Dead Simple (19 page)

Grace tolerated it for some moments, then turned the volume down again.

‘What’s the matter, man — this group is so cool,’ Branson said.

‘Great,’ Grace said.

‘You want to pull a bird, yeah? You need to get with the culture.’

‘You’re my culture guru, right?’

Branson shot him a sideways glance. ‘I ought to be your style guru, too. Got a great hairdresser you should go to — Ian Habbin at The Point. Get him to sharpen up your hair — I mean, like, you are looking so
yesterday.
’

‘It’s starting to feel like yesterday,’ Grace responded. ‘You asked me to have lunch with you. It’s now past teatime and heading for supper. At this rate we’ll be having breakfast together.’

‘Since when did you have a life?’ Almost as the words came out, Branson regretted saying them. He could see the pain in Grace’s face without even turning to look at him. ‘Sorry, man,’ he said.

They drove through the smart, cliff-top village of Rottingdean, then along a sweeping rise, dip, followed by another rise, past the higgledy-piggledy suburban sprawl of post-war houses of Saltdean, then Peacehaven.

‘Take the next left,’ Grace said. Then he continued to direct Branson through a maze of hilly streets, crammed with bungalows and modest detached houses, until they pulled up outside a small, rather shabby-looking bungalow, with an even shabbier-looking camper van parked outside.

They hurried through the rain into a tiny porch, with wind chimes pinging outside, and rang the doorbell. After a few moments it was answered by a diminutive, wiry man well into his seventies, with a goatee beard, long grey hair tied back in a pony tail, wearing a kaftan and dungarees, and sporting an ankh medallion on a gold chain. He greeted them effusively in a high-pitched voice, a bundle of energy, taking Grace’s hand and staring at him with the joy of a long-lost friend. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace! So good to see you again.’

‘And you, my friend. This is DS Branson. Glenn, this is Harry Frame.’

Harry Frame gripped Glenn Branson’s hand with a strength that belied both his years and his size and stared up at him with piercing green eyes. ‘What a pleasure to meet you. Come in, come in.’

They followed him into a narrow hallway lit by a low-watt bulb in a hanging lantern and decorated in a nautical theme, the centrepiece of which was a large brass porthole on the wall, and through into a sitting room, the shelves crammed with ships in bottles. There was a drab three-piece suite, its backs covered in antimacassars, a television, which was switched off, and a round oak table with four wooden chairs by the window, to which they were ushered. On the wall Branson clocked a naff print of Anne Hathaway’s cottage and a framed motto which read, ‘A mind once expanded can never return to its original dimensions.’

‘Tea, gentlemen?’

‘Thank you,’ Grace said.

Looking at Grace for his cue, Branson said, ‘That would be very nice.’

Harry Frame hurried busily out of the room. Branson stared at a lit, solitary white candle in a glass holder on the table, then at Grace, giving him a
What is this shit?
expression.

Grace smiled back at him.
Bear with it.

After a few minutes a cheery, dumpy, grey-haired lady, wearing a heavy-knit roll-neck, brown polyester trousers and brand new white trainers, carried out a tray containing three mugs of tea and a plate of Bourbon biscuits, which she set down on the table.

‘Hello, Roy,’ she said familiarly to Grace, and then to Branson, with a twinkle in her eye she said, ‘I’m Maxine.
She Who Must Be Obeyed!
’

‘Nice to meet you. Detective Sergeant Branson.’

She was followed by her husband, who was carrying a map.

Grace took his mug, and noticed the tea was a watery-green colour. He saw Branson eyeing his dubiously.

‘So, gentlemen,’ Harry said, seating himself opposite them, ‘you have a missing person?’

‘Michael Harrison,’ Grace said.

‘The young man in the
Argus
? Terrible thing, that accident. All so young to be called over.’

‘Called over?’ Branson quizzed.

‘Obviously the spirits wanted them.’

Branson shot Grace a glance which the Detective Superintendent resolutely ignored.

Moving the biscuits and the candle over to one side, Frame spread out an Ordnance Survey map of East Sussex on the table.

Branson ate a biscuit. Grace fished in his pocket and gave the medium the copper bracelet. ‘You asked me to bring something belonging to the missing person.’

