Dead Simple

by Peter James

  He tried to work out where he might be. The place smelled dank, musty, there was still a faint reek of engine oil. He was lying on a hard surface and something sharp was digging into the base of his spine, hurting like hell, getting worse by the minute.

  He felt stronger, despite the pain, much stronger than he had earlier. The food was having an effect. / am not fucking staying here and dying. I haven't done everything in life to end up here. No way. No absolutely no absolutely no, no no fucking way.

  He struggled against his bonds. Breathed in deeply, trying to

  shrink his body, then out, trying to expand. And felt something give. Some tiny hint of slack. In again, pulled his arms in tight, tight, tight, out, in, out. Oh sweet Jesus he could move his right arm. Only a tiny amount. But he could move it! He pushed against his bonds, constricted, pushed again, constricted. More slack for his right arm.

  Then more still!

  He rolled over onto his side, then his stomach. His nostrils filled with the reek of engine oil now; he was lying face down in the slimy stuff, but it didn't matter, because at least the pain in the base of his spine had stopped.

  He wriggled his hand round, further round, and then touched something.

  OhmyGod!

  He was touching the top of his Ericsson mobile!

  Got his hand on it, pulled, and it came out of the back pocket of his trousers.

  His heart kicked into overdrive. It had been there in the coffin, underwater. Even though it was supposed to be waterproof he doubted it would work. All the same, he ran his fingers over its surfaces as if he was caressing the best friend he had ever had in his life. Found the power button at the top, pushed it. Listened.

  There was the faintest beep. Then a dim glow of light, enough that he could see steep walls either side of him. He was in a space about six feet wide and maybe five feet high, covered with a door of some kind. And suddenly he was alert, his brain sharp and focused. He tried to move his hand, to slip it free of the bonds and bring the phone up to his face, but nothing he did succeeded. The bonds were too tight, too well wound around his arms.

  Yet.

  He had to think this through.

  Text.

  He could try to send a text.

  Think! You switch the phone on and what happens? First is a request for the pin code. Like most people, he used a simple code: 4-4-4-4, his lucky number.

  He ran his finger across the key pad - 4 was far left, second row. He tapped it and heard a beep; then another beep each time he

  tapped the next three. Incredible! The thing had been submerged in the coffin but it was working. Enough to send a text?

  The next part was going to be much harder. He had to work out the letters on the keys. On key number 1 he remembered there were no letters. Key number 2 had ABC. He did some maths in his head the whole alphabet was in groups of three letters except for two numbers, where there were four. Which numbers? Shit, he had used text so much, it must be imprinted in his brain, if he could just access it.

  It had to be the least popular letters in the alphabet, Q and - X orZ?

  Taking it slowly, counting very carefully, he tried to recall the sequence on his phone. The menu button was top left. One tap took you to messages. The second tap took you to write message. The third tap took you to the blank screen. Then he tapped out what he hoped were the right letters. Alive. Call police.

  The next tap, he hoped he remembered correctly, took you to send.

  The one after that to phone number.

  He tapped in Ashley's number.

  The one after that should be send.

  He pressed, and to his incredible relief heard a confirmation beep. The message had gone!

  Then he felt a stab of panic. Even if the message had gone successfully, what use would it be to her, or the police? How the hell would they be able to find him from a text? Within moments he was engulfed in despair darker than the blackness that surrounded him.

  But he refused to give up. There had to be a way. Think! Think!

  His fingers moved along the keys, counting, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9.

  He pressed 9-9-9. Then he pressed the send button. Moments later he heard a faint ringing sound. Then a female voice, very faint also.

  'Emergency, which service?'

  He tried desperately to speak, but all he could make was his feeble grunting sound. He heard the voice say, 'Hello? Caller? Hello? Is everything all right? Hello, Hello, caller, can you identify yourself? Hello? Caller, are you in trouble? Can you hear me, caller?'

  There was a silence.

  Then her voice again. 'Hello, caller, are you there?'

