Want You Dead (22 page)

She saw the two detectives exchange a glance. Then Roy Grace looked her in the eye. ‘Do you think it is possible he wanted to punish Dr Murphy?’

‘Punish Karl?’

‘For dating you?’

Red looked into the deadly serious faces of the two men. The idea made her flesh crawl. She felt like she had a tightening tourniquet in her stomach as she realized the implication of what the detective had just said. It had been at the back of her mind for days, but she had dismissed it. Bryce had a dark side for sure, but he wouldn’t have gone that far, would he? Could he have?

‘Do you – do you think – think – he – ’ Her words fell away. She wasn’t sure what she was saying. She felt enveloped suddenly in a dark, acrid fog.

Then she heard the black detective’s voice. Tender now. ‘Red, are you okay?’

She stared at him through her tears of fear and sorrow. ‘No, please tell me no, please tell me Bryce didn’t – didn’t. . . oh God.’ She buried her face in her hands and began sobbing deeply, everything that had been pent up inside her for this past week now flooding out.

Glenn Branson produced some tissues for her and she dabbed her eyes, sniffing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry. God. I thought the day I finished with Bryce – threw him out – with PC Spofford’s help – I thought that was the day my nightmare had ended. It’s starting to feel now like it was the day it began.’

55

Wednesday, 30 October

Began, baby, you are right on that one! Oh yes, I can promise you that. The day you humiliated me is the day your nightmare began. Although, strictly speaking, nightmare is the wrong word. You wake up from nightmares, you see.

That’s not going to happen.

Bryce sat at his desk in his workshop, headphones on, listening to the interview, TweetDeck open in front of him on one of his computer screens. He continued to tap his keyboard while listening. Multitasking. He’d got good at that in these past months. Doing all kinds of stuff, while listening all the time to what was happening with Red. Sometimes smiling, sometimes getting angry.

Nothing had made him so angry as the sounds of Red and the doctor having sex. The sounds she made, the noises, the gasps, the swear words that came out of her mouth, all staccato, as she climaxed.

The same swear words as when she had climaxed with him. As if she had known he was listening and was doing this to taunt him.

He had to stop that, could not let that happen again, it hurt him too much.

He exited TweetDeck. He loved the internet; it was so easy to be anonymous. He was anonymous in real life, too. Creating an identity was easy but it took physical work. Going around to apartment blocks and stealing from the communal mailboxes utility bills, driving licences, tax forms, and all the other kinds of personal stuff that arrived in buff envelopes. Then going through the registry of deaths in the public records office, finding names that matched, but who had died young, too young to have ever applied for driving licences or passports. He had seven real identities – passports, driving licences, bank accounts, credit cards, all registered to different mailbox addresses in Brighton and London. As was his Land Rover.

They had appointed an officer to look after Red. How sweet he was! What fun it might be to tie Red up and then let her watch him slowly cutting bits off PC Spofford in front of her, teaching him not to meddle in private affairs of the heart. It would do the smug bitch Red some good to get a real taste of what he had in store for her. It would be worth all the pain she had put him through, she and her nasty family, if he could see the terror on her face. See it for a long time. Hours. Days. Maybe weeks. As she begged for forgiveness. Pleaded for him to come back, for everything to be how it was with them before. Swore her undying love for him.

Undying love.

He would like to hear those words so much.

In the moments before she died.

But first he had work to do. He opened the animation program, and set to work drawing a boat.

The interview had come to an end. Red was going home. The boat was shaping nicely. He selected Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’ from Spotify and clicked to play it. It was one of Red’s favourite songs. He smiled.
Sailing.

A life on the ocean wave. Heigh-ho.

And maybe a death.

He began a Google search of Admiralty charts for the English Channel.

56

Wednesday, 30 October

It was shortly after eight on a damp October evening when Glenn Branson turned the unmarked car right at the bottom of The Drive, into Church Road.

‘Anywhere here’s fine,’ Red said.

‘You sure? I can drop you to your front door. Make sure you’re safely home,’ he said.