Frame took it, held it tight and closed his eyes. Both police officers stared at him. His eyes remained closed for a good minute, then, finally, he started to nod. ‘Umm,’ he said, his eyes still closed. ‘Umm, yes, umm.’ Then he opened his eyes with a start, looking at Grace and Branson as if surprised to find them still in the room. He moved closer to the map, then pulled a length of string, with a small lead weight attached, from his trouser pocket.

‘Let’s see what we can find,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed, let’s see. Is your tea all right?’

Grace sipped his. It was hot and faintly sour-tasting. ‘Perfect,’ he said.

Branson sipped his too, dutifully. ‘Good,’ he said.

Harry Frame beamed, genuinely pleased. ‘Now, now…’ Resting his elbows on the table, he buried his face in the palm of his hands as if in prayer, and began to mutter. Grace avoided Branson’s eye.

‘Yarummm,’ Frame said to himself. ‘Yarummmm. Brnnnn. Yarummm.’

Then he sat bolt upright, held the string over the map between his forefinger and thumb, and let the lead weight swing backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. Then, pursing his lips in concentration, he swung it vigorously in a tight circle, steadily covering the map inch by inch.

‘Uckfield?’ he said. ‘Crowborough? Ashdown Forest?’ He looked quizzically at each man. Both nodded.

But Harry Frame shook his head. ‘No, I’m not being shown anything in this area, sorry. I’ll try another map, smaller scale.’

‘We’re pretty sure he is in this area, Harry,’ Roy Grace said.

Frame shook his head determinedly. ‘No, the pendulum is not telling me that. We need to look wider.’

Grace could
feel
Branson’s scepticism burning like a furnace. Staring at the new map, which showed the whole of East and West Sussex, he saw the pendulum swinging in a narrow arc over Brighton.

‘This is where he is,’ Frame murmured.

‘Brighton? I don’t think so,’ Grace responded.

Frame produced a large-scale street map of Brighton and set the pendulum swinging over it. Within moments it began to make a tight circle over Kemp Town. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, this is where he is.’

Grace stared at Branson now, as if sharing his thoughts. ‘You are wrong, Harry,’ he said.

‘No, I don’t think so, Roy. This is where your man is.’

Grace shook his head. ‘We’ve just come from Kemp Town — we’ve been to talk to his business partner — are you sure you aren’t picking up on that?’

Harry Frame picked up the copper bracelet. ‘This is his bracelet? Michael Harrison?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then this is where he is. My pendulum is never wrong.’

‘Can you give us an address?’ Branson asked.

‘No, not an address — the housing is too dense. But that’s where you must look, that is where you will find him.’

‘Fucking weirdo,’ Branson said to Grace as they drove away from Harry Frame’s house.

Grace, deep in thought, did not say anything for a long while. In the past hour the rain had finally stopped, and streaks of late-evening sunlight pierced the net of grey cloud that sagged low over the sea. ‘Let’s assume he’s right for a moment.’

‘Let’s get a drink and something to eat,’ Branson said. ‘I’m starving; I’m about to keel over.’

The clock read 8.31 p.m.

‘Good idea.’

Glenn called his wife on his mobile. Grace listened to Branson’s end of the conversation. It sounded pretty heated and finished with him hanging up in mid-call. ‘She’s well pissed off.’

Grace gave him a sympathetic smile. He knew better than to make an uninformed comment on someone else’s domestic situation.

A few minutes later, in the bar of a cliff-top pub called the Badger’s Rest, Grace cradled a large Glenfiddich on the rocks, noticing that his companion was making short work of a pint of beer, despite the fact he was driving.

‘I went into the Force,’ Branson said, ‘so I’d have a career that would make my kids proud of me. Shit. At least when I was a bouncer, I had a life. I’d get to bath my Sammy and put him to bed and had time to read him a story before I went off to work. Do you know what Ari just said to me?’

‘What?’ Grace stared at the specials on the blackboard.

‘She said Sammy and Remi are crying ’cause I’d promised to be home and read them stories tonight.’

‘So go home,’ Grace said gently, meaning it.

Branson drained his pint and ordered another. ‘I can’t do that, you know I can’t. This isn’t a fucking nine-to-five job. I can’t just walk out of the office like some dickhead civil servant, and do a Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday stunt. I owe it to Ashley Harper and to Michael Harrison. Don’t I?’

‘You have to learn when to let go,’ Grace said.

‘Oh really? So when exactly do I let go?’

