Want You Dead (23 page)

She grinned. ‘Did you get that from Glenn?’

‘Actually, no.
The Three Musketeers
is one of the few books I remember from childhood.’ He grinned, then paused to look at the television. ‘I need a drink.’

‘I’ve put everything out for you.’

He blew her a kiss, went through into the kitchen and mixed himself a stiff vodka martini, then brought it back into the room and perched on the end of the sofa beside them. He took a sip, and instantly craved a cigarette, but would wait until Noah was in bed.

‘If you need to postpone our honeymoon, darling, I’d understand,’ Cleo said. ‘Even though I’ve been expressing milk all week.’

‘No way.’

‘I’d hate for Cassian Pewe to use this against you. Taking off in the middle of a murder enquiry. I can imagine him doing that.’

He shook his head. ‘We’re well into the investigation. I’m setting everything up and Glenn is perfectly capable of running with it until I’m back. I’m not letting anything get in the way – like I did previously.’

‘With Sandy?’ The moment she had said the name, she regretted it. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s history. We have our whole lives ahead of us, and I love you so damned much. I’m not going to repeat any mistakes. Okay?’ He looked at her with a big smile.

She smiled back. ‘Are you still going to have your stag night?’

‘It’s not exactly going to be a wild occasion. I’m going out for a couple of beers with Glenn and the team tomorrow night, then staying over with him again on Friday. It’s meant to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride on the day of the wedding.’

‘It’s going to be sooooooooo good to have some time alone together,’ she said.

‘It is! We used to leap on each other all the time. Remember those showers we used to take, soaping each other? God, they made me so damned horny!’

‘And me! I promise, next week we’ll have showers every night. I’ll massage you all over. I can’t wait. I still fancy you, Roy Grace, I fancy you like crazy. I’m sorry if I’ve been too tired recently to show it.’

‘And right back at you, my lovely.’

He leaned over and kissed her.

Noah stopped suckling and began crying.

59

Thursday, 31 October

Red heard crying. Her eyes sprang open, straight into a dazzling beam of light burning into her retinas like a laser. She closed them. Then opened them again. Saw a face this time.

Bryce.

Staring down at her.

She lay, frozen, staring back up at him. Staring into his eyes. She tried to speak but her voice was muted with fear. She tried again. Then again. Then finally she blurted out a feeble, ‘What do you want?’

The light went out and then, suddenly, she was staring into darkness. Listening. Listening for footsteps. Shaking in terror. Was Bryce in the room?

She heard another cry in the darkness. A wail of pain. A howl. A long, tortured, high-pitched scream. The clank of a dustbin. Two cats fighting. Then the wail of a siren.
Police, please!
Brief, then it stopped. The rattle of a taxi. The slam of a car door. Shouting. Two drunks, a man and a potty-mouthed woman, arguing. She hurling obscene insults. He slurring back in a broad Scouse accent.

Was Bryce in the room?

More people outside now, two floors below, all of them sounding drunk. One of them started singing ‘Rule Britannia!’ Another began shouting, ‘Seagulls! Seagulls! Seagulls!’

Football supporters.

She looked at the clock beside her bed. The luminous hands showed it was 2.18 a.m.

‘Seagulls!’

‘Screw seagulls!’

‘I never tried!’

More laughter.

Drunks inflicting their hilarity on everyone sleeping around them.

She was close enough to shout for help. Help from a bunch of drunks? Goosebumps pricked her body. Ran up her legs, her midriff, her arms.

Was Bryce in here?

She reached out her arm, careful not to knock over her water, found the lamp, found the switch and pressed it. The small room flooded with weak light.

She was alone.

Her heart was pounding. She picked up her mobile phone from the bedside table, hovered her thumb over the speed-dial button, number 1, for PC Spofford. Then lay still, listening. The arguing couple moved on, but the drunks remained, starting to sing again, their Seagulls supporters chant.

She wanted to get out of bed and check the flat, but she was too afraid of stepping out of her bedroom door into the corridor. So instead she lay still, listening to the drunks singing and ragging each other. Listening for any sound in her flat beyond the bedroom. Until, suddenly, she heard a male voice.

