Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  Josh nodded, thoughtfully. ‘But what if we can’t get him back out?’

  ‘Course we can get him out,’ Robbo said. ‘We just unscrew the lid.’

  ‘Let’s just get on with it,’ Luke said. ‘OK?’

  ‘He bloody deserves it,’ Pete reassured his mates. ‘Remember what he did on your stag night, Luke?’

  Luke would never forget. Waking from an alcoholic stupor to find himself on a bunk on the overnight sleeper to Edinburgh. Arriving forty minutes late at the altar the next afternoon as a result.

  Pete would never forget, either. The weekend before his wedding, he’d found himself in frilly lace underwear, a dildo strapped to his waist, manacled to the Clifton Gorge suspension bridge, before being rescued by the fire brigade. Both pranks had been Michael’s idea.

  ‘Typical of Mark,’ Pete said. ‘Jammy bastard. He’s the one who organized this and now he isn’t bloody here . . .’

  ‘He’s coming. He’ll be at the next pub, he knows the itinerary.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘He rang, he’s on his way.’

  ‘Fogbound in Leeds. Great!’ Robbo said.

  ‘He’ll be at the Royal Oak by the time we get there.’

  ‘Jammy bastard,’ Luke said. ‘He’s missing out on all the hard work.’

  ‘And the fun!’ Pete reminded him.

  ‘This is fun?’ Luke said. ‘Standing in the middle of a sodding forest in the pissing rain? Fun? God, you’re sad! He’d fucking better turn up to help us get Michael back out.’

  They hefted the coffin up in the air, staggered forward with it to the edge of the grave and dumped it down, hard, over the tapes. Then giggled at the muffled ‘Ouch!’ from within it.

  There was a loud thump.

  Michael banged his fist against the lid. ‘Hey! Enough!’

  Pete, who had the walkie-talkie in his coat pocket, pulled it out and switched it on. ‘Testing!’ he said. ‘Testing!’

  Inside the coffin, Pete’s voice boomed out. ‘Testing! Testing!’

  ‘Joke over!’

  ‘Relax, Michael!’ Pete said. ‘Enjoy!’

  ‘You bastards! Let me out! I need a piss!’

  Pete switched the walkie-talkie off and jammed it into the pocket of his Barbour jacket. ‘So how does this work, exactly?’

  ‘We lift the tapes,’ Robbo said. ‘One each end.’

  Pete dug the walkie-talkie out and switched it on. ‘We’re getting this taped, Michael!’ Then he switched it off again.

  The four of them laughed. Then each picked up an end of tape and took up the slack.

  ‘One . . . two . . . three!’ Robbo counted.

  ‘Fuck, this is heavy!’ Luke said, taking the strain and lifting.

  Slowly, jerkily, listing like a stricken ship, the coffin sank down into the deep hole.

  When it reached the bottom they could barely see it in the darkness.

  Pete held the flashlight. In the beam they could make out the breathing tube sticking limply out of the drinking-straw-sized hole that had been cut in the lid.

  Robbo grabbed the walkie-talkie. ‘Hey, Michael, your dick’s sticking out. Are you enjoying the magazine?’

  ‘OK, joke over. Now let me out!’

  ‘We’re off to a pole-dancing club. Too bad you can’t join us!’ Robbo switched off the radio before Michael could reply. Then, pocketing it, he picked up a spade and began shovelling earth over the edge of the grave and roared with laughter as it rattled down on the roof of the coffin.

  With a loud whoop Pete grabbed another shovel and joined in. For some moments both of them worked hard until only a few bald patches of coffin showed through the earth. Then these were covered. Both of them continued, the drink fuelling their work into a frenzy, until there was a good couple of feet of earth piled on top of the coffin. The breathing tube barely showed above it.

  ‘Hey!’ Luke said. ‘Hey, stop that! The more you shovel on the more we’re going to have to dig back out again in two hours’ time.’

  ‘It’s a grave!’ Robbo said. ‘That’s what you do with a grave, you cover the coffin!’

  Luke grabbed the spade from him. ‘Enough!’ he said, firmly. ‘I want to spend the evening drinking, not bloody digging, OK?’

