by Peter James
And tomorrow he had an early meeting with his unpredictable boss, the alternatively sweet and sour Alison Vosper, Assistant Chief Constable of Sussex Police. Dog-tired suddenly, he was in the process of debating whether to pour himself another whisky and watch the rest of the movie or save it for his next night in when the doorbell rang.
Who the hell was visiting him at midnight?
The bell rang again. Followed by a sharp rapping sound. Then more rapping.
Puzzled and wary, he froze the DVD, stood up, a little unsteadily, and walked out into the hall. More rapping, insistent. Then the bell rang again.
Grace lived in a quiet, almost suburban neighbourhood, a street of semi-detached houses that went down to the Hove seafront. It was off the beaten track for the druggies and the general nocturnal flotsam of Brighton and Hove, but all the same, his guard was up.
Over the years he had crossed swords with – and pissed off – plenty of miscreants in this city because of his career. Most were just plain lowlife, but some were powerful players. Any number of people could find good reason to settle a score with him. Yet he’d never bothered to install a spy hole or a safety chain on his front door.
So, relying on his wits, somewhat addled by too much whisky, he yanked the door wide open. And found himself staring at the man he loved most in the world, Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson, six foot two inches tall, black, and bald as a meteorite. But instead of his usual cheery grin, the DS stood all crumpled up and was blubbing his eyes out.
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4
The blade pressed harder against her neck. Cutting in. Hurting more and more with every bump in the road surface.
‘Don’t even think about whatever it is you are thinking about doing,’ he said, in a voice that was calm and filled with good humour.
Blood trickled down her neck; or maybe it was perspiration, or both. She didn’t know. She was trying, desperately trying, through her terror, to think calmly. She opened her mouth to speak, watching the oncoming headlights, gripping the wheel of her BMW with slippery hands, but the blade just cut in deeper still.
They were cresting a hill, the lights of Brighton and Hove to her left.
‘Move into the left-hand lane. Take the second exit at the roundabout.’
Katie obediently turned off, into the wide, two-lane Dyke Road Avenue. The orange glow of street lighting. Large houses on either side. She knew where they were heading and she knew she had to do something before they got there. And suddenly, her heart flipped with joy. On the other side of the road was a starburst of blue flashing lights. A police car! Pulling up in front of another car.
Her left hand moved from the wheel on to the flasher stalk. She pulled it towards her, hard. And the wipers screeched across the dry windscreen.
Shit.
‘Why have you put the wipers on, Katie? It isn’t raining.’ She heard his voice from the back seat.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Wrong fucking stalk!
And now they were past the police car. She saw the lights, like some vanishing oasis, in her mirrors. And she saw the silhouette of his bearded face, shadowed by his baseball cap and further obscured by dark glasses although it was night. The face of a stranger but at the same time a face – and a voice – that were uncomfortably familiar.
‘Left turn coming up, Katie. You should slow down. You know where we are, I hope.’
The sensor on the dash would automatically trigger the switch on the gates. In a few seconds they would start to open. In a few seconds she would turn into them, and then they would close behind her, and she would be in darkness, in private, out of sight of everyone but the man behind her.
No. She had to stop that from happening.
She could swerve the car, smash into a lamppost. Or smash into the headlights of a car that was coming towards them now. She tensed even more. Looked at the speedometer. Trying to work it out. If she braked hard, or smashed into something, he would be flung forward, the knife would be flung forward. That was the smart thing to do. Not smart. It was the only option.
Oh, Jesus, help me.
Something colder than ice churned in her stomach. Her mouth felt arid. Then, suddenly, her mobile phone, on the seat beside her, began to ring. The stupid tune her stepdaughter, Carly, who was just thirteen, had programmed in and left her stuck with. The bloody ‘Chicken Song’, which embarrassed the hell out of her every time it rang.
‘Don’t even think about answering it, Katie,’ he said.
She didn’t. Instead, meekly, she turned left, through the wrought-iron gates that had obligingly swung open, and up the short, dark tarmac driveway that was lined by huge, immaculately tended rhododendron bushes that Brian had bought, for an insane price, from an architectural garden centre. For privacy, he had said.
Yep. Right. Privacy.
The front of the house loomed in her headlights. When she had left, just a few hours earlier, it had been her home. Now, at this moment, it felt like something quite different. It felt like some alien, hostile edifice that was screaming at her to leave.
But the gates were closing behind her.
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5
Roy Grace stared at Glenn Branson for some moments in shock. Usually sharply dressed, tonight the Detective Sergeant was wearing a blue beanie, a hooded grey tracksuit top over a sweatshirt, baggy trousers and trainers, and had several days’ growth of stubble on his face. Instead of the normal tang of his latest, macho cologne-of-the-month, he reeked of stale sweat. He looked more like a mugger than a cop.
Before Grace had a chance to say anything, the DS threw his arms around him, clutching him tightly, pressing his wet cheek against his friend’s face. ‘Roy, she’s thrown me out! Oh, God, man, she’s thrown me out!’
