Dead Simple (13 page)

There was a sudden sharp hiss, stark and clear. The walkie-talkie!

Then a voice, in a thick Southern drawl said: ‘You have any idea how much damage they do? Huh? You got yourself any idea?’

Frantically, Michael scrabbled in the darkness for his torch.

The voice continued, ‘Y’know, most folk ain’t got no idea. You git them durn conservationalists talking ’bout protecting the wildlife, but them guys, they don’t know shit, know what I’m saying?’

Michael found the torch, switched it on, located the walkie-talkie and pressed the
talk
button. ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello? Davey?’

‘Uh huh, I’m talking to ya! Bet you don’t have no idea, right?’

‘Hello, who are you?’

‘Hey dude, you don’t need to worry ’bout who I am. Thing is five danged rabbits eat near enough the same amount of grass as one sheep. Go figure.’

Michael gripped the black box, totally confused, wondering if he was hallucinating. What the hell was going on? ‘Can I speak to Mark? Or Josh? Or Luke? Or Pete? Robbo?’

There was silence for some moments.

‘Hello?’ Michael said. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Ma friend, I ain’t going nowhere.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Maybe I’m the Man With No Name.’

‘Listen, Davey, this joke’s gone on too long, OK? Too fucking long. Please get me out of here.’

‘You gotta be impressed with two hundred rabbits, right?’

Michael stared at the walkie-talkie. Had everyone gone totally insane? Was this the lunatic who had just taken out the breathing tube? Michael tried desperately to think clearly.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’ve been put here as a joke by some friends. Can you get me out of here, please?’

‘You in some kind of bad shit?’ the American voice said.

Still unsure whether this was some kind of game, Michael said, ‘Bad shit, you got it.’

‘What do you think about two hundred rabbits?’

‘What do you want me to think about two hundred rabbits?’

‘Well dude, what I want you to think is that any dude wastes two hundred rabbits, he’s gotta be an OK kind of a dude, know what I’m saying?’

‘Totally,’ Michael said. ‘I totally agree with you.’

‘OK, we’re on the same page, that’s cool.’

‘Sure is. Cool.’

‘Don’t get much cooler, right, dude?’

‘You got it,’ Michael said, trying to humour him. ‘So maybe you could lift the lid off for me and we could have a discussion about this face to face?’

‘I’m kinda tired now. Think I’m going to hunker down, get me some shut-eye, know what I’m saying?’

Panicking, Michael said, ‘Hey, no, don’t do that, let’s keep talking. Tell me more about the rabbits, Davey.’

‘Told ya, I’m the Man With No Name.’

‘OK, Man With No Name, you don’t happen to have a couple of Panadols, because I’ve one mother of a headache?’

‘Panadols?’

‘Yes.’

There was silence. Just the crackle of static.

‘Hello?’ Michael said. ‘You still there?’

There was a chuckle. ‘Panadol?’

‘Come on, please get me out of here.’

After another long silence the voice said, ‘Guess that depends where
here
is.’

‘I’m in the goddamn coffin.’

‘You’re shittin’ me.’

‘No shit.’

Another chuckle. ‘No shit, Sherlock, right?’

‘Right! No shit, Sherlock.’

‘I have to go now, it’s late. Shut-eye!’

‘Hey, please wait — please—’

The walkie-talkie went silent.

In the fading beam of the flashlight Michael saw that the water had risen considerably just in the past hour. He tested the depth again with his hand. An hour ago it had reached the knuckle of his index finger.

Now it covered his hand completely.

Roy Grace, in a white short-sleeve shirt and sombre tie, his collar loose, stared at the text message on his phone, and frowned:

Can’t stop thinking about you! Claudine xx

Claudine?

Sitting in his office shortly after 9 a.m., in front of his computer screen, which was pinging with new emails every few moments, feeling dog tired and with a blinding headache, he was cold. It was tipping down with rain outside and there was an icy draught in the room. For some moments he watched it running down his window, staring at the bleak view of the alley wall beyond, then he unscrewed the cap of a bottle of mineral water he’d bought at a petrol station on his way in, rummaged in a drawer of his desk and took out a packet of Panadol. He popped two capsules from the foil, swallowed them, then checked the time the message had been sent: 2.14 a.m.

Claudine
.

Oh God. Now it registered.

