Peter James - Not Dead Yet

‘Good to see you, Roy. Long time!’

Grace stood up. It had been several years since they’d last met. A sprinter with the Sussex Police Athletics team, the Detective Superintendent was a wiry forty-five-year-old, with a shaven head and a slightly world-weary cynicism in his eyes. ‘Good to see you too.’

Evans frowned. ‘Did things ever get resolved about your wife – Sandy, wasn’t it?’

He clearly wasn’t up to speed, Grace thought. ‘Nope. It’ll be ten years in a couple of months. I’m going through the process of having her declared legally dead. I’m planning to get married again.’

Evans pursed his lips and nodded, like some inane troll on a toy counter. For some reason his expression reminded Grace that he needed to buy a birthday present for his god-daughter, Jaye Somers, who would be ten in August. Then he said, ‘Word of advice, Roy, make sure you get all that buttoned up. You know, just in case…’

‘I know.’

Compliance was a big current issue in the police force. There had been too many scandals over expenses and police relationships recently. They were all walking on eggshells these days.

He followed Evans a short distance to the modern block where the PSD was housed, then along a corridor and into a small, boxlike office, and took one of the two chairs opposite his desk. The office was that of a man who lived a neat, orderly life. Tidy desk, tidy shelves, regulation framed photos of a perfect-looking wife against a blank, blue background, and cute kids against beige backgrounds. Nothing to give any hint of any interests. It was, he imagined, like a KGB member’s office during the height of the Cold War.

‘So how can we help you, Roy?’ he asked, settling down behind his desk and not offering any drinks.

‘You may remember I mentioned to you a while ago I’ve been concerned about leaks of key information on a number of murder enquiries I’ve been running during the past year,’ Grace said. ‘It’s still going on and I need advice from you on dealing with the situation.’

Evans opened a lined notebook, identical to the Policy Books that were maintained during Major Crime enquiries. He jotted down the date and Grace’s name. ‘Right. Can you give me details?’

For the next thirty minutes, Grace talked him through the cases, during the past twelve months, where Kevin Spinella always seemed to have privileged information on what was happening, long before any press officer had circulated it. Sometimes, Spinella had called him only minutes after he himself had been informed of a murder. All the time he kept an eye on the notes Evans was taking – he had long been skilled at reading upside down.

When Grace had finished, Evans said, ‘Well, so far as I can see there are three scenarios. The first is someone in your team is providing the information. The second is another member of police staff, perhaps even the press office. If you can let me have this Kevin Spinella’s phone number, we’ll run a check on all outgoing calls made from police phones to see if that picks up anything. We can also run a check on work computers to see if there’s any communication between him and any police staff. It could be he has a hold on someone in the Force – either on an officer or a member of civilian staff. And of course the third scenario, which is a hot topic at the moment, is that someone’s hacked into your phone. What do you use?’

‘My BlackBerry, mostly.’

‘My advice to you is to take the phone to the High Tech Crime Unit, and get them to see if it’s clean, in the first instance. If it is, come back and we’ll see what the next step is.’

Grace thanked him for the advice. Then he hesitated for a moment, Michael Evans’s friendly attitude making him wonder whether he should say anything about Amis Smallbone, to head off any possible complaint by the creep. But he decided against. Smallbone, out of prison after a long sentence, was going to concentrate on building his crime empire up again; he wouldn’t risk further wrath from himself by making an issue out of last night. He might seek some kind of revenge against him, down the line, but he would have to deal with that as and when.

He drove back to Sussex House, then wound his way along the corridors of the ground floor to the rear of the building, and entered the High Tech Crime Unit. To the casual observer, most of it didn’t look any different to many of the other departments in the building. An open-plan area, densely packed with workstations, on several of which stood large server towers, and on some, the entrails of disembowelled computers as well.

A plain clothes Sergeant was in charge of the unit, and many of the people working there were civilian computer experts. One of them, Ray Packham, hunched over a computer on the far side of the room, he knew well, and had worked with on a number of recent cases. A pleasant-looking man in his forties, neatly dressed, he had the quietly efficient air of a bank manager. On the screen in front of him were rows of numbers and digits that were meaningless to Grace.

‘How long can you spare it for, Roy?’ he asked, taking the BlackBerry.

‘I can’t spare it at all,’ he said. ‘I’m in the early days of a new murder enquiry. And I have to help safeguard Gaia, who’s arriving today. How long would you need it?’

Packham’s eyes lit up. ‘Could you do me a big favour, Roy? Get her autograph for Jen? She’s crazy about her!’

‘I’ll be getting her autograph for half of Sussex Police and their beloveds at this rate! Sure, I’ll try.’

‘I’ve got to finish an urgent job I’m on – I wouldn’t be able to start looking at it until later today at the earliest. But I can clone it, if you give me an hour, and keep that, so you can have the phone back.’

‘Okay, that would be great.’

‘Where are you going to be?’

‘Either in my office or MIR-1.’

‘I’ll bring it up to you as soon as I can.’

‘You’re a good man.’

‘Tell Jen!’

Grace grinned. Packham doted on his wife and his new, crazy beagle puppy, Hudson. ‘How is she?’

‘Good. Her diabetes is much more under control, thanks for asking.’

‘And Hudson?’

‘Busy trashing the house.’

Grace grinned. ‘He should meet Humphrey. Actually, on second thoughts, better not. They might swap ideas on new ways to eat a sofa.’

At 12.30 p.m. Colin Bourner, the doorman of The Grand Hotel, stood proudly outside the handsome portals of the historic building he loved so much, sharp and elegant in his black and grey uniform. Built in 1864, its swanky interior had once boasted the first lifts in England outside of London. A darker chapter of its history came in 1984, when the IRA blew it up in an unsuccessful attempt at killing the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

The hotel had been lavishly rebuilt, but in recent years, under different management, had lost much of its kudos. Now under a passionate new manager, Andrew Mosley, it was steadily climbing back to its former glory. As testament to that was the quality of cars parked outside in the crescented driveway, for which he had the keys in his safe keeping. A black Bentley saloon. A red Bentley coupé. A silver Ferrari and a dark green Aston Martin. Also parked outside, less conspicuously, an unmarked silver Ford Focus, with two police officers from the Close Protection Unit inside.

And the surest endorsement of all for any establishment with high aspirations, a large cluster of paparazzi crowded the pavement outside and some, with long lenses, across the street. Accompanying them were outside broadcast units from both local television stations and Southern Counties Radio, along with a growing crowd of excited onlookers, as well as a cluster of Gaia fans, several holding record sleeves, CD booklets, or copies of her autobiography. A number of them were dressed wildly, in homage to some of their idol’s more outlandish stage appearances.