Peter James - Looking Good Dead

‘Could be good cover, torching the car.’

Branson was adamant. ‘No. No way.’

‘I’d like to see this Mr Bryce. Let’s take a drive over.’

‘Now? Tonight? We could go over but he’s pretty distressed, trying to cope with his kids. I’ve got a rota of FLOs with him. I’d prefer to go back in the morning – if his missus hasn’t shown up.’

‘You’ve talked to the babysitter’s parents?’

‘Yeah. They were in bed when their daughter came home. She called out to them to say she was back, about 1.45 a.m. They heard a car drive off, that was all.’

‘Their neighbours?’

‘They don’t have many in that street – up on “Nob Hill”. I’ve been round them; no one saw or heard anything.’

‘You’ve checked all traffic CCTV cameras?’

‘I’m waiting – they’ve been looking through all the footage from one a.m. until the call-out came in. Nothing so far.’

‘Have you found out anything about them as a couple?’

‘Talked to their neighbours on one side – elderly couple. He’s about ten foot tall and she smokes so heavily I could hardly see her in the room. She seemed to have a bit of a friendship with Mrs Bryce – Kellie. Helps them out babysitting in emergencies, that sort of thing. What she said was that they have money troubles.’

Grace raised an eyebrow, his interest piqued. ‘Oh yes?’

‘You’d never know it from their house. They got a fuck-off barbecue that looks like Mission Control at Houston – must have cost thousands. They got a swanky kitchen, plasma telly, all the kit.’

‘Probably why they’ve got money problems,’ Grace said. ‘Could she have torched the car for the insurance?’

Branson frowned. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. Does anyone ever make money out of a car insurance claim?’

‘Worth finding out if they owned it or if it was on finance. Whether they’ve tried to sell it recently. The High Tech Crime Unit now have a copy of his laptop hard drive. Get them to check if he’s posted any ads for his car on a website anywhere – someone like Autotrader. They could be in on this disappearance together.’

The more he thought about it, the more excited Grace got. Money troubles, he thought. Might be a red herring, but it needed to be explored. Sometimes people got up to ingenious tricks to reduce their debts. He watched Bella Moy reach for a Malteser; there was a trail of icing sugar from her doughnut to the edge of her keyboard. Nick Nicholl was on the phone, concentrating intensely.

Norman Potting was on the phone also, working his way through the client list of BCE-247, no doubt causing a few upsets, Grace thought a touch malevolently. Not that he took the moral high ground on prostitution – there had been a few occasions during the past nine years when he’d picked up the phone to call one of the numbers in the personal ads in the Argus himself. But on each occasion he had felt the shadow of Sandy over his shoulder.

The same thing had happened to him during a brief holiday romance on the one, disastrous, occasion he had gone on a singles holiday – to the Greek island of Paxos.

The door opened and the cheery face of Tony Case, the senior support officer for Sussex House, peered round. ‘Just thought I’d pop in to see if there was anything you needed, Roy,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Tony, I think we’re fine. I appreciate your coming in.’

Case raised a finger in acknowledgement. ‘All part of the service.’

‘Enjoy the rest of your weekend,’ Grace said.

Tony Case looked at his watch. ‘All four hours of it? That’s almost funny, Roy.’

As the support officer headed off down the corridor, Grace stared at the bright orange lettering on the Vantage screen, scanning down it for the latest activity logged on the D’Eath murder. It did not take him long to find something. The house-to-house enquiries had turned up a vigilant neighbour who had clocked a white van parked outside Reggie D’Eath’s house at around seven the previous evening. The neighbour had dutifully written down the van’s number.

He double-clicked on the log to read the details. The PC who had interviewed the neighbour had requested a vehicle registration check, and it had come back as clean. The SIO appointed for Reggie D’Eath’s murder was Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor, a considerably more experienced officer than himself. No doubt Gaylor’s team would be all over that van when they found it.

Nicholl came over and stooped beside him. ‘Roy, I’ve just had a call from a bar manager I saw yesterday, at a place called the Karma Bar, down at the Marina. They’ve just been watching some CCTV tapes going back a couple of weeks – they’re trying to stop a problem they have with a couple of drug dealers operating in the place – and he reckons he’s got some footage of Janie Stretton.’

Grace felt a sudden bolt of excitement. ‘How quickly can we get it here?’

‘He’d rather I went there – he needs the tapes. He said I could watch them right away.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

Grace thought for a moment. Nick Nicholl had not been in the CID long, and still had a lot to learn. The young DC was bright but he might miss something – and this promised to be the first lead they had in the case. If this was so, then it was crucial to get every possible piece of information from it.

‘Bring her photographs,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll come with you.’ Turning to Branson, he said, ‘We’ll see Mr Bryce as soon as I’m back.’

‘That’s going to make it well late for him.’ Glenn Branson was thinking, unprofessionally, he knew, but he couldn’t help it, about the remnants of his own Sunday night. He longed to see his kids, even if it was just for five minutes before they went to sleep.

‘Glenn, if Mr Bryce hasn’t murdered his wife, or pulled off some scam with her, he’s going to be wide awake all night long, trust me.’

Branson gave a reluctant nod, knowing Grace was right, and glanced at his watch. Grace would be an hour at the very least and probably much longer. By the time he was back and they’d gone to the Bryces’ house it would be eleven at the earliest. He wasn’t afraid of facing half a dozen knife-wielding thugs in a dark alley in Brighton, but at times he was bloody terrified of his wife, and at this moment he was terrified of picking up the phone to Ari and telling her he was unlikely to be home this side of midnight.

Grace was so fired up by the possible sighting in the Karma Bar that, running his eye down the rest of the incident reports log, he skipped over the report Sergeant Jon Rye had logged an hour earlier, headed War Driving, without even noticing it.

Tom read a few pages of The Gruffalo to Jessica. His heart wasn’t in it, and she was not really listening. He didn’t fare any better with Max.

All he could think was, miserably, that he must be a crap father. The children wanted their mother, which was completely understandable, but he was starting to feel beyond inadequate as a stand-in. They now even seemed to prefer the company of Linda Buckley to himself. The WPC was sitting downstairs, waiting for the replacement family liaison officer to arrive and take over from her for the night.

He put the book down, kissed his wide-awake son goodnight and closed the door, then went into his den and made another round of phone calls – to Kellie’s parents, who had been ringing just about every hour, to all her friends, and again to her very worried sister in Scotland. No one had heard from her.

Then he went into their bedroom and opened the top drawer in the Victorian chest where Kellie kept her clothes. He rummaged through her sweaters, smelling her scent rising from them. But found nothing. Next he opened the drawer beneath, which was crammed with underwear. And his hand struck something hard and round. He pulled it out.