Peter James: You Are Dead

‘She definitely drove to work herself, sir? She didn’t get a lift from a colleague, which could explain why her car is here?’

‘No, for God’s sake! She called me from her car, down in the car park. She said she’d seen a man down there and screamed. It was a terrible sound. It wasn’t like her. Can we go back down to the car park and take a look?’ Jamie pleaded.

The officer’s radio crackled. Jamie heard a disembodied female voice say something he couldn’t discern.

‘Charlie Romeo Four,’ Susi Holliday answered. ‘We’re still attending at Chesham Gate.’

‘Thank you, Charlie Romeo Four. Let me know when you stand down.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she replied. Then she turned to Jamie Ball.

‘Did you and your fiancée have any kind of an argument today, sir?’ Susi Holliday asked.

‘Argument? No, why?’

‘I noticed blood on the bottom of your bathroom door, earlier.’

‘Oh, that. She tripped getting out of bed and gashed her toe on it. She was going to go to the hospital this morning to get it looked at.’

‘The hospital would be able to verify that, would they, sir?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Then Jamie Ball hesitated and stared at the officer. ‘Oh God, you think I did something to her? For Christ’s sake!’

‘I’m afraid we have to ask these questions, sir.’

Jamie grabbed the spare keys to Logan’s car and then they took the lift back down to the car park to join Kyrke, and the three of them headed over to the Fiat.

‘One thing I should add,’ Ball said, ‘is that Logan’s diabetic. She’s Type-2 — needs to keep her sugar levels up, otherwise she can risk a hypo.’

The officer nodded. ‘Where do you work, Mr Ball?’

‘In Croydon, Condor pet foods.’

‘We’ve got two Rhodesian Ridgebacks,’ PC Kyrke said, walking over and joining them. ‘The wife swears by Condor — Condor Vitalife. ’

‘Good to hear that,’ Jamie said, without enthusiasm. ‘It’s an excellent product.’

‘Better than raw meat?’

He shrugged. ‘From what I know it’s more of a balanced diet than raw meat.’

They reached the Fiat.

‘She was down here when she called you?’ PC Holliday asked. She held up her iPhone. ‘It’s a very poor signal.’

Jamie nodded. He pulled out his phone again. The signal veered from one dot, to zero, to two. He dialled Logan’s number again, and moments later heard it ringing. Very faintly.

They all could.

For an instant, the caretaker and two officers looked at him. Frowning, he fumbled with the key then opened the car door. Instantly the ringing was louder.

Her phone was lying in the footwell almost under the passenger seat.

He started to lean across to pick it up, but was held back by PC Holliday, who reached past him with a gloved hand. The ringing stopped. Holliday knew that recovered phones were normally retained for forensic digital evidence, but as a life was potentially at risk she decided to check the phone immediately. She held it up and asked him for the code, which he gave her. She tapped it in and stared at the display, and saw nine missed calls from ‘Jamie Mob’. She asked if it was him and he confirmed it was.

He looked at the two police officers. ‘She’d never — she’d never leave her phone. She wouldn’t go anywhere without it.’

But although he could see sympathy in their expressions, he could also see they were a tad sceptical.

‘I’m afraid all of us leave our phones behind sometimes,’ PC Holliday said. ‘Done it myself.’

‘Me too,’ the caretaker chipped in. ‘I couldn’t find the thing for two days.’

‘Something’s happened to her. Please believe me. Something’s happened. I heard her scream, for God’s sake!’

Their radios crackled again and once more he heard a female voice.

‘Charlie Romeo Four,’ PC Kyrke said, tilting his head and speaking down into the radio clipped to the left of his chest.

‘Serious RTC at the A23–A27 junction. RPU need some assistance. Can you advise me when you’re free to attend, Charlie Romeo Four?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Kyrke said. ‘But I think we’re going to be a while.’ Then he turned to Jamie Ball. ‘Excuse me being personal, sir, but was everything all right between you and your fiancée? No arguments or anything like that?’

‘Nothing. We’ve bickered like every couple, but we’ve never had a real argument in all the time we’ve been together. We love each other so much.’

Susi Holliday stepped away from the others, feeling increasingly concerned about what she had heard. She radioed Control and requested that the Duty Inspector attend urgently.

Thursday 11 December

Roy Grace arrived home shortly after 6.45 p.m. on Thursday night. The Detective Superintendent had three and a half more days to go as the on-call Senior Investigating Officer for Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, before the buck got passed to another senior detective at 7 a.m. on Monday for the following seven days.

The county of Sussex averaged twelve homicides a year, and it was around ten in Surrey. In the whole of the UK there were about six hundred and fifty a year. Every homicide detective hoped to get a challenging murder. Not that they were bloodthirsty people, but it was what they trained for, and what challenged them the best. And it had to be said that a high-profile homicide raised your own profile, and promotion prospects.

Not that Roy Grace ever wished anyone dead.

Over the past few years, weekends had been jinxed for him. On each occasion that he had hoped for a quiet one, because of a social engagement, or more recently wanting to spend time with his wife, Cleo, and their five-month-old son, at the last minute he had been called to a homicide investigation. He was really hoping for a peaceful weekend so that he could focus his energies on helping Cleo to sort her possessions, in preparation for the move next week from Cleo’s house, which they were sharing, to the cottage they had bought together, near the village of Henfield, eight miles north of Brighton.

Cleo stood up, carefully removing a large book of fabric swatches from her lap and placing it on the coffee table, on top of a pile of other fabric and wallpaper sample books.

Grace turned to his eleven-year-old goldfish, Marlon. ‘You’re going to be moving to the country next week. How do you feel about that? We’re going to have hens. You’ve never seen a hen, have you? Other than on television. But you’re not that big on watching television, are you?’

Cleo slipped an arm around his waist and kissed him on the neck. ‘If someone had told me, a few years ago, that one day I would be jealous of a goldfish, I wouldn’t have believed them. But I am. Sometimes I think you care more about Marlon than me!’

Marlon opened and shut his mouth, looking as ever like a grumpy, toothless old man, on his never-ending circumnavigation of his round tank, passing through the fronds of green weed and over the submerged remains of a miniature Greek temple, which Roy had bought some years ago after reading an article in a magazine on the importance of giving goldfish things to interest them in their bowls. But nothing Roy had ever bought seemed to interest this lonesome creature. Over the years he had attempted on several occasions to provide Marlon with a mate. But every companion he had bought had ended up either gulped down by this mini-monster or floating dead on the surface, while Marlon continued, day in, day out, his eternal circular motion.

He had won the fish at a fairground stall all those years back with his long-missing first wife, Sandy, who after ten years’ absence had recently been declared legally dead, allowing him and Cleo to marry. He’d carried the fish home in a water-filled plastic bag, and according to Sandy’s research, the life expectancy of fairground goldfish was less than a year.