Dead Simple (16 page)

The phone on Bella’s desk rang. She answered it, and almost instantly her expression conveyed that it was significant.

‘You’re certain?’ she said. ‘Since Tuesday? You can’t be sure it was Tuesday? No one else could have taken it?’ After a few moments, she said, ‘No, I agree. Thank you, that could be very significant. May I take your number?’

Grace watched while she wrote down on a pad ‘
Sean Houlihan’,
followed by a number. ‘Thank you, Mr Houlihan, thank you very much, we’ll get back to you.’

She hung up and looked at Grace then Branson. ‘That was Mr Houlihan, the owner of the undertakers where Robert Houlihan, his nephew, worked. They’ve just discovered that they are missing a coffin.’

‘Missing a coffin?’ Glenn Branson said.

‘Not something people ordinarily steal, is it?’ Bella Moy said.

Grace was silent for a moment, distracted by a bluebottle that buzzed noisily around the room for a moment, then batted against a window. Forensics was on the floor below. Bloodstained clothes and artefacts were a magnet for bluebottles. Grace hated them. Bluebottles — or
blowflies —
were the vultures of the insect world. ‘This character, Robert Houlihan, borrowed the undertaker’s van without permission. Seems possible he might have borrowed a coffin without permission too.’ He looked quizzically at Branson then Bella, then at Nick Nicholl. ‘Do we have one very sick prank on our hands?’

‘Are you suggesting his mates might have put him in a coffin?’ Glenn Branson said.

‘Do you have a better theory?’

Branson smiled, edgily. ‘Work on the facts. Right?’

Looking at Bella, subconsciously thinking how attractive she was, Grace said, ‘How sure is this Houlihan fellow that his coffin has been taken and they haven’t just misplaced it?’

‘People misplace their front door keys — I don’t think people misplace coffins,’ Branson said, a tad facetiously.

Bella interrupted, ‘He’s very sure. It was the most expensive coffin in his range, Indian teak, says it would last for hundreds of years — but this one had a flaw — the wood had warped or something — wasn’t sealing tight at the bottom — he was having a ding-dong with the manufacturers in India about it.’

‘I can’t believe we have to import coffins from
India
! Don’t we have carpenters in England?’ Branson said.

Grace was staring at the map. He traced a circle with his finger. ‘This is a pretty big area.’

‘How long could someone survive in a coffin?’ Bella asked.

‘If the lid was on properly it would depend on if they had air, water, food. Without air, not long. A few hours, maybe a day,’ Grace replied.

‘It’s now three days,’ Branson said.

Grace remembered reading about a victim who had been pulled out alive from the ruins of his home twelve days after an earthquake in Turkey. ‘With air, at least a week, maybe longer,’ he said. ‘We’d have to assume if they have done some damned stupid prank on him they would have left him with air. If they didn’t, then we’re looking for a body.’

He looked at the team. ‘Presumably you’ve talked to Mark Warren, the business partner?’

‘He’s also his best man,’ Nicholl said. ‘Says he has no idea what happened. They were going on a stag-night pub crawl and he was stuck out of town and missed it.’

Grace frowned, then glanced at his watch, acutely aware of time slipping away. ‘There’s one thing going on a stag-night pub crawl, there’s another thing taking a coffin with you. You don’t decide to take a coffin with you on the spur of the moment — do you?’ He stared pointedly at each of them in turn.

All three shook their heads.

‘Someone’s talked to all the girlfriends, wives?’

‘I did,’ Bella said. ‘It’s hard because they’re in shock, but one of them was very angry — Zoe…’ She picked up her notepad and flipped over some pages. ‘Zoe Walker — widow of Josh Walker. She said that Michael was always playing stupid pranks, and she was certain they had been planning revenge.’

‘And the best man didn’t know anything about it? I don’t buy that,’ Grace said.

‘I’m pretty convinced he didn’t know anything. Why would he have any reason to lie?’ Nicholl said.

Grace was worried by the young detective’s naivety. But he always believed in giving juniors opportunities to show their abilities. He let it ride for the moment, but logged it firmly in his mind to come back to later today.

‘This is one hell of an area to search,’ Branson said. ‘It’s heavily wooded; it could take a hundred people days to comb this.’

