RG8 - Not Dead Yet

by Peter James

  ‘She does, it’s true.’

  Anna Galicia signed the release form, and entered the details requested from her. She was given the production schedule, a call sheet for Monday, and was then directed through to the female costume room.

  It was full of fat women, slim women, young women, middle-aged women, squeezing into ridiculous costumes and ornate wigs. They were there for the money, the sixty-five pounds a day. They were there for vanity. For fun.

  None of them was there for the same reason as herself.

  None of the others was there because Gaia had personally asked them to be there, like she had asked her. To make amends for her behaviour at The Grand. She had been stressed out with jet lag. She was deeply sorry for her behaviour.

  Anna was big-hearted. She knew how to forgive.

  She’d forgiven her.

  75

  After his costume fitting, Drayton Wheeler took the extras’ courtesy bus down to the centre of Brighton, then walked along to the Royal Pavilion, checking that one part of his purchase from Mothercare was safely in his pocket. He paid his entrance fee and went in. It was half past one. Over four hours before the place closed to the public.

  More than sufficient time, with luck.

  He made his way straight to the Banqueting Room, and was pleased to see it was packed with people, all slowly moving around the edge of the room, restricted by the ropes on their brass posts which kept them well away from the banqueting table. He was even more pleased to see there was only one security guard in here at the moment.

  He stopped only a short distance along, pretending to admire a handsome mahogany side table, laden with silverware. A couple with two bored children shuffled past, followed by a group of Japanese tourists, who stopped right in front of him. On the far side of the room the security guard was momentarily occupied preventing someone from taking a photograph. Now was perfect!

  No one noticed him slip his hand beneath the side table, and press something small and hard against the underside, holding it until he was certain the glue had taken. It took only a few seconds, during which the Japanese tourists had, very obligingly, not moved either.

  Then he shuffled on forward, going with the flow. Mission accomplished!

  76

  ‘The bitch won’t let me!’ Glenn Branson said, storming into Roy Grace’s office shortly before 8 a.m. on Monday. ‘Can you believe it? The chance of a lifetime, something they could tell their children about one day, and their grandchildren!’

  Grace looked up from the notes his MSA had prepared for this morning’s briefing. ‘Won’t let you what?’

  ‘Take Sammy and Remi to meet Gaia’s kid, right?’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘I am so not joking. I am seething. She said no. I asked them both when I took them out on Saturday afternoon, and they were thrilled to bits. I told you they’re both massive Gaia fans. So I told her they wanted to go, when I took them back.’

  ‘So, she can’t stop you. Just take them.’

  ‘She says Gaia is a symbol of sex and bad language and she’s not having her corrupting them.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! Her little boy is six years old!’

  ‘You want to phone Ari and tell her?’

  ‘I will, if you like,’ Grace said, with false bravado. Not many things scared him in life, but Glenn Branson’s wife did.

  ‘I spoke to my solicitor over the weekend. She advised me not to force the issue, that Ari could use it against me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sat down in front of Grace, looking dejected. ‘How was your weekend?’

  For a change, Grace had had a peaceful weekend. Just two short briefings on Operation Icon, and the rest of the time he had spent with Cleo. They’d gone shopping on Saturday and bought stuff for the baby’s room, had a takeaway curry on Sunday, watched a couple of movies, and in between read some of the papers. One of Cleo’s extravagances, which he liked, was that she had virtually every English Sunday paper, from lowbrow to highbrow, delivered every week.

  It was a fine day, and she had insisted they go out for fresh air to their favourite place, the undercliff walk at Rottingdean, and she had managed the entire length of it. It really seemed the problems with a sudden bleed that she’d had a few weeks ago were a thing of the past. Just a few more weeks to go before she was due.

  She would stop work at the end of this week. Most of the rest of Sunday he’d spent on the sofa with her as she worked on her Philosophy studies, and he’d gone through all the trial papers on the Carl Venner case, which opened at the Old Bailey this morning.

