. Then they both got out of the car and walked around it.
‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ Larry encouraged. ‘You know what, we’re only here for a short while. Live the dream! If you can afford it, why not?’
It was that phrase, ‘If you can afford it’, that hooked them, he had learned. Oh yes!
And he could see that the words had struck home.
‘Imagine gliding away from your wedding reception in this beauty! And there are very good finance deals at the moment,’ Olson said, pushing at temptation. ‘Might even be able to get you zero interest for the first twelve months.’
It was the generous terms he had to offer from finance companies, enabling customers to buy something they thought would be beyond their reach, that usually clinched it. And who would dare to admit they couldn’t afford it?
‘You’re asking for £89,500?’ Sophia said, looking at the price displayed on the windscreen. ‘What would be your best price, if we were interested?’
‘Let me talk to my boss and see if we can do anything.’ Larry winked. ‘Give me a couple of minutes.’
‘Sure.’
He walked to the rear of the showroom and through the door into the empty double garage at the rear, closing it behind him. There was a kitchenette in there. He sat on a stool at the table for a carefully timed five minutes, reading the paper, then he went back into the showroom and approached the couple with a beam.
‘My boss says he would take £88,000 and throw in a year’s tax and warranty.’
‘What about servicing charges?’ Goodman asked.
‘I’m sure we could do something on that, too.’
Sophia knelt and studied the tyres.
‘All replaced three months ago, I understand,’ Larry said.
She stood back up and looked at her fiancé. He was nodding enthusiastically. She turned to Larry. ‘OK, we’ll think about it.’
Quoting one of his favourites, from Robert Browning, Larry Olson’s parting words to the couple had been, ‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’
It had been no surprise to him when Christopher Goodman called, later that afternoon, asking first if the car was still available, and then, sounding very relieved it was, to book a test drive. Could Larry hold the car until Tuesday morning?
He’d given him the usual patter that he had someone else who was interested coming back on Monday, but for a £5,000 deposit, fully refundable, he’d hold it until midday, Tuesday. And he would need to see on Tuesday either a bank statement showing he was good for the finance or a reference from his bank manager, along with his driving licence.
Goodman had replied that he would bring both. And the deposit had been paid minutes later.
Larry walked across the showroom floor shortly after 7.30 a.m. with a spring in his step. He already had a selection of financial options printed out to show the punter just how incredibly affordable it was.
He only had one slight concern, and that was the weather. It was dry at the moment, but rain was forecast for a little later. Electric cars, especially this BMW, had phenomenal acceleration, and even this BMW with its sure-footed handling could easily catch out the inexperienced driver on a slippery, wet road. But hey, hopefully it would still be dry for the test drive.
And he was confident that, once he had driven it, Goodman would be smitten.
Suddenly he felt a tightening in his chest and a pain, like indigestion. The pain shot acutely down both his arms. It was another angina attack coming on. His heart specialist had been trying to fix a date to book him in for a triple bypass, but Olson didn’t have time for that, not at the moment, when he had to focus on keeping his business afloat. Maybe if he got this sale he could then afford the time.
He dug his hand into his jacket pocket, pulled out the vial of tiny white nitroglycerine tablets and popped one under his tongue. Within half a minute or so the pain began to subside. Shit, the symptoms were coming on increasingly frequently now.
You’d better buy this car, Christopher Goodman. You won’t just be saving my business, you might be saving my life.
And with his lovely, caring Irish girlfriend, Shauna, life was really good for him again, after the trauma of his health scares. He would have the op and afterwards he would do his damnedest to get fit again. He had promised her that.
Manoeuvring some of his other stock out of the way, he slid open the showroom doors, grabbed the BMW’s keys off the hook on his office wall and decided to take it for a quick spin round the block to check everything was working fine, after a few weeks of it sitting idle in the showroom. Unplugging the charging cable, he then, mindful of his bad back, eased himself gently into the driver’s seat with a pained grunt, glided the car silently out of the showroom, drove north up to Church Road, Hove, and turned left. I
t was 7.45 a.m.
32
Tuesday 3 September
Roy Grace turned his Alfa Romeo right into New Church Road. Bruno, hair neatly brushed as ever, dressed in his red school blazer, white shirt and striped tie, grey trousers and black shoes, sat beside him, silent and stroppy. It was 7.45 a.m.
Bruno was in a particularly strange mood this morning, barely saying a word during the half-hour drive in the early rush-hour traffic. In response to his father’s question about what he had on at school today, he just tut-tutted loudly, intently studying his phone. From the sounds coming out of it, Grace guessed he was looking at TikTok.
Attempting again to engage, he asked if he was playing any sport this afternoon, but all he got in response was Bruno sighing loudly in an irritable ‘leave me alone’ fashion.
For a while, Grace turned up the volume on the radio, tuned to Radio Sussex, listening to the news and traffic reports. He’d been hoping to have a good chat in the car with Bruno, but so far that hadn’t happened. He’d learned that ignoring the boy was sometimes the best tactic to get him to speak. The tactic worked now.
‘Why do you think school is so important?’ Bruno asked suddenly.
Roy turned down the radio. ‘You don’t think it is?’
‘Most teachers I have are useless. I know more than them,’ he said.
‘You do?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I don’t think, I know.’
‘You do?’ The small boy’s confidence – and arrogance – at times was breathtaking, he thought.
‘Yeah, I tested my Geography teacher yesterday. I asked him what the capital of Kazakhstan was. He didn’t know.’
‘I don’t know either,’ Grace said.
‘You’re just a police officer, you’re not paid to know the capital of countries. Mr Maitland is.’
‘So what is it?’
‘Nur-Sultan.’