‘One hundred and thirty-four people are feared dead when a railway bridge, one hundred miles north of Calcutta, collapsed in what is reported to be one of India’s worst ever rail disasters.’

Red rolled over and stared at the blinking light on her clock/radio. It was just gone 6.30 a.m.

Memories of the night came back, and relief flooded through her. Bryce shining the torch at her, staring down at her, had been a dream. That was all. She closed her eyes and half dozed, half listened to the news, as she did every weekday morning.

Twenty minutes later, she slipped out of bed, naked, and padded through into her bathroom, pushed open the sliding door that closed off the tiny loo, and peed. Then she went through into the kitchen to brew a cup of tea and prepare her breakfast of chopped-up fruit and porridge.

And instantly stopped in her tracks.

Was her memory playing tricks?

She thought back to last night. Her breakfast stuff from the morning had lain unwashed on the draining board. Additionally, she had left the packaging from the fish pie she’d microwaved on the draining board, ready to throw it away in the morning. Along with the dishes she’d used – the plate, the bowl for the salad, and the empty low-fat fruit yoghurt pot.

They had gone.

All the dishes were now clean and lying on the draining board.

She opened the cupboard with the swing bin. The lid rose to reveal a fresh, unused black bin liner.

Her stomach flipped. Fear washed through her. She turned and ran along the corridor to the front door. Then stared for some moments, ensuring she was focused and not dreaming, at the door. The security chain was securely in place.

Bryce could not have been here last night, could he?

No way could he have let himself out of the front door with that safety chain still in place. It was too high for him to have jumped from a window. She hurried over to each window in turn, and looked down into the faint, breaking light. Not possible. He’d have had to have left something behind if he had gone out of any of the windows. A rope, a cord, a wire. Something.

But if not Bryce, who the hell had done the washing-up then emptied the bin? Had she done it herself? She knew she had drunk far too much last night. Did that explain it? That she had done all of that and forgotten in her drunkenness?

She was so damned sure she had seen Bryce in the middle of the night. But the safety chain was still in place. No one could have come in through the front door. Nor locked it behind them. So how could it have been him?

She had dreamed him, she thought. It was the only possible explanation.

60

Thursday, 31 October

At a few minutes before half past eight in the morning, carrying a mug of coffee, Roy Grace left his office and used his pass card to open the door to the Major Crime Suite. He walked along the corridor, the walls lined on both sides with noticeboards pinned with crime-scene photographs, charts and newspaper headlines from recent solved homicides, and entered Major Incident Room One.

MIR-1 was a spacious, modern, airy room furnished with three large oval workstations, around which his team were settling down. Three whiteboards were fixed to the walls. One was stickered with crime-scene photographs from Haywards Heath golf course, with arrows, and handwriting in red, black and green marker pen. The second displayed a series of portrait photographs of Bryce Laurent. On the third was an association chart of Bryce Laurent, as well as two photographs of Red Westwood. One of these was in Brighton, right in front of the Brighton Oyster & Shellfish Bar. The other was of her on a terrace, overlooking the Mediterranean, with a glass of champagne in her hand.

Someone’s mobile phone was ringing with an old-fashioned bell tone. There was a smell of eggs and bacon – Guy Batchelor hunched over a hot breakfast roll from Trudie’s mobile cafe, a short walk down the road. As Roy Grace sniffed it, he felt a pang of hunger. The bowl of porridge he’d gulped down at 5.30 a.m. before leaving home seemed a long time ago now.

DS Bella Moy was seated, with the ever-present box of Maltesers in front of her, studying the case notes that had been circulated in advance. Norman Potting sauntered in holding a lidded carton of coffee, and Grace clocked the secretive grin between him and Bella. He smiled to himself, happy to see lost soul Bella at last looking happy; he was pleased for Norman, too. The old sweat’s private life had been a series of disasters – particularly the nightmare of his grasping Thai bride of a few months back.

Two young, bright Detective Constables, Alec Davies and Jack Alexander, were present, along with his other stalwarts – DS Jon Exton, recently promoted, DS Guy Batchelor, and Crime Scene Manager David Green. The others in the room included Inspector James Biggs from the Road Policing Unit, HOLMES analyst Keely Scanlan, researcher Becky Davies, Chief Fire Investigation Officer Tony Gurr, and forensic podiatrist Haydn Kelly, whose forensic gait analysis instruments had been invaluable in both of Roy Grace’s most recent cases, DI Gordon Graham, a specialist from the Police Financial Investigation Unit, and Ray Packham.