His cop-hating, vegan blind date from U-Date of Tuesday night. She’d been horrible, the evening had been a disaster, and now she was texting him. Terrific.

He held his mobile phone in his hand, toying with whether to reply or just delete it, when his door opened and Branson walked in, dressed in a crisp brown suit, a violent tie and two-tone brown and cream correspondent’s shoes, holding a capped Starbucks coffee in one hand and two paper bags in the other.

‘Yo, man!’ Branson greeted him, breezily, as usual, plonking himself in the chair opposite Grace and setting the coffee and paper bag down on his desk. ‘Still own a shirt, I see.’

‘Very funny,’ Grace said.

‘You win last night?’

‘No, I did not sodding well win.’ Grace was still smarting at his loss. Four hundred and twenty quid. Money wasn’t a problem for him, and he had no debts, but he hated losing, especially losing heavily.

‘You look like shit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No, I mean, really. You look like absolute shit.’

‘Nice of you to come all this way to tell me.’

‘You ever see
The Cincinatti Kid?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Steve McQueen. Got wiped out in a card game. Had a great ending — you’d remember, the kid in the alley challenging him to a bet, and he tosses his last coin at him.’ Branson peeled the lid off, spilling coffee onto the desk, then removed an almond croissant, dropping a trail of icing sugar next to the coffee spill. He proffered it to Grace. ‘Want a bite?’

Grace shook his head. ‘You should eat something more healthy for breakfast.’

‘Oh really? So I get to look like you? What did you have? Organic wheat grass?’

Grace held up the Panadol packet. ‘All the nourishment I need. What are you doing here in the sticks?’

‘Got a meeting in ten minutes with the Chief. I’ve been drafted onto the Drugs Performance committee.’

‘Lucky you.’

‘It’s all about profile, isn’t that what you told me? Stay visible to your chiefs?’

‘Good boy, you remembered. I’m impressed.’

‘But actually that’s not why I’m here to see you, old-timer.’ Branson pulled a birthday card out of the second bag and laid it in front of Grace. ‘Getting everyone to sign — for Mandy.’

Mandy Walker was in the Child Protection Unit in Brighton. At one time Grace and Branson had both worked with her.

‘She’s leaving?’ Grace said.

Branson nodded, then mimed a pregnant belly. ‘Actually, thought you’d be in court today.’

‘Adjourned to Monday.’ Grace signed alongside a dozen other names on the card; the coffee and pastry suddenly smelled good. As Branson took a bite of croissant he reached out a hand, took the other croissant from its bag and tore a mouthful off, savouring the instant hit of sweetness. He chewed slowly, peering at Branson’s tie, which had such a sharp geometric pattern it almost made him dizzy, then handed back the card.

‘Roy, that flat we went to on Wednesday, right?’

‘Down The Drive?

‘There’s something I don’t get. I need the wisdom of your years. You got a couple of minutes?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

Ignoring him, Branson said, ‘Here’s the thing.’ He took another bite of his croissant, icing sugar and crumbs falling onto his suit and tie. ‘Five guys on a stag night, right? Now—’

There was a rap on the door, then it opened, and Eleanor Hodgson, Grace’s management support assistant, brought in a sheaf of papers and files. A rather prim, efficient middle-aged woman, with neat black hair and a plain, slightly old-fashioned face, she always seemed nervous of just about everything. At the moment she looked nervous of Glenn Branson’s tie.

‘Good morning, Roy,’ she said. ‘Good morning, DS Branson.’

‘How you doing?’ Glenn replied.

She put the documents down on Roy’s desk. ‘I’ve got a couple of forensics reports back from Huntingdon. One’s the one you’ve been waiting for.’

‘Tommy Lytle?’

‘Yes. I’ve also got the agenda and briefing notes for your budget meeting at eleven.’

‘Thanks.’ As she was leaving the room he quickly sifted through the pile and pulled the Huntington report to the top. Huntingdon, in Cambridge, was one of the forensic centres that Sussex Police used. Tommy Lytle was Grace’s oldest ‘cold case’. At the age of eleven, twenty-seven years ago, Tommy had set out from school on a February afternoon, to walk home. He’d never been seen again. The only lead at the time had been a Morris Minor van, seen by a witness who had had the presence of mind to write down the number. But no link to the owner, a weirdo loner with a history of sex offences on minors, had ever been established. And then, two months ago, by complete coincidence, the van had showed up on Grace’s radar, when a classic car enthusiast who now owned it got stopped for drunken driving.