  Robbo nodded, never wanting to upset anyone in the group. Pete, sweating heavily, threw his spade down. ‘Don’t think I’ll take this up as a career,’ he said.

  They pulled the corrugated iron sheet over the top, then stood back in silence for some moments. Rain pinged on the metal.

  ‘OK,’ Pete said. ‘We’re outta here.’

  Luke dug his hands into his coat pocket, dubiously. ‘Are we really sure about this?’

  ‘We agreed we were going to teach him a lesson,’ Robbo said.

  ‘What if he chokes on his vomit, or something?’

  ‘He’ll be fine, he’s not that drunk,’ Josh said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Josh climbed into the rear of the van, and Luke shut the doors. Then Pete, Luke and Robbo squeezed into the front, and Robbo started the engine. They drove back down the track for half a mile, then made a right turn onto the main road.

  Then he switched on the walkie-talkie. ‘How you doing, Michael?’

  ‘Guys, listen, I’m really not enjoying this joke.’

  ‘Really?’ Robbo said. ‘We are!’

  Luke took the radio. ‘This is what’s known as pure vanilla revenge, Michael!’

  All four of them in the van roared with laughter. Now it was Josh’s turn. ‘Hey, Michael, we’re going to this fantastic club, they have the most beautiful women, butt naked, sliding their bodies up and down poles. You’re going to be really pissed you’re missing out on this!’

  Michael’s voice slurred back, just a tad plaintive. ‘Can we stop this now, please? I’m really not enjoying this.’

  Through the windscreen Robbo could see roadworks ahead, with a green light. He accelerated.

  Luke shouted over Josh’s shoulder, ‘Hey, Michael, just relax, we’ll be back in a couple of hours!’

  ‘What do you mean, a couple of hours?’

  The light turned red. Not enough time to stop. Robbo accelerated even harder and shot through. ‘Gimme the thing,’ he said, grabbing the radio and steering one-handed around a long curve. He peered down in the ambient glow of the dash and hit the talk button.

  ‘Hey, Michael—’

  ‘ROBBO!’ Luke’s voice, screaming.

  Headlights above them, coming straight at them.

  Blinding them.

  Then the blare of a horn, deep, heavy duty, ferocious.

  ‘ROBBBBBBBBOOOOOOO!’ screamed Luke.

  Robbo stamped in panic on the brake pedal and dropped the walkie-talkie. The wheel yawed in his hands as he looked, desperately, for somewhere to go. Trees to his right, a JCB to his left, headlights burning through the windscreen, searing his eyes, coming at him out of the teeming rain, like a train.

  2

  Michael, his head swimming, heard shouting, then a sharp thud, as if someone had dropped the walkie-talkie.

  Then silence.

  He pressed the talk button. ‘Hello?’

  Just empty static came back at him.

  ‘Hello? Hey guys!’

  Still nothing. He focused his eyes on the two-way radio. It was a stubby-looking thing, a hard, black plastic casing, with one short aerial and one longer one, the name ‘Motorola’ embossed over the speaker grille. There was also an on–off switch, a volume control, a channel selector, and a tiny pinhead of a green light that was glowing brightly. Then he stared at the white satin that was inches from his eyes, fighting panic, starting to breathe faster and faster. He needed to pee, badly, going on desperately.

  Where the hell was he? Where were Josh, Luke, Pete, Robbo? Standing around, giggling? Had the bastards really gone off to a club?

  Then his panic subsided as the alcohol kicked back in again. His thoughts became leaden, muddled. His eyes closed and he was almost suckered into sleep.

/>   Opening his eyes, the satin blurred into soft focus, as a roller wave of nausea suddenly swelled up inside him, threw him up in the air then dropped him down. Up again. Down again. He swallowed, closed his eye again, giddily, feeling the coffin drifting, swaying from side to side, floating. The need to pee was receding. Suddenly the nausea wasn’t so bad any more. It was snug in here. Floating. Like being in a big bed!

  His eyes closed and he sank like a stone into sleep.

  3

  Roy Grace sat in the dark, in his ageing Alfa Romeo in the line of stationary traffic, rain drumming the roof, his fingers drumming the wheel, barely listening to the Dido CD that was playing. He felt tense. Impatient. Gloomy.

