Peter James: Love You Dead

In truth, many of the changes had helped to create more tolerant, less corrupt, less sexist and less racist police forces than when Roy Grace had begun his career. There were many pluses. He did still love his job and he tried not to let the negatives get to him, but there were moments, too, for the first time in the two decades he had served, that he had found himself contemplating alternatives. Particularly during his month off in January convalescing, when he’d had time to think. But in his heart he knew nothing could ever give him the satisfaction that solving murders did, despite all the changes.

And there was one very big change happening right here, to this building. Formerly the HQ CID, before the merger of the Major Crime Team with Surrey, this two-storey art deco building had been his base for the past decade. Once it had been a hive of activity, filled with detectives, SOCOs, a forensic department, the Fingerprint, Imaging and High Tech Crime Units, and the hub for many homicide and other serious crime investigations. But in a few months it would be no more, thanks to the brutal — and in his view highly short-sighted — government budget cuts inflicted on his and other police forces in the UK.

The Imaging Unit had already moved to Surrey. Soon the High Tech Crime Unit would be moved a few miles north of Brighton to Haywards Heath. And while nothing was confirmed yet, the rumour was that his branch of the Major Crime Team would be moved to the Sussex Police headquarters in Lewes.

Like most of the officers and support staff here, he had never really liked this building. Stuck on an industrial estate on the edge of the city, with no canteen, far too many people crammed into it, and a heating and air-conditioning system that was unable to cope in any weather conditions, he should have been glad of the impending move. But now, with the building beginning to take on the air of a ghost town, he was starting to feel nostalgic for it. All that would remain on this site, by this coming autumn, would be the custody block right behind it.

He walked through the large, deserted open-plan first-floor office that had until recently been the Detectives’ Room, passing the cleared desks of officers and civilian staff who had already moved elsewhere, then entered his own office, one of the few enclosed ones.

He closed the door and sat behind his desk, staring out through the drizzle at the Asda superstore across the road which served as their canteen, thinking about Cleo’s first Mother’s Day which was just a few weeks away. He needed to get her a present from Noah. Roy had an ongoing list on his phone of gifts to get Cleo for her birthday and for Christmas, one of which was turquoise earrings — she loved the colour — and a rollerball pen. He added book , to remind himself to get down to City Books to pick up a novel she wanted, although he had forgotten the title. He would have to tease it out of her, somehow.

Then he logged on to his computer terminal and checked the serials and emails that had come in since he’d been at the physio, noting an email trail that referred to the Sussex Police rugby team. It reminded him he needed to find a new captain, as the current one was being sent to work on anti-terrorist training at the FBI’s base in Quantico, Virginia. He was also pleased to see that the bread-making machine Cleo and he had ordered for the house was on its way.

He fired off some quick responses and forwarded the rugby emails to one of his predecessors, a retired former detective chief superintendent, David Gaylor, who had continued to be the team manager. Next he turned his attention back to the case that had been consuming him ever since his return to work.

His assailant, Dr Edward Crisp.

He glanced at the photograph of the Hove general practitioner, who appeared to be staring back at him with a smug grin.

Crisp had murdered five women in their early twenties — or rather, five that they knew about. His tally could quite possibly be higher. Maybe a lot higher. They’d had him cornered in an underground lair, but after shooting Grace in the leg with a shotgun, the man had made a seemingly impossible escape. No one knew how. One theory was that Crisp, an experienced potholer and caver, had gone through the Brighton and Hove sewer system, and had emerged through one of the manholes in the complex network.

Southern Water, who controlled it, were initially adamant that it would not have been possible for anyone to have survived. If Crisp hadn’t drowned, he’d have ended up in one of the filters that prevented objects larger than a fraction of an inch reaching the open sea. Yet their searches found no trace of a body. They’d been forced to admit, reluctantly, that it was possible, however unlikely, that Crisp had survived.

One thing that Roy Grace was certain of was Crisp’s cunning. The man’s estranged wife, Sandra, had been interviewed exhaustively, and exonerated from any complicity. She seemed very happy — and relieved — to be away from him. The only one who appeared to be missing the doctor was the family dog, Smut, now living with her and apparently pining. Incredible though it was, for all the years that they had lived together, she’d had no idea that the derelict house next door to their Brighton mansion, where Crisp had carried out some, if not all, of his atrocities, had been owned by an offshore company set up by her husband.

Very recently the police had received possible evidence that Crisp had survived.

It was in the form of a sinister email that the doctor had subsequently sent to one of Roy’s team, some weeks after his disappearance — and presumed death.

The source of the email was apparently untraceable. An anonymous Hotmail account that could have come from anywhere in the world. And which, just possibly, could have been sent, on a time delay, weeks earlier.

Fortunately, so far February had been a calm time, with no reported homicides in Sussex, leaving Roy Grace free to work, doggedly, through contacts at police forces throughout Europe, the USA, Australia, Africa and the Far East for any signs of the doctor. He had also spent some time with a desk officer at Interpol, ensuring that Crisp’s details and photograph were circulated around the world.

Crisp’s MO was to target women in their early twenties with long brown hair. Summaries of every unsolved murder matching this profile, from within the UK and overseas, were stacked all round Roy and filled numerous folders on his computer.

And he was still no further forward. There were around two hundred countries in the world, and right now Dr Edward Crisp could be sitting in a hotel room, with his bald head and big glasses and smug grin, in any one of them.

Although a few, especially Syria and North Korea, could probably be safely eliminated.

‘So where the hell are you, you bastard?’ Grace said aloud in frustration.

‘Right here, O master!’

He looked up, startled, to see his mate DI Glenn Branson, a black, shaven-headed man-mountain, standing in front of him with a broad smile.

‘You’re not looking a happy bunny,’ Branson said.

‘Yeah, you know why not? Because every time I start to feel a happy bunny, I see Edward bloody Crisp’s face grinning at me.’

‘Well, I’ve got some news for you.’

‘Tell me.’

Branson reached over and placed an email printout on Grace’s desk.

Grace read it, then looked up at his mate. ‘Shit.’

Shortly before 6 p.m., Jodie woke up with a start, on the big soft duvet in her Courchevel hotel room, to the sound of a helicopter flying low and fast over the resort. She could see through the window it was almost dark outside. Her mouth was dry and she had a slight headache.