Peter James - Looking Good Dead

Within seconds he was gaining on the vehicle. He jolted over a speed hump. There were red traffic lights at the bottom of the hill, the junction with Eastern Road. The Transit would have to stop, or at least slow down.

It did neither.

As the van ran the junction Nick saw the glare of headlights, and moments later a Skoda taxi strike the driver’s door broadside. He heard a loud, dull metallic bang, like two giant dustbins swung together.

The Transit spun, and came to a halt, spewing steam, oil and water, its horn blaring, shards of glass and metal lying all around, one wheel buckled and at a skewed angle, almost parallel with the ground, the tyre flat.

The Skoda, slewing, carried on for some yards, making a high-pitched metallic grinding sound, steam pouring from its bonnet, then it mounted the pavement, hit the wall of a house and bounced a few feet back.

Nicholl halted his car, radioing for the emergency services, then jumped out and sprinted to the van. But as he reached it he realized there had been no need to hurry. The windscreen was cracked and stained with blood. The driver was slumped sideways, his body partially draped over the steering wheel, his neck twisted, his face, gashed open in several places, tilted up at the cracked windscreen, his eyes closed.

Steam continued rising and there was a stink of diesel. Nick Nicholl tried to open the buckled door but it was still locked. He pulled hard, nervous the van might catch fire, then harder, wrenching at it with all his strength. Finally it opened a few inches.

He was conscious of vehicles stopping; out of the corner of his eye he saw two people at the taxi, pulling the driver’s door open, and another person struggling with the rear passenger door. Nick yanked harder still on the Transit door; it yielded a little more. And as it did so, he caught sight of a glow coming from the passenger footwell.

A laptop computer, he realized.

Squeezing through the door, Nick peered at the man’s face closely. He was breathing. One of the principal lessons he had learned in first aid was never to move the victim of an accident unless it was to get them out of danger. He reached past the man and turned the ignition off. There was no smell of burning. He decided to wait, then went round to the other side of the van and removed the laptop – with presence of mind, only touching the machine through his handkerchief.

Then, desperately worried about Emma-Jane, he radioed to ask the status of the emergency vehicles. As he did so, he could already hear sirens.

And on top of his concern about the young Detective Constable, he had another worry. Roy Grace was not going to be a happy bunny when he heard about this crash.

At half past eleven, Roy Grace parked his Alfa Romeo on a single yellow line outside the unlit shop window of a dealer specializing in retro twentieth-century furniture.

He climbed out, locked the door and stood, in the orange sodium glow of the street lighting, in front of the wrought-iron gates of the converted warehouse where Cleo lived. For some moments he stared at the entryphone panel, feeling a confusion of emotions. Part of him was angry, part of him nervous about what she was going to say. And part of him was just plain low.

For the first time since Sandy had vanished he felt something for another woman. During brief moments when he had been awake last night and not thinking about Janie Stretton’s murder, he had actually dared allow himself to think that it might be possible to start a new life. And that it could, maybe, have been with Cleo Morey.

Then her text had arrived.

Fiancé.

Just what the hell was all that about? Who was this man? Some dribbling chinless wonder from her posh background who Mummy and Daddy approved of? With a Porsche and a country estate?

How on earth could she have failed to mention that she was engaged? And why did she want to see him now? To apologize for last night, and tell him that the snog in the back of the taxi had been a terrible, drunken mistake, and they needed to be grown up about it as they had to work together?

And why had he come? He shouldn’t be here. He should either be back at his desk in the Major Incident Suite or, at this late hour on a Sunday night, heading home to bed, to be fresh for the morning’s briefing and all the follow-ups he needed to do on Janie Stretton. As well as keeping on top of the progress of the Suresh Hossain trial.

In his mind he was turning over the interview he had just come from with Tom Bryce. As part of Grace’s training in recent years he had attended several psychological profiling courses, but he had never found them that helpful. They could give you useful clues if you were having to pick between three different suspects, perhaps, but nothing he had learned was helping him at this moment assess whether Tom Bryce was acting his grief and concern or whether it was real.

But the man had very definitely told one lie.

Have you noticed any change in Mrs Bryce’s behaviour in recent months?

No, not at all.

What was that all about? Bryce was covering up something. Did he suspect she might be with a lover? Or have left him? And despite all his sympathy for the man, it was this moment of hesitation, this lie, that had sowed sufficient doubt in Grace’s mind to prevent him from pushing all the buttons tonight for a full-scale hunt for Kellie Bryce. He would suggest to Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper, in the morning, that Cassian Pewe be put in charge of the woman’s disappearance.

And, with luck, the smug little shit would end up with a lot of bright yellow yolk all over his face on his very first job. How sweet that would be.

He stared at the entryphone panel and felt butterflies in his stomach. Get a grip, man! Standing here on a doorstep like a pathetic teenager! At half past bloody eleven on a Sunday night!

He felt tired suddenly. Drained. For a moment anger flared up inside him – anger at Cleo and at himself for being so weak in coming here – and he was tempted to go back to his car and drive home. He turned, felt in his pocket for his keys, and was in the process of pulling them out when he heard her voice, sounding strangely distorted through the speakerphone. ‘Hi!’

And that voice did something to him. It totally energized him. ‘Pizza!’ he said in a bad Italian accent. ‘You have-a-order-a pizza?’

She laughed. ‘Come into the courtyard and turn right. Number six, far end on the left! I hope you didn’t forget the extra anchovies!’

The lock opened with a sharp click. He pushed the heavy gate open, digging in his pocket, suddenly remembering his chewing gum, and popped a stick in his mouth, as he walked across the spotless cobblestones illuminated by a row of lights inside glass domes. As he reached her door he put the gum back in its foil wrapper and balled it into his pocket.

The door opened before he had even pressed the bell, and Cleo stood there, barefoot, in tight jeans and a loose blue sweatshirt, some of her hair clipped up, the rest loose. Her face was pale, she was wearing hardly any make-up, yet she looked more beautiful than ever.

She greeted him with a meek smile, and a round-eyed guilty sort of look, like a child who has done something just a little bit naughty. ‘Hi!’ she said, and gave a little shrug.

Grace shrugged back. ‘Hi.’

There was an awkward silence, as if each of them was waiting for the other to offer a kiss. Neither did. She stepped aside for him to come in, then closed the door behind him.

He entered a large, open-plan living room, softly lit with a dozen or more small white candles and some hip, ultra-modern lights; there was a strong scent in the room, faintly sweet, musky, feminine and very seductive.