  He felt like shit.

  Tomorrow he was due to appear in court, and he knew he was in trouble.

  He took a swig of bottled Evian water, replaced the cap and jammed the bottle back in the door pocket. ‘Come on, come on!’ he said, fingers tapping again, harder now. He was already forty minutes late for his date. He hated being late, always felt it was a sign of rudeness, as if you were making the statement, my time’s more important than yours, so I can keep you waiting . . .

  If he had left the office just one minute sooner he wouldn’t have been late: someone else would have taken the call and the ram-raid on a jewellery shop in Brighton, by two punks who were high on God-knows-what, would have been a colleague’s problem, not his. That was one of the occupational hazards of police work – villains didn’t have the courtesy to keep to office hours.

  He should not be going out tonight, he knew. Should have stayed home, preparing himself for tomorrow. Tugging out the bottle, he drank some more water. His mouth was dry, parched. Leaden butterflies flip-flopped in his belly.

  Friends had pushed him into a handful of blind dates over the past few years, and each time he’d been a bag of nerves before he’d shown up. The nerves were even worse tonight, and, not having had a chance to shower and change, he felt uncomfortable about his appearance. All his detailed planning about what he was going to wear had gone out of the window, thanks to the two punks.

  One of them had fired a sawn-off shotgun at an off- duty cop who had come too close to the jewellery shop – but luckily not quite close enough. Roy had seen, more times than he had needed, the effects of a 12-bore fired from a few feet at a human being. It could shear off a limb or punch a hole the size of a football through their chest. This cop, a detective called Bill Green who Grace knew – they had played rugger on the same team a few times – had been peppered from about thirty yards. At this distance the pellets could just about have brought down a pheasant or a rabbit, but not a fifteen-stone scrum prop in a leather jacket. Bill Green was relatively lucky – his jacket had shielded his body but he had several pellets embedded in his face, including one in his left eye.

  By the time Grace had got to the scene, the punks were already in custody, after crashing and rolling their getaway Jeep. He was determined to stick them with an attempted murder charge on top of armed robbery. He hated the way more and more criminals were using guns in the UK – and forcing more and more police to have firearms to hand. In his father’s day armed cops would have been unheard of. Now in some cities forces kept guns in the boots of their cars as routine. Grace wasn’t naturally a vengeful person, but so far as he was concerned, anyone who fired a gun at a police officer – or at any innocent person – should be hanged.

  The traffic still wasn’t moving. He looked at the dash clock, at the rain falling, at the clock again, at the burning red tail lights of the car in front – the prat had his fogs on, almost dazzling him. Then he checked his watch, hoping the car clock might be wrong. But it wasn’t. Ten whole minutes had passed and they hadn’t moved an inch. Nor had any traffic come past from the opposite direction.

  Shards of blue light flitted across his interior mirror and wing mirror. Then he heard a siren. A patrol car screamed past. Then an ambulance. Another patrol car, flat out, followed by two fire engines.

  Shit. There had been road works when he’d come this way a couple of days ago, and he’d figured that was the reason for the delay. But now he realized it must be an accident, and fire engines meant it was a bad one.

  Another fire engine went past. Then another ambulance, twos-and-blues full on. Followed by a rescue truck.

  He looked at the clock again: 9.15 p.m. He should have picked her up three-quarters of an hour ago, in Tunbridge Wells, which was still a good twenty minutes away without this hold-up.

  Terry Miller, a newly divorced Detective Inspector in Grace’s division, had been regaling him with boasts about his conquests from a couple of internet dating sites and urging Grace to sign up. Roy had resisted, then, when he started finding suggestive emails in his inbox from different women, found out to his fury that Terry Miller had signed him up to a site called U-Date without telling him.

  He still had no idea what had prompted him to actually respond to one of the emails. Loneliness? Curiosity? Lust? He wasn’t sure. For the past eight years he had got through life just by going steadily from day to day. Some days he tried to forget, other days he felt guilty for not remembering.

  Sandy.

  Now he was suddenly feeling guilty for going on this date.

