Dead Man's Grip

by Peter James

  All eyes were on the Detective Superintendent. A sudden and complete silence had fallen in the room. Only to be broken by the Indiana Jones ring tone of Norman Potting’s mobile phone. He silenced it, murmuring an apology to Grace. Then PC Davies’s phone rang, with a stuttering chirrup. He checked the caller display, then quickly silenced that too.

  ‘The print is from Ewan Preece, a thirty-one-year-old convicted drug dealer serving his last three weeks of a six-year sentence in Ford Prison,’ Grace said. ‘He’s on a day-release rehabilitation programme, working on a construction site in Arundel. On Wednesday 21 April, the day of the collision, he failed to return for evening lock-in. I’ve had a vehicle check run on him at Swansea and the only thing registered in his name is a 1984 Vauxhall Astra which was impounded and destroyed some months ago for no tax or insurance.’

  ‘I know that name,’ Norman Potting said. ‘Ewan Preece. Little bastard. Nicked him years ago for stealing cars. Used to be one of the Moulsecoomb troublemakers when he was younger.’

  ‘Know anything about him now, Norman?’ Grace asked. ‘Where he might be? Why would anyone go over the wall with just three weeks left?’

  ‘I know the people to ask, chief.’

  Grace made an action note. ‘OK, good. If you can follow that up. I spoke to a senior officer at Ford just before this meeting, Lisa Setterington. She told me Preece has been as good as gold in Ford. He’s applied himself, learning the plastering trade. She says she knows him well and feels it’s out of character for him to have done this.’

  ‘Out of character for a villain like Preece?’ Potting snorted. ‘I remember him when he was fifteen. I was doing community policing then. He had a formal warning for being mixed up with a bunch of kids who’d been nicked for joyriding. I felt sorry for him and got him lined up for a job at the timber people, Wenban-Smith, but he never turned up for his interview. I stopped him one night a few weeks later, him and two others, and asked why he’d not gone. He gave me a story about his family getting evicted from their council house.’ Potting nodded his head. ‘It’s not easy to be evicted from a council house if you’ve got young kids – his parents were scumbags. He never had a chance. But I thought maybe he was a decent kid and I felt sorry for him. I bet him a tenner that he’d be in jail by his sixteenth birthday. He took the bet.’

  Bella Moy was staring at him incredulously. ‘Your own money?’

  Potting nodded. ‘I knew it was a safe bet. He was banged up six months later for vehicle theft. Doesn’t surprise me how he’s ended up.’ He nodded again, wistfully.

  ‘So did he pay you?’ David Howes asked.

  ‘Ha-ha!’ Potting replied.

  Nick Nicholl suddenly interjected, ‘Boss, might it be a good idea to get the word spread around Ford about the reward. It’s likely someone in there will know what Preece was up to. All prisoners know each other’s business.’

  ‘Good point,’ Grace said. ‘You should go over there, Norman. See if any of the prisoners will talk to you.’

  ‘I’ll do that, chief. I know where to start looking in Brighton as well. A bloke like Ewan Preece isn’t capable of hiding for long.’

  ‘Especially,’ Grace said, ‘when there’s a hundred-thousand-dollar price tag on finding him.’

  32

  Tooth was up at dawn, as he was every morning, before the heat of the sun became too intense. He was running his regular ten-mile circuit up in the arid hills close to his home, dressed in his singlet, shorts and trainers, with his associate loping along at his side.

  When he arrived back home, ninety minutes later, he worked out with his weights in the gym in the small, air-conditioned spare room, while Yossarian waited patiently for his breakfast. Then he went through his martial arts routine. Sometimes, when he had been behind enemy lines, using a gun wasn’t practical. Tooth was fine with his bare hands. He preferred them to using knives. You could hurt people a lot more with your bare hands, if you knew where to squeeze. You could pop their eardrums, their eyeballs or their testicles. You really could give them a lot of pain before you killed them. And you didn’t leave a trail of blood.