The advances in forensics from twenty-seven years back were beyond quantum. With modern DNA testing, police forensic scientists boasted, not without substance, that if a human being had ever been in a room, no matter how long ago, given time, they could find evidence. Just one skin cell that had escaped the vacuum cleaners, or a hair, or a clothing fibre. Maybe something one hundred times smaller than a pinhead. There would be a trace.

And now they had the van. And the original suspect was still alive. And forensics had been through that van with microscopes!

Despite his fondness for Branson, suddenly Grace could not wait for him to leave, so he could read the report. If he solved this, it would be the oldest cold case ever solved in the country.

Popping the remains of the croissant in his mouth and talking while he chewed, Branson said, ‘Five guys go on a stag night, right? The groom is a real joker — he’s pulled a stunt on each of the guys in the past — handcuffed one poor sod to a seat on the night train to Edinburgh when he was meant to be getting married in Brighton the next morning.’

‘Nice guy,’ Grace said.

‘Yes, just the kind of fun bloke you want for your best friend. So. Let’s look at what we have: Five of them start out. Somewhere along the line they lose the groom, Michael Harrison. Then they are in an RTA, three of them dead at the scene, the fourth in a coma and he died last night. Michael has vanished, no one has heard a word. It is now Friday morning and he’s due to be married in a little over twenty-four hours.’

Branson sipped some coffee, stood up for a moment and walked around the office. He stopped and stared for a moment at the SASCO flip chart, on which a draft rota for something had been written in blue ink. He flipped it over, then picked up a pen and drew on the board.

‘We got Michael Harrison.’ He wrote his name and drew a circle around it. ‘We got the four dead mates.’ He drew a second circle. ‘Then we have the fiancée, Ashley Harper.’ He drew a third circle around her. ‘Then the business partner, Mark Warren.’ He drew a fourth circle. ‘And…’

Grace looked at him quizzically.

‘We have what we dug out of his computer yesterday, yeah?’

‘A bank account in the Cayman Islands.’

Still holding the pen, Branson sat down in front of Grace again.

Grace continued. ‘The business partner wasn’t at the stag do, you said.’

Branson never failed to be impressed by Grace’s memory for detail. He always seemed to retain everything. ‘Correct.’

‘Because he was stuck out of town on a delayed flight.’

‘That’s the story so far.’

‘So what does he say? Where does he think Michael Harrison went? Did he fuck off to the Cayman Islands?’

‘Roy, you have seen his bird. And we agreed no bloke in his right mind would ditch her and run away — she is drop-dead gorgeous, and smart with it. And…’ Branson pursed his lips.

‘And what?’

‘She lies. I did your NLP stuff on her, the eye trick. I asked her if she knew about the Cayman Islands account and she said she didn’t. She was lying.’

‘She was probably just being protective. Covering her boss — and fiancé’s arse.’ Grace was distracted for an instant by the ping of another incoming email. Then he thought hard. ‘What is your take so far?’

‘The following possible scenarios: Could be his mates have been paying him back and they’ve tied him up somewhere. Or he might have had an accident. Or he’s got cold feet and done a runner. Or the Cayman Islands features in this somewhere.’

Grace clicked open one of the emails that was flagged as urgent and was from his boss, Alison Vosper. She asked if he was free for a brief meeting at 12.30. He typed back that he was, while he talked to Branson. ‘The guy’s business partner, Mark Warren, he’d know if they had been planning a prank, like tying him to a tree, or something.’

‘Ms Harper says he knows they were planning something, but doesn’t know what they decided on.’

‘Have you checked out the pubs they visited?’

‘Doing that today.’

‘CCTV footage?’

‘Starting on that, too.’

‘Have you checked out the van?’

From the look of sudden panic on Branson’s face, Grace saw he hadn’t. ‘Why the hell not? Isn’t that the first place to look?’

‘Yeah, you’re right. I haven’t got fully into gear on this yet.’

‘Have you done an all-ports?’

‘Yeah, his picture’s being circulated this morning. We’ve put out a missing persons alert.’

Grace felt as if a dark cloud had slipped overhead.
Missing persons
. Every time he heard the phrase it affected him, brought it all right to the front of his mind again. He thought of this woman, Ashley, Branson had described. The day before her wedding and her man gone missing. How must she feel?