Grace waited until a further two DCs, Francesca Jamieson and Liz Seward, whom he had requested this morning to help on the outside enquiry team, had entered, then seated himself at his own workstation with his policy book and briefing notes, prepared by his assistant, in front of him. He glanced at the notes then opened his policy book and made a note of the date and time.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the first briefing of Operation Aardvark, the investigation into the suspected murder of Dr Karl Thomas Murphy, whose charred body was found on Haywards Heath golf course on the morning of last Thursday, 24 October.’

‘Did he count as a movable obstruction, chief, or did the players get a free drop?’ Norman Potting said with a chortle. There were a few other titters of laughter, instantly silenced by Grace’s glare.

‘Thank you, Norman. Save the golfing jokes for another time, okay?’

‘Sorry, chief.’ Potting turned towards Bella, as if for approval, but she studiously ignored him by reaching forward and helping herself to a chocolate.

Distracted for a moment, Roy Grace noticed the large print from the cartoon film
The Ant and the Aardvark,
with a bright blue, gormless-looking Aardvark standing erect, that some wag had taped to the inside of the door. It had become a Sussex Police tradition for a picture mimicking the title of a major crime operation to be stuck there. This one had appeared faster than usual.

‘Before I start,’ Roy Grace said. ‘I should let you all know that I will be absent from this Saturday until next Friday morning, 8 November, for my marriage to Cleo and our brief honeymoon. DI Branson will deputize for me during this period.’

Glenn, two seats away from him, raised his hand in acknowledgement.

The Detective Superintendent pointed at the whiteboard on which there were a series of photographs of Bryce Laurent. In one he wore a striped T-shirt and shorts; in another he was dressed in a felt graduation cap and ermine gown; another was a US penitentiary photograph of him against a height ruler, with an ID number tag around his neck. ‘This man is our prime suspect and we need to find him urgently. We are also linking him to a number of suspected arson attacks in the city during the past week. We believe his real name to be Thomas William Cheviot. This was the name under which he spent three years in a Philadelphia State Penitentiary for an assault on his girlfriend. According to the detective I spoke to, he beat her up pretty badly. We’re not exactly dealing with Mr Nice Guy here, okay?’

Then he looked back down at his notes. ‘Thomas Cheviot has any number of possible aliases. His last known one is Bryce Laurent. Previous ones include Pat Tolley, Derek Jordan, Michael Andrews and Paul Riley. Thanks to the cooperation of the Philadelphia police we have his fingerprints and DNA. He’s smart, he dresses well, speaks with a classy voice, and is a regular charmer in every sense. He could be anywhere in the world right now. But for reasons that will become self-evident, I believe he is staying local and ready to strike at any moment.’

He looked at his notes again. ‘What we do know about Bryce Laurent – we’ll refer to him by this name to avoid confusion – is that he has worked as a close magician, he has extensive knowledge of pyrotechnics, and he is a total fantasist. He’s passed himself off in the US separately as an American Airlines captain and an investment banker, and in the UK as an Air Traffic Controller at Gatwick Airport. Under one of his aliases, Pat Tolley, he was granted a fireworks manufacturing licence here in the UK. But we’ve checked out the address, an industrial site on farmland in Suffolk, and he’s long gone from there. We also know he is a talented cartoonist.’

He sipped some water. ‘I’ve again engaged the services of a forensic behavioural psychologist, Dr Julius Proudfoot – some of you will remember he worked with us very effectively on Operation Houdini, the Shoeman case. He’ll be joining future briefings. It is Dr Proudfoot’s view that Laurent has an immensely high opinion of himself; that he is displaying all the qualities of a classic narcissist. I wrote down this from him: “Narcissism is a highly dangerous trait, which stems often from people who have been unloved in childhood compensating in later life with grandiose self-belief, arrogance, a tendency to make unreasonable demands, unstable temper and violent mood swings, and, very significantly and dangerously, that familiar attribute of the psychopath – a lack of empathy.”’