  He practised his movements in the gym. In particular he worked his hand muscles, slamming the punchbag with his hand weights attached, then worked on his squeezes. He might be small, but he could crush a brick into dust with either his right or his left hand.

  When he had finished in the gym, he showered, poured some biscuits into his associate’s bowl, opened a tin of dog food and scooped that in, then set it down out on the balcony. A few minutes later he joined Yossarian and had his own breakfast. He drank energy powder mixed with water, staring out at the flat surface of Turtle Bay Cove and the boats moored alongside the pontoon below the Shark Bite Sports Bar, reading today’s New York Times on his Kindle.

  It was a fine day, as it was most days here, and the shipping forecast was good. In a while he and Yossarian would head out to sea on Long Shot, switch on the side-scan sonar and start hunting fish. Whatever he caught, he would share with his associate. They were in this shitty life together and they took care of each other.

  One time, a few months ago, a local scumbag had gone into his apartment when he’d been out shopping. It wouldn’t have been hard, because he left the patio doors open on to the ground-floor terrace and garden in case Yossarian, who liked to lie asleep in the shade indoors, needed to go out to relieve himself. The only way Tooth knew that anyone had been in was from the four severed fingers leaking blood on to the floor tiles, close to the dining table. His associate had done his job.

  Before they went fishing, Tooth had a job to do. A ritual, every morning after his birthday. Life was simple: you should take care of the things that took care of you. He took care of his associate and he took care of his Colt revolver.

  He removed it from the locked cabinet now, laid it on newspaper and began to dismantle it. He liked the feel of the cold metal. Liked to see the barrel, the trigger, the frame, hammer, sights and trigger guard all laid out in front of him. He liked the knowledge that this inanimate, beautifully engineered machine made the decision for him about when he lived and when he died. It was a good feeling to abdicate all responsibility.

  He tipped the can of gun oil on to a piece of rag and wiped along the barrel. He liked the smell of the oil the way some folk, he imagined, liked the smell of a fine wine. He’d seen wine experts on television talk about hints of cedar, cigar, pepper and cinnamon, or about gooseberries, and citrus. This oil had a metallic tang to it, a hint of linseed, copper and rotting apples. It was every bit as fine to him as the finest wine.

  He’d spent so much time alone, in enemy territory, with his rifle and his handgun. The smell of the weapons, and of the oil that kept them running smoothly, was more potent to him than the smell of the most beautiful woman on earth. It was the one smell in all the world he could trust.

  Suddenly his phone rang.

  He looked down at the black Nokia on the table beside him. The number was displayed. A New York State number, but not one he recognized. He killed the call, then waited for some moments, composing his thoughts.

  Only one person knew how to contact him. That man had the number of his current pay-as-you-go phone. Tooth had five such phones in his safe. He would only ever take one call on a phone, then he would destroy it. It was a precaution that had served him well. The man, who was an underboss with a New York crime family, understood Tooth and, in turn, Tooth trusted him.

  He removed the SIM card from the phone, then held it in the flame of his cigarette lighter until it had melted beyond recovery. Then he removed another phone from the safe, ensured that it was set to withhold the caller’s number and dialled.

  ‘Yep?’ said the male voice the other end, answering almost immediately.

  ‘You just called.’

  ‘I’m told you can help me.’

  ‘You know my terms?’

  ‘They’re fine. How soon could we meet? Tonight?’

  Tooth did a quick calculation
of flight times. He knew the flights out of here to Miami and the times of the connecting flights to most capitals that concerned him. And he could always be ready in one hour.

  ‘The guy who gave you this number, he’ll give you another number. Call me on that at 6 p.m. and give me the address.’ Then Tooth hung up.

  He phoned the cleaning lady who took care of Yossarian when he was away. Then he added a few items to his go-bag and ordered a taxi. While he waited for it to arrive he chatted to his associate and gave him an extra big biscuit in the shape of a bone.

  Yossarian took it and slunk miserably away to the dark recess within the apartment, where he had his basket. He knew that when he got a big biscuit, his pack leader was going away. That meant no walks. It was like some kind of a punishment, except he didn’t know what he had done wrong. He dropped the biscuit in the basket, but didn’t start to eat it. He knew he would have plenty of time for that.

