(1998) Denial (24 page)

The bacon roll sat untouched on Glenn’s desk. Grease was sweating through to the outside of the paper napkin in which it was folded. It was midday. He had been back in his office for an hour and it felt good to be in the warmth of this room, to listen to the chatter, to be with the living. He liked football, but he didn’t have football on his mind right now.

He was still feeling queasy from the mortuary. He needed to eat, needed some energy, he’d been at the mortuary
since eight thirty this morning and had had no breakfast, but wasn’t ready yet to swallow anything solid. Instead he was sipping his way gingerly through a mug of treacly sweet tea.

The detective constables’ office was on the first floor of Hove police station. It was a narrow room, packed tightly with six desks down each side, paired up so that their occupants faced each other. At the far end, partitioned off by a bank of filing cabinets, was a large oval conference table used by the ProActive section.

Just inside the entrance was a work area housing the room’s one computer terminal, an ancient electric typewriter and a television set. Half-way down the room was a ceiling-mounted ForceLink closed-circuit TV screen, which played a loop, updated throughout the day, of descriptions of wanted criminals, with warnings if they were either violent or armed, licence plates of cars to be stopped, and anything else that Sussex Police should be on the look-out for, plus crime statistics and targets.

On the screen at the moment in bright colours, it announced: OVERALL CRIME DETECTION RATE. JUNE 1997. 26.2%.

‘So this is what happens, I get called out at three thirty on Saturday morning,’ Glenn heard another colleague’s excitable voice. ‘Two gays, right? They lit a candle Saturday night to create the
right atmosphere
. They fell asleep after the
right atmosphere
had done its stuff. Burned their flat down and the flats on the next three floors above them. You know who the only casualty was? A cat! The guy in flat six threw his cat out the window and it died.’

Glenn’s feet were sodden from treading in a deep puddle and his suit was damp. Chilly air blasted him from the air-conditioning and an equally hostile draught came at him though the windows.

He glanced outside. It wasn’t much of a view, the asphalt roof of the floor below, the car park, some garages; leafy branches swinging around in the wind. A patrol car was heading out, wipers clouting the rain, and some poor sod was cycling, plastic cape flying behind him.

Petechial haemorrhaging in the whites of the eyes. This looks normal – consistent with suffocation
.

Everything the pathologist had found was consistent with suffocation. No abnormal marks on Cora Burstridge’s body. Her doctor had told the coroner’s officer that the actress had been on antidepressants for five years. There was an inevitability about the findings. He already knew what the bright young coroner, Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, would say in her summing up at the inquest. Cora Burstridge was a sad, lonely actress who could not face the deterioration of her looks, her reduced income, the absence of hope.
Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed
.

Glenn sipped some tea and looked at the pile of files and forms on his desktop and in his in-tray. Paperwork was the only thing he didn’t like about this job.
File Content Checklist. Defendant Details. Case Decision Information Form. Summary of Evidence. Remand Application Form. Witness List. Exhibit List. Cautions
. Endless forms. Hours and hours of pen-pushing, never able to catch his tail. Everyone in here was overworked. That was good and bad.

They were divided into three sections, each of four detectives, with a detective sergeant in another office. Three male and one female detective per section. The female detective in his section, Sandra Denham, was out taking a statement from a rape victim in preparation for a court hearing. One of his other partners, Mike Harris, sat opposite him, and Will Guppy, the team’s resident comedian, was across the narrow aisle.

Guppy, beanpole tall, with crew-cut blond hair, a mournful crag of a face that masked a sense of humour even more grotesque than his taste in ties, sat in his shirtsleeves, hunched over his desk. He liked to give the impression that he was a man of culture. On the wall beside him was a drawing of two large squares, underneath which was printed the words:
PICASSO’S TESTICLES.

The room was half full. Colleagues were slowly drifting in and it would be packed by two o’clock for the Monday briefing, when the previous week’s activities would be reviewed. Everyone liked to report results, and Glenn had
two good results: a petty burglar he’d been responsible for catching had been sent down for two years on Friday, and the arrest of a serious antique-jewellery thief.

