by Peter James
Spicer shrugged evasively. ‘I in’t here to talk about myself.’
Grace raised his hands. ‘Don’t worry, I’m clean, no recorder! So tell me who’s offered you this job?’
Even though the terrace was deserted, Spicer still looked cautiously around, before leaning across the table and, in a very low voice, said, ‘Amis Smallbone.’
Grace stared back at him. ‘Amis Smallbone? Seriously?’
Spicer nodded.
‘Why you?’
‘I used to work at The Grand after I come out of prison, down in the maintenance department. Know my way around the place with me eyes shut. I know how to get into any room there. Smallbone had heard that, that’s why he come to me.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d like to go on the record with this?’
‘Yer having a laugh!’
‘If you made a statement I could get his licence revoked. He’d be back inside for a good long stretch.’
‘I know I’m not that smart,’ Spicer said. ‘But I’m still alive. If I go public and grass up Smallbone, I’d have to watch me back for the rest of my life. No thanks.’ He looked worriedly at Grace. ‘This is not – you know?’
Grace shook his head. ‘It stays with me. No one will ever know we had this conversation. So tell me more? I didn’t think burglary was Smallbone’s game.’
‘It ain’t. He just wanted to fuck you over. Embarrass you.’ Then Spicer gave a wry smile. ‘I don’t think he likes you very much.’
‘That’s a shame. My mantelpiece will look very bare this Christmas without my usual card from him.’
68
‘No I don’t need help, thank you. Do I look that fucking frail?’
The doorman of The Grand Hotel was taken aback, but outwardly kept his composure. ‘Very good, sir, just trying to be helpful.’
‘When I want your help, I’ll tell you.’
Drayton Wheeler walked on through the lobby, perspiring heavily, struggling from the weight of the sealed brown box under his left arm, and his two heavily laden carrier bags.
He passed a couple of photographers and the same oddball group of people occupying a bay of sofas, several of them holding CD booklets and record sleeves, who seemed to be camped out here, sad fans of that superbitch cow actress. How wrong was she for the part? His part. The one he had written. He pressed the button and waited for the lift. His anger was all over the place, he knew. He had shouted at two different pharmacists, the idiot on the checkout desk in the Waitrose supermarket, the cretin in Dockerills hardware store and the total asshole in Halfords.
He got out at the sixth floor, walked down the corridor, then struggled to get his key card out. He pushed it in then removed it.
The light flashed red.
‘Shit!’ he shouted. He rammed it in then pulled it out again, the weight of the package under his left arm killing him. He put it in again, the right way around this time, and the light flashed green.
He half kicked, half pushed open the door and stepped into the small room, staggered over towards the twin beds and dumped his packages down on one, with relief.
He needed a shower. Something to eat. But first he needed to check everything, to make sure the fuckwits hadn’t sold him the wrong stuff.
He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign outside the door, turned the security lock, then ripped open the first package, took out the car battery and set it down on top of the Sussex Life magazine that lay on the small round table. Then he dipped into one of the carrier bags and pulled out a heavy metal tyre bar, and then six thermometers which he placed next to the battery. Then he removed the bottle of hydrochloric acid, labelled as paint stripper, which he had bought from Dockerills. He placed that on the table, on top of another magazine, Absolute Brighton. Then he added a bottle of chlorine. He opened the last carrier bag, which was from Mothercare.
He stood back for a moment, clasped his hands together, and smiled. The great thing about dying, he thought, was that you no longer had to be worried about anything. A quotation was spinning around in his head and he tried to remember who said it.
To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the dead have no more fears.
That was right, oh yes. Do you know that quotation, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Gaia Lafayette?
Know who you are dealing with?
A man who has no more fears!
A man who has the chemical components to make mercuric chloride. And who knows how to make it!
He was a successful industrial chemist long before he became a screwed screenwriter. He remembered all this stuff from a long time ago.
Mercuric chloride is not a salt but a linear triatomic molecule, hence its tendency to sublime.
Did you know that, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Bitch queen Gaia Lafayette?
You will soon.
His phone rang. He answered it aggressively, not in any mood to be disturbed.
An irritatingly cheery young woman said, ‘Jerry Baxter?’
He remembered the voice. ‘Uh huh.’
‘You didn’t turn up for your costume fitting today. Just wanted to check if you were still interested in being an extra on The King’s Lover?’
He held his temper. ‘I’m sorry, I had an important meeting.’
‘No problem, Jerry. We’re shooting crowd scenes outside the Pavilion on Monday morning, weather permitting. If you’re still interested, could you come tomorrow?’
He said nothing for some moments, thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Perfect.’
69
Cleo found a parking space two streets away from her home, shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday evening. The rain had stopped and the sky was brightening. As she climbed out of her little Audi she felt leadenly tired, but happy. So incredibly happy, and with the weekend to look forward to ahead. As if responding to her mood, the baby kicked inside her.
‘You happy too, Bump?’
She lifted her handbag off the passenger seat, locked the car and started walking home, totally unaware of the two pairs of eyes watching her from behind the windscreen of the rented Volkswagen that had been following her from the mortuary.
‘Warum starrst du die dicke Frau an?’ the boy asked.
