Peter James - Need You Dead

Outside, he heard a gruff male voice, sounding very indignant. ‘I saw it! Couldn’t believe my eyes. He rammed him, deliberately, he did! You know, it was like in the movies, unbelievable. I nearly went smack into him myself.’

The siren stopped suddenly. He heard footsteps and then a male voice asking, ‘Is anyone injured?’ and a female voice calling out, ‘Are there any witnesses?’

Moments later a Road Policing Unit officer in a yellow fluorescent jacket peered inside. ‘Are you all right, sir?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine, I think. May have bust a rib.’

‘We’ll get you checked over.’

‘I’m a police officer,’ Weatherley said.

‘You are?’

‘With the Met.’

‘Well, that’s a bit of a coincidence!’ Sharka DuBois said. ‘You’re my second copper in two days!’

‘I’m very happy for you,’ Weatherley replied.

Grace sat quietly in his office, pondering the words of the Super Recognizer’s text.

Roy, you asked me to be discreet, which is why I said nothing after the meeting. Call me as soon as you are alone in the office.

He thought back over Exton’s behaviour recently; the coincidence of him being in the vicinity of the dead woman’s flat for days before and on the night of her death; the GoPro memory card delivered to the Forensic Unit with nothing on it — presumably wiped clean or replaced with a blank; the GoPro found in his glove box.

But Weatherley said the image of the man leaving the flat was not Exton. So who was it? A different Sussex police officer?

Who?

Hopefully, Weatherley had made a mistake. The image was terrible, blurred by the rain, how could anyone make a positive ID from that? He appreciated he did not have Super Recognizer skills, but all he could have said, if giving evidence in a court of law, was that the figure in the video entering and leaving the apartment block was of a similar height to DS Exton. Nothing else.

Perhaps when Weatherley examined the footage in the morning, he’d come to the same conclusion, he thought. He went through his team members who were around the same height as Exton. Guy? Jack? Donald? Kevin? Then he was interrupted by his mobile phone ringing. It was Ray Packham, sounding deeply on edge.

‘Roy,’ he said. ‘I’m up at the HTCU offices in Haywards Heath and we’ve got Lorna Belling’s laptop up and running. There’s something you need to see on this.’

‘Right, what?’

‘This is very sensitive, Roy. Very sensitive. I don’t want to risk talking about it over the phone.’

‘Can you email anything to me?’

‘No, too risky. I’ll bring it myself. Where are you at the moment?’

‘In my office.’

‘You need to see this right away, but we need to be private.’

‘We can be private in my office.’

‘Too risky, Roy.’

‘Ray, just what the hell do you have?’

‘Believe me, Roy, I have something I do not think you’re expecting.’

Grace turned and peered through the window. It was nearly dark outside.

‘Ray, what about we meet outside the main gates?’

‘No, too close.’

The man was sounding scared, he realized. Shit, what did he have? ‘Ray, what about the Tesco Superstore — on the edge of the industrial estate. Meet in the car park there?’

‘Good plan.’

‘When you enter it, go to the far side and turn left, and drive as far as you can go. Remind me, what car are you in?’

‘An Audi Q3, black.’

‘I’ll be in a plain Mondeo estate, I’ll wait for you there.’

‘I’ll be half an hour — hopefully less. Oh and listen, Roy, don’t say a word to anyone, OK?’

Hesitantly, he replied, ‘OK.’

Then he ended the call with his mind on fire. What was Packham about to reveal that was too risky to bring in to the Police HQ? Ordinarily he would have spoken to the one person he did totally and utterly trust, Glenn Branson, but he was in Portsmouth right now with Exton. He decided Batchelor, as his deputy, should be notified that they might be about to get a major development. He dialled the number, but it went to voicemail. He left a message asking the DI to call him back very urgently.

Then he texted Cleo to say he did not know when he would be home and would update her in an hour, picked up his car keys and headed outside.

I can’t see a damned thing through the windscreen. It’s all blurry, like it’s covered in rainwater, like that video of the guy walking down the street and in and out of Lorna Belling’s apartment building.

I can’t see anything and it’s only raining very lightly. My eyes won’t focus. Nothing will focus. This is the problem with Natural Selection or whatever you want to call it. We’ve evolved all wrong, we’ve not kept pace biologically with the way we’ve evolved sociologically. Go back to our hunter-gatherer days, if you suddenly found yourself face-to-face with a sabre-toothed tiger, your adrenaline would kick in, pumping into your veins to enable you to run like the wind. But if you don’t burn that stuff off by running, it makes you all jittery, muzzes your brain, stops your eyes from focusing properly.

We have different kinds of terror now, like being confronted by the VAT inspector, where the response we need is to remain calm, level-headed, highly focused. But still the damned adrenaline kicks in — or in my case, right now, kicks off.

It didn’t let me focus.

I got too anxious and blew it.

I should have waited for that damned detective from the Met, the Super Recognizer, to have got onto the M23 motorway, where he’d have been driving eighty, maybe ninety miles per hour, as he was in a hurry. And it would have been fully dark, half an hour, on from now. I was impatient, picked him off in a line of traffic, he was only doing fifty-five, maybe sixty. Did the classic car-chase manoeuvre, tapping him with the front of my car, the heavy part where the engine is, at the lightest point of his, behind the rear wheels. Knocked him sideways, then he rolled, I saw it in my mirror. Nice barrel rolls. But not enough. He might survive.

If I’d hit him at higher speed on the motorway and he’d flipped and barrel-rolled at eighty, that would pretty likely have been goodnight.

Now I don’t know where the hell I am. Where to go? He knows. Which means Roy Grace is going to know — if Weatherley lives.

I’m just not thinking straight.

I haven’t thought straight since April 20th, since —

Since —

Since Lorna Belling turned out her lights.

Maybe I turned them out.

Or maybe I didn’t.

The Super Recognizer knows who turned them out. He saw. He recognized.

This must be what hell feels like.

When everyone you know and love and respect is about to find out you’ve done a terrible thing — the worst thing a human being can do — and you’re going to lose everything.

This car needs fuel, I’m going to have to stop soon at a petrol station and be careful where I position it so no one spots the damage. I’ll have to get out, fill up, then go inside and pay. The guy or the woman I hand the money to will probably smile, and ask if I want a receipt. He — or maybe she — won’t know they’ve just served a murderer — who, if DS Weatherley dies, will be defined as a multiple killer — until they read the papers or watch the news tomorrow, or perhaps the day after. Then they’ll be shocked, and one day they’ll tell their grandchildren. ‘You’ll never guess what grandpa/grandma did! I once served a murderer in a petrol station!’