His mind drifted back to Cora Burstridge’s flat. The blowflies. The terrible sight of her face inside the plastic bag. What a way to end up. To have been loved by the whole world, and to end up alone, being eaten by flies.

He shuddered.

Then he thought again about the pathologist querying how the blowflies had got there.

Two actresses of similar ages had killed themselves in the past three weeks. First Gloria Lamark, then Cora Burstridge. He’d spotted the news of Gloria Lamark’s death by chance, when he was waiting in a private house to take a statement and the only thing to read had been a copy of
The Times
. Poor old Gloria Lamark, he thought. Whatever happened to her? She’d made quite a few pictures, some very good, but then her career had petered out way back in the mid-sixties, whereas Cora Burstridge’s had taken off. They had been famous rivals at one time, he remembered, Halliwell or Kim Newman had talked about it in one of their books on the movies of that era.

He could remember how beautiful Gloria Lamark had been. She’d been called England’s Marilyn Monroe and there were indeed similarities. She’d had that same quality of innocence and charm as Marilyn. He remembered in
Double Zero
with Michael Redgrave and Herbert Lom, the way she had smiled so innocently while lifting Michael Redgrave’s wallet as they embraced on the dance floor and –

‘Glenn, it was you last week put out an alert on a suspect Jag on the seafront, wasn’t it?’ Will Guppy said, without turning his head.

‘Last week?’ His mind was a blank for a second.

‘You prat! I was out with a uniform crew and we stopped it.’

It came back now. The Jaguar he had spotted on his way to Cora Burstridge’s flat. ‘Right! Got it!’

‘You are a fucking tosser. Know who was driving it?’

‘Who?’

‘Only Glen Drury. Only Glen fucking Drury, who just got a seven-million-pound transfer fee to Newcastle United and is probably going to be the next England striker, and you go and report him as having nicked his own brand new set of wheels. Good one!’

‘I hope he plays football better than he drives,’ Glenn replied, unfazed. He was about to take another sip of his tea when his phone rang. He picked up the receiver and heard the voice of the female switchboard operator.

‘Glenn, I’ve got a DC Roebuck from the Met, wants some help from someone in Hove. Can I put him through to you?’

‘Sure.’

The London Metropolitan Police considered themselves the cream, and could be arrogant when dealing with provincials. This one wasn’t. He had a polite, good-natured voice.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you could do me a favour. I need some help on a missing person. Her name is Tina Mackay. Thirty-three years old, editorial director with a London publishing house. Has not been seen since early evening, Wednesday July the ninth, when she failed to turn up for a date with her boyfriend.’

Glenn had his notepad open in front of him and was jotting details down as he listened. ‘I’m familiar with her name. We’ve had pictures of her sent down. There’s been a fair bit of press coverage, right?’

‘Yes. She’s quite prominent in the publishing world. She was last seen by a colleague just before seven that day, leaving the office. Collected her car from the multi-storey nearby where she had a contract parking arrangement. The attendant was distracted by two car alarms that had gone off simultaneously. He noticed her car leaving, but only from a distance and can’t identify who was driving. No one has heard from her since.’

‘Is this a murder inquiry?’

A brief silence. ‘We don’t have a body but we’re stepping up our inquiries a little. That’s all at this stage.’

‘How can we help you?’

‘I’ve been going through her expenses. She put in a standard claim form for the week ending July the fourth. There was a petrol receipt for a PDH garage in Old Shoreham Road, Hove dated June the twenty-ninth.’

Glenn flicked through his diary. ‘That was a Sunday?’

‘Yes. All she put down on the form was “Lunch, Robert Mason”. That name is not known to anyone in her company or to her family. She doesn’t appear to have mentioned him to anyone.’

‘If she put expenses in that means it’s to do with her work,’ Glenn said.

Then he detected a wry note in the reply. ‘Assuming she was honest with her expenses.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ said Glenn.

DC Roebuck laughed. ‘Of course. Wouldn’t dream of trying to stick a day at the seaside on
my
expenses.’

‘I wouldn’t need to,’ Glenn said. ‘Life’s one long beach here.’

‘Lucky sod. You ever need any help with topless sun-bathers, let me know, I’ll be straight down.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind. But you’ll be at the back of the queue.’