  He hung up, dialled again. Heard another female voice speak almost identical words. He hung up again. They would have to understand if he kept doing this. Surely they would understand?

  73

  In the saloon bar of the pub, Grace ordered Cleo Morey her second Polstar vodka and cranberry, and himself a Diet Coke. One large Glenfiddich had been enough - he was going to have to return to the Incident Room later this evening and needed all his wits.

  They sat on cushioned seats at a corner table. With less than a dozen other people in the pub the place was not very busy. A one armed bandit at the far end of the room winked and blinked away forlornly like an old tart in a windswept alley.

  Cleo looked stunning. Her hair, freshly washed and shining, hung down over her shoulders. She wore a classy-looking light suede jacket over a beige tank top, white jeans of fashionable three quarter length, revealing her slender ankles, and plain white mules.

  Grace had dashed from Mark Warren's apartment to the Incident Room to get copies of Davey's diagram faxed out to the team, and from there went straight on to the pub, still arriving an hour and twenty minutes late. Of course he had had no time to change or even tidy himself up. He was wearing the plain navy suit he had put on early this morning in case he had to appear in court, with a white shirt and plain navy tie - now slackened and hanging at half mast with his top button open. Compared to Cleo he was feeling very dowdy.

  'I've never seen you in civvies before,' he joked.

  'Would you have felt more comfortable if I'd turned up in my green gown and wellies?'

  'I guess it would have had a certain je ne sais quoi about it.'

  She beamed at him, and raised her glass. 'Cheers!'

  She had a great figure. He loved her blue eyes, her small, pretty nose, her almost rosebud lips, her dimpled chin, her lean body. And she smelled stunning too, as if she had been marinated in some very classy perfume. Some difference to the reek of Trigene disinfectant that he normally associated her with - tonight she radiated femininity, her eyes sparkled with fun, and every man in the pub was j ogling her. Grace wondered if they would still be ogling if they knew| what she spent her days doing.

  He poured some more Coke over the ice cubes and lemon an<|| raised his glass back. 'Good to see you.'

  'And you, too. So, tell me about your day?'

  'You don't want to hear about my day!'

  She leaned closer, all her body language receptive to him. If she came any closer still she would be snuggling up to him. He felt very good, very comfortable sitting here with her, and for a moment all his cares were parked in another space. 'I do,' she said. 'I want a blow-by-blow account of every minute!'

  'How about the edited version? I got up, had a shower, went out, met Cleo for a drink. That enough?'

  She laughed. 'OK, that's a start. Now talk me through the bits you edited out.'

  He gave her a brief summary, mindful of the time. It was a quarter past nine - in an hour he had to be back in the Incident Room. He shouldn't have come on this date at all, he ought to have cancelled because of everything he had to do, but hell, didn't he have the right to enjoy himself just once in a while?

  'Must be tough, interviewing the bereaved,' she said. 'In seven years I should have got used to seeing people, often within a few hours of getting the news that their loved one is dead; but I still dread every s
ingle one of those moments.'

  'It might sound callous,' Grace said, 'but catching the bereaved within a few hours is the best chance we have of getting them to talk. When people have just lost someone, their first automatic response is to go into shock. While they are in that state they will talk. But within twelve hours or so, with family and friends gathering around, they start to close ranks, and clam up. If you are going to get anything useful, in my experience, you have to do it in those first hours.'

  'You like what you do?' she asked.

  He sipped his Coke. 'I do. Except - when I run up against people in my organization with limited minds.'

  Cleo poked around in her drink with a cocktail stick as if looking for something, and for a moment the intensity of her gaze reminded

  Grace of her at work in the post-mortem room, when she was taking ft tissue sample. He wondered what it would be like if he ever made love to her. Would the sight of her naked body remind him of all the naked cadavers he had looked at with her? Would he be put off by knowing that beneath her beautiful skin were the same hideous, slimy, fat-coated internal organs that all humans - and all mammals - shared in common?

  'Roy, there's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time. And of course I saw that stuff in the papers last week. How did you get interested in the supernatural?'