  He reached out and took his friend’s massive black hand. It was hard as a rock, like gripping a piece of ebony. All the same, he squeezed it. ‘Don’t let her get you down, matey. Okay?’

  Glenn squeezed back.

  Grace said nothing. He could see the big, tough guy he loved so much was close to tears.

  77

  ‘The time is 8.30 a.m., Monday, June the thirteenth. This is the seventeenth briefing of Operation Icon,’ Roy Grace said to his team in the Conference Room. ‘Does anyone have any progress to report since our briefing of yesterday morning?’

  Annalise Vineer raised her hand. ‘Yes, chief. I’ve been going through the list of members of the West Sussex Piscatorial Society supplied to me by their secretary, and the list of all people who had any involvement with this club. I’ve found someone with a link to Stonery Farm.’

  ‘You have?’ Grace said. ‘Well done – tell us!’

  ‘I don’t know if it’s of any significance, but Stonery Farm and the West Sussex Piscatorial Society use the same firm of Brighton accountants, Feline Bradley-Hamilton. There’s one name in particular that’s common to both, which is an auditor employed by this firm, a man by the name of Eric Whiteley. He has carried out the annual audit for both the farm and the club for several years.’

  Grace wrote the name down. ‘I’m not familiar with how auditors work,’ he said. ‘Would he have been to the premises of both?’

  ‘Well, he goes to the office at Stonery Farm each year. The Piscatorial Society secretary was unable to tell me whether Whiteley has ever actually been to the lake that the Piscatorial Society own. But he is their principal contact.’

  ‘How many employees are there at these accountants, Feline Bradley-Hamilton?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Fourteen, sir,’ Annalise Vineer replied. ‘There are four partners, the rest are employees.’

  ‘So anyone from this firm would have access to information about Stonery Farm and the Piscatorial Society, presumably?’ Grace quizzed.

  ‘Presumably, sir, yes,’ she replied.

  Grace felt excited; at last he had something concrete to work on now. And his instincts were telling him that while the perpetrator was not necessarily part of this accountancy firm, there was the possibility of a lead coming from here. ‘So we can’t be sure Eric Whiteley would be the only one in the firm who knows where the lake is?’

  ‘No, sir. But certainly he’s the only one who visits Stonery Farm on a regular basis.’

  ‘And that’s the only match you have? The only person common to both?’

  ‘Yes, it is, sir.’

  ‘Is the club secretary able to tell you anything about this Eric Whiteley?’

  ‘Not much, sir. Says he’s a quiet, unassuming man who just turns up at the secretary’s house every year, by appointment, to get the paperwork signed off. He doesn’t talk much, apparently.’

  ‘Okay, first things first, we should interview everyone in the firm who’s been there more than six months. I want two trained interviewers – ’ He looked at the faces around him.

  Glenn raised a hand. ‘Boss, I’d like to suggest Bella and I do the interview. Big if, but, if this Eric Whiteley, or anyone else at the accountancy firm, should turn out to be the perp, he might react – and be thrown a bit – by having seen us on Crimewatch.’

  Grace nodded assent. Both detectives were trained Cogn
itive Suspect Interviewers. ‘He doesn’t sound a very likely candidate, but the link between the two places is interesting.’

  He looked down at his notes, then at Norman Potting. ‘Myles Royce, Norman? You’re expecting DNA results back from the lab later today?’

  ‘I am indeed, boss.’

  ‘Let me know as soon as you hear.’

  ‘I will indeed.’

  Glenn Branson stared at Potting, still trying to figure out what on earth Bella Moy could see in the man. Twenty years her senior, charmless and, despite his recent makeover, not in any way physically appealing. At least not in his view. Although to be fair, he had been married four times, so presumably he had something that was not immediately apparent.

  David Green, the Crime Scene Manager, reported on the progress that SOCOs and the Specialist Search Unit were making, looking for the missing head in the area around the West Sussex Piscatorial Society. Or rather, the lack of progress. This morning he had instructed them to widen the search parameters.

