Peter James - Not Dead Enough

He continued to pray for some minutes, then, finally, stood up, feeling refreshed, energized, happy that God was with him in the room now. He walked back over to his workstation and drank some tea. Someone on the radio was explaining how to fly a kite. He had never flown a kite in his life, and it had never, before, occurred to him to try. But maybe he should. Perhaps it would take his mind off things. Might be a good way to spend some of that time that was piling up in his account.

Yes, a kite.

Good.

Where did you buy one? In a sports shop? A toyshop? Or the internet, of course!

Not too big a kite, because he was tight on space in the flat. He liked it here, and the place was ideal for him, because it had three entrances – or, more importantly, three exits .

Perfect for an evil creature.

The flat was on the busy thoroughfare of Sackville Road, close to the junction with Portland Road, and there were always vehicles passing by, day and night. It was a downmarket area, this end. A quarter of a mile to the south, closer to the sea, it became rapidly smarter. But here, close to an industrial estate, with a railway bridge running overhead and a few grime-fronted shops, it was a ragbag of unloved, modest-sized Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, all of them split up into rooming houses, bedsits, cheap flats or offices.

There were always people around. Mostly students, as well as some transients and dossers, and the occasional dealer or two. Just sometimes, a few of Hove’s elderly, gentrified, blue-rinse ladies could be seen out and about in daylight, waiting at the bus stop or waddling to a shop. It was a place where you could come and go, twenty-four/seven, without attracting attention.

Which made it perfect for his purposes. Apart from the damp, the inadequate storage heaters and the leaking cistern which he kept fixing, over and over. He did all the maintenance down here himself. He didn’t want workmen coming in. Not a good idea.

Not a good idea at all.

One exit was up the front steps. Another was out the back, through a garden belonging to the ground-floor flat, above him. The owner, a wasted-looking guy with straggly hair, grew rust and weeds in it very successfully. The third exit was for Doomsday, when it finally came. It was concealed behind a false, plywood wall, carefully and seamlessly covered in the same drab floral paper as the rest of the room. Over it, like over most of the wall space down here, he had stuck cuttings from newspapers, photographs and parts of family trees.

One photograph was brand new – he had added it just a quarter of an hour ago. It was a grainy head and shoulders of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, from today’s Argus , which he had scanned into his computer, blown up, and then printed.

He was staring at the policeman now. Staring at his sharp eyes, at the quiet determination in his expression. You’re going to be a problem for me, Detective Superintendent Grace. You are in my face. We’re going to have to do something about you. Teach you a lesson. Nobody calls me an evil creature.

Then suddenly he shouted out aloud, ‘No one calls me an EVIL CREATURE, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of Sussex CID. Do you understand me? I will make you sorry you called me an evil creature. I know who you love.’

He stood, hyperventilating, closing and opening his left hand. Then he paced around the room a couple of times, treading a careful path through the magazines, manuals and entrails of the computers that he was building on the floor, then returned to the photograph again, aware that circumstances had changed. There had been a call on his bank; he could no longer luxuriate in being a time billionaire. The stuff was running out.

48

Just before four o’clock, Holly Richardson stood at the till of Brighton’s coolest new boutique, paying for the insanely expensive, seriously skimpy black dress, edged with diamantés, that she had decided she totally could not go to the party tonight without. She was buying it courtesy of a Virgin credit card that had conveniently landed on her doormat, followed by the pin code, just a few days ago. Her Barclay-card was already maxed out, and by her calculations, on her current rate of outgoings, her earnings from the Esporta fitness centre at Falmer, where she worked as a receptionist, would enable her to pay it off fully around the time of her ninety-fifth birthday.

Marrying someone rich was not an option, it was a necessity.

And maybe tonight Mr Seriously Gorgeous Very Rich Who Likes Curly Dark Haired Girls With Very Slightly Big Noses might just be at that party she and Sophie were going to. The guy throwing it was a successful music producer. The house was a stunning Moorish pad right on the beach, just a couple of doors along from the one Paul McCartney had bought his ex-beloved Heather.

And, oh shit! She just remembered that she had promised to call Sophie back yesterday, when she was out of the hairdresser’s, and it had completely slipped her mind.

Carrying her extremely expensive purchase by the rope handles of the store’s swanky carrier bag, she went out into busy East Street, dug her tiny, latest-model Nokia out of her handbag and dialled Sophie’s. It went straight to voicemail. She left an apologetic message, suggested they meet for a drink about seven thirty, then share a taxi to the party. When she finished, she then dialled the landline in Sophie’s flat. But that went to voicemail too.

She left a second message there.

49

Roy Grace didn’t leave a message. He had already left one earlier on Cleo’s home phone, as well as on her mobile, and he’d also left one on the mortuary’s answering machine. Now he was listening to her breezy voicemail intro on her mobile for the third time today. He hung up. She was clearly avoiding him, still in her strop over Sandy.

Shit, shit, shit.

He was angry with himself for handling it so bloody clumsily. For lying to Cleo and breaking her trust in him. OK, it was a white lie, yadda yadda yadda. But that question she asked, that one simple question, was one he just could not answer, not to her, not to himself. Always the killer question.

What happens if you find her?

And the truth was he really did not know. There were so many imponderables. So many different reasons why people disappeared, and he knew most of them. He had been over this ground so many times with the team at the Missing Persons Helpline, and the shrink he had been seeing on and off for years. In his heart he clung to the slim hope that, if Sandy was alive, she was suffering from amnesia. That had been a realistic possibility in those first days and weeks after she had disappeared, but now, with so many years gone by, it was a straw almost too thin to clutch.

A pink-faced Swatch wristwatch with white letters and a white strap dangled in front of his face. ‘I got my nine-year-old one of these. She was over the moon, like, totally wow, know what I mean?’ the shop assistant said helpfully. He was a pale Afro-Caribbean, in his early thirties, smartly dressed and friendly, with hair that looked like a bunch of broken watch springs.

Grace focused back on his task. His sister had suggested he buy his goddaughter a watch for her birthday tomorrow, and he had phoned her mother to check they were not giving her one. There were ten laid out on the glass counter. His problem was that he had no idea what a nine-year-old would consider cool or horrid. Memories of the disappointment of opening dreary presents thrust on him by his own well-meaning godparents haunted him. Socks, a dressing gown, a jumper, a wooden replica of a 1920s Harrods delivery van where the wheels wouldn’t even turn.