‘We have to try to narrow it down,’ Grace responded. He picked up a marker pen from Bella’s desk, and drew a blue circle on the map, then turned to DC Nicholl. ‘Nick, we need a list of every pub in this circle. This is where we need to start.’ He turned to Branson. ‘Do you have photographs of the lads in the van?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good boy. Two sets?’

‘I have a dozen sets.’

‘We’ll divide in two, DS Branson and I will take one half of the pubs, you two take the other. I’ll see if we can get the helicopter to cover the area — although it’s very wooded, they’ve a better chance of seeing something from the air.’

An hour later, Glenn Branson pulled his car up on the deserted forecourt of a pub called the King’s Head, on the Ringmer Road, on the perimeter of the circle. They climbed out of the car and went up to the door. Above it was a sign saying, ‘John and Margaret Hobbs, landlords’.

Inside, the saloon bar was deserted and so was the drab restaurant area off to the left. The place smelled of furniture polish and stale beer. A fruit machine flashed and winked away in a far corner, near a dartboard.

‘Hello?’ Branson called out. ‘Hello?’

Grace leaned over the bar and saw an open trap door. He lifted a flap in the counter, went behind it, kneeled and shouted down into the cellar, which was illuminated by a weak bulb. ‘Hello? Anyone there?’

A gruff voice came back. ‘Be up in a moment.’

He heard a rumbling sound, then a grey beer barrel, with ‘HARVEY’S’ stamped on the side, gripped by a pair of massive, grimy hands, appeared, followed by the head of a burly, red-faced man, in a white shirt and jeans, sweating profusely. He had the bulk and the broken nose of an ex-boxer. ‘Yes, gents?’

Branson showed him his warrant card. ‘Detective Sergeant Branson and Detective Superintendent Grace of the Sussex Police. We’re looking for the landlord. Mr Hobbs?’

‘You’ve found him,’ he wheezed, climbing out, then hauling himself up on to his feet and staring at them warily. He stank of body odour.

‘Wonder if you’d mind taking a look at these photographs and see if you recognize any of the faces. They might have come in here last Tuesday night.’ Branson laid the photographs on the counter.

John Hobbs studied each of the photographs in turn. Then he shook his head. ‘No, never saw them before.’

‘Were you working here on Tuesday night?’ Grace asked him.

‘I’m here every sodding night,’ he said. ‘Seven days a week. Thanks to your bloody lot.’

‘Our lot?’ Grace said.

‘Your Traffic Division. Not easy to make a living running a rural pub, when your chums in Traffic sneak around outside, breathalysing all my customers.’

Ignoring the comment, Grace said, ‘Are you absolutely sure you don’t recognize them?’

‘I get ten people in here on a mid-week night, it’s Fat City. If they’d been here, I’d have seen them. I don’t recognize them. Any reason why I should?’

It was moments like this that made Roy Grace very angry at the Traffic Division. For most people, being stopped for speeding, or to take a breathalyser check, was the only contact they ever had with the police. As a result, instead of viewing the police as their friends and guardians of the peace, they regarded them as an enemy.

‘Do you watch television? Read the local papers?’ Grace asked.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m too busy for that. Is that a crime?’

‘Four of these boys are dead,’ Glenn Branson said, riled by the man’s attitude. ‘They were killed in a traffic accident on Tuesday night.’

‘And you walk in here with your big swinging dicks, looking for some poor sodding landlord to blame for plying them with drink?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Grace replied. ‘No, I’m not. I’m looking for this lad who was with them.’ He pointed at Michael’s photograph.

The landlord shook his head. ‘Not in here,’ he said.

Looking up at the walls, Branson asked, ‘Do you have CCTV?’

‘That meant to be a joke? Like I have money to buy fancy security gizmos? You know the CCTV I use?’ He pointed at his own eyes. ‘These. They come free when you’re born. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a barrel to change.’

Neither of them bothered to reply.

Michael shivered. Something was crawling through his hair. It was progressing steadily, determinedly, towards his forehead. It felt like a spider.

In panic, dropping the belt buckle, he jerked his hands up, sweeping furiously at his hair, fingers raw and bloody from scraping away at the lid.

Then it was on his face, crossing his cheek, mouth, chin.

‘Jesus, get off, you fuckwit!’ He smacked at his face with both hands, then felt something small and sticky. It was dead, whatever it had been. He wiped what remains he could feel off the thick, itchy growth of his stubble.

