Peter James - Not Dead Enough

‘This CCTV footage you gave me yesterday, Roy, from the Royal Sussex County Hospital? The bearded guy in sunglasses and long hair who was in there, creating a scene on Sunday?’

Grace had almost forgotten about it. ‘Yes?’

‘Well, we’ve got something! I’ve been running it through some software they’ve developed at the Missing Persons Helpline. Yep? To detect changes of identity in people – how they might look in five, ten, twenty years’ time? Yep? With hair, without hair, with beards, without beards, all that stuff. I’ve been trying to persuade Tony Case we need to invest in it for here.’

‘Tell me?’ Grace said.

Erridge put the first photograph down. Grace saw a man with a heavy beard and moustache, long, straggly hair that hung low over his forehead and large, tinted glasses, dressed in a baggy shirt over a string vest, slacks and sandals.

‘We’ve had the computer remove the long hair, the beard, the sunglasses, yep?’

‘OK,’ Grace replied.

Erridge slapped down a second photograph on Grace’s desk. ‘Recognize him?’

Grace was staring at Brian Bishop.

For some moments he said nothing. Then he said, ‘Bloody hell. Well done, George. How the hell did you get the eyes behind the glasses?’

Erridge grinned. ‘We got lucky. There’s also a CCTV camera in the men’s room. Your guy took his glasses off in there to wipe them. We got footage of his eyes!’

‘Thank you,’ Grace said. ‘This is ace work!’

‘Tell that tight bastard Tony Case, will you? We need this kit here. Could have got this back to you yesterday if we had it in-house.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Grace said, standing up and looking around for Adrienne Corbin, the young detective constable who had been working on the phone log. Addressing no one in particular, he asked, ‘Anyone know where DC Corbin is?’

‘Taking a break, Roy,’ Bella Moy said.

‘Can you get hold of her – ask her to come back here quickly?’

He sat down, staring at each of the photographs in turn, thinking. The transformation was extraordinary. A total metamorphosis, from a suave, good-looking man into someone you’d want to cross the road to avoid.

Sunday , he was thinking. Bishop was at the hospital late on Sunday morning. So he was out and about.

It was Sunday morning when Cleo had the roof of her car ripped open.

He leafed through the time-line report until he reached Sunday morning. According to Bishop’s own statement, in his first interview, he had spent the morning in his hotel room, catching up on his emails and then had gone to some friends for Sunday lunch. There was a note that the friends, Robin and Sue Brown, had been contacted and confirmed that Bishop had arrived at half past one and stayed with them until just after four. They lived in the village of Glynde, a fifteen- to twenty-minute drive from the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Grace estimated.

The time showing on the CCTV footage on the first photograph was twelve fifty-eight. Tight, but possible. Very possible.

He looked back at the time-line for earlier that morning. The duty FLO, Linda Buckley, reported that Bishop had remained in his hotel room until noon, then had left in his Bentley, telling her that he was going to the lunch and would be back later. She had logged his return at four forty-five.

The concern inside him was growing. Bishop could easily have diverted on his route to the hospital and gone via the mortuary. But why? What on earth would have been the point? His motive?

But then again he had no motive yet for the death of Sophie Harrington.

Adrienne Corbin came hurrying into the room, puffing from exertion and perspiring, her dumpy frame clearly not suited to this hot weather. ‘Sir, you wanted to see me?’

Grace apologized for cutting short her break and told her what he needed from the phone mast records and from the CCTV records. He wanted to plot Bishop’s movements from midday on Sunday, when he left the hotel, to the time he arrived at the Browns’ home in Glynde.

‘Old-timer?’ Branson, who had been sitting quietly at his workstation, suddenly spoke.

‘What?’

‘If Bishop was treated in A&E at the hospital, he’d have had to sign the register, right?’

And suddenly Grace realized just how tired he was and what an addling effect it was having on his mind. How on earth could he have overlooked that? ‘You know what?’ he replied.

‘I’m all ears.’

‘Sometimes I actually think you do have a brain.’

113

Finding a route through the red tape of Social Services had been a doddle compared to the phone marathon that now ensued with the Brighton Health Care Trust, Grace rapidly discovered. It took Glenn Branson over an hour and a half of being shunted from official to official, and waiting for people to come out of meetings, before he finally got through to the one manager who was in a position to sanction the release of confidential patient information. And then only after Grace had been put on the line and pleaded his case.

The next problem was that no one by the name of Bishop had been seen at the A&E department on Sunday, and seventeen people had been treated for hand injuries during that day. Fortunately Dr Raj Singh was on duty, and Grace dispatched Branson to the hospital with the photograph from the CCTV in the hope that Singh would recognize him.

Just after four thirty, he stepped out of MIR One and phoned Cleo, to see how she was.

‘Quiet day,’ she said, sounding tired but reasonably cheerful. ‘I’ve had two detectives here all the time, going through the register. I’m just tidying up with Darren, then he’s driving me home. How’s you?’

Grace relayed the conversation with DI Pole he’d had earlier.

‘I didn’t think it was Richard,’ she said, sounding strangely relieved, which annoyed him. He was being irrational, he knew, but there was a warmth in her voice whenever she mentioned her ex, which concerned him. As if it was over, but not really over completely. ‘Are you going to be working late?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know yet. I have the six-thirty briefing and will have to see what that throws up.’

‘What do you fancy for supper?’

‘You.’

‘How would you like me garnished?’

‘Naked, with just a lettuce leaf.’

‘Then get yourself over here as early as you can. I need your body.’

‘Love you,’ he said.

‘I quite like you too!’ she said.

Deciding to take advantage of the first free moment he’d had all day, Grace walked across to the PNC unit, at the far end of the building, where poor Janet McWhirter had spent so much of her working life.

Normally the large office area, with many of its team civilian computer staff, had a lively buzz of activity. But this afternoon there was a subdued atmosphere. He knocked on the door of one of the few enclosed offices. It had been Janet McWhirter’s room and now, according to the label on the wall, housed Lorna Baxter, PNC and Disclosure Unit Manager. He had known her, like Janet, for a long time and liked her a lot.

Without waiting for a reply, he opened the door. Lorna, who was in her mid-thirties, was heavily pregnant. Her brown hair, normally long, was cropped short into a clumsy monk’s fringe, which accentuated the weight that had gone on to her face, and although she was dressed lightly, in a loose floral-patterned dress, she was clearly suffering in the heat.

She was talking on the phone, but signalled at him cheerily to come in, pointing to a chair in front of her desk. He closed the door and sat down.

It was a small, square room, her desk and chair, two visitor chairs, a tall metal filing cabinet and a stack of box files just about filling it. There was a Bart Simpson cartoon pinned to the wall on his right with coloured drawing pins, and a sheet of paper on which was crayoned a large heart and the words, I Love You Mummy!