Peter James - Not Dead Enough

72

Malling House, the headquarters of Sussex Police, was a fifteen-minute drive from Grace’s office. It was a ragbag complex of buildings, situated on the outskirts of Lewes, the county town of East Sussex, from where the administration and key management for the five thousand officers and employees of the force were handled.

Two buildings dominated. One, a three-storey, futuristic glass and brick structure, contained the Control Centre, the Crime Recording and Investigation Bureau, the Call Handling Centre and the Force Command Centre, as well as most of the computing hardware for the force. The other was an imposing red-brick, Queen Anne mansion, once a stately home and now a Grade-1 listed building, kept in fine condition, which had given its name to the HQ. Although next to the ramshackle sprawl of car parks, single-storey pre-fabs, modern low-rise structures and one dark, windowless building, complete with a tall smokestack that always reminded Grace of a Yorkshire textile mill, it stood proudly aloof. Inside were housed the offices of the Chief Constable, the Deputy Chief Constable and the Assistant Chief Constables, of which Alison Vosper was one, together with their support staff, as well as a number of other senior officers working either temporarily or permanently out of here.

Vosper’s office was on the ground floor at the front of the building. It had a view through a large sash window out on to a gravel driveway and a circular lawn beyond. As he strode towards her desk, Grace caught a glimpse of a thrush standing on the grass, washing itself under the throw of a sprinkler.

All the reception rooms contained handsome woodwork, fine stucco and imposing ceilings, which had been carefully restored after a fire nearly destroyed the building some years back. The house had originally been built both to provide gracious living and to impress upon visitors the wealth of its owner.

It must be nice to work in a room like this, he thought, in this calm oasis, away from the cramped, grotty spaces of Sussex House. Sometimes he thought he might enjoy the responsibility, and the power trip that came with it, but then he would wonder whether he could cope with the politics. Especially that damn insidious political correctness that the brass had to kow-tow to a lot more than the ranks. However, at this moment it wasn’t so much promotion that was on his mind as avoiding demotion.

Some years ago, because of her mood swings, a wit had nicknamed Alison Vosper ‘No. 27’, after a sweet-and-sour dish on the local Chinese takeaway menu, and it had stuck. The ACC could be your new best friend one day and your worst enemy the next. It seemed a long time since she had been anything but the latter to Grace, as he stood in front of her desk, used to the fact that she rarely invited visitors to sit down, in order to keep meetings short and to the point.

So it surprised him, in a way that created a rather ominous sensation in the pit of his stomach, that, without looking up from a document bound with green string, she waved him to one of the two upright armchairs by the large expanse of her glossy rosewood desk.

In her early forties, with blonde hair cut in a short, severe style that framed a hard but not unattractive face, she was power-dressed in a crisp white blouse buttoned up at the neck, despite the heat, and a tailored navy blue two-piece, with a small diamanté brooch pinned to one lapel.

As always, the morning’s national newspapers were fanned out on her desk. Grace could smell her usual, slightly acidic perfume; it was tinged with the much sweeter smell of freshly mown grass wafting in on a welcome breeze through the opened window.

He couldn’t help it. Every time he came into this office his confidence ebbed away, as it used to when, as a child, he was summoned to the headmaster’s study. And the fact that she continued to ignore him, still reading, made him more nervous with each passing second. He listened to the swish . . . swish . . . swish of the sprinkler outside. Then two rings of a mobile phone, faint, in another room.

Munich was going to be the first point of Alison Vosper’s attack, and he had his – admittedly somewhat lame – defence ready. But when she finally looked up at him, while not exactly beaming with joy, she gave him a pleasant smile.

‘Apologies, Roy,’ she said. ‘Been reading this bloody EU directive on standardization of the treatment of asylum seekers who commit crimes. Didn’t want to lose my thread. What bloody rubbish this is!’ she went on. ‘I can’t believe how much taxpayers’ money – yours and mine – is wasted on stuff like this.’

‘Absolutely!’ Grace said, agreeing perhaps a little too earnestly, waiting warily for her expression to change and whatever nuke she had ready to land on him.

She raised a fist in the air. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much of my time I have to waste reading things like this – when I should be getting on with my job of helping to police Sussex. I’m starting to really hate the EU. Here’s an interesting statistic: you know the Gettysburg Address?’

‘Yes. What’s more, I can probably quote it completely – I learned it at school for a project.’

She barely took that in. Instead, she splayed her hands out on her desk, as if to anchor herself. ‘When Abraham Lincoln gave that speech, it led to the most sacrosanct principles in the world, freedom and democracy , becoming enshrined in the American Constitution.’ She paused and drank some water. ‘That speech was less than three hundred words long. Do you know how long the European directive on the size of cabbages is?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Sixty-five thousand words long!’

Grace grinned, shaking his head.

She smiled back, more warmly than he could remember her ever smiling before. He wondered if she was on some kind of happy pill. Then, abruptly changing the subject, but still good-humoured, she asked, ‘So how was Munich?’

Wary suddenly, his guard up again, Roy said, ‘Well, actually it was a bit of a Norwegian lobster.’

She frowned. ‘I beg your pardon? Did you say Norwegian lobster ?’

‘It’s an expression I use for when something is less than you’ve been expecting.’

She cocked her head, still frowning. ‘I’m lost.’

‘A couple of years ago I was in a restaurant in a pub at Lancing. There was something on the menu described as Norwegian lobster . I ordered it, looking forward to a nice bit of lobster. But what I in fact got were three small prawns, about the size of my little finger.’

‘You complained?’

‘Yes, and I was then confronted by Sussex’s own Basil Fawlty, who produced an ancient cookbook which said these particular prawns were sometimes called Norwegian lobsters .’

‘Sounds like a good restaurant to avoid.’

‘Unless you feel in particular need of going out for a disappointment.’

‘Quite.’ She smiled again, a little less warmly, as if realizing that she and this particular man would always be on different planets. ‘So, I take it you didn’t find your wife in Munich?’

Wondering how she knew that this had been his mission, he shook his head.

‘How long has it been now?’

‘Just over nine years.’

She seemed to be about to say something further, but instead she refilled her glass. ‘Do you want any water? Tea? Coffee?’

‘I’m OK, thanks. How was your weekend?’ he said, anxious to move the subject on from Sandy, and still wondering why he had been summoned here.

‘I was at an ACC’s conference in Basingstoke on the subject of improving police performance – or rather, public perceptions of police performance. Another of Tony Blair’s cosmetic tinkerings. A bunch of slick marketing gurus telling us how to leverage our results and how to strategize and drive that process.’ She shrugged.