‘Thanks, pal. OK, business. Could you check out this Robert Mason for me, so we can eliminate him?’

‘You have any other details on him?’

‘Sorry, that’s it.’

‘No problem. What’s your first name?’

‘Simon. Simon Roebuck. You?’

‘Glenn Branson.’

‘Any relation to Richard?’

‘I wish!’

Roebuck said he would fax down full details about the inquiry, gave his direct line and his mobile number, thanked Glenn and hung up.

Glenn entered the name Robert Mason into the Sussex Police computer files but nothing showed up. Then he opened the phone directory and saw, to his dismay, about a hundred and fifty Masons listed.

Bastard!
he thought, realising that Roebuck had offloaded a pile of thankless donkeywork on him. He ran a finger down the names. Fifteen had an ‘R’ among the initials. At least that narrowed it down.

While he waited for Roebuck’s fax to come through, his thoughts turned back to Cora Burstridge.

It would take a couple of days for the blood and fluid samples the pathologist had taken from the body to be analysed by the lab. By the time he got the pathologist’s report through from the coroner, it would be early next week. If Dr Church found nothing suspicious, her body would be released by then and her funeral arrangements made.

He had a week to satisfy himself that she really had committed suicide.

And he didn’t yet have any idea where or how to start looking.

The same woman as earlier answered the phone.

‘Oh, hallo,’ Michael said. ‘Could I speak to Amanda Capstick?’

Irritation. ‘She hasn’t come in yet. May I take a message?’

‘I’ll call back, thanks.’

He hung up.

It was one o’clock. His next patient was due at two fifteen. He felt ragged from lack of sleep. She would call, of course she would call. She was busy, her work was hectic, she’d already told him that. Her early meeting had gone on later than she’d expected, that was all.

He looked out of the window but it was still raining hard. Even so he decided to brave it, he needed fresh air. If he went out for half an hour, he’d arrive back to find a message from her.

He checked his e-mail again. Another dozen had come in but he barely noted who they were from: he was looking for one name only, and it wasn’t there.

He took the main section of
The Times
, the blue and yellow golfing umbrella that someone had left in his waiting room a year back and had never claimed, slipped his mobile phone into his raincoat pocket, told his secretary at the Princess Royal Hospital, Angela Witley, whom he shared with two other psychiatrists, that he was popping out, and asked her to give Amanda Capstick his mobile number if she rang.

He walked down to Tottenham Court Road, crossed over, then cut through into Cleveland Street and joined the short queue at the counter of his favourite sandwich bar. He wasn’t hungry but he needed energy; the slice of toast and
bowl of cereal he’d forced down at breakfast had gone and he was aware that his gloomy mood was being exaggerated by his low blood-sugar level.

‘Don’t worry, it no gonna happen!’

Michael looked up with a start to discover it was his turn. The irrepressibly cheery Greek owner beamed up at him like a man with six numbers up on his lottery ticket. He smiled back drily. ‘Your people were all right. You had Byron to solve your problems.’

Still beaming like a lottery winner. ‘And you have Mr Blair.’ He made the name sound like a deity.

‘Blair’s not a poet.’

‘But he’s good Prime Minister, yes?’

‘He doesn’t have much to beat,’ Michael replied.

He ordered a tuna-salad sandwich on sourdough, a banana, and a can of Coke, which he normally only drank as a hangover remedy. The rain was easing and he took the dainty brown carrier bag across into Regent’s Park and strode briskly towards the lake.

Every time he saw a flash of blonde hair his hopes rose, and he looked carefully, just in case it might be Amanda. It was the kind of coincidence that
could
happen, he reasoned against logic.

There was a bench close to the water, sheltered under the overhang of a massive chestnut tree. He folded his Burberry and sat down on it – remembering the day Katy had dragged him off to Simpson’s in his lunch hour to buy it, because she could no longer stand the battered mackintosh he’d worn for years. Dirty old man’s raincoat! she called it.

He checked that his phone was switched on and there was a reception signal. All five black dashes were lit. The signal could not be stronger. If someone tried to call, it would ring loud and clear.