  A few minutes later he heard a sound he recognized. Departing footsteps. Then a slam.

  33

  Shortly after 2.30 p.m., Roy Grace left his team at Sussex House, saying he would be back for the 6.30 p.m. briefing, then he drove the few miles down to his house. He wanted to collect his post, check the condition the place was in, as the estate agent had someone coming to view it tomorrow, and make sure that his goldfish, Marlon, had plenty of food in his hopper. He didn’t trust Glenn, in his current distracted state over his marriage breakdown, to remember to keep it topped up.

  It was a sunny afternoon and the air had warmed up with the first promises of approaching summer. As he made his way down Church Road, passing all the familiar landmarks, he felt a sudden twinge of sadness. A decade ago he used to feel a flutter of excitement each time he drove along the wide residential street, as in a few moments he would be home. Home to the woman he used to adore so much. Sandy.

  He waited at the top of the street for an elderly man in a motorized wheelchair to pass in front of him, then drove down towards the seafront. The houses were similar on both sides of the road, three-bedroom mock-Tudor semis, with integral garages, small front gardens and larger plots at the back. Little changed here over the years, just the models of the neighbours’ cars and the ‘for sale’ boards, like the Rand & Co. one outside his house now.

  As he slowed and pulled on to the driveway, it felt like a ghost house. He’d made an attempt to remove all the reminders of Sandy during the past few months, even boxing up her clothes and taking them to charity shops, but he could still feel her presence strongly. He halted the Ford in front of the garage door, knowing that on the other side of it was Sandy’s ancient black VW Golf, caked in dust, the battery long dead. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t sold it, not that it was worth much now. It had been found twenty-four hours after she had disappeared in the short-term car park at Gatwick Airport’s South Terminal. Perhaps he kept it because part of him still wondered if it contained as yet undiscovered forensic clues. Or perhaps just for sentimental reasons.

  Whoever had written those words, that the past was another country, was right, he thought. Despite so little having changed around here, this house and this street felt increasingly alien to him each time he came here.

  Climbing out of the car, he saw one of the Saturday afternoon constants of this street – a neighbour directly opposite, Noreen Grinstead. A hawk-eyed jumpy woman in her mid-seventies, whose husband had died a couple of years ago from Alzheimer’s, she was out there, in her Marigold rubber gloves, polishing her elderly Nissan car as if her very life depended on it. She glanced round, checking him out, and gave him a forlorn wave.

  He almost had to pluck up the courage to enter the house these days, the memories becoming increasingly painful. It had been a wreck when they bought it, as an executor sale, and with her great taste and her passion for Zen minimalism Sandy had transformed it into a cool, modern living space. Now, with the house and its Zen garden totally neglected, it was slowly reverting to its former state.

  Perhaps some other young couple, full of happiness and dreams, would buy it and make it into their special place. But with the property market in its current long slump, few properties were shifting. The boss of the estate agency, Graham Rand, had suggested he drop the asking price, which he had done. Now it was spring, the market might lift and with luck the house would finally be sold. Then, along with the impending certification of Sandy’s death, he would finally be able to move on. He hoped.

  To his surprise, his post was in a tidy pile on the hall table, and to his even greater surprise, the hallway looked as if it had been cleaned. So did the living room, which Glenn had turned into a tip these past few months. Grace sprinted upstairs and checked out Glenn’s bedroom. That looked immaculate too, the bed beautifully tidy. The place was looking like a show home. Had Glenn done this?

  Yet, in a strange way, it made the house seem even more alien. It was as if the ghost of Sandy had returned. She had always kept it almost obsessively tidy.

  Marlon’s hopper was full and, as far as you could tell with a goldfish, his pet seemed genuinely pleased to see him. It whizzed around the bowl for several laps, before stopping and placing its face close against the glass, opening and shutting its mouth with a mournful expression.