She liked the big, tall, gentle giant, with his kind face. He was enough of a man-mountain to make her feel totally safe, but at the same time she sensed a vulnerability, a deep inner sadness about him. She’d made a couple of attempts at asking him about his personal life on the slow drive through the rush-hour traffic from the CID headquarters, but he’d maintained a total policeman-like focus on how she was to keep alert and safe.

‘Thanks, but I need to do some food shopping.’

They were passing the blackened facade of the minimart, all boarded up and already stickered with apologetic notices to customers.

‘Yeah, well, careful where you go. No more pyrotechnics, okay?’

She gave a wan smile, then pointed across the road to the Tesco superstore. ‘If you can drop me there,’ she said.

He flipped his right indicator. ‘Door-to-door service for madam!’

As he pulled up, Glenn noticed a scruffy, shaven-headed old lag of a villain, in his late forties, lurking near the exterior rubbish bins. Jimmy West. He kept an eye on him, aware of the scam he would be getting up to, of removing a sales receipt from the bin then going into the store, matching groceries up to the receipt and departing. But Jimmy West wasn’t his problem right now.

‘You’re really kind,’ Red said, opening the door.

‘Yeah, I know!’ Glenn grinned.

She grinned back, on the verge of giving him a kiss goodbye, then hesitated, thinking that might not be proper. Instead she gave him a wave of her hand and closed the door.

Glenn continued grinning as he watched her enter the supermarket. She was an attractive lady; he’d seen the hesitation in her face. He’d have liked a kiss from her, he thought. Rather a lot.

He saw West move towards a bin. He hit the button to lower the passenger-door window, leaned across and shouted out, ‘Evening, Jimmy! Doing a bit of shopping, are we?’

West looked round at him, flustered for a moment. Then he recognized Glenn’s face. ‘Oh . . . evening . . . er, Sergeant! Sergeant Bistow!’

‘Branson. And it’s Inspector now. What you doing here?’

‘Oh, er, you know, just passing.’

‘Good. Then keep going. Pass right along!’

West raised a finger, signalling his intention to oblige.

Glenn sat there, watching until the man was out of the car park and back on the street. There was a time, he realized, when he would have felt sorry for someone like Jimmy West. Trapped in a spiral, if one of his own making. But just like every cop he had ever spoken to, a few years in the police force changed you, hardened you. You looked for the bad in people, rather than the good. And you didn’t often have to look too far to find it.

But Red, he sensed, had good in her. He felt her warmth. He drove out of the car park and pulled up on the opposite side of the road, waiting until she emerged from the store holding two carrier bags. Keeping a discreet distance, he tracked her all the way to her flat, and waited until he saw her safely inside, before driving off back to Sussex House.

57

Wednesday, 30 October

Red punched on the stairwell light, then climbed up warily, holding her two heavy Tesco bags. She stood still, nervous, on the landing and looked along the corridor, checking behind her, down the stairs, before putting the bags down, pulling out her keys, and carefully checking the hair she had stuck at the top of the door jamb. It was still in place.

Relieved, she unlocked all three locks and went in, switching on the hall light and closing the door behind her, locking the deadbolts and pushing home the heavy-duty safety chain. Even so, she still waited for some moments, listening for any sounds. Outside she heard the wail of a siren fading into the distance. She carried her bags along the short corridor, snapping on the lights of the panic room behind its reinforced door and her bedroom light and checking both rooms, before looking in the bathroom and making her way through into the living/kitchen area and dumping the bags on the floor.

She took out the two bottles of Sauvignon Blanc and put one in the fridge and the other into the freezer compartment, then put away the milk, cheese, bread, blueberries and grapes she had bought, put the mixed salad on the table, and ripped the packaging off the fish pie, which she then put into the microwave before setting the timer.

The message light was winking red on her answering machine, and she hit the play button, peeling off her coat. It was her mother. Why, she wondered, did her dear mother always phone her at home and leave a message there instead of phoning her mobile which she carried with her all the time? She had told her a thousand times, but it made no difference.