  That was not good news, Grace thought. Although, from experience, he knew that there was always the possibility that the head, if buried on dry land, could have been carried off by a fox or a badger. Perps often spent hours digging deep graves for their victims. But these tended to preserve the bodies quite well. It was shallow graves that caused much bigger problems for murder investigation teams, because all kinds of animals would carry the remains away, for food and nests, dispersing them over a wide area.

  He drew a circle on his pad around the name Eric Whiteley. So far their only suspect. He looked forward to the interview report.

  After the meeting ended he headed back to his office and phoned Victoria Somers, the mother of his god-daughter, wondering if Jaye might like to play with Gaia’s son. She was a few years older than Roan Lafayette, but from the tone of her mother’s voice, that did not matter remotely. She sounded thrilled to bits.

  One very small problem sorted.

  And brownie points for himself all round.

  78

  He felt ridiculous. He had a pretty good idea that he looked ridiculous too. And he was perspiring heavily. He was in goddamn agony. The waist of the jacket was far too tight for him; the crotch of the cream pantaloons was crushing his balls, and the boots the idiot wardrobe woman had crammed his feet into were at least two sizes too small, and crippling his toes. His wig felt like he was wearing a straw bird’s nest.

  He should be spending his last days on a sunlounger on a yacht in the Caribbean, drinking mojitos, surrounded by nubile young women. This was so wrong. The story of his fucking life. Screwed all the time. The goddamn movie business, goddamn television. Screwed by each of his agents. And now this final insult. Brooker Brody Productions stealing his story. The best damned thing he had written in his life.

  And instead of basking in glory, he was sweating in tights and an itchy wig.

  You’re going to be sorry. So sorry. All of you. Oh fucking yes.

  That bitch who had been rude to him on Saturday was going to be sorry, too. He was looking around for her but had not seen her so far. He had plans for her. That was the great thing about dying – you no longer had to give a shit!

  But first he had to focus. The task ahead. He had a copy of the production schedule. It gave him every day’s shooting on location in Brighton. Inside and outside the Pavilion, depending on the weather. Outside during the daytime, weather permitting. Inside when it was closed to the public.

  Tomorrow after it was closed they were starting shooting the scene in the Banqueting Room when George IV ended his relationship with Maria Fitzherbert, telling her she was history.

  The king would tell her while they were sitting beneath the chandelier that he was always scared of. Hollywood stars Judd Halpern and Gaia seated beneath that chandelier. How great would it be to have it crash down on both of them?

  He could imagine the headlines around the world the next day. Two legends dead!

  How are you going to feel about that, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Bet you will be sorry you ripped off my treatment, won’t you? All your dreams shattered like the crystals of the chandelier.

  See? I’m pretty poetic, really. Know what I’m saying?

  The bus, packed full of costumed extras, moved off, pulling out through the gates of Brighton Racecourse, and on to the road. It turned left, down the hill, heading towards the sea, and then the Pavilion.

  Drayton Wheeler clutched the small rucksack tightly. It contained his change of clothes; drinking water; food; torch; a glass San Pellegrino bottle filled with the mercuric chloride acid cocktail he had very carefully mixed; and a towel from the hotel bathroom.

  When he focused on the task ahead, and forgot all about his outfit, he felt a lot better. Oh yes.

  He felt extremely happy.

  79

  The bloody woman was pestering him again. Angela McNeill was managing to find an excuse to come into Eric Whiteley’s office almost every lunchtime now, on some pretext or other. He tried ignoring her, but she was not the kind of person who would even notice she was being ignored.

  Today she was holding a clutch of bound annual accounts for Stonery Farm, which had been returned by a Sussex Police financial investigator called Emily Curtis, wanting to replace them in their correct filing cabinet. There was no urgency on this, Eric knew, she could have done it at any time, but she chose his lunch hour. Deliberately.

  Angela McNeill stood over him, looking down at the tuna mayo sandwich, Twix bar, apple and bottle of sparkling water. ‘My, you’re a real creature of habit, aren’t you, Eric Whiteley?’

