Peter James - Need You Dead

Life was much simpler for animals. He and his wife had had a German Shepherd dog called Romy, who had lived to twelve. Her back legs had eventually gone and she was a pitiful sight, dragging herself around the garden, desperately trying to still be her old self. The vet had told them that it had come to the point where it was cruel to keep her alive, because she was suffering so much. A few days later they’d agreed with him. He came to their house with a veterinary nurse, and gave Romy an injection to put her to sleep. Within moments the wonderful, bright, intelligent dog was dead. No longer suffering. Alive one second, gone the next.

Why not with humans too?

He was about to find out, he thought, as he approached the cliff edge, shining his phone torch beam down at the long, wet grass bent in the wind. Through the howl of the wind he could hear the sea, a long way below.

Moments later, a beam of light danced in front of him, crossing his.

Then he heard a bluff, friendly voice right behind him.

‘Hello!’

He turned.

A middle-aged, bearded man in a sou’wester stood there, holding a powerful torch. ‘Just checking you are OK, sir?’

‘OK?’

‘You are a bit near the edge. We’ve had a lot of erosion recently. It’s not safe to get too close — some of the chalk is very unstable.’

‘I see. Thanks for the warning.’

‘Would you like to have a chat?’

‘Chat?’ he said, blankly.

‘I’m with the Beachy Head Chaplaincy Service — my name’s Bill, what’s yours?’

‘It’s — Robert,’ he said. ‘Robert Frost.’ Remembering the poet now.

‘Is everything all right? Not a nice night to be out, and with these strong gusts of wind it can be even more dangerous than normal near the edge.’

‘No, all’s fine,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fine. I’m — I’m working on a poem — I thought I’d come here for some inspiration.’

‘You’re a poet?’

‘I am, yes.’

‘Robert Frost’s your name?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’ll keep a lookout for your work, Mr Frost.’

‘Yes, good, thank you.’

‘So, OK, you’re absolutely sure everything is all right?’

‘All good, thank you.’

Actually, it wasn’t. It wasn’t all good. He’d just realized he’d left on the passenger seat of the car the photograph of himself and Lorna — the second one that he’d noticed and taken down from the wall.

As he walked back towards it, he was aware of the Good Samaritan from the Chaplaincy following him at a distance.

He got back in, closed the door and switched on the ignition. His brain was such a jumble, a million thoughts all broken loose from their mountings. He had to stop somewhere, stop and think.

Think.

And find a bin and dump the photograph.

And then?

He didn’t know.

Go back to Beachy Head? Just drive over a cliff somewhere nearby?

A song was playing on the radio. It had been playing the first time he and Lorna had made love and it had kind of become their song. Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’.

Shit.

So many memories. So many beautiful ones.

What a bloody mess I’ve made of everything.

He shivered, suddenly realizing he was freezing cold. It would be cold in the mortuary, too. Lorna would be lying in there tomorrow. And if they found him? Would they be in the same mortuary together?

He shivered again.

The car rocked in the wind.

Thinking. What? What? What was he going to do?

Throw himself out into that inky, cold darkness?

I don’t have to.

I’ve covered my tracks.

I didn’t do it.

Andreas Thomas, the German lawyer whom Sandy had appointed as her executor, spoke reasonably good English, but Roy Grace sometimes found him hard to understand on the phone, and the conversation was a lengthy one as he had to ask him to repeat himself frequently.

The documentation allowing Sandy’s body to be repatriated to England had been completed, and a firm of funeral directors in Brighton had everything in hand. The funeral had been booked for the following Thursday at the vast Hove Cemetery, coincidentally where both of Sandy’s grandparents were buried. His own had been cremated at what Roy thought was the much prettier Woodvale. He had still not yet decided which of the options he would choose for himself. Neither appealed that much. It was something he knew he should confront but — and he knew it was stupid — it felt that to make the choice was almost inviting his own death.

Many German wills did not include funeral instructions because, Andreas Thomas explained, often they would not be discovered or read until many weeks after death. The lawyer agreed that burial would be the better option for Sandy.

The one grey area currently was Sandy’s substantial estate. A short while before she had left Roy, Andreas Thomas informed him, she’d had a windfall inheritance from an aunt that she’d kept secret, instructing the funds to be sent to a numbered Swiss bank account, clearly in preparation for leaving Roy. It could even have been this inheritance that gave her the courage to leave him, the lawyer speculated. Sandy had left clear instructions that almost her entire estate be put in trust to pay for private education for Bruno, until the age of twenty-one, when he would receive the balance of the money. The estate was now worth four million euros.

In the weeks before her accident, Sandy had been anxious to establish this trust and to Roy’s dismay had left instructions in her will for her parents to be appointed fellow trustees, along with the Munich lawyer.

Grace told the lawyer that he wasn’t worried about the money. He would take responsibility for Bruno, and bring him back to live with himself, Cleo and Noah, in England, and would put him into a good school — the money to pay for it could be sorted out in due course. He wanted to make sure he was in the driving seat on this one, not Sandy’s parents.

He arranged to meet Andreas Thomas at his office in Munich the following morning. As he ended the call, he was about to dial his travel agent when his work phone rang. It was the duty Ops-1, Inspector David Graham, known to everyone by his initials, DG, in the Comms department, which was housed in a modern block on the far side of the Police HQ campus from the Specialist Crime Command offices. A call from him was not going to be good news.

‘Roy, I was told you’re the on-call SIO — I thought you were off active duty for a while?’

‘I am, DG, but I’m covering for Kevin Shapland this week. What’s up?’

‘We’ve got a suspicious death. Woman in a bathtub in a block of flats in Hove. It was called in by an electrician who had apparently gone to the premises to carry out some rewiring work. A Response Unit attended, along with an ambulance crew, who declared her dead — sounds like she had been dead for a while.’

‘A while? Any idea how long? Days, weeks?’

‘No, but some hours — perhaps overnight.’

‘What about the cause of death?’

‘It looks like she might have electrocuted herself, but the officers attending were not happy about an injury to the back of her skull, and blood on the bathroom tiles, and requested supervision. Their sergeant attended and agreed with them, declaring it a potential crime scene. A senior CSI was called in, along with the duty divisional DI. There are a number of factors that make me think this looks like a job for Major Crime — can you attend and take command of the investigation, Roy?’

‘Have they got scene guards?’

‘Yes, in place.’

‘Good. We’ll need to inform the Coroner’s Officer.’

‘I’ve done that.’