Peter James - Looking Good Dead

He took his phone out of his pocket and checked it was still on – just in case it had somehow got switched off and he had missed a call back from Cleo.

He wondered briefly how Glenn Branson was getting on, worrying a little about his friend. Underneath the hulking frame that must have made him a formidable nightclub bouncer was a gentle guy. Too damned gentle and kind-hearted for his own good, at times.

‘Sulphuric acid,’ Potting said pensively, raising his glass and taking a long draught.

Grace stared at him. The poor sod had not been blessed with good looks – in fact he verged on being plug ugly. Despite the ageing detective’s failings, he suddenly felt a little sorry for his colleague, sensing a sad and lonely man behind the bravado.

Potting put his glass down on a Guinness mat, dug his hand in his pocket and got out his pipe. He stuck it in his mouth, then pulled a box of matches from the opposite pocket. Nick Nicholl watched in fascination.

‘Ever smoked, lad?’ Potting asked.

The young DC shook his head.

‘Didn’t think so; you don’t look the type. Fit bugger, I suppose?’

‘I try.’ Nicholl sipped his beer. ‘My dad smoked. He died at forty-eight from lung cancer.’

Potting was silenced for a second. Then he said, ‘Cigarettes?’

‘Twenty a day.’

He held up his pipe, smugly. ‘There’s a difference, you see.’

‘Nick’s a good runner,’ Grace cut in. ‘I want to poach him for my rugby team this autumn.’

‘Sussex need some good runners at the moment,’ Potting retorted. ‘They’ve got a lot of bloody runs to get today. What a Horlicks yesterday! Three bowled out for ten! Against bloody Surrey!’ He struck a match and lit his pipe, blowing out a cloud of sickly sweet smoke which billowed around Grace.

Potting puffed away until the bowl of his pipe glowed an even, bright red.

Normally Grace liked the smell of pipe smoke, but not this morning. He waved the smoke away, watching it curl heavily and lazily up towards the nicotine-decorated ceiling. Reggie D’Eath’s murder could have been coincidental, he thought. The man was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial of members of a major international paedophile ring. There were several people who would have good reasons for wanting him silenced.

Yet what had been found on the two computers seemed to him to indicate another possibility. Bryce had been warned not to contact the police. He had – rightly – ignored the warning, and a police examination of his computer had connected it to Reggie D’Eath’s PC. Less than twenty-four hours later D’Eath was dead.

There was an irritating chime from the fruit machine, then a series of further chimes like a xylophone. Potting and Nicholl were now deep into a conversation about cricket, and Grace drifted more deeply into his own thoughts. He remained so deep in thought that, even when they were back in the car, he barely registered the one piece of information that Norman Potting, changing the subject from cricket back to Reggie D’Eath, suddenly revealed.

The emergency vet, who had introduced herself as Dawn, a rather butch-looking Australian woman in her mid-thirties, was kneeling beside Lady, who was still very drowsy. She pulled down the Alsatian’s left eyelid and examined it with the aid of a pencil torch. Max and Jessica watched anxiously. Tom stood with an arm around each of them.

The detective, Glenn Branson, had gone outside to make a phone call.

Tom stared down at the dog, his mind in turmoil. Yesterday morning he had gone to the police, defying the email warning that had been sent to him. Now Kellie was missing and the car had been found, burned out.

Oh Christ, my darling, where are you?

Standing in the brilliant morning sunshine out in the street, Branson held his mobile phone to his ear, talking to a family liaison officer, WPC Linda Buckley, arranging for her to come straight over to the Bryces’ house.

Almost immediately after he ended the call, the phone rang. It was an officer from British Transport Police, PC Dudley Bunting, returning Branson’s call. Glenn told him what he was looking for and that it was very urgent. Bunting promised to come back to him as quickly as he could.

‘Today is what I need,’ Branson said. ‘Not three weeks time. That possible?’

Bunting sounded hesitant. ‘It’s Sunday.’

‘Yeah, I know, I should be in church. And I’m with a geezer who would quite like to spend the day with his wife, and I’m with his two kids who’d quite like to spend the day with their mother – except it looks like someone abducted her in the middle of the night. So maybe you’d like to sacrifice the Sunday roast with your in-laws and pull your fucking finger out for me?’

Bunting assured him he would exert maximum digital extraction.

While he was talking, another call came in – from Ari. Branson ignored it. When he finished his call, a message signal appeared on the phone’s display, accompanied by two sharp beeps.

The DS stared at the sign on the windows of the gym on the other side of the road. Gym and Tonic. It was a good name, he thought. Yeah, he liked that. With a balled fist he tested his own stomach muscles. He still had a six-pack, but he needed to get back into the gym soon; there had been a time when he went to the gym every single day; now, he thought guiltily, he did well to make it twice a week.

But there was something else making him feel a lot more guilty, as he looked up at the clear blue sky and felt the glorious warmth of the sun on his face.

Ari, his wife – and his kids.

Sammy was just eight and Remi was three; he missed both of them every minute of the day he wasn’t with them. Yet these days he hardly ever was with them. Work was increasingly consuming his life.

He pressed the message retrieval button and listened to the voicemail Ari had just left – in a tone that was short and sarcastic, and growing shorter and more sarcastic by the day. ‘Glenn, going to take Sammy and Remi onto the beach; be nice if you joined us as it was your suggestion. They’d quite like to see their father for at least one hour over the weekend. Perhaps you can call me back. My name’s Ari, in case you’ve forgotten. I’m your wife.’

He sighed heavily. They rowed increasingly frequently about his hours. Ari seemed to have forgotten already that he’d taken the whole of last weekend off to drive up to Solihull for her sister’s thirtieth birthday, dumping his work onto a broad-shouldered Grace.

Glenn Branson’s problem was that he was ambitious; he wanted to rise through the ranks, like Roy Grace had done. But that meant long hours were not a temporary thing. This was the way it was going to be for the next twenty years.

A lot of his colleagues found the job tough on their marriages; it often seemed only those officers married to other police officers, who understood each others’ crazy hours, had happy marriages. At some point he was going to have to make a decision about which was more important to him, his job or his family.

That was pretty ironic, really. Soon after Sammy was born, when Glenn Branson had been working as a nightclub bouncer, he had decided he wanted to have a career his son would be proud of, and that was when he had joined the Sussex force.

He was about to dial Ari when a voice behind him startled him. It was Tom Bryce, and the man looked in bad shape, his face pale, his eyes spooked.

‘Could I have a quiet word with you, Sergeant Branson?’ he asked.

‘Of course.’

They climbed into Branson’s pool Mondeo and closed the doors.

‘What I want to ask you is if you think we’re in danger – whether I should take my children somewhere? Go into hiding?’