  It never ceased to amaze Grace that the creature was still alive. He’d won the fish by target shooting at a fairground, eleven years ago, and he could still remember Sandy’s shriek of joy. When he’d later Googled fairground goldfish, and posted a request for advice, he’d been told that providing a companion was very important. But Marlon had eaten all the subsequent companions he had bought.

  He glanced out of the window and got another shock. The lawn was mown. What, he wondered, was going inside his friend’s head? Had the ‘for sale’ board freaked Glenn out – and did he think by tidying the place up, Grace might relent and take it off the market?

  He glanced at his watch. It was coming up to three o’clock and he’d been told he could collect Cleo from the hospital any time after four, when the consultant had done his rounds. He made a cup of tea and sifted through his post, binning the obvious junk mail. The rest was mainly bills, plus a tax disc renewal reminder for his written-off Alfa Romeo. Then he came to one addressed to Mrs Sandy Grace. It was an invitation to a private view at a Brighton art gallery. Modern art had been one of her passions. He binned that, thinking she must be on a very old computer list that was long overdue an update.

  Twenty minutes later, as he headed off along the seafront towards Kemp Town, he was still puzzling about what had made Glenn Branson tidy the place up so much. Guilt? Then he thought back to the bollocking he’d had from Peter Rigg, which was still hurting him a lot. He could not believe that bitch Alison Vosper had warned the ACC he needed to keep a careful eye on him.

  Why? His track record in the past twelve months had been good. Every case he had been on had ended with a result. OK, there had been the deaths of two suspects in a car, and two of his team, Emma-Jane Boutwood and Glenn Branson, had been injured. Perhaps he could have been more careful – but would he have got the results? And even if the ACC did not have total confidence in him, he knew he had the backing of Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Skerritt, the head of HQ CID.

  And, shit, he’d already produced one impressive result for the ACC, solving a serial rape case that went back twelve years, hadn’t he?

  He turned his mind to the current case. Ewan Preece, the driver of the hit-and-run van. First point was they could not be certain he was the driver, even though his fingerprints had been on the mirror. But the fact that he had not returned to Ford Prison that night was a good indicator of guilt. And applying the simple principle of Occam’s Razor, which he always interpreted as the simplest and most obvious is usually the right answer, he was fairly confident Preece would turn out to be the driver.

  He was equally confident the man would be caught quickly. His face was known to half the police in Brighton, both the uniform and CID divisions, and Grace had seen his mugshot
on posters of wanted people on police station walls many times. If the police didn’t spot him first, someone would grass him up for that reward money, for sure.

  With a bit of luck, they’d pot him within a few days – and find out why he did a runner. Probably, Grace speculated, because he should have been working on a construction site near the prison at nine on Wednesday morning and not driving a van in Brighton, twenty-five miles away. Almost certainly with something illegal inside it.

  If they could get an explanation out of Preece, he should be able to wrap up the inquiry by the end of next week. And hopefully win some brownie points with Peter Rigg. It all looked pretty straightforward.

  Fortunately for Roy Grace’s mood at this moment, he didn’t know how brutally different things were going to turn out to be.

  34

  There was a long jam on the approach to the roundabout opposite the Palace Pier – wrongly, in Roy Grace’s traditionalist view, renamed Brighton Pier. As he sat, slowly crawling forward in the traffic, he watched a couple pushing their stroller along the promenade. He found himself looking at them with intense curiosity. That was something, he realized, that had definitely changed inside him. He’d never, ever, been remotely interested in babies. Yet in recent weeks, wherever in the city he had been, he had suddenly found himself staring at babies in buggies.

  A few days ago, buying a sandwich in the ASDA superstore opposite his office, he began making inane comments to the mother and father of a tiny infant in a stroller, as if the three of them were members of a very exclusive club.

  Now, as the engine idled, and an old Kinks song played on BBC Radio Sussex, he found himself looking around for more buggies. A few evenings ago, the night before Cleo had gone into hospital, they’d spent a long time studying them on the Internet and had made a shortlist of ones they thought might be suitable.