Peter James - Looking Good Dead

Fifteen minutes later, Grace and Branson were in a grim elevator, with obscene spraypainted graffiti on every wall and a puddle of urine in one corner, in a tower block on the Whitehawk council estate.

They emerged at the seventh floor, walked down the corridor and rang the bell of Flat 72.

After a few moments a woman’s voice called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘Police!’ Grace said.

A tired, harried-looking woman in her early fifties, wearing a dressing gown and pompom slippers, opened the door. She looked as if she had been attractive in her youth, but her face was now leathery and criss-crossed with lines, and her wavy hair, cut shapelessly, was blonde, fading into grey. Her teeth were badly stained – from nicotine, Grace judged by the reek of tobacco. Somewhere behind her in the flat a child was screaming. There was a faintly rancid smell of fried fat in the air.

Grace held up his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace of Brighton CID, and this is Detective Sergeant Branson. Are you Mrs Margaret Stevenson?’

She nodded.

‘You are Mrs Kellie Bryce’s mother?’

She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Yes. ’E’s not here. You’re looking for Tom? ’E’s not here.’

‘Do you know where he is?’ Grace asked.

‘Do you know where my daughter is?’

‘No, we’re trying to find her.’

‘She wouldn’t disappear – she wouldn’t leave the children. She didn’t never hardly bear to let them outta her sight. She wouldn’t even leave them with us. Tom brung the kids here about an hour ago. Just rang the bell, bundled them in, then left.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘No. ’E said ’e’d call me later.’

The screaming got worse behind her. She turned anxiously.

Grace fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Please call me if you hear from him – the mobile number.’

Taking the card, she asked, ‘Do you want to come in? A cup of tea? I must stop Jessica crying; my husband’s gotta have his sleep. He’s got the Parkinson’s. ’E must have rest.’

‘I’m sorry we disturbed you,’ Grace said. ‘Mr Bryce didn’t say anything at all?’

‘Nothing.’

‘He didn’t explain why he was bringing the children over in the middle of the night?’

‘For their safety, that’s what ’e said. That was all.’

‘Safety from what?’

‘Didn’t say. Where’s Kellie? Where do you think she is?’

‘We don’t know, Mrs Stevenson,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘As soon as we find her, we’ll call you. Mr Bryce really didn’t say where he was going?’

‘Going to find Kellie, ’e said.’

‘He didn’t say where?’

She shook her head. The screaming got louder still. Grace and Branson exchanged glances – a question and a shrug.

‘I’m sorry we disturbed you,’ Grace said. He gave her a smile, trying to reassure her. ‘We’ll find your daughter.’

Tom, driving Kellie’s Espace slowly north out of Brighton, holding his mobile phone in his hand, was shaking. The road was quiet, just occasional headlights coming the other way and, from time to time, lights appearing in his mirror, then passing him.

Indistinct thoughts flitted in and out of his mind, like the shadows made by his headlights. His whole body was clenched tight. He leaned forward, peering through the windscreen, shooting nervous, darting glances into the mirror, fear riddling his stomach.

Oh my God. My darling, where are you?

He did not know what he was doing here or what to expect. His brain felt locked; he was unable to think out of this box, unable to think beyond those words on his computer screen.

He had visions of the girl, Janie Stretton, in her room being butchered by the hooded man with the stiletto blade. But it wasn’t Janie Stretton now, it was Kellie.

He couldn’t imagine where Kellie was nor what was going through her mind. He just had to get to her, whatever it took, whatever it cost.

Money. That’s what they would want, he suspected hazily. They had kidnapped Kellie and now they wanted money. And they would have to believe him when he told them he did not have very much, but he would give them everything he had in the world. Everything.

A road sign loomed up. cowfold. haywards heath.

Suddenly the display on his mobile lit up and it began ringing:

Private number calling

Nervously, he pressed the answer key. ‘Hello?’

‘Mr Bryce?’

It was DS Branson. Shit. He killed the call.

Moments later there was the double beep of a message waiting.

He played it. It was DS Branson, for the third time, asking him to phone him back.

Kellie, my darling, for God’s sake call me!

Headlights loomed in his mirror. Although he was only doing forty on a dual carriageway, this time they stayed behind him, right on his tail. He dropped his speed to thirty. Still the headlights stayed behind him. His throat tightened.

His phone rang again. On the caller display was a number he did not recognize. He answered, a cautious, shaky, ‘Hello?’

A male voice in a guttural eastern European accent said, ‘Mr Bryce, how are you doing?’

‘Who – who are you?’ he said. The lights were right behind him, dazzling him.

‘Your wife would like to see you.’

Finding it hard to see the road ahead, he said, ‘Is she OK? Where is she?’

‘She’s fine, she’s great. She is looking forward to seeing you.’

‘Who are you?’

‘There is a lay-by coming up in half a mile. Pull into it and turn your engine off. Stay in your car and do not turn round.’ The phone went dead.

He did not know what to do. Some distance ahead, as he started down a long hill with signs to a garden centre on his left, his headlights picked up a blue p sign for a parking area.

Then he saw the lay-by.

His heart was thrashing like a crazed bird inside his ribcage, and his mouth was dry with fear. He tried desperately to think clearly, rationally. A voice somewhere inside his head was screaming at him not to pull over, to keep going, to call DS Branson back, to let the police handle this.

And another voice, a much quieter, more logical one, was telling him that if he did not pull over, Kellie would die.

Her scream of terror on his computer echoed all around him. That scream had been real.

That woman on his computer last Tuesday night being cut to ribbons by the stiletto blade was real.

He indicated left, slowed, pulled over.

The headlights followed him.

He braked, switched off the engine, then sat rigidly staring ahead, frozen in fear but determined to stick this out, somehow.

The headlights in his mirror went off. Darkness. Silence. The engine pinged. He thought he saw shadows moving. Behind him tiny pinpricks of light appeared. They grew larger. A lorry roared past, shaking his car, and he saw its red tail lights fade slowly into the distance.

Then both rear doors of the Espace opened simultaneously. A hand, like a vice, gripped his throat.

Something was pressed over his mouth and nose, a damp cloth with a sharp, sour reek. He felt an instant, blinding headache, like a cheese-wire slicing through his brain.

Behind his eyes it was as if a television had been switched off: one small diminishing pinprick of light, rapidly fading to black.

The next Sussex police officer to get an early-morning call was Detective Sergeant Jon Rye of the High Tech Crime Unit. His alarm clock showed 2.43 a.m. as his mobile began to ring, and he cursed not having turned the damned thing off.

His wife stirred but didn’t say anything as he snapped on the bedside light, waking up fast, looked at the caller display and saw only Private number calling. Almost certainly to do with work, he thought.