Peter James - Not Dead Enough

Another action Grace had assigned to Norman Potting was to obtain plans of the Bishops’ house, an aerial photograph of the property and surrounding area, and to ensure all routes by which someone could have got to the house were carefully searched. He also wanted from Potting, and then separately from the forensic scene manager, a detailed assessment of the crime scene, including reports from the house-to-house search of the neighbourhood, which had been started early that afternoon.

Potting reported that two computers in the house had already been taken to the High Tech Crime Unit for analysis; the house landline records for the past twelve months had been requisitioned from British Telecom, as had the mobile phone records for both the Bishops.

‘I had the mobile phone that was found in her car checked by the Telecoms Unit, Roy,’ Potting said. There was one message timed at eleven ten yesterday morning, a male voice.’ Potting looked down at his notepad. ‘It said, See you later .’

‘That was all?’ Grace asked.

‘They tried a call-back but the number was withheld.’

‘We need to find out who that was.’

‘I’ve been on to the phone company,’ Potting replied. ‘But I’m not going to be able to get the records until after the start of office hours on Monday.’

Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays were the worst days for starting a murder inquiry, Grace thought. Labs were shut and so were admin offices. Just at the very moment you needed information quickly, you could lose two or three vital days, waiting. ‘Get me a tape of it. We’ll ask Brian Bishop if he recognizes the voice. It might be his.’

‘No, I checked that already,’ Potting said. ‘The gardener turned up, so I played it to him.’

‘He on your suspect list?’

‘He’s about eighty and a bit frail. I’d put him a long way down it.’

That did elicit a smile from everyone.

‘By my calculations,’ Grace said, ‘that places him at the bottom of a list of two.’

He paused to drink some coffee, then some water. ‘Right, resourcing. At the moment all divisions are relatively quiet. I want you each to work out what assistance you need drafted in to supplement our own people. In the absence of many other major news stories, we’re likely to have the pleasure of the full attention of the press, so I want us to look good and get a fast result. We want a full dog-and-pony show.’ And it wasn’t just about pleasing the public, Grace knew but did not say. It was about, again, demonstrating his credibility to his acerbic boss, the Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper, who was longing for him to make another slip-up.

Any day soon, the man she had drafted in from the Met, and had promoted to the same rank as himself, the slimeball Detective Superintendent Cassian Pewe – her new golden boy – would finish his period of convalescence after a car accident and be taking up office here at Sussex House. With the unspoken goal of eating Roy Grace’s lunch and having him transferred sideways to the back of beyond.

It was when he turned to forensics that he could sense everyone concentrate just a little bit harder. Ignoring Nadiuska De Sancha’s pages of elaborate, technical details, he cut to the chase. ‘Katie Bishop died from strangulation from a ligature around her neck, either thin cord or wire. Tissue from her neck has been sent to the laboratory for further analysis, which may reveal the murder weapon,’ he announced. He took another mouthful of coffee. ‘A significant quantity of semen was found in her vagina, indicating sexual intercourse had taken place at some point close to death.’

‘She was a dead good shag,’ Norman Potting muttered.

Bella Moy turned to face Potting. ‘You are so gross!’

Bristling with anger, Grace said, ‘Norman, that’s enough from you. I want a word after this meeting. None of us are in any mood for your bad-taste jokes. Understand?’

Potting dropped his eyes like a chided schoolboy. ‘No offence meant, Roy.’

Shooting him daggers, Grace continued, ‘The semen has been sent to the laboratory for fast-track analysis.’

‘When do you expect to have the results back?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

‘Monday by the very earliest.’

‘We’ll need a swab from Brian Bishop,’ Zafferone said.

‘We got that this afternoon,’ Grace said, smug at being ahead of the DC on this.

He looked down at Glenn Branson for confirmation. The DS gave him a gloomy nod and Grace felt a sudden tug in his heart. Poor Glenn seemed close to tears. Maybe it had been a mistake pulling him back to work early. To be going through the trauma of a marriage bust-up, on top of not feeling physically at his best, and with a hangover that still had not gone away to boot, was not a great place to be. But too late for that now.

Potting raised a hand. ‘Er, Roy – the presence of semen – can we assume there is a sexual element to the victim’s death – that she’d been raped?’

‘Norman,’ he said sharply, ‘assumptions are the mother and father of all fuck-ups. OK?’ Grace drank some water, then went on. ‘Two family liaison officers have been appointed,’ he said. ‘WPC Linda Buckley and WPC Maggie Campbell—’

He was interrupted by the loud ring-tone of Nick Nicholl’s mobile phone. Giving Roy Grace an apologetic look, the young DC stood up, bent almost double, as if somehow reducing his height would reduce the volume of his phone, and stepped a few paces away from his workstation.

‘DC Nicholl,’ he said.

Taking advantage of the interruption, Zafferone peered at Potting’s face. ‘Been away, Norman, have you?’

‘Thailand,’ Potting answered. He smiled at the ladies, as if imagining they would be impressed by such an exotic traveller.

‘Brought yourself back a nice suntan, didn’t yer?’

‘Brought myself back more than that,’ Potting said, beaming now. He held up his hand, then raised his third finger, which sported a plain gold wedding band.

‘Bloody hell,’ Zafferone said. ‘A wife ?’

Bella popped a half-melted Malteser into her mouth. She spoke with a voice that Grace liked a lot. It was soft but always very direct. Despite looking, beneath her tangle of hair, like she was sometimes in another world, Bella was very sharp indeed. She never missed anything. ‘So that’s your fourth wife now, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ he said, still beaming, as if it were an achievement to be proud of.

‘Thought you weren’t going to get married again, Norman,’ Grace said.

‘Well, you know what they say, Roy. It’s a woman’s prerogative to change a man’s mind.’

Bella smiled at him with more compassion than humour, as if he were some curious but slightly grotesque exhibit in a zoo.

‘So where did you meet her?’ Zafferone asked. ‘In a bar? A club? A massage parlour?’

Looking coy suddenly, Potting replied, ‘Actually, through an agency.’

And for a moment, Grace saw a rare flash of humility in the man’s face. A shadow of sadness. Of loneliness.

‘OK,’ Nick Nicholl said, sitting back down at the workstation and putting his phone back in his pocket. ‘We have something of interest.’ He put his notepad on the surface in front of him.

Everyone looked at him with intensity.

‘Gatwick airport’s on security alert. ANPR cameras have been installed on the approach bridges either side of the M23. A Bentley Continental car, registered to Brian Bishop, was picked up by one at eleven forty-seven last night. He was on the south-bound carriageway, heading towards Brighton. There was a technical problem with the north-bound camera, so there is no record of him returning to London – if he did.’

ANPR was the automatic number plate recognition system increasingly used by the police and security services to scan vehicles entering a particular area.