Peter James - Not Dead Enough

Missa Bishop no here wik time. No here lass night. I know no here lass night, I have to make supper Missy Bishop. She jus salad. When Missa Bishop here, he like meat or fish. I make big food.

So if Brian Bishop wasn’t here last night, having kinky sex with his wife, who was?

And if he killed her – why?

An accident?

The ligature mark shouted a very distinctive ‘No.’

As did his instinct.

12

Like many of the products of the early post-war building boom, Sussex House, a sleek, rectangular, two-storey building, was not ageing particularly well. The original architect had clearly been influenced by the Art Deco period and the place looked from some angles like the superstructure of a small, tired cruise liner.

Originally constructed in the early 1950s as a hospital for contagious diseases, at that time it had occupied a commanding, isolated position on a hill on the outskirts of Brighton, just beyond the suburb of Hollingbury, and the architect could no doubt have seen his vision in its full, stand-alone glory. But the ensuing years had not been kind. As the urban sprawl encroached, the area around the building became designated as an industrial estate. For reasons no one today was clear about, the hospital closed down and the building was bought by a firm that manufactured cash registers. Some years later it was sold to a freezer company, which subsequently sold it to American Express, which in turn, in the mid-1990s, sold it to the Sussex Police Authority.

Refurbished and modernized, it was opened in a blaze of publicity as the flagship, high-tech headquarters for Sussex CID, positioning the county’s force at the very cutting edge of modern British policing. More recently, it had been decided to move the custody centre and cell block out there also, so these were built on and annexed to the building. Now, despite the fact that Sussex House was bursting at the seams, some of the uniformed divisions were also being moved here. And with just ninety parking spaces for a workforce that had expanded to 430 people, not everyone found the place lived up to its original promise.

The Witness Interview Suite was a rather grand name for two small boxrooms, Glenn Branson thought. The smaller, which contained nothing but a monitor and a couple of chairs, was used for observation. The larger, in which he was now seated with DC Nick Nicholl and the very distressed Brian Bishop, had been decorated in a manner designed to put witnesses, and potential suspects, at their ease – despite two wall-mounted cameras pointing straight down at them.

It was brightly lit, with a hard, grey carpet and cream walls, a large south-facing window giving partial views of Brighton and Hove across the slab-like roof of an ASDA supermarket, three bucket-shaped chairs upholstered in cherry-red fabric, and a rather characterless coffee table with black legs and a fake pine top, which looked like it might have been the last item to go in a Conran shop sale.

The room smelled new, as if the carpet had just been laid minutes before and the paint on the walls was still drying, yet it had smelled like this for as long as Branson could remember. He had only been in here a few minutes and was perspiring already, as were DC Nicholl and Brian Bishop. That was the problem with this building: the air conditioning was crap and half the windows did not open.

Announcing the date and time, Branson activated the wall switch for the recording apparatus. He explained that this was standard procedure to Bishop, who responded with an acquiescent nod.

The man appeared totally wretched. Dressed in an expensive-looking tan jacket with silver buttons, pulled on untidily over his blue, open-throat Armani polo shirt, sunglasses sticking out of his top pocket, he sat all hunched up, broken. Away from the golf course, his tartan trousers and two-tone golfing shoes seemed a little ridiculous.

Branson couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. And try as he might, the DS could not get the image of Clive Owen in the movie Croupier out of his mind. In other circumstances he might have asked Bishop if they were related. And although it had no bearing on the task he was here to carry out, he could also not help wondering why golf clubs, which always seemed to him to have ludicrously formal and outdated dress codes, such as wearing ties in clubhouses, allowed their members to go out on the course looking like they were starring in a pantomime.

‘May I ask when you last saw your wife, Mr Bishop?’

He clocked the hesitation before the man answered.

‘Sunday evening, about eight o’clock.’ Bishop’s voice was suave, but deadpan, and totally classless, as if he had worked on it to lose whatever accent he might once have had. Impossible to tell whether he came from a privileged background or was self-made. The man’s dark red Bentley, which was still parked at his golf club, was the kind of flash motor Branson associated more with footballers than class.

The door opened and Eleanor Hodgson, Roy Grace’s prim, nervy, fifty-something Management Support Assistant, came in with a round tray containing three mugs of coffee and a cup of water. Bishop drained the water before she had left the room.

‘You hadn’t seen your wife since Sunday?’ Branson said, with an element of surprise in his voice.

‘No. I spend the weeks in London, at my flat. I go up to town Sunday evenings and normally come back Friday night.’ Bishop peered at his coffee and then stirred it carefully, with laboured precision, with the plastic stick Eleanor Hodgson had provided.

‘So you would only see each other at weekends?’

‘Depends if we had anything on in London. Katie would come up sometimes, for a dinner, or shopping. Or whatever.’

‘Whatever?’

‘Theatre. Friends. Clients. She – liked coming up – but . . .’

There was a long silence.

Branson waited for him to go on, glancing at Nicholl but getting nothing from the younger detective. ‘But?’ he prompted.

‘She had her social life down here. Bridge, golf, her charity work.’

‘Which charity?’

‘She’s involved – was – with several. The NSPCC mainly. One or two others. A local battered-wives charity. Katie was a giver. A good person.’ Brian Bishop closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. ‘Shit. Oh, Christ. What’s happened? Please tell me?’

‘Do you have children, sir?’ Nick Nicholl asked suddenly.

‘Not together. I have two by my first marriage. My son, Max, is fifteen. And my daughter, Carly – she’s thirteen. Max is with a friend in the South of France. Carly’s staying with cousins in Canada.’

‘Is there anyone we need to contact for you?’ Nicholl continued.

Looking bewildered, Bishop shook his head.

‘We will be assigning you a family liaison officer to help you with everything. I’m afraid you won’t be able to return to your home for a few days. Is there anyone you could stay with?’

‘I have my flat in London.’

‘We’re going to need to talk to you again. It would be more convenient if you could stay down in the Brighton and Hove area for the next few days. Perhaps with some friends, or in a hotel?’

‘What about my clothes? I need my stuff – my things – wash kit . . .’

‘If you tell the family liaison officer what you need it will be brought to you.’

‘Please tell me what’s happened?’

‘How long have you been married, Mr Bishop?’

‘Five years – we had our anniversary in April.’

‘Would you describe your marriage as happy?’

Bishop leaned back and shook his head. ‘What the hell is this? Why are you interrogating me?’

‘We’re not interrogating you, sir. Just asking you a few background questions. Trying to understand a little more about you and your family. This can often really help in an investigation – it’s standard procedure, sir.’