Peter James - Not Dead Enough

If looks could kill, Vosper’s smile would have sliced Grace open and then disembowelled him.

A solidly built earth mother standing near the back called out loudly, ‘Assistant Chief Constable, will you be allowing Detective Superintendent Grace to consult a medium?’

There was a titter of laughter. The woman had touched a raw nerve. Maintaining a poker face, Grace smiled inwardly, watching Alison Vosper’s sudden discomfort and really quite enjoying it. He had been pilloried over a previous case, a few months back, when it had come out in court that he had taken a shoe, a key piece of evidence in a murder trial, to a medium. The press had had a field day. And so had Vosper – with him.

‘It is not normal practice for the police to follow such a line of inquiry,’ she replied sharply. ‘That said, we listen to anyone who can provide us with information, and then assess how it may progress the investigation.’

‘So you don’t rule it out?’ the reporter persisted.

‘I think I’ve already given you my answer.’ Then she looked around the room. ‘Any more questions?’

At the end of the conference, as Grace was leaving, Alison Vosper collared him and they stepped into a vacant office.

‘We’ve got the whole eyes of the city on us, Roy. If you are planning to go and see any of your psychics, please discuss it with me first.’

‘I don’t have any plans, not at this stage.’

‘Good!’ she said, with the gusto of someone praising a puppy for urinating in the right place. For a moment he thought she was going to pat him on the head and give him a biscuit.

75

Half an hour later, Grace stood in the cramped changing room at the mortuary, fumbling with the tapes on the green gown, then stepping into a pair of white gumboots. As he did so a very hung-over, gowned-up Cleo popped her head around the door and gave him a look he could not read.

‘Sorry about last night!’ she said. ‘Didn’t mean to pass out on you, honest!’

He smiled back. ‘Do you always get that wrecked when you go out with your sister?’

‘She’s just been dumped by her dickhead boyfriend and wanted to get smashed. It seemed rude not to join her.’

‘Quite. How are you feeling?’

‘Only marginally better than Sophie Harrington looks. I had the roundabouts earlier!’

‘Coca-Cola, full strength – the best thing,’ he said.

‘I’ve already drunk two cans.’ She again gave him a look he could not read. ‘I don’t think I asked you how Germany went. Did you find your wife? Have a cosy reunion?’

‘You did ask, about five times.’

She looked astonished. ‘And you told me?’

‘How about we have a meal tonight and I’ll give you the full low down.’

She looked hard at him again and, for a sudden, panicky moment, he thought she was going to tell him to get lost. Then she gave him a thin smile – but with no warmth. ‘Come over to me. I’ll cook something very simple and non-alcoholic. Comfort food. I think we need to talk.’

‘I’ll come over as soon as I can after the evening briefing.’ He took a step towards her and gave her a quick kiss.

At first she pulled away sharply. ‘I’m very hurt and I’m very angry with you, Roy.’

‘I like it when you are angry,’ he said.

Suddenly she melted a little. ‘Bastard,’ she said and grinned.

He gave her another quick kiss, which turned into a longer kiss. Their gowns rustled as they held each other tighter, Grace keeping one eye on the door in case anyone came in.

Then Cleo broke away and looked down at herself, grinning again. ‘We’re not meant to be doing this. I’m still angry with you. Turns you on, this gear, does it?’

‘Even more than black silk underwear!’

‘Better get back in and do some work, Detective Superintendent. A centre-spread in the Argus that you got caught shagging in the mortuary changing room wouldn’t be the best thing for your image.’

He followed her down the tiled corridor, his mind a maelstrom of thoughts, about Cleo, about Sandy and about work. The press had given them a rough ride this morning and he could understand where they were coming from. One murder of an attractive young woman could be an isolated incident, something personal. Two could put a city, or an entire county, into a state of panic. If the press got hold of the information on the gas mask there would be a feeding frenzy.

He hadn’t released the information that Sophie Harrington had made a call to Brian Bishop, the prime suspect in Katie Bishop’s murder. And that Brian Bishop, behind his veneer of respectability as a successful businessman, respected citizen of Brighton and Hove, golf club committee member and charity benefactor, whose equally outwardly respectable Rotarian wife had been having an affair, had a deeply unpleasant criminal record.

At the age of fifteen, according to the information on the PNC – the Police National Computer database – Bishop had been sentenced to two years in a young offenders’ institute for raping a fourteen-year-old girl at his school. Then, at the age of twenty-one, he was given two years’ probation for violently assaulting a woman, causing her grievous bodily harm.

It seemed that the deeper his team dug into Bishop’s life, the stronger the evidence against the man was becoming. Earlier today Alison Vosper had talked about his alibi in London being the elephant in the room. But there was another elephant in the same room at this moment. And that was Bishop’s vehement denial of any knowledge of the insurance policy taken out on his wife’s life. Because he appeared to be telling the truth about that, and that was bothering Grace.

Still, it was equally clear that Brian Bishop was a sharp operator. Not many people achieved his level of financial success by being a nice guy, in Grace’s view – something now borne out by the man’s ugly, violent past. And he knew he shouldn’t read too much into Bishop’s ignorance – or feigned ignorance – of the life insurance policy.

The complexities were starting to hurt his brain. He wanted to go somewhere and sit in a quiet, dark corner and run through every element of the Bishop and Harrington cases. The SOCO team would be in the Bishops’ house for a good few days yet, and Grace was glad about that. He wanted the man to be uncomfortable, out of his natural habitat. In a hotel room, like a caged animal, he would be insecure and therefore would respond better to questioning.

They were definitely stacking up material against Bishop, but it was too early to arrest the man. If they did that, they could only keep him inside for twenty-four hours – with an extension of a further twelve hours – without charging him. There wasn’t enough hard evidence yet, and although the man’s alibi wasn’t watertight, there was enough room for doubt. Two independent witnesses to say he had been in London either side of the time of the murder, against one Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera, which said he hadn’t. There had been far too many cases of villains using copied number plates – particularly these days, to avoid speeding fines from cameras; a clever brief could easily sow doubt in a jury’s mind about whether this number plate was real or a fake.

He was also very interested in the artist that Katie Bishop had been seeing. At this point the man was a potential suspect, for sure.

Deep in thought, he entered the stark, bright glare of the post-mortem room. Sophie Harrington’s body was obscured from his view, crowded by green-gowned figures peering intently, like students in a classroom, as Nadiuska De Sancha pointed out something.

In the room, in addition to the pathologist, Cleo and Darren, were DCI Duigan and the lean figure of the Coroner’s Officer, Ronnie Pearson, a retired police officer in his early fifties.