In German, she replied, ‘She’s not fat, my love. She’s carrying a baby.’
In German, he asked, ‘Whose baby?’
She did not reply. With hatred in her eyes she watched the woman.
‘Whose baby, Mama?’
For some moments she said nothing, feeling deep turmoil inside her. ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right back.’
She left the car and walked up the street for some yards past the Audi. Trying to appear nonchalant, and not to draw any attention to herself, she turned around until she could see the front of Cleo’s car.
There was a patina of dust on the bonnet, and several spatterings of seagull droppings, one lying on the duct-tape repair to the roof. But the wording she had carved was still there, clearly visible.
COPPERS TART. UR BABY IS NEXT.
70
Anna paced around her Gaia museum, her Gaia shrine. A Martini glass in her hand. She was drinking – deliberately drinking – a cocktail that was so not Gaia. It was a Manhattan. Two parts bourbon, one part red Martini, Angostura bitters and a maraschino cherry on its stalk, in a Martini glass.
She was drinking it to spite Gaia.
She was drinking it to get drunk.
It was her third Manhattan of the evening. Friday evening. She didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. So she could get totally smashed.
She had never been so humiliated in her life as she had been on Wednesday. Her face was still burning. She could hear the silent laughter of all the other fans on the sofas.
Standing in front of a life-size cardboard cut-out of her idol, she stared into those blue eyes. ‘What went wrong? Hey? Tell me? I’m your number one fan and you turned away from me? Tell me why? Hey? Tell me? You found someone else? Someone who’s more into you than me?’
Not possible.
No way.
‘You’ve made my life worth living, don’t you know that, don’t you care? You’re the only person who’s ever loved me.’
In her left hand she held a knife. A kukri. The knife one of her father’s ancestors had taken from a dead soldier way back during the Gurkha wars. Gurkhas were brave people. They did not care about dying.
If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha.
What do you think about that, Gaia? Are you lying or a Gurkha?
Or just a parvenue from Whitehawk in Brighton who thinks you are too big to bother to acknowledge your fans?
She strutted very slowly down the steep wooden stairs, went through into the kitchen and filled her glass with the remainder of the drink that was in the silver cocktail shaker. Then she went back upstairs to her shrine.
‘Cheers, Gaia!’ she said. ‘So tell me, did it feel good cutting me dead yesterday? Hey? Tell me about it? Who put you on your platform? Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think about me? You stared at me so often. I watched you watching me on Top Gear. And on so many other shows. So what do you think gave you the right to treat me like – like – scum – shit – like – like – trash? Tell me, I’m really interested. Your number one fan needs to know.
‘I do really.
‘Tell me.
‘Tell me.
‘Tell me?’
71
For the Friday evening briefing, Glenn Branson chose a seat that gave him a clear view of Bella. He noticed that, as usual, she and Norman Potting sat well apart so that eye contact between them was difficult. Experienced detectives, he thought, they’d clearly planned this between them. So just how long had their relationship being going on? It wasn’t that long ago that Potting had married for the fourth time, suckered by a Thai girl who’d been bleeding him dry of money.
He watched her pop a Malteser into her mouth. She wasn’t in any sense beautiful, but there was something about her that he found very attractive. Warmth and a vulnerability that made him want to scoop her up into his arms. Just a short while ago he’d thought he might be able to offer her something better than the life of drudgery she had looking after her ailing mother. Now it was a different challenge altogether. Potting was so not right for her. He looked at him. At the smug grin on his face.
Come on, Bella, how on earth could you fancy him?
‘Glenn? Hello? Glenn?’
With a start, he realized Roy Grace was speaking to him, and he had no idea what about.
‘Sorry, chief, I was somewhere else.’
‘Welcome back from Planet Zog!’
There was some sniggering in the room.
‘Long day?’ Potting queried. His words were like a knife twisting inside him.
‘I asked you about the DNA results on the four limbs,’ Grace said, glancing briefly down at his notes. ‘You said you were expecting them back from the lab today?’
Branson nodded. ‘Yep. I have the results.’ He opened a plastic folder. ‘I can read you out the full lab report if you want, chief?’
Grace shook his head. To most police officers, himself included, DNA reports were a mysterious, arcane art. He had always been rubbish at science at school. In fact he had been rubbish at most things at school except for rugby and running. ‘Just summarize for now, Glenn.’
‘Okay. So all four limbs are from the same body and it’s a millions-to-one certainty that they belong to the torso of “Unknown Berwick Male”,’ he said.
‘Good work,’ Grace said. ‘Right, so we have another piece of our jigsaw in place. All we are missing now is his head.’
‘Could be we are looking for a man who lost his head to a woman,’ Potting said, and guffawed.
‘You should know!’ Bella rounded on Potting. Potting blushed and looked down. To everyone else present her remark was a barb about his marital failures. Only Glenn knew the truth behind it.
‘Not very helpful, actually, Norman,’ Grace said.
‘Sorry, boss.’ He looked around with a sheepish grin, but no one responded.
Roy Grace stared at Potting. He was a fine detective, but sometimes he could be so damned irritating with his bad jokes, and on this enquiry he seemed to be worse than ever.