  He concentrated on reading the Argus newspaper, open in front of him. They had conveniently printed the entire production shooting schedule, so that the public could know where to go and watch. The production was still appealing for more extras for some crowd scenes.

  They had asked him to turn up this morning, but of course he couldn’t, not today, not during a weekday, except in his holidays. But the next days off he had booked were not until September.

  ‘You always have exactly the same lunch.’

  He wasn’t sure whether it was a question or just a comment. Either way he didn’t care and it was none of her business. He didn’t like her voice, it was a charmless, flat monotone. He didn’t care for the way she smelled either. She wore a scent that smelled like toilet air freshener. He hated the way she stood over him, watching him feed like he was some creature in a zoo. He could imagine her being the kind of woman a husband would want to murder.

  ‘It’s what I like,’ he mumbled without looking up at her, and realized he had now re-read the same sentence three times.

  ‘It’s important to vary your diet, you know, Eric. There’s a lot of mercury in fish. Too much fish is bad for you.’

  ‘I’m a bit of a fishy character!’

  ‘Oooh, you’ve got a wicked sense of humour, haven’t you? I can tell!’

  He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Then he silently prayed that if he were ever in his life unfortunate enough to get stuck in a lift with someone, it wouldn’t be her.

  His phone rang.

  Saved by the bell, he thought, picking it up.

  It was the receptionist. Her voice sounded strange. ‘Eric, there’s a gentleman and a lady who’d like to speak to you in the Conference Room.’

  ‘Really? What about? I don’t have any appointments today.’

  In fact, he very rarely had appointments. He mostly worked alone, crunching numbers; it was other people in this firm who regularly dealt with the clients. The only meetings he ever had were the occasional ones with inspectors from the HM Revenue and Customs probing into the finances of clients, and when he was auditing.

  ‘They are police officers – detectives. They’re interviewing everyone in the firm.’

  ‘Ah.’ He frowned. ‘Shall I come down?’

  ‘Right away, if you could, please.’

  ‘Yes, good, right.’ He stood up and put on his jacket. ‘I’m sorry,�
� he said to Angela McNeill. ‘I – my appointment’s here – I have to go to the Conference Room.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to finish your lunch first?’

  ‘I’ll have it afterwards.’

  ‘Would you like me to put your sandwich in the fridge? You shouldn’t leave it out, you could get salmonella.’

  ‘A bit of salmonella would go rather nicely with tuna,’ he said, and escaped from the room, leaving Angela to laugh at his joke.

  As he walked along the corridor he wondered what this could be about. Had they found the bicycle he’d had stolen two years ago? Somehow he didn’t think they’d be interviewing everyone in the firm about that.

  He entered the small Conference Room, with its eight-seater table, with a breezy smile but feeling nervous. A tall black man in a flashy suit and even flashier tie stood there. Next to him was a rather plain-looking woman in her mid-thirties, with tangled brown hair, wearing a white blouse, black trousers and utilitarian black shoes.

  ‘Good afternoon!’ he said. He could feel beads of sweat popping on his brow. Police always had that effect on him. He noticed the male officer peering down at his feet for a moment.

  ‘Eric Whiteley?’ The man produced a warrant card. ‘I’m Acting Detective Inspector Branson and this is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Moy. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.’

  Eric studied his warrant card for some moments because he felt he should, to look like he was taking this meeting seriously. Then he said, expansively, ‘Please have a seat. Can I offer you any refreshments?’

  ‘Thank you,’ the Acting DI said. ‘We’ve already been looked after.’

  ‘Good!’ Eric said. ‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it!’

  He noticed a quick exchange of glances between the two officers. The two detectives sat on one side of the table, with their backs to the window with its view out across the Pavilion grounds, and he sat opposite them. Immediately he realized he was in a bad position, because the strong afternoon light from the brilliant blue sky was directly behind them, making it hard to see their faces clearly.