Peter James - Not Dead Enough

Her flat was on the third floor of a rather tired Victorian terrace, just north of the busy shopping street of Church Road. The lock on the front door had worked so loose in its rotting surround that anyone could have opened it with just a sharp push to shear the screws out of the wood. Her landlord, a friendly, diminutive Iranian, was forever promising to get it fixed, the same way he kept promising to have the drip in the loo cistern fixed, and never did.

She opened the door and was greeted by the smell of damp carpets, a faint aroma of Chinese takeaway and a strong whiff of dope. From the other side of the door leading into the ground-floor flat came a frenetic pounding, rhythmic, bass beat. The post lay spread out on the threadbare hall carpet, untouched from where it had fallen this morning. She knelt and checked it. The usual decimated rainforest-worth of pizza menus, summer sale offers, fliers for concerts, home insurance and a whole ton of other junk, with a few personal letters and bills interspersed.

Naturally tidy, Sophie scooped it up into two piles, one comprising rubbish mail, one the proper post, and put them both on the shelf. Then she eased herself past two bicycles, which were blocking most of the passageway, and up the balding treads of the staircases. On the first-floor landing, she heard the sound of Mrs Harsent’s television. Raucous studio laughter. Mrs Harsent was a sweet old lady of eighty-five who, fortunately for her, with the noisy students she had underneath, was deaf as a post.

Sophie loved her top-floor flat, which although small was light and airy, and had been nicely modernized by the landlord with beige fitted carpets, creamy white walls and smart cream linen curtains and blinds. She had decorated it with framed posters of some of the films from Blinding Light Productions and with large, moody black and white sketches of the faces of some of her favourite stars. There was one of Johnny Depp, one of George Clooney, one of Brad Pitt, and her favourite, Heath Ledger, which had pride of place on the wall facing her bed.

She switched on her television, channel-hopped, and found American Idol , a show she really liked. With the volume up loud, partly to drown out the sound of Mrs Harsent’s television and partly so she could hear it in her kitchenette, she took a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon from her fridge, opened it and poured herself a glass. Then she cut open the avocado, removed the stone and dropped it in her waste bin, before squeezing some lemon over the avocado.

Half an hour later, having had a refreshing bath, she sat propped on her bed, wearing just a baggy white T-shirt, with her avocado and prawn salad, and her third glass of wine on the tray on her lap, watching a geeky-looking man in huge glasses reach sixty-four thousand pounds on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? , which she had recorded earlier in the week. And finally, with the sky gradually darkening outside her window, her day was starting to improve.

She did not hear the key turning in the lock of her front door.

33

Roy Grace stood in the empty hotel room and dialled Brian Bishop’s mobile phone number. It went straight to voicemail. ‘Mr Bishop,’ he said. ‘This is Detective Superintendent Grace. Please call as soon as you get this message.’ He left his number. Then he rang Linda Buckley down in the lobby. ‘Did our friend have any luggage?’

‘Yes, Roy. An overnight bag and a briefcase – a laptop bag.’

Grace and Branson checked all the drawers and cupboards. There was nothing. Whatever he had brought here, Bishop had taken away with him. Grace turned to the duty manager. ‘Where’s the nearest fire escape?’

The man, who wore a name tag which said Roland Wright – Duty Manager, led them along a corridor to the fire escape door. Grace opened it and stared down the metal steps into a courtyard filled mostly with wheelie bins. A strong aroma of cooking rose up. He closed the door, thinking hard. Why the hell had Bishop left again? And where had he gone to?

‘Mr Wright,’ he said, ‘I need to check if our guest, Steven Brown, made or received any phone calls while he was here.’

‘No problem – we can go down to my office.’

Ten minutes later, Grace and Branson sat down in the lobby of the hotel with Linda Buckley. ‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘Brian Bishop received a phone call at five twenty.’ He checked his own watch. ‘Approximately two and a half hours ago. But we have no information who it was from. He made no outgoing calls from the hotel phone. Maybe he used his mobile – but we won’t know that until we get his records – which will be Monday at the earliest, from past experience with the phone companies. He’s slunk out, with his luggage, probably down the fire escape, deliberately avoiding you. Why?’

‘Not exactly the actions of an innocent man,’ Glenn Branson said.

Grace, deep in thought, acknowledged the somewhat obvious comment with a faint nod. ‘He has two bags with him. So did he walk somewhere or take a taxi?’

‘Depends where he was going,’ Branson said.

Grace stared at his colleague with the kind of look he normally reserved for imbeciles. ‘So where was he going, Glenn?’

‘Home?’ Linda Buckley said, trying to be helpful.

‘Linda, I want you to get on to the local taxi companies. Call all of them. See if anyone picked up a man matching Bishop’s description in the vicinity of this hotel some time around five twenty, five thirty this afternoon. See if anyone called a cab to come here. Glenn, check the staff. Ask if anyone saw Bishop get into a taxi.’

Then he dialled Nick Nicholl. ‘What are you doing?’

The young DC sounded in something of a state. ‘I’m – er – changing my son’s nappy.’

How fucking great is that? Grace thought but restrained himself from saying. ‘I hate to drag you from your domestic bliss,’ he said.

‘It would be a relief, Roy, believe me.’

‘Let’s not run it by your wife,’ Grace said. ‘I need you to get down to Brighton station. Brian Bishop’s done another disappearing act on us. I want you to check the CCTVs there – see if he turns up on the concourse or any platforms.’

‘Right away!’ Nick Nicholl could not have sounded more cheerful if he had just won the Lottery.

Ten minutes later, terrified out of his wits, Roy Grace sat belted into the passenger seat of the unmarked police Ford Mondeo.

Having recently failed his Advanced Police Driving course – which would have enabled him to take part in high-speed chases – Glenn was now preparing to take it again. And although his head was full of the words of wisdom his driving instructor had imparted, Grace did not think that they had permeated his brain. As the speedometer needle reached the 100-mph mark on the approach to a gentle left-hander, on the road out of Brighton towards the North Brighton Golf Club, Grace was thinking ruefully, What am I doing, letting this maniac drive me again? This tired, hung-over, deeply depressed maniac who has no life and is suicidal?

Flies spattered on the windscreen, like red-blooded snowdrops. Oncoming cars, each of which he was convinced would wipe them out in an explosion of metal and pulped human flesh, somehow flashed past. Hedgerows unspooled on each side at the speed of light. Vaguely, out of the furthest reach of his retina, he discerned people brandishing golf clubs.

And finally, in defiance of all the laws of physics that Grace knew and understood, they somehow arrived in the car park of the North Brighton, intact.

And among the cars still sitting there was Brian Bishop’s dark red Bentley.

Grace climbed out of the Mondeo, which reeked of burning oil and was pinging like a badly tuned piano, and called the mobile of Detective Inspector William Warner at Gatwick airport.