Peter James - Not Dead Yet

‘And?’ Grace asked.

She shook her head. ‘Nothing came up.’

‘If you want my opinion, sir,’ Bella Moy said abruptly, ‘he’s just a harmless saddo.’

Grace looked at her for some moments. ‘You may be right, Bella, but you have to remember something. Criminals escalate. The sicko who starts off as a seemingly harmless flasher can turn into a serial rapist twenty years later.’

‘Yes, sir, I understand,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be frivolous.’

Grace saw his BlackBerry was flashing red at him. New emails. He tapped to check them as he asked, ‘Norman, anything back yet from the High Tech Crime Unit on Myles Royce’s computer?’

‘No, chief, not so far.’

He glanced through the emails. The second was from the Chief Superintendent of Brighton Police, Graham Barrington.

Roy, call me urgently after your briefing.

Drayton Wheeler looked at his watch. 9.03 a.m. Time was passing slowly. Ordinarily, with just six months or so left of it, he might have been grateful. But not up here, lying on this hard wooden floor inside the dome that supported the chandelier, surrounded by mouse droppings, and goddamn seagulls screeching outside.

The battery on his fucking Kindle was running out. In his calculations he hadn’t figured that would happen, but he’d left the thing switched on to wireless, which ate up the battery life. Great. He had about nine hours to kill, and an hour of reading time left. So much for his ambition to finish War and Peace before he died. He laughed. His own private joke. With six months to live, he had to be choosy about what he read. Did it matter what he had and hadn’t read in his life? In six months’ time would anyone care that Drayton Wheeler had not read War and Peace ?

Nor anything by Dostoyevsky. Nor Proust. He hadn’t read much Hardy either. Just one Scott Fitzgerald. Two Hemingways. All people you were supposed to read to make you a more rounded human being. And the more rounded you were, the easier it was for some bastard to stick a pin in you and deflate you.

Well, he sure as hell would not be fretting about it in his grave. Fade to black. Good riddance.

At least today’s Times had downloaded. He could cheer himself up with the last of the Kindle’s battery life by reading all the shit that was going on in the world. Palestine. Libya. Iraq. Iran. North Korea. Hey, you know what, sort yourselves out, world, you’re going to have to learn to get by without me .

Dying. With every single one of his damned ambitions unfulfilled. Thanks to people like Larry Brooker and Maxim Brody who had screwed him. Everyone had screwed him. Life itself had screwed him.

He was a genius, he knew that. He always had the ideas first. And some other bastard always got there before him, or stole them. He’d had the idea of writing about a child wizard. Fucking JK Rowling got hers out first. He’d had the idea about a young teenage girl falling in love with a vampire. Some Mormon called Stephenie Meyer wrote her books ahead of him.

Now The King’s Lover . This time, he knew, no one was there ahead of him. He had the surefire formula.

And it had been stolen from under his feet.

Sue me.

Oh sure, Larry Fucking Brooker. I could sue you. If I had a million bucks in the bank and ten years to live, I could wipe your ass for you with legal paperwork.

He munched angrily through his breakfast of a stale Marks and Spencer egg and bacon sandwich and an over-ripe apple, washed down by cold coffee. Breakfast of Champions !

He had that book on his Kindle. Written by one of his favourite authors, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut was a cynic too. The book was all about a great visionary writer called Kilgore Trout who found one of his science fiction novels being used as toilet paper in a motel lavatory. That was pretty much how Wheeler felt about his own career. He was a genius constantly pissed on from a great height. Well, smug little baldy Larry Brooker and fat toad Maxim Brody, you’re about to get pissed on from a great height back! Hope you’re looking forward to shooting the banqueting scene tonight.

I’m looking forward to it a lot.

The opening day of the Carl Venner trial at the Old Bailey had gone as well as could be expected, Roy Grace’s Case Officer, Mike Gorringe, who was attending for the whole duration, had reported. The hearing was set to run for three weeks and Grace would not be needed until the middle of next week at the earliest, which suited him well. He had plenty of other issues to deal with here in Sussex at the moment. The most pressing one, as he sat at his desk, staring at his computer screen, was the email Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington had just forwarded him.

It had been sent to Gaia’s published email address last night, read by an assistant who vetted all of her fan mail, and immediately forwarded to her head of security Andrew Gulli.

I still cannot believe how you cut me dead. I thought your whole point in coming to England was to see me. I know you love me, really. You’re going to be sorry you did that. Very sorry. You made me look a fool. You made people laugh at me. I’m going to give you the chance to apologise. You are soon going to be telling the whole world how much you love me. I will kill you if you don’t.

He rang Graham Barrington’s direct line. It was answered instantly. ‘What do you think, Roy?’ Even though Barrington had been a police officer for nearly thirty years, his voice was still full of an infectious, boyish enthusiasm, and Grace loved that, because it was how he felt, too – most days at any rate.

‘I guess we need to assess whether this is a harmless nutter or a serious threat. In the first instance, are we certain this isn’t from the perp in Los Angeles, Graham?’

‘Well,’ the Chief Superintendent replied, ‘it’s in a similar vein, but I spoke to our contact there, Detective Myman – I just woke him up, it’s 1 a.m. local time – and he assures me that the man they have in custody has no internet access. I’ve forwarded it to the High Tech Crime Unit to see if they can find the source for us. What’s your view, Roy?’

‘Has anyone spoken to Gaia about this?’

‘Not yet, she’s still asleep, I understand.’

‘Someone needs to talk to her as soon as she’s up.’

‘Maybe you should – I think she’s quite sweet on you, Roy!’

‘Probably a good reason why I shouldn’t then!’ Then, being serious again he said, ‘We need to find if she has any idea who this could be. Has she had a confrontation with any of her fans since she’s been here?’

‘I’ve asked Gulli that question. There was a middle-aged woman in The Grand Hotel who tried to push past the security guards, and then made a complaint to us about their brutality.’

‘Oh? How was it followed up?’

‘Uniform attended. They took a statement from her and then interviewed a couple of the security guards later. Seems the woman lied about being a journalist to try to get into Gaia’s suite, then chased after her. We’re not taking her complaint any further.’

Grace wondered why no one had thought to notify him about this incident. Then he looked at the email again. One possibility going through his mind was whether this could be Amis Smallbone winding them up? He read the words and did not think so. There was something sad about them, a desperation. A wounded lover? A stalker deluded that Gaia was in love with him? Or her ?

‘I think we need to know more about this woman at The Grand, Graham. Can you get someone from your CID team to go and talk to her?’