Peter James - Not Dead Enough

Grace sat on one of the two large red sofas in the downstairs room of Cleo’s house, with Cleo snuggled up beside him, the empty fish tank sitting on the table still filled with water. He had one arm draped around her and he was holding a large glass of Glenfiddich and ice with his free hand. Her hair smelled freshly washed and fragrant. She felt warm, alive, so intensely, beautifully alive. And so vulnerable.

He was scared as hell for her.

Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers was playing on the hi-fi. It was exquisite music, but it was too poignant, too sad for this moment. He needed silence, or something cheerful, but he didn’t know what. He suddenly felt that he didn’t know anything. Except for this. That he loved this beautiful, warm, funny creature he was holding. He loved her truly and deeply, more than he had ever imagined he could love anyone after Sandy. And that somehow he had to let Sandy go. He did not want her shadow destroying this relationship.

And he could not stop thinking what would have happened if that sad little villain, who was still fighting for his life, had not beaten her to her car.

If there had been no police stakeout. Nobody around to pull her out.

The thought was almost unbearable. Some psycho had planned to kill her and had gone to great trouble.

Who?

Why?

And if that person had tried once and failed, then was he – or she – going to try again?

His mind went back to Sunday, when someone had sliced open the soft-top of the MG. Was that just a coincidence or was there a connection?

Tomorrow a detective would sit down with her and go through a list of all the people she might have upset during her work. There were plenty of relatives of victims who got angry about their loved ones having post-mortems – and invariably they took their anger out on Cleo rather than on the coroner, who was actually the person responsible for that decision.

Cleo had initially greeted the news with disbelief, but during the past hour, since he had arrived home, it was starting to sink in, and the shock was now hitting her.

She leaned down, picked up her wine glass and drained it. ‘What I don’t understand is—’ She stopped in mid-sentence, as if a thought had struck her. ‘If someone was going to wire my car to blow up, wouldn’t they do it to make it look like an accident? They’d know that forensics would be crawling all over it afterwards. It sounds like what this person did made it look very obvious.’

‘You’re right. Whoever it was, they did, they made it very obvious. Although I doubt they could have easily disguised what was done. I’m not a mechanic, but it was a lot more elaborate than just crossing a couple of wires.’ It was vicious, sadistic, he thought but did not say. He hadn’t yet told her that her car was now being treated as a crime scene, the event categorized as a major incident, with a senior investigating officer being appointed and a full inquiry team.

She turned and looked at him with round, worried eyes. ‘I just can’t think of anyone who could have done this, Roy.’

‘What about your ex?’

‘Richard?’

‘Yes.’

She shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t go this far.’

‘He stalked you for months. You had to threaten him with a court order at one point – that was when he backed off, you said. But some stalkers don’t go away.’

‘I just cannot imagine him doing this.’

‘Didn’t you say he raced cars?’

‘He did, until God started occupying his weekends.’

Grace’s mobile rang. He put his glass down and disentangled himself from Cleo, to retrieve it from his jacket pocket. Glancing at the caller display, he saw it was Lloyd.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

‘OK, I’ve spoken to my client,’ the solicitor said. ‘He was adopted. He doesn’t know anything about his birth parents.’

‘Does he know anything about his background at all?’

‘He only found out he was adopted after the death of his parents. After his mother died he was going through her papers and found his original birth certificate. It was a big shock – he didn’t know.’

‘Has he made any attempt to find his birth parents?’

‘He says he had been planning to quite recently, but hadn’t yet done anything about it.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘Did he by any chance tell you where his birth certificate is?’

‘Yes. It’s in a filing cabinet in his office at Dyke Road Avenue. It’s in a folder marked Personal . Would you like to tell me any more?’

‘Not at this stage,’ Grace replied. ‘But thank you. I’ll let you know what I find.’

He ended the call, then immediately dialled the number of the Operation Chameleon incident room.

107

Despite being desperately tired, Grace slept fitfully, woken by the slightest noise and not settling again each time until he was certain that it had come from outside Cleo’s house, not from inside.

His mind was a jumble of dark thoughts. A burning MG. A tattoo. A gas mask. A body with crabs falling off it, rolling through the surf on a Brighton beach, Janet McWhirter’s smiling, cheerful face in her PNC office.

Clear the ground under your feet.

The words of his own mentor, the recently retired Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor, were rolling around like surf inside his head. Gaylor had been a detective inspector when Grace had first met him. The youngest ever DI in Sussex. Twelve years his senior, Gaylor had taught him much that he knew today. In a sense, his own attempts at helping Glenn Branson were his way of passing that knowledge on.

Clear the ground under your feet . It was an old CID expression. Gaylor had always impressed on him the importance of looking at what was immediately around you when you were at a crime scene. Of not ignoring anything, however irrelevant it might seem at the time. He had also told Grace that if something felt wrong, then it probably was wrong.

Janet McWhirter’s death felt wrong to him.

The words of one of his own personal mantras, cause and effect , were also tumbling around in his mind. Cause and effect. Cause and effect .

After fifteen years in the police PNC department, Janet McWhirter falls in love. She goes for a career change, a lifestyle change, plans to move to Australia. Was the cause of her lifestyle change the man she met? And the effect for her to end up dead?

It was really troubling him.

Dawn was breaking outside. Grace had never been afraid of the dark, even as a child, perhaps because he knew his policeman dad was there, in the next room, to protect him. But he had been worried during these past hours of darkness now. Concerned who might be out there wanting to harm Cleo. Her insanely jealous ex-fiancé, Richard?

Richard Northrop-Turner.

The man who had stalked Cleo relentlessly and increasingly nastily, until she had threatened to go to court. Then he had gone away, or so it seemed. Richard Northrop-Turner, who raced cars and did the mechanics himself. Despite all Cleo’s protestations that she did not believe her ex would go as far as trying to kill her, the first call he would make this morning, when he left here, would be to the SIO on the investigation into her attempted murder, a competent DI called Roger Pole, and suggest they concentrate on Richard Northrop-Turner as the prime suspect.

Cleo stirred and he kissed her lightly on the forehead, feeling her warm, sour breath on his face. He wanted to move her out of here and into his own house for the next few days, which would, ideally, mean getting rid of his lodger. For some moments, as he lay awake, he wondered whether he could do a swap with Cleo. Let Glenn Branson come and stay here – and act as a guard – while she stayed with him.