  It was his turn to probe his drink. With the plastic cocktail stick he squeezed the lemon flesh, releasing some of the juice into the Coke. 'When I was a kid, my uncle - my dad's brother - lived on the Isle of Wight - in Bembridge. I used to go and stay every summer for a week - and loved it. They had two sons, one slightly older than me, the other slightly younger -1 kind of grew up with them from about the age of six. I don't know if you've ever been to Cowes?'

  'Yes, Daddy's taken me sailing there during Cowes Week lots of times.'

  Mimicking her posh accent, Grace said, 'Ew, Deeaddy would.'

  Grinning and blushing, she gave him a friendly prod in the arm. 'Don't be mean! Carry on with your story.'

  'They had a tiny terraced cottage, but right opposite was quite a grand house - a townhouse, four storeys high. There were two very sweet old ladies who lived there, and they were always sitting in a big bay window on the top floor, and they'd wave at us every time we saw them. When I was fourteen my aunt and uncle sold their house and emigrated to New Zealand, and I didn't go back there for about eight years. Then, in the spring of the summer that Sandy and I got married, I was taking her on one of those kind of meet the ancestors tours - and I thought it would fun to show her Cowes and the place where I'd spent so many happy holidays as a kid.'

  He paused to light a cigarette, clocking Cleo's frown of surprise, then continued. 'When we got to my uncle's house, the beautiful townhouse opposite was in the process of being demolished - to make way for an apartment building. I asked the workmen what had happened to the two old ladies and they introduced me to the

  property developer - he'd lived in Cowes all his life and knew just about everyone. He told me the house had been empty for over forty] years.'

  He paused to drag on his cigarette. 'There had been two oldf ladies, sisters - both had lost their husbands in the First World Waf� � the story goes. They became inseparable, then one was diagnosed with cancer and the other decided she didn't want to go on livingj alone. So they both gassed themselves in that top room, sitting in the ' bay window. That was in 1947.'

  Cleo sat for some moments, thinking. 'You never saw the old ladies outside?'

  'No - I was young - just a kid. I suppose at the time it never occurred to me that they were always indoors. I supposed that some old people did just stay indoors.'

  'And your uncle and aunt?'

  'I spoke to them about it afterwards - called them in New Zealand. They said they used to wave at this blank window just to humour us - they thought these two old ladies were our imaginary friends!'

  'And they were real to you?'

  'I looked them up in the newspaper archives. There were photographs of both of them - unmistakeable. Absolutely no question in my mind - these were the two old ladies I had waved at - and who had waved at me every day for a week, for ten years of my childhood.' 'Amazing! That's a pretty convincing story,' she said. 'So what is your explanation?'

  He noticed her glass was empty. Another?'

  'Oh, why not!' she said. 'But it's my turn to buy.'

  'I kept you waiting and hour and twenty minutes - I'm buying the drinks. No argument!'

  'So long as I can buy them on our next date - deal?'

  They locked eyes, both smiling. 'Deal.'

  Then she tapped the table impatiently with her manicured finger. 'So, come on, what is your explanation?'

  Grace ordered Cleo Morey a third vodka and cranberry, then said,

  'I have several theories about ghosts.' After a brief pause, he added, 'What I mean is, I believe there are different types of ghosts--'

  He was interrupted by the beeping of his phone.

  Apologizing to Cleo, he answered with a curter than usual, 'Grace speaking.'

  It was DC Boutwood in the Incident Room. 'Sorry to bother you, sir. There has been a development. Are you on your way back yet?'

  He looked at Cleo Morey, loath to tear himself away, and said with more than a trace of reluctance, 'Yes, I'll be there in fifteen minutes.'

  74

  In the studious atmosphere of the Incident Room time barely intruded. At five past ten, when Grace walked back in, all the desks were almost fully manned. At the Operation Salsa work station, Nick forked his way through a Chinese takeaway, Bella munched on an apple, and Emma-Jane sat glued to her computer screen, sipping a carton of Ribena through a straw. For a moment none of them noticed him.