  She looked gorgeous – from her photo, at any rate. He liked her name, too. Claudine. French-sounding, it had something exotic. Her picture was hot! Amber hair, seriously pretty face, tight blouse showing a weapons-grade bust, sitting on the edge of a bed with a miniskirt pulled high enough to show she was wearing lace-topped hold-ups and might not be wearing knickers.

  They’d had just one phone conversation, in which she had practically seduced him down the line. A bunch of flowers he’d bought at a petrol station lay on the passenger seat beside him. Red roses – corny, he knew, but that was the old-fashioned romantic in him. People were right, he did need to move on, somehow. He could count the dates he’d had in the past eight and three-quarter years on just one hand. He simply could not accept there might be another Miss Right out there. That there could ever be anyone who matched up to Sandy.

  Maybe tonight that feeling would change?

  Claudine Lamont. Nice name, nice voice.

  Turn those sodding fog lamps off!

  He smelled the sweet scent of the flowers. Hoped he smelled OK, too.

  In the ambient glow from the Alfa’s dash and the tail lights of the car in front, he stared up at the mirror, unsure what he expected to see. Sadness stared back at him.

  You have to move on.

  He swallowed more water. Yup.

  In just over two months he would be thirty-nine. In just over two months also another anniversary loomed. On 26 July Sandy would have been gone for nine years. Vanished into thin air, on his thirtieth birthday. No note. All her belongings still in the house except for her handbag.

  After seven years you could have someone declared legally dead. His mother, in her hospice bed, days before she passed away from cancer, his sister, his closest friends, his shrink, all of them told him he should do that.

  No way.

  John Lennon had said, ‘Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.’ That sure as hell was true.

  By thirty-six he had always assumed Sandy and he would have had a family. Three kids had always been his dream, ideally two boys and a girl, and his weekends would be spent doing stuff with them. Family holidays. Going to the beach. Out on day trips to fun places. Playing ball games. Fixing things. Helping them at nights with homework. Bathing them. All the comfortable stuff he’d done with his own parents.

  Instead he was consumed with an inner turbulence that rarely left him, even when it allowed him to sleep. Was she alive or dead? He’d spent eight years and ten months trying to find out and was still no nearer to the truth than when he had started.

  Outside of work, life was a void. He’d been unable – or unwilling – to attempt another relationship. Every date he’d been on was a disaster. It seemed at times that his
only constant companion in his life was his goldfish, Marlon. He’d won the fish by target shooting at a fairground, nine years ago, and it had eaten all his subsequent attempts to provide it with a companion. Marlon was a surly, anti-social creature. Probably why they liked each other, Roy reflected. They were two of a kind.

  Sometimes he wished he wasn’t a policeman, that he did some less demanding job where he could switch off at five o’clock, go to the pub and then home, put his feet up in front of the telly. Normal life. But he couldn’t help it. There was some stubbornness or determination gene – or bunch of genes – inside him – and his father before him – that had driven him relentlessly throughout his life to pursue facts, to pursue the truth. It was those genes that had brought him up through the ranks, to his relatively early promotion to Detective Superintendent. But they hadn’t brought him any peace of mind.

  His face stared back at him again from the mirror. Grace grimaced at his reflection, at his hair cropped short, to little more than a light fuzz, at his nose, squashed and kinked after being broken in a scrap when he’d been a beat copper, which gave him the appearance of a retired prize fighter.

  On their first date, Sandy had told him he had eyes like Paul Newman. He’d liked that a lot. It was one of a million things he had liked about her. The fact that she had loved everything about him, unconditionally.

  Roy Grace knew that he was physically fairly unimpressive. At five foot, ten inches, he had been just two inches over the minimum height restriction when he’d joined the police, nineteen years back. But despite his love of booze, and an on–off battle with cigarettes, through hard work at the police gym he had developed a powerful physique, and had kept in shape, running twenty miles a week, and still playing the occasional game of rugger – usually on the wing.

  Nine-twenty.

  Bloody hell.

  He seriously did not want a late night. Did not need one. Could not afford one. He was in court tomorrow, and needed to bank a full night’s sleep. The whole thought of the cross-examination that awaited him pressed all kinds of bad buttons inside him.