He had always been fine with most creatures, but not spiders. When he was a kid, he’d read a story in the local newspaper about a greengrocer who got bitten by a tarantula that was concealed in a bunch of bananas and had nearly died.

The beam of the torch was very faint now, giving a dark amber glow to the interior of the coffin. He was having to hold his head up to stop the rising water washing over his cheeks and into his eyes and mouth. Something else had bitten him on the ankle a while back, some insect, and it was stinging.

He shook the torch. For a moment the bulb died altogether. Then a tiny strip of filament glowed for a few seconds.

He was freezing cold. Working away at the lid was the only thing stopping him from getting even colder. He still hadn’t broken through. He had to,
had to
, before the water — he tried to shut the unthinkable from his mind, but he couldn’t. The water kept rising, it covered his legs and part of his chest. With one hand he was having to cradle the walkie-talkie in the gap between his chest and the lid to prevent it from getting immersed.

Despair, like the water, was steadily enveloping him. Davey’s words went round and round inside his mind.

There was one guy sticking right out through the windshield, half his head missing. Jeez, could see his brains coming out. Knew right away he was a goner. Only one survivor, but he died too.

A Transit van in a smash at a time and place that fitted. Pete, Luke, Josh, Robbo — could they really all be dead? And that was the reason no one had come to find him? But Mark must have known what they were planning, he was his best man, for Christ’s sake! Surely Mark was out there, leading a team looking for him? Unless, he thought bleakly, something had happened to him, too. Maybe he’d joined them at the next pub and been in the van with them?

It was ten past four, Friday afternoon. He tried to imagine what was happening right now. What was Ashley doing? His mother? Was everything still going forward for tomorrow as planned?

He raised his head, so his mouth was up a few precious inches closer to the lid, and shouted, as he did regularly, ‘Help! Help me! Help!’

Nothing but numbing silence.

I have to get out.

There was a fizz, then a crackle that for a moment Michael thought was splintering wood, until he heard the familiar hiss of static. Then a disembodied Southern drawl: ‘You mean that, what you said, ’bout me being on television?’

‘Davey?’

‘Hey pal, we just got back — that was a real wreck, boy! You didn’t want to be in that automobile, I tell you. Took ’em two hours to cut the driver out, he was in pretty bad shape. Better shape than the woman in the other car, though, you know what I’m saying?’

‘Yes I do,’ Michael said, trying the tack of humouring him.

‘Not sure about that. I’m saying she’s dead. Y’all understand?’

‘Dead? Yes, I understand that.’

‘You can tell y’know, just by looking, who the dead ones are and who the ones gonna survive are. Not all the time. But wow, I’m tellin’ you something!’

‘Davey, that wreck you went to on Tuesday night, can you remember how many young men were in it?’

After some moments of silence, Davey said, ‘Just counting the ambulances. Bad accidents you get one ambulance for each person. There was one leaving when we arrived, one still there.’

‘Davey, you don’t by any chance know the names of the victims?’

Almost instantly, surprising Michael, Davey rattled them off to him. ‘Josh Walker, Luke Gearing, Peter Waring, Robert Houlihan.’

‘You have a good memory, Davey,’ Michael said, trying to encourage him. ‘Was there anyone else? Was someone called Mark Warren in that wreck, also?’

Davey laughed. ‘Never forget a name. If Mark Warren had been in that wreck, I’d have known about it. Remember every name I ever heard, remember where I heard it, and the time. Ain’t ever been a shitload of use.’

‘Must have been good for history at school.’

‘Mebbe,’ he said noncommittally.

Michael fought the temptation to shout at him from sheer frustration. Instead, keeping his patience, he said, ‘Do you remember where the accident happened?’

‘A26. Two point four miles south of Crowborough.’

Michael felt a ray of hope brightening inside him. ‘I don’t think I’m very far from there. Can you drive, Davey?’

‘You mean like an automobile?’

‘Yup, that’s exactly what I mean.’

‘Guess that would depend on how you define
drive
.’

Michael closed his eyes for some moments. There had to be some way to connect properly with this character.
How?
‘Davey, I need help, really badly. Do you like games?’

‘You mean like computer games? Yeah! Do you have a Play-Station-2?’