  'Hi,' he said. 'What's up?'

  Immediately all three of them looked up. Bella Moy said, through a mouthful of apple, 'Glenn's had to rush home - some problem with the babysitter. He'll be back shortly.'

  'Great! Is that the development you wanted to tell me about?'

  DC Boutwood looked at him nervously; the junior on the team, she hadn't yet spent enough time with him to know when he was being funny and when he was in a temper. She was wise to be cautious - at this moment it was borderline and he was very tired. 'Sir, they've found a coffin in a concealed grave on land owned by Double-M Properties - from the diagram you brought in.'

  'Brilliant! Fantastic news!'

  Then he was aware of all three pairs of eyes on him, and that there was something wrong. 'Yes?'

  'I'm afraid it's not such good news, sir. There's no one in it.'

  'Just an empty coffin? In a proper grave?'

  'As I understand, sir, yes.' She was getting increasingly nervous.

  'Was there anyone in it -1 mean - had there been anyone in it?'

  'Apparently on the lid - the inside - there were signs of it, yes sir.'

  'Cut the sir, OK? Call me Roy' 'Yes, sir -1 -1 - mean - Roy.'

  He gave her a fleeting smile of reassurance. 'What kind of signs inside the lid?'

  'Evidence of someone trying to scrape - cut - their way out of it.'

  'And Michael Harrison, or whoever it was, succeeded?'

  'The lid was off, sir - Roy - but apparently the grave was covered with a corrugated iron sheet and someone had put shrubs and mosses on top. Sounds like they were trying to conceal it.'

  Grace leaned his arms wearily on the work-station surface. 'So who the hell are we dealing with here? Houdini?'

  'It doesn't make much sense,' added Nicholl.

  'The guy - Michael Harrison - has a reputation as a practical joker. It makes plenty of sense,' Grace retorted testily. He was starting to feel very tired and very grumpy and wished he wasn't here at all, but back in the pub, chatting with the warm and lovely Cleo Morey.

  Realizing his blood sugar must be running low - he'd not eaten anything since a sandwich at lunchtime, and was now starving - he went out, down the corridor to a vending machine, and bought himself a double espresso, a bo
ttle of water and a Mars Bar.

  When he returned to the Incident Room, already munching on the Mars, Emma-Jane was holding a telephone receiver up for him.

  'Ashley Harper - she's insisting on speaking to you and says it is very urgent.'

  Grace swallowed his mouthful, and took the receiver. 'This is Detective Superintendent Grace,' he said.

  'It's Ashley Harper,' she said, sounding frantic. 'I've just had a text message from Michael. He's alive!'

  'What does he say?'

  'Alive, call police. I think that's what it says.'

  'You think?'

  'The spelling's a bit strange - text messages come out a bit oddly sometimes, don't they?'

  'That's all it says?'

  'Yes.'

  Thinking fast, Grace asked, 'From his own mobile?'

  'Yes, his normal number.'

  He could have dispatched Nick or Bella over to her, but he decided he wanted to see Ashley himself. 'Stay there. I'm coming over right now.'

  75

  Mark stared at his gloomy reflection in the smoked-glass mirror in the lift that was sweeping him up to the fourth floor of the Van Allen building. Everything seemed to be unravelling around him.

  Less than a week ago he'd sat on the aeroplane flying back from Leeds, reading the road test on the Ferrari 365 and trying to decide whether he would buy one in red or in silver, and whether it should have Formula-One-style gear-shift paddles, or a conventional lever on the floor.

  Now that car was fast receding towards the horizon, without him. And everything else seemed to be, too.

  What was Ashley's problem? For months they had been so incredibly close, as close as he could ever imagine two human beings could be. They shared the same humour, the same taste in food, drink, the same interests; they fancied each other like crazy, making love whenever they could snatch a few precious moments - and on a couple of occasions coming perilously close to being caught by Michael. She was an amazing girl, smart, super-bright and yet so loving and caring. He had never met anyone remotely like her, and could not imagine life without her.