Peter James - Dead Simple

He glanced at his watch, needing to keep an eye on the time. Ari got mad if he was late and caused her to miss the beginning of her class. And besides, it was no hardship - there were few things he treasured more than spending time with his kids. Then his phone beeped.

It was the front desk. A woman had waited an hour to see him and wasn't leaving. Would he mind having a word with her? Everyone else was busy.

'Right, like I'm not busy?' Glenn said to the receptionist, letting irritation show in his voice. 'What does she want?'

'It's to do with the accident on Tuesday - the missing groom.'

Instantly he mellowed. 'Right. OK, I'll come down.'

Despite her bleached-out complexion, Ashley Harper looked every bit as beautiful in the flesh as she did in the photograph he had just seen of her in Michael Harrison's apartment. She was dressed in designer denims, with a bling belt, and carried a classy handbag. He led her into an interview room, got them each a coffee, closed the door and sat down opposite her. Like all the interview rooms it was small and windowless, painted a drab pea green, with a brown carpet and grey metal chairs and table, and reeked of stale cigarette smoke.

She placed her handbag on the floor. Beautiful grey eyes framed by smudged mascara stared out from a wan face, leaden with grief. Fronds of her brown hair fell across her forehead, the rest swooped in a single wave either side of her face and onto her shoulders. Her nails were perfect, as if she had come straight from a manicure. She looked immaculate, and that surprised him a little. People in her state were usually careless about their appearance, but she seemed dressed to kill.

Equally he knew how hard it was to figure women out. Once, when their relationship was going through a rocky time, Ari had given him the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. It had helped him go some way towards understanding the mental gulf between men and women (but not all the way).

'You're a hard man to get hold of,' she said, and tossed her head, flicking her long brown hair away from her eyes. 'I left four messages.' 'Yeah, I'm sorry.' He raised his hands. 'I've two of my team off sick and two away on holiday. I understand how you must feel.'

'Do you? Do you have any idea how I feel? I'm meant to be getting married on Saturday and my fiance's been missing since Tuesday night. We have the church booked, I've got my dressmaker turning up for a fitting, two hundred guests invited, wedding presents pouring in. Do you have any idea how I feel?' Tears rolled down her cheeks. She sniffed, fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a tissue.

'Look, I'm sorry. I have been working on your - Michael - your fiancee's disappearance since we spoke this morning.'

'And?' She dabbed her eyes.

He cradled his beaker of coffee, which was too hot to drink. Had to let it cool. 'I'm afraid I don't have anything to report, yet.' Not strictly true, but he wanted to hear what she had to say.

'What exactly are you guys doing?'

'Like I said this morning on the phone, ordinarily when someone goes missing--'

She cut him short. 'This isn't ordinarily, for God's sake. Michael's been missing since Tuesday night. When we're apart he rings me five, ten times a day. It's now two days. Two fucking days, for Christ's sake!'

Branson studied her face carefully, searching for giveaways. But he found nothing. Just a young woman desperate for news of her loved one. Or- ever the cynic - a fine actress. 'Hear me out, OK? Two days is not in ordinary circumstances enough for alarm. But I agree, in this situation, it is strange.'

'Something's happened to him, OK? This isn't some normal missing persons situation. His friends did something to him, put him somewhere, sent him somewhere, I don't know what the hell they did to him -1--' She lowered her head as if to hide her tears, fumbled for her bag, found it, pulled out a tissue and dabbed her eyes, still shaking her head.

Glenn was moved. She had no idea, and this wasn't the moment to tell her.

'We're doing everything we can to find Michael,' he said gently.

'Like what? What are you doing?'

Her grief lifted momentarily, as if she was wearing it like a veil. Then another flood of tears and deep, gulping sobs.

'We've done a search around the immediate vicinity of the accident, and we still have people there - sometimes people get disoriented after an accident, so we're searching all the surrounding area - and we've now put out an all-points alert. All police forces have been informed. Airports and seaports--'

Again she cut him short. 'You think he's done a runner? Jesus! Why would he do that?'

Using a subtle technique he had learned from Roy Grace to tell if someone was lying, he asked her, 'What did you have for lunch today?'

She looked at him in surprise. 'What did I have for lunch today?'

'Yes.' He watched her eyes closely. They moved to the right. Memory mode.

Human brains are divided into left and right hemispheres. One contains long-term memory storage, and in the other the creative processes take place. When asked a question, people's eyes almost invariably move to the hemisphere they are using. In some people the memory storage is in the right hemisphere and in some the left; the creative hemisphere the opposite one.

When people are telling the truth, their eyes swing towards the memory hemisphere; when they lie, towards the creative one. Branson had learned to tell which by tracking their eyes in response to a simple control question such as the one he had just asked, where there would be no need for a lie.

'I didn't have lunch today.'

Now he judged it was time to tell her. 'How much do you know about your fiance's business dealings, Miss Harper?'

'I was his secretary for six months, OK? I don't think there's much I don't know.'

'So you know about his Cayman Islands company?'

Genuine surprise in her face. Her eyes shot to the left. Construct mode. She was lying. 'Cayman Islands?' she said.

'He and his partner' - he paused, pulled out his notebook and flipped through several pages - 'Mark Warren. You're aware of this company they have there? HW Properties International?' She stared at him in silence. 'HW Properties International?' she echoed.

'Uh huh.'

'No, I know nothing about this.'

He nodded. 'OK.'

The tone of her voice had shifted subtly. Thanks to Roy Grace's teaching he knew what it meant. 'Tell me more?'

'I don't know much more, I was hoping you could tell me.'

Her eyes shot to the left again. Construct mode again. 'No,' she said, 'I'm sorry.'

'It's probably not significant anyway,' he said. 'After all, who doesn't want to avoid the tax man?'

'Michael is shrewd. He's a clever businessman. But he would never do anything illegal.'

'I'm not suggesting that, Miss Harper. I'm trying to establish that perhaps you don't know the full picture about the man you are marrying, that's all.'

'Meaning what?'

Again he raised his hands in the air. It was five to seven. He needed to go. 'It doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. But it's something we have to be aware of.' He gave her a smile.

It was not returned.

17

On the unstable television screen in the chaotically untidy Portakabin annexed to his dad's house on the edge of Lewes, with its view out on to the yard filled with car wrecks, Davey was watching the American cop show, Law, and Order. His favourite character, a sharp cop called Detective Reynaldo Curtis, was eyeballing a lowlife, holding him by the dewlaps with a clenched fist. 'I'm in your face, know what I'm saying?' Reynaldo Curtis snarled.

Davey, in his baggy jeans, and baseball cap tugged tight over his head, lay back on his beat-up sofa munching a Twinkie bar from a supply that was delivered to him weekly from the States by mail order and shouted out, 'Yeah, scumbag! I'm in your face, know what I'm saying?'