Grace drained his whisky. It felt good. The burning sensation first in his gullet, then in his stomach. He held his glass out to the barman, ordered another double, then put a twenty-pound note down and asked for change for the cigarette machine. He hadn’t had a cigarette for several days, but tonight his craving for one was too strong.

The pack of Silk Cut dropped into the tray of the machine. He tore off the cellophane and asked the barman for some matches. Then he lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deeply, gratefully, down into his lungs. It tasted beyond exquisite.

‘I thought you’d quit,’ Branson said.

‘I have.’

He received his new drink and clinked glasses with Glenn. ‘You don’t have a life and I’m destroying mine. Welcome to a career in the police.’

Branson shook his head. ‘Your friend Harry Frame is one weird dude. What a flake!’

‘Remember Abigail Matthews?’

‘That kid a couple of years ago? Eight years old, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Kidnapped outside her folks’ home. You found her in a crate in a hangar at Gatwick Airport.’

‘Nigerian. She’d been sold into a child sex ring in Holland.’

‘That was great detective work. Wasn’t that part of the reason you got promoted so fast?’

‘It was. Except I never told anyone the truth about how I found her.’ The whisky was talking now, rather than Roy Grace. ‘I never told anyone, because—’

‘Because?’

‘It wasn’t great detective work, Glenn, that’s why. It was Harry Frame who found her, with his pendulum. OK?’

Branson was silent for some moments. ‘So that’s why you believe in him.’

‘He’s been right in other cases, too. But I don’t shout about him. Alison Vosper and her brass cronies don’t like anything that doesn’t fit into their boxes. You want a career in the police, you have to be seen to play by the rules. You have to be
seen
, OK? You don’t actually have to play them, just so long as they
think
you are playing by them.’ He drained the second whisky far faster than he had intended. ‘Let’s get some grub.’

Branson ordered scampi. Grace chose a distinctly unhealthy gammon steak with two fried eggs and French fries, lit another cigarette and ordered another round of drinks.

‘So what do we do next, old wise man?’

Grace squinted at Branson. ‘We could get smashed,’ he said.

‘That’s not exactly going to help us find Michael Harrison, is it? Or have I missed something?’

‘You haven’t missed anything — not that I can see. But it is now about…’ Grace checked his watch. ‘Nine on a Friday night. Short of heading out into Ashdown Forest with a shovel and a flashlight, I’m not sure what else we can achieve.’

‘There must be something that we’re missing.’

‘There’s always something, Glenn. What very few people understand is the importance of serendipity in our job.’

‘You mean luck?’

‘You know the old joke about the golfer?’

‘Tell me.’

‘He says, “It’s a strange thing … the more I practise, the luckier I get.”’

Branson grinned. ‘So maybe we haven’t practised enough.’

‘I think we’ve practised enough. Tomorrow’s the big day. If Mr Michael Harrison is playing the joke of all jokes, then tomorrow will be the moment of truth.’

‘And if he’s not?’

‘Then we go to Plan B.’

‘Which is what?’

‘I have no idea.’ Grace squinted at him across the top of his glass. ‘I’m just your lunch date. Remember?’

Ashley, in her white towelling dressing gown, was slouched on her bed watching a
Sex in the City
repeat playing on the plasma television screen, when the telephone rang. She sat up with a start, nearly spilling some of the Sauvignon Blanc in the glass she was holding. Her alarm clock said 11.18 p.m. It was late.

She answered it with a nervous, near-breathless, ‘Yeshello?’

‘Ashley? I hope I haven’t woken you, love?’

Ashley put her wine glass down on her bedside table, grabbed the remote and muted the sound. It was Gill Harrison, Michael’s mother. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not at all. I can’t sleep anyhow. I haven’t slept a wink since — Tuesday. I’m going to take a pill in a little while — the doctor gave me some — said they would knock me out.’ In the background she heard Bobo, Gill’s little white shih-tzu, barking.

‘I want you to think again, Ashley. I really think you must cancel the reception tomorrow.’

Ashley took a deep breath. ‘Gill — we discussed it all yesterday and today. We can’t get anything refunded cancelling this late; we have people coming from all over the place — like my uncle from Canada who’s giving me away.’

‘He’s a nice man,’ Gill said. ‘Poor fellow’s come all this way.’

‘We adore each other,’ Ashley said. ‘He took the whole week off just so he could be at the rehearsal on Monday.’