Somehow, Grace manhandled him into the house, into the living room and on to the sofa. Sitting beside him and putting an arm around his massive shoulders, he said lamely, ‘Ari?’
‘She’s thrown me out.’
‘Thrown you out? What do you mean?’
Glenn Branson leaned forward, elbows on the glass coffee table, and buried his face in his hands. ‘I can’t take this. Roy, you’ve got to help me. I can’t take this.’
‘Let me get you something. Whisky? Glass of wine? Coffee?’
‘I want Ari. I want Sammy. I want Remi.’ Then he lapsed into more deep, gulping sobs.
For a moment, Grace stared at his goldfish. He watched Marlon drifting, taking a rare break from his globetrotting, mouth opening and shutting vacantly. He found his own mouth opening and shutting also. Then he got up, went out of the room, cracked open a bottle of Courvoisier that had been gathering dust in the cupboard under the stairs for years, poured some into a tumbler and thrust it into Glenn’s meaty hands. ‘Drink some of that,’ he said.
The DS cradled the glass, peering into it in silence for some moments, as if searching for some message he was supposed to find written on the surface. Finally he took a small sip, followed immediately by a large gulp, then set the glass down, keeping his eyes gloomily fixed on it.
‘Talk to me,’ Grace said, staring at the motionless black and white image of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten on the screen. ‘Tell me – tell me what’s happened?’
Branson looked up and stared at the screen too. Then he mumbled, ‘It’s about loyalty, yeah? Friendship. Love. Betrayal.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That movie,’ he rambled. ‘The Third Man. Carol Reed directed. The music. The zither. Gets me every time. Orson Welles peaked early, couldn’t ever repeat his early success, that was his tragedy. Poor bastard. Made some of the greatest movies of all times. But what do most people remember him for? The fat man who did the sherry commercials.’
‘I’m not totally on your bus,’ Grace said.
‘Domecq, I think it was. Domecq sherry. Maybe. Who cares?’ Glenn picked up his glass and drained it. ‘I’m driving. Screw that.’
Grace waited patiently; there was no way he was letting Glenn dri
ve anywhere. He’d never seen his friend in a state like this.
Glenn held the glass up, almost without realizing.
‘You want some more?’
Staring back down at the table, the DS replied, ‘Whatever.’
Grace poured him four fingers. Just over two months ago, Glenn had been shot during a raid which Grace had organized – and which Grace had felt guilty as hell about ever since. The .38 bullet that hit the DS had, miraculously, done relatively little damage. Half an inch to the right and it would have been a very different story.
Entering his abdomen low down beneath his ribcage, the low-velocity, round-nose bullet managed to just miss the spinal cord, the aorta, the inferior vena cava and ureters. It nicked part of his loops of bowel, which had needed to be surgically resected, and caused soft-tissue damage, mostly to his fat and muscle, which had also required surgery. He had been allowed home, after ten days in hospital, for a lengthy convalescence.
At some point during every single day or night in the following two months, Grace had replayed the events of that raid. Over and over and over. Despite all the planning and precautions, it had gone badly wrong. None of his superiors had criticized him over it, but in his heart Grace felt guilty because a man under his command had been shot. And the fact that Branson was his best friend made it worse for him.
What made it even worse still was that earlier, in the same operation, another of his officers, an extremely bright young DC called Emma-Jane Boutwood, had been badly injured by a van she was trying to stop, and was still in hospital.
One quotation from a philosopher he had come across recently had given him some solace, and had taken up permanent residence in his mind. It was from S�Kierkegaard, who wrote, ‘Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards.’
‘Ari,’ Glenn said suddenly. ‘Jesus. I don’t get it.’
Grace knew that his friend had been having marital problems. It went with the territory. Police officers worked insane, irregular hours. Unless you were married to someone also in the force, who would understand, you were likely to have problems. Virtually every copper did, at some point. Maybe Sandy did too, and she never discussed it. Maybe that was why she had vanished. Had she simply had enough one day, upped sticks and left? It was just one of the many possibilities of what had happened to her that July night. On his thirtieth birthday.
Nine years ago, last Wednesday.
The Detective Sergeant drank some more brandy and then coughed violently. When he had finished he looked at Grace with large, baleful eyes. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Tell me what’s happened?’
‘Ari’s had enough, like, that’s what’s happened.’
‘Enough of what?’
‘Me. Our life. I don’t know. I just don’t know,’ he said, staring ahead. ‘She’s been doing all these self-improvement courses. I told you she keeps buying me these books, Men Are from Mars,Women Are from Venus, yeah? Why Women Can’t Read Maps and Men Can’t Find Stuff in Fridges, or some crap like that. Right? Well, she’s been getting angrier and angrier that I keep coming home late and she misses her courses cos she’s stuck with the kids. Right?’
Grace got up and poured himself another whisky, then found himself, suddenly, craving a cigarette. ‘But I thought she’d encouraged you to join the police in the first place?’
‘Yeah. And that’s now one of the things pissing her off, the hours. You go figure a woman’s mind out.’
‘You’re smart, ambitious, making great progress. Does she understand that? Does she know what a high opinion your superiors have of you?’