‘Hi darling. The forecast is good tomorrow, so your father and I are taking the train down to Chichester early in the morning, to sail the boat back to the marina. If you can take the day off, join us – the fresh air might do you good!’

Yeah, Red thought glumly. A day out on the English Channel, freezing her butt off, eating soggy egg and tomato sandwiches and drinking warm beer, whilst enduring a lecture from her well-meaning parents on the disaster that was her life.

She phoned her mother back and told her that, much though she would have loved to join them, she had viewings set up for tomorrow, so skiving off work was, unfortunately, not an option. They confirmed the arrangement to meet at her new flat at midday on Sunday.

Then she flipped up the lid of her laptop and checked first her emails. The usual ton of spam, a message asking if she would be interested in playing lacrosse next Wednesday, to which she replied an enthusiastic yes – no one had organized a game in over a year, and she loved it – and another, an advance warning of a New Year’s Eve party, which she logged on her calendar.

Suddenly, an email popped up.

Red Westwood, you have new followers on Twitter.

After three years on Twitter she had a meagre, if respectable, one hundred and thirty-seven followers – despite following over seven thousand people herself, including Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry, the Prime Minister, President Obama, and numerous other high-profile people around the world. Not that she worried about it, but it was of course always nice to have new followers.

She clicked to open the link and read with dismay:

The queen of hearts is now following you.

58

Wednesday, 30 October

After his interview with Red Westwood finished, Roy Grace needed no more convincing. He believed her and he felt her pain. He phoned Cleo to tell her he would be delayed, but would get home as soon as he could. She sounded exhausted.

‘Please do, darling. Noah’s been grizzling all day. I think he’s teething.’

Ignoring his guilt, he spent the next hour and a half in his office, first pulling a favour from Tony Case, the Senior Support Officer responsible for Sussex House administration, getting him to clear Major Incident Room One, where there were a few team members of an enquiry which was winding down. Then he began a series of phone calls putting together the team he needed, and setting up the first briefing meeting for 8.30 a.m. the following morning.

On his drive home, shortly after 9 p.m., he continued making calls on his hands-free, and by the time he climbed out of his car, still on his phone, he had the majority of people he wanted in place. He entered the gated courtyard of Cleo’s townhouse that he and Cleo were sharing until their hoped-for move to the country within the next couple of months, if the purchase of the house went through okay. And he was cheered by a piece of good news he’d received late this afternoon, a phone call from the estate agent telling him that they had a prospective purchaser for his house, where he had lived with Sandy, and were expecting an offer in the morning.

He slipped the key in the lock and pushed the front door open. All those people who told him that having a baby would change his life were so right, he thought, despite his and Cleo’s best efforts. It was inevitable, he realized, because of the enormity of the responsibility the two of them now shared.

Up until the last months of her pregnancy, when he came home from work he would be greeted by the smell of scented candles, music playing and Cleo thrusting an ice-cold vodka martini into his hands, then kissing him passionately.

Today the smell was different. An anodyne, milky smell of baby powder and freshly laundered nappies, which Cleo insisted on using, preferring them to the convenience of disposables. She sat in a loose smock on the sofa, breastfeeding Noah in front of the television, and greeted him with a wan smile.

‘Hi darling. How was your day?’ she asked.

He wrestled out of his coat, patting an excited Humphrey at the same time. ‘Okay . . . well . . . actually, a bit shit. Got a new murder enquiry, which I could do without right now.’

Instantly her face dropped. ‘God, is that going to affect our—’

‘Absolutely not!’ he said, cutting her short in mid-sentence. ‘Nothing’s going to affect Saturday, or our honeymoon. How’s the little fellow?’

Noah, eyes shut, was sucking away.

‘Okay, for the moment. But he’s been grizzly all day with the combination feeding. I don’t think we’re going to get much sleep tonight. Maybe you should go in the spare room.’

He shook his head. ‘All for one and one for all!’