Peter James - Dead Simple

'Good morning, Roy,' she said. 'Good morning, DS Branson.'

'How you doing?' Glenn replied.

She put the documents down on Roy's desk. 'I've got a couple of forensics reports back from Huntingdon. One's the one you've been waiting for.'

'Tommy Lyde?'

'Yes. I've also got the agenda and briefing notes for your budget meeting at eleven.'

'Thanks.' As she was leaving the room he quickly sifted through the pile and pulled the Huntington report to the top. Huntingdon, in Cambridge, was one of the forensic centres that Sussex Police used. Tommy Lytle was Grace's oldest 'cold case'. At the age of eleven, twenty-seven years ago, Tommy had set out from school on a February afternoon, to walk home. He'd never been seen again. The only lead at the time had been a Morris Minor van, seen by a witness who had had the presence of mind to write down the number. But no link to the owner, a weirdo loner with a history of sex offences on minors, had ever been established. And then, two months ago, by complete coincidence, the van had showed up on Grace's radar, when a classic car enthusiast who now owned it got stopped for drunken driving.

The advances in forensics from twenty-seven years back were beyond quantum. With modern DNA testing, police forensic scientists boasted, not without substance, that if a human being had ever been in a room, no matter how long ago, given time, they could find evidence. Just one skin cell that had escaped the vacuum cleaners, or a hair, or a clothing fibre. Maybe something one hundred times smaller than a pinhead. There would be a trace.

And now they had the van. And the original suspect was still alive. And forensics had been through that van with microscopes!

Despite his fondness for Branson, suddenly Grace could not wait for him to leave, so he could read the report. If he solved this, it would be the oldest cold case ever solved in the country.

Popping the remains of the croissant in his mouth and talking while he chewed, Branson said, 'Five guys go on a stag night, right? The groom is a real joker - he's pulled a stunt on each of the guys in the past - handcuffed one poor sod to a seat on the night train to Edinburgh when he was meant to be getting married in Brighton the next morning.'

'Nice guy,' Grace said.

'Yes, just the kind of fun bloke you want for your best friend. So. Let's look at what we have: Five of them start out. Somewhere along the line they lose the groom, Michael Harrison. Then they are in an RTA, three of them dead at the scene, the fourth in a coma and he died last night. Michael has vanished, no one has heard a word. It is now Friday morning and he's due to be married in a little over twenty-four hours.'

Branson sipped some coffee, stood up for a moment and walked around the office. He stopped and stared for a moment at the SASCO flip chart, on which a draft rota for something had been written in blue ink. He flipped it over, then picked up a pen and drew on the board.

'We got Michael Harrison.' He wrote his name and drew a circle around it. 'We got the four dead mates.' He drew a second circle. 'Then we have the fiancee, Ashley Harper.' He drew a third circle around her. 'Then the business partner, Mark Warren.' He drew a fourth circle. 'And ...'

Grace looked at him quizzically.

'We have what we dug out of his computer yesterday, yeah?'

'A bank account in the Cayman Islands.'

Still holding the pen, Branson sat down in front of Grace again.

Grace continued. 'The business partner wasn't at the stag do, you said.'

Branson never failed to be impressed by Grace's memory for detail. He always seemed to retain everything. 'Correct.'

'Because he was stuck out of town on a delayed flight.'

'That's the story so far.'

'So what does he say? Where does he think Michael Harrison went? Did he fuck off to the Cayman Islands?'

'Roy, you have seen his bird. And we agreed no bloke in his right mind would ditch her and run away- she is drop-dead gorgeous, and smart with it. And ...' Branson pursed his lips.

'And what?'

'She lies. I did your NLP stuff on her, the eye trick. I asked her if she knew about the Cayman Islands account and she said she didn't. She was lying.'

'She was probably just being protective. Covering her boss - and fiance's arse.' Grace was distracted for an instant by the ping of another incoming email. Then he thought hard. 'What is your take so far?'

'The following possible scenarios: Could be his mates have been paying him back and they've tied him up somewhere. Or he might have had an accident. Or he's got cold feet and done a runner. Or the Cayman Islands features in this somewhere.'

Grace clicked open one of the emails that was flagged as urgent and was from his boss, Alison Vosper. She asked if he was free for a brief meeting at 12.30. He typed back that he was, while he talked to Branson. 'The guy's business partner, Mark Warren, he'd know if they had been planning a prank, like tying him to a tree, or something.' 'Ms Harper says he knows they were planning something, but doesn't know what they decided on.'

'Have you checked out the pubs they visited?'

'Doing that today.'

'CCTV footage?'

'Starting on that, too.'

'Have you checked out the van?'

From the look of sudden panic on Branson's face, Grace saw he hadn't. 'Why the hell not? Isn't that the first place to look?'

'Yeah, you're right. I haven't got fully into gear on this yet.'

'Have you done an all-ports?'

'Yeah, his picture's being circulated this morning. We've put out a missing persons alert.'

Grace felt as if a dark cloud had slipped overhead. Missing persons. Every time he heard the phrase it affected him, brought it all right to the front of his mind again. He thought of this woman, Ashley, Branson had described. The day before her wedding and her man gone missing. How must she feel?

'Glenn, you said this guy is a joker - any chance this a prank he's pulling and he's about to turn up, with a big grin on his face?'

'With four of his best mates dead? He'd have to be pretty sick.' Branson looked at his watch. 'What you doing for lunch?'

'Unless I get a call from Julia Roberts, I may be free - oh - subject to No. 27 not detaining me for more than half a hour.'

'How is the delightful Alison Vosper?'

Grace gave him a bleak stare and raised his eyebrows. 'More sour than sweet.'

'Ever thought of shagging her?'

'Yes, for about one nano-second - or perhaps even a femtosecond - isn't that the smallest unit of time that exists?'

'Could be a good career move.'

'I can think of a better one.'

'Like?'

'Like not trying to shag the Assistant Chief Constable.'

'Did you ever see Susan Sarandon in Moonlight MileV

'I don't remember it.'

'She reminds me of Susan Sarandon in that movie. I liked that movie, it was good. Yeah. Want to take a ride out to the car pound

with me, lunchtime - talk some more on the way? I'll buy you a pint and slap-up sandwich.'

'Lunch at the car pound? Wow, proves what I thought the moment I saw that tie. You really do have style.'

26

The water was still rising, Michael calculated, at one inch every three hours. It was now just below his ears. He was shivering from cold, getting feverish.

He had worked frantically through the night, sawing with the glass, and he was now on the last fragment of the whisky bottle and his arms ached with exhaustion. He had made a deep groove in the lid, but had still not yet broken through to the outside of it.

He was pacing himself now, two hours on, half an hour off, imagining he was sailing. But he was losing. The water was rising faster than the hole was widening. His head would be underwater before the hole was wide enough to get through.

Every fifteen minutes he pressed the talk button on the walkietalkie. Each time all he got was static back.