‘I don’t think she gives a shit about any of that stuff.’
‘Get a grip, man! Glenn, you were working as a security guard in the daytime, and three nights a week as a bouncer. Where the hell were you heading? You told me that when your son was born you had some kind of an epiphany. That you didn’t want him having to tell his mates at school that his dad was a nightclub bouncer. That you wanted a career he would be proud of. Right?’
Branson stared lamely into his glass, which was suddenly empty again. ‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t understand—’
‘Join the club.’
Seeing that the drink was at least calming the man down, Grace took Branson’s glass, poured in a couple more fingers and returned it to his hands. He was thinking about his own experience as a beat copper, when he had done his share of domestics. All police hated getting called to domestic ‘situations’. It mostly meant turning up to a house where a couple were fighting hammer and tongs, usually one – or both – drunk, and the next thing you knew you were getting punched in the face or whacked with a chair for your troubles. But the training for these had given Grace some rudimentary knowledge of domestic law.
‘Have you ever been violent to Ari?’
‘You’re joking. Never. Never. No way,’ Glenn said emphatically.
Grace believed him; he did not think it was in Branson’s nature to be violent to anyone he loved. Inside that hulk was the sweetest, kindest, most gentle man. ‘You have a mortgage?’
‘Yeah, me and Ari jointly.’
Branson put down his glass and started crying again. After some minutes, faltering, he said, ‘Jesus. I’m wishing that bullet hadn’t missed everything. I wish it had taken my fucking heart out.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It’s true. It’s how I feel. I can’t fucking win. She was mad at me when I was working twenty-four/seven cos I was never home, now she’s fed up cos I’ve been at home for the past seven weeks. Says I’m getting under her feet.’
Grace thought for a moment. ‘It’s your house. It’s your home as much as Ari’s. She might be pissed off with you, but she can’t actually throw you out. You have rights.’
‘Yeah, and you’ve met Ari.’
Grace had. She was a very attractive, very strong-willed lady in her late twenties who had always made it abundantly clear who was boss in the Branson household. Glenn might have worn the trousers, but his face poked out through the fly buttons.
It was almost five in the morning when Grace pulled some sheets and a blanket out of the airing cupboard and made up the spare bed for his friend. The whisky bottle and the brandy bottle were both nearly empty, and there were several crumpled cigarette butts in the ashtray. He had almost stopped smoking completely – after recently being shown, in the mortuary, the blackened lungs of a man who had been a heavy smoker – but long drinking sessions like this clobbered his willpower.
It seemed it was only minutes later that his mobile phone was ringing. Then he looked at the digital clock beside his bed and saw, to his shock, that it was ten past nine.
Knowing almost certainly the call was from work, he let it ring a few times, trying to wake up properly so he didn’t sound groggy, his head feeling like it had a cheese-wire sawing through it. He was the duty Senior Investigating Officer for this week and really should have been in the office by eight thirty, to be prepared for any major incident that might occur. Finally, he pressed the answer button.
‘Roy Grace,’ he said.
It was a very serious-sounding young civilian dispatcher from the Control Room called Jim Walters, whom Grace had spoken to a few times but did not know. ‘Detective Superintendent, I’ve a request from a Brighton Central detective sergeant for you to attend a suspicious death at a house in Dyke Road Avenue, Hove.’
‘What details can you give me?’ Grace asked, now fully alert and reaching for his BlackBerry.
As soon as he had hung up, he pulled on his dressing gown, filled his toothbrush mug with water, took two paracetamols from the bathroom cabinet, downed them, then popped another two from their foil, padded into the spare room, which reeked of alcohol and body odour, and shook Glenn Branson awake. ‘Wakey-wakey, it’s your therapist from hell!’
One of Branson’s eyes opened, partway, like a whelk in the safety of its shell. ‘Whatthefucksupman?’ Then he put his hands to his head. ‘Shit
, how much did I drink last night? My head is like—’
Grace held up the mug and the capsules. ‘Brought you breakfast in bed. You now have two minutes to shower, get dressed, swallow these and grab a bite from the kitchen. We’re going to work.’
‘Forget it. I’m on sick leave. Got another week!’
‘Not any more. Your therapist’s orders. No more sickies! You need to get back to work now, today, this instant. We’re going to see a dead body.’
Slowly, as if every moment was painful, Branson swung himself out of bed. Grace could see the round, discoloured mark on his six-pack, some inches above his belly button, where the bullet had entered. It seemed so tiny. Less than half an inch across. Terrifyingly tiny.
The DS took the pills, washing them down with the water, then stood up and tottered around in his boxer shorts for some moments, looking very disoriented, scratching his balls. ‘Shit, man, I got nothing here, just these stinky clothes. I can’t go see a body dressed in these.’
‘The body won’t mind,’ Grace assured him.
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6
Skunk’s phone was ringing and vibrating. Preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz. It was flashing, slithering around on the sink-top, where he had left it, like some large, crazed, wounded beetle.
After thirty seconds it succeeded in waking him. He sat up sharply and, as he did most mornings, hit his head on the low Luton roof of his clapped-out camper van.
