Peter James - Looking Good Dead

‘Good man.’

Five minutes later, just as the first fire engine pulled up outside, the warehouse exploded. The blast blew out windows from buildings up to a quarter of a mile away. It was over two days before it was cool enough for the forensic investigators to enter and begin their grim task.

Three sets of human remains were eventually found. One would be identified in a few weeks’ time by his brother, still under police guard in hospital, from the partially melted gold medallion found around his neck. The second, just a human skull, would be identified from dental records as being Janie Stretton. The third would also be identified from dental records as being Andy Gidney.

The intense heat had made it impossible to determine, from what little remained of his bones, Gidney’s precise cause of death. And no one was able to offer any explanation of what he had been doing on the premises.

In a couple of months, Detective Sergeant Jon Rye of the High Tech Crime Unit would provide a report for the Coroner’s Court. And, for lack of evidence, the Coroner would have no option but to return an open verdict. More succinct but less informative than a shipping forecast.

It was half past four when Roy Grace finally left the blaze, which was a long way yet from being under control. He drove straight to the Royal Sussex County Hospital and went to find Glenn Branson in the emergency ward.

Glenn’s pretty wife, Ari, was already there. She had never shown much warmth towards Grace, blaming him, he suspected, for keeping her husband away from home so much. And there was no thaw today. Glenn had been lucky. Only one bullet had hit, and it had gone through his abdomen, missing his spine by half an inch. He would be a little sore for a while, and Grace had no doubt he would enjoy much of his convalescence watching movies in which screen heroes took bullets and survived.

Next, in the intensive care unit, he met Emma-Jane’s parents, her mother an attractive woman in her forties who gave him a stoical smile, her father a very quiet man who sat squeezing a yellow tennis ball in his hand as if his daughter’s life depended on it. Emma-Jane seemed to be improving; that was the best they could say.

When he left the hospital, he felt depressed, wondering what kind of a leader he was to let two of his team come so close to death. He stopped off at a workmen’s cafe, went in and had a massive fry-up and a strong cup of tea.

When he had finished, feeling considerably better now, he sat hunched over the Formica table and made a series of phone calls. As he stood up to leave, his mobile rang. It was Nick Nicholl, asking how he was, then telling him he hadn’t had a chance to report on his meeting with the officer from the Met, about the girl who had been found dead on Wimbledon Common with a scarab design on her bracelet. It had turned out to be a dead end. A coincidence. The girl’s boyfriend had confessed to her murder. Bella Moy, who had been working on all the other forces, had found no other murders with a scarab beetle at the crime scene.

Maybe we got lucky and caught them early? Grace wondered. But not early enough for poor Janie Stretton.

He told the young DC to go home, to put his arms around his wife, who was due to give birth any day, and tell her he loved her. Nicholl, sounding surprised, thanked him. But that was how Grace felt at this moment. That life was precious. And precarious. You never knew what was around the corner. Cherish what you had while you had it.

As he climbed back into his car, Cleo rang, sounding bright and perky.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Sorry to be so long calling you back! Are you free to talk?’

‘Totally,’ he said.

‘Good. I’ve had one hell of a day. Four cadavers – you know what it’s like after a weekend!’

‘I do.’

‘One motorbike fatality, one fifty-year-old man who fell off a ladder, and two old ladies. Not to mention a male head that came in yesterday without much else left of him – but I think you know about that one.’

‘Just a little.’

‘Then I had to go into the centre of Brighton at lunchtime to buy an anniversary present for the aged Ps.’

‘Aged whats?’

‘My parents!’

‘Ah.’

‘And I got my damned car stuck in the Civic Square car park. There was a bomb scare – can you bloody believe it?’

‘Really?’

‘When I finally got the car out, the whole bloody city was gridlocked!’

‘I did hear something about that,’ he said.

‘So how was your day?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you know – average.’

‘No big excitement?’

‘Nah.’

There was a strange but comfortable silence between them for some moments. Then she said, ‘I’ve been longing to speak to you all day. But I wanted to do it when we had some quality time. I didn’t want it to be just a hurried, Hi! Great shag last night. Bye! ’

Grace laughed. And suddenly it seemed an awfully long time since the last time he’d laughed. It had been a long, long few days.

Later, much later, after hours in the office making a start on the mountain of paperwork that would keep him occupied for the rest of the week and beyond, Grace found himself back in Cleo’s flat.

That night, after they had made love, he slept in her arms like a baby. He slept the sleep of the dead. And for a few of those hours it was without any of the fears of the living.

On Thursday morning, his hands heavily bandaged and still hurting like hell from the acid burns, Tom Bryce went into his office for a couple of hours.

It was clear from the exuberant greetings from his staff and the stack of press cuttings on his desk that the front-page headlines he had made with Kellie, nationwide over the past couple of days, had done Bryceright Promotional Merchandise no harm at all. His two salesmen in the office, Peter Chard and Simon Wong, were over the moon – they couldn’t remember when they had last had this level of enquiries, from existing and potential customers.

‘Oh,’ Chard added, standing over his desk, ‘good news is that we’ve delivered the Rolexes to Ron Spacks. All twenty-five of them. Our margin is un-bloody-believable!’

‘I never saw the final artwork,’ Tom said, suddenly feeling a little concerned. If there had been a screw-up on the engraving of twenty-five Rolex watches, it would be a financial disaster.

‘No worries! I rang him yesterday to check all was kosher. He’s happy as Larry with them.’

‘Get me the paperwork on them, will you?’

A couple of minutes later Chard put the file down on his desk. Tom opened it and stared at the order. The margin was fantastic, £1,400 profit per watch. Multiplied by twenty-five. That made £35,000. He’d never made that kind of a profit on an order before, ever.

Then his elation turned to gloom. Kellie had agreed to go to a clinic, to dry out. Afterwards they would start afresh together. But the good places cost a fortune; for the top ones, you could be looking at the wrong end of a couple of thousand pounds a week – multiplied by several months. A good £30,000-40,000 if you really wanted a result. And the cost of childminders while she was there.

At least with this order he would have the dosh to cover it – and in the six years he had been doing business with Ron Spacks, the man had always paid on the nail. Seven days from delivery. Never a day late.

Looking at the paperwork, Tom asked, ‘When were these delivered?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Fast work,’ Tom said. ‘I only took the order last-’

‘Thursday!’ Peter Chard said. ‘Yeah, well I found a supplier who had stock, and got our engraver to work through the night.’

‘I never saw the design; he was going to send it through.’