‘The issue we have is the timing difference between the torso and the limbs,’ Glenn said, pushing his mess of thoughts to the back of his mind, and fully focused again now. ‘We know that the torso was deposited many months ago and is in a highly advanced state of decomposition. The limbs are relatively fresh.’
‘Which would indicate that Darren Wallace’s opinion that they had been frozen is probably correct,’ said the Crime Scene Manager, David Green.
‘Is that not something the pathologist can determine?’ Bella Moy asked.
Green shook his head. ‘Not easily. Freezing will cause cell damage, but it is going to take a while to establish that.’
‘So what does this tell us?’ Grace said, addressing the entire team. ‘Why was the torso dumped months ago and the limbs only in the past couple of days?’
‘Someone playing games with us, chief?’ suggested Nick Nicholl.
‘Yes,’ Roy Grace said. ‘That’s a possibility. But let’s apply our old friend Brother Ockham’s razor.’
William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century friar and logician. He believed that the simplest answer was usually the right one.
‘You’re suggesting a link between Crimewatch and the limbs, boss?’ said Guy Batchelor.
‘I think we’re dealing with someone either very cunning or very nervous,’ Grace replied. ‘It’s possible that he left the torso and the suit fabric in the chicken farm as one clue for us. Then the limbs and the piece of suit fabric at the trout lake as another clue. In which case at some point we’ll find another piece of fabric and the head. Or, as I think more likely, Crimewatch spooked the perpetrator into getting rid of some – and possibly all – of the rest of the evidence. Lorna’s team are continuing to search for the head.’
‘Or maybe that’s the one trophy he can’t bear to part with?’ Potting said.
Grace nodded. ‘Yes, that’s possible.’ He looked at his notes. ‘For the moment we have no option but to work with what we have. Right, the suit fabric.’ He looked up at Glenn Branson. ‘What is the situation with that?’
‘DS Batchelor’s been on to this, boss.’
Batchelor nodded. ‘I’ve got the outside enquiry team going through the list that Dormeuil supplied us. All men’s clothing stores and tailors within our three counties’ parameter who bought sufficient quantities of this cloth to make suits from, including Savile Style. I gave a list of eighty-two people who bought one of the suits – or had one made – to Annalise Vineer at midday today.’ He turned to the indexer. ‘What do you have for us, Annalise?’
‘There is something interesting,’ she said, flushing a little, as if not used to being in the limelight. ‘There’s a men’s clothing store in Gardner Street, Brighton, called Luigi, which sold a suit in this material to a man called Myles Royce two years ago. It wasn’t bespoke, but the proprietor, Luigi, remembers making a number of tailoring alterations to make a better fit. Myles Royce is on our mispers list. DS Potting is following up.’
Grace turned to Potting. ‘Have you progressed this?’
‘Yes, chief. Luigi had an address for his customer in Ash Grove, Haywards Heath, which I went to this afternoon – a pleasant detached house in a decent neighbourhood. There was no answer and the place looked in a state of neglect. I come from a farming background and I know a little about grass. In my view the lawn hasn’t been cut this year. The garden’s overgrown with weeds. I found one helpful neighbour at home, an elderly lady opposite, who told me he lived alone. She’s been looking after his cat for several months. Apparently he had some investments – some kind of family trust that he lived on – and he’d told her he was going off to do a bit of travelling for a few weeks, and never returned.’ Potting paused and s
huffled through the mess of papers in front of him.
‘Now here’s the interesting thing – well – maybe not that interesting.’
Grace stared at him, waiting patiently, wishing he could get to the point. But that wasn’t Norman Potting’s style and never would be.
‘I got the name and phone number of his mother from this lady,’ Potting said. ‘So I went round to see her, in a care home in Burgess Hill. She told me her son used to call her at seven every Sunday evening without fail. She hasn’t heard from him since January. She’s very distressed – apparently they were extremely close.’
‘Did she report him as a misper?’ Bella Moy said.
‘In April.’
‘Why did she wait so long?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
‘She told me he was often travelling,’ Norman Potting replied. ‘She said he was a very big fan of Gaia, obsessed by her. He’d a small trust fund, and made a bit of money, apparently, dabbling in the property market, and that enabled him to travel the world following her.’
Grace frowned. ‘A wealthy, grown man, travelling the world for Gaia? What was all that about?’
‘I’m told she’s a huge gay icon,’ Potting replied.
‘Is – was – Myles Royce gay?’ Branson interjected.
‘The neighbour said she saw a few young men turn up at his house, but never any ladies,’ Potting said.
Grace thought hard. Something didn’t quite add up. A Gaia fan butchered. Gaia in town. A recent murder attempt on her in Los Angeles. Coincidences?
He didn’t like coincidences much. They were too convenient. Easy to explain something away as coincidence.
Much harder to drill down beneath the surface to see what was really there.
‘Has his mother got anything we might get his DNA from, Norman?’ he asked.
Potting shook his head. ‘No, but I got the neighbour to let me into his house. I removed one of his suits. He fits our size profile exactly. And I brought back a hairbrush and toothbrush – I’ve already had them sent to the lab.’
