Peter James - Dead Simple

Then his mobile phone beeped with the message signal.

He stopped, pulled it from his zipped pocket and looked at the screen.

You can't tease a girl like this, Big Boy. Claudine XX

Jesus! Leave me alone. You spent the whole evening attacking me for being a cop, nowyou're driving me nuts. So far his only experience at internet dating wasn't working out too well. Were they all like Claudine? Aggressive, lonely women with a screw loose? Surely not, there had to be some normal women out there. Didn't there?

He pocketed the phone and ran on, knowing he owed her a reply, but wondering if it was better to just continue ignoring her. What could he say? Sod off and stop bothering me? It was nice meeting you but I've decided I'm gay?

Eventually he decided he would send her a text when he got back. He would take the coward's route: Sorry, I've decided I'm not ready for a relationship.

His relaxing mind turned to work, to the paper mountain that seemed to be forever building and building. The Nigerian trafficking of young women; the trial of Suresh Hossain; the cold case of little Thomas Lytle; and now the disappearance of Michael Harrison.

This really bugged him. And one thought in particular had woken him during the night and stayed with him. He reached the under-cliff walk, ran along below the white chalk bluffs, high above the Marina with its rows of pontoons and forest of masts, its hotels and shops and restaurants, and on for two more miles.

Then he turned, feeling the burn in his lungs, his legs high from the exertion, and ran back until he reached the point where he was near the Van Allen building. He ran up the ramp onto the promenade, waited for a gap in the busy traffic of Marine Parade and crossed over. He made his way down the narrow street along the side of the building, and stopped by the entrance to the underground car park.

His luck was in. Within moments, the gates swung open and a dark blue Porsche Boxter drove out, a predatory-looking blonde in dark glasses - despite the dull, wet day - at the wheel. He slipped in before the gates closed. It was good to be out of the rain.

He breathed in the dry, engine-oil-laced air as he ran down the hard concrete, past a red Ferrari he remembered from before, and several other cars he recalled, and then stopped in front of the gleaming, mint-clean BMWX5 offroader.

He stared at the number plate. W 796 LDY. Then he looked around, scanning the area. It was deserted. He walked up closer, knelt beside the front nearside wheel, then lay down on his back, wormed himself under the sill and peered up at the inside of the wheel arch. It was covered in mud.

He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, opened it out in the palm of his left hand, then with his right hand scraped at the dry mud until several pieces of it fell into his handkerchief.

Carefully he closed it, knotted it and replaced it in his pocket. Then he hauled himself back up, walked to the garage entrance and waved his hand across the infra-red beam. Moments later, with a loud clank and a busy whirr, the doors opened for him.

He walked out, checked the street in both directions, then resumed his homeward run.

43

At 9.30, showered and after a relaxed breakfast of scrambled eggs and grilled organic tomatoes - organic was a current fad he was going through at home, to counteract all the junk food he often had to eat when working, along with drinking quantities of mineral water - he enjoyed a leisurely read of the Daily Mail, followed by a drool over a road test of the latest Aston Martin in Autocar. Then Grace went into the study he had created in a small back room of the house overlooking his tiny, increasingly overgrown garden, and the almost embarrassingly neat gardens of his neighbours on either side, sat down at his desk in front of his computer screen and rang Glenn Branson's home phone number. His handkerchief, containing the soil he had scraped from Mark Warren's car, lay on the desk inside a small plastic bag.

Ari, Branson's wife, answered. Although he had clicked with Glenn from the day he had met him, Grace found Ari quite hard to get on with. She was often brittle with him, almost as if she suspected that, because he was single, he might be trying to lead her husband astray.

Over the years Grace had worked hard to charm her, always remembering their kids' birthdays with cards and generous presents, and taking her flowers on the few occasions he had been invited round for a meal. There were moments when he thought he was making progress with her, but this morning was not one of them. She sounded less than pleased to hear him. 'Hi, Roy', she said curtly, 'you want to speak to Glenn?'

No, actually, I want to speak to the Man in the Moon, he nearly said, but didn't. Instead, a tad lamely, he asked, 'Is he around?'

'We're in rather a hurry,' she said. In the background he heard the sound of a kid screaming. Then Ari shouting, 'Sammy! Give it to her, you've had your turn, now give it to your sister!' Then the screaming got louder. Finally Branson came on the line.

'Yo, ole wise man, you're up early.'

'Very funny. What was it you said you were doing today?'

'Ari's sister's thirtieth birthday party - in Solihull. Seems I have the choice - find Michael Harrison or save my marriage. What would you do?'

'Save your marriage. Be grateful for your sad-old-git friends who have no life and can spend their weekends doing your work for you.'

'I'm grateful. What are you doing?'

'I'm going to a wedding.'

'You're such a sentimentalist. 'Top hat? Tails? All cleaned and pressed?'

'Anyone ever tell you what a bitch you are?'

'The wife I nearly don't have any more.'

Grace felt a twinge of pain. He knew that Glenn did not mean any malice, but the words stung. Every night, even if it was late, and even if it meant hassle, Glenn at least went home to loving kids and to a beautiful warm woman in his bed. People who had that were incapable of understanding what it meant to live alone.

Solitude.

Solitude could be crap.

Was crap.

Grace was tiring of it - but did not know what to do about it. What if he found someone? Fell in love with a woman, big time? And then Sandy turned up? What then?

He knew in his mind she wasn't ever going to turn up, but there was a part of his heart that refused to go there, as if it was stuck like some old-fashioned record needle, in an eternal groove. Once or twice every year, when he was low, he would go to a medium, trying to make contact with her, or at least trying to eke out some clue about what might have happened to her. But Sandy remained elusive, a photographic negative that lay for ever black and featureless in the hypo fluid of the developing tray.

He wished Branson a good weekend, envying him his life, his demanding wife, his gorgeous kids, his damned normality. He washed up his breakfast things, staring out of his kitchen window at Noreen Grinstead across the street, in a brown polyester trouser suit, apron and yellow rubber gloves, a plastic hat over her head to shield her from the rain, busily soaping her silver Nissan on the driveway. i A black and white cat darted across the road. On the radio the prei tenter, on Home Truths, was interviewing a woman whose parents I had not spoken one word to each other throughout her childhood.

Nineteen years in the police had taught him never to underestimate the weirdness of the human species. Yet barely a day went by when it didn't seem to be getting even weirder.

He went back into the study, dialled Brighton police station and asked if any of the Crime Scene Investigators were in. Moments later he was put through to Joe Tindall, a man he rated highly.

Tindall was meticulous, hard-working and endlessly resourceful. A short, thin, bespectacled, man, with thinning wiry hair, he could have been a mad professor drawn straight from Central Casting. Before joining the police, Tindall had worked for several years for the British Museum as a forensic archaeologist. Joe was the man he was working with on the Tommy Lytle cold case.