Peter James: Dead Like You

For a start, Cleo passionately loved the whole idea of celebrating the New Year. Which made it all the more ironic that she was pregnant and therefore could not really drink very much. But he hadn’t minded; he was just happy to be with her, celebrating not just the coming year, but their future together.

And, quietly, he celebrated the fact that his irascible boss, Alison Vosper, would no longer be there to dampen his spirits on an almost daily basis. He looked forward to his first meeting with his new boss, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Rigg, on Monday.

All he had managed to glean about the man so far was that he was a stickler for detail, liked to be hands-on involved and had a short fuse with fools.

To his relief, it had been a quiet morning in the CID HQ at Sussex House, so he’d spent the time steadily working through his paperwork and making brisk progress, while keeping a regular eye on the serials – the log of all reported incidents in the city of Brighton and Hove – on the computer.

As expected, there had been a few incidents in the bars, pubs and clubs, mostly fights and a few handbag thefts. He noted a couple of minor road traffic collisions, a domestic – a couple fighting – a complaint about noise from a party, a lost dog, a stolen moped and a naked man reported running down Western Road. But now a serious entry had appeared. It was a reported rape, at Brighton’s smart Metropole Hotel, which had popped on to the screen a few minutes ago, at 12.55 p.m.

There were four principal categories of rape: stranger, acquaintance, date and partner. At this moment there was no mention on the serial of which this might be. New Year’s Eve was the kind of time when some men got blind drunk and forced themselves on their dates or partners, and in all likelihood this incident would be in one of those categories. Serious enough, but not something likely to involve Major Crime.

Twenty minutes later he was about to head across the road to the ASDA supermarket, which doubled as the CID HQ canteen, to buy himself a sandwich for lunch, when his internal phone rang.

It was David Alcorn, a detective inspector he knew and liked a lot. Alcorn was based at the city’s busy main police station in John Street, where Grace himself had spent much of his early career as a detective, before moving to the CID HQ at Sussex House.

‘Happy New Year, Roy,’ Alcorn said in his usual blunt, sardonic voice. From the tone of his voice, happy had just fallen off a cliff.

‘You too, David. Did you have a good night?’

‘Yeah. Well, it was all right. Had to keep off the booze a bit to be here for seven this morning. You?’

‘Quiet, but nice – thanks.’

‘Thought I’d better give you a heads-up, Roy. Looks like we might have a stranger rape at the Metropole.’

He filled him in on the sketchy details. A Uniform Response Team had attended the hotel and called in CID. A Sexual Offences Liaison Officer or SOLO was now on her way over to accompany the victim to the recently opened specialist rape unit, the Sexual

Assault Referral Centre or SARC, in Crawley, a post-war town located in the geographical centre of Sussex.

Grace jotted down the details, such as Alcorn could give him, on a notepad. ‘Thanks, David,’ he said. ‘Keep me updated on this. Let me know if you need any help from my team.’

There was a slight pause and he sensed the hesitation in the DI’s voice. ‘Roy, there’s something that could make this a bit politically sensitive.’

‘Oh?’

‘The victim had been at a do last night at the Metropole. I’m informed that a number of police brass were at a table at this same function.’

‘Any names?’

‘The Chief Constable and his wife, for starters.’

Shit, Grace thought, but did not say.

‘Who else?’

‘The Deputy CC. And one assistant chief constable. You get my drift?’

Grace got his drift.

‘Maybe I should send someone from Major Crime up to accompany the SOLO. What do you think? As a formality.’

‘I think that would be a good plan.’

Grace quickly ran through his options. In particular he was concerned about his new boss. If ACC Peter Rigg was truly a stickler for detail, then he damned well had to start off on the right footing – and to cover himself as best he could.

‘OK. Thanks, David. I’ll send someone up there right away. In the meantime, can you get me a list of all attendees of that event?’

‘That’s already in hand.’

‘And all the guests staying there, plus all the staff – I would imagine there might have been extra staff drafted in for last night.’

‘I’m on to all of that.’ Alcorn sounded just slightly miffed, as if Grace was doubting his abilities.

‘Of course. Sorry.’

Immediately after he ended the call, he rang DC Emma-Jane Boutwood, one of the few members of his team who was in today.

She was also one of the detectives he had tasked with working through the mountains of bureaucracy required by the Crown Prosecution Service for Operation Neptune, a large and harrowing human-trafficking investigation he had been running in the weeks before Christmas.

It took her only a few moments to reach him from her desk in the large, open-plan Detectives’ Room just beyond his door. He noticed she was limping a little as she came into his office – still not fully recovered from the horrific injuries she had sustained in a pursuit last summer, when she had been crushed against a wall by a van. Despite multiple fractures and losing her spleen, she had insisted on cutting short her advised convalescence period to get back to work as quickly as possible.

‘Hi, E-J,’ he said. ‘Have a seat.’

Grace had just begun to run through the sketchy details David Alcorn had given him and to explain the delicate political situation when his internal phone suddenly rang again.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered, raising a finger to E-J to ask her to wait.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ said a chirpy, friendly voice with a posh, public-school accent. ‘How do you do? This is Peter Rigg here.’

Shit, Grace thought again.

‘Sir,’ he replied. ‘Very nice to – er – um – hear from you. I thought you weren’t actually starting until Monday, sir.’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

Oh boy, Roy Grace thought, his heart sinking. The New Year was barely twelve hours old and they had their first serious crime. And the new ACC hadn’t even officially started and he’d managed to piss him off already.

He was conscious of E-J’s eyes on him, and her ears scooping this all up.

‘No, sir, absolutely not. This is actually fortuitous timing. It would seem we have our first critical incident of the year. It’s too early to tell at this moment, but it has potential for a lot of unwelcome media coverage.’

Grace then signalled to E-J that he needed privacy and she left the room, closing the door.

For the next couple of minutes he ran through what was happening. Fortunately, the new Assistant Chief Constable continued in a friendly vein.

When Grace had finished, Rigg said, ‘You’re going up there yourself, I take it?’

Roy hesitated. With the highly specialized and skilled team at Crawley, there was no actual need for him to be there at this stage, and his time would be far better employed here in the office, dealing with paperwork and keeping up to speed on the incident via the phone. But he decided that was not what the new ACC wanted to hear.

‘Yes, sir. I’m on my way shortly,’ he replied.

‘Good. Keep me informed.’

Grace assured him he would.

As he hung up, thinking hard, his door opened and the morose face and shaven dome of Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson appeared. His eyes, against his black skin, looked tired and dulled. They reminded Grace of the eyes of fish that had been dead too long, the kind Cleo had told him he should avoid on a fishmonger’s slab.