Peter James: Dead Simple

They'd had just one phone conversation, in which she had practically seduced him down the line. A bunch of flowers he'd bought at a petrol station lay on the passenger seat beside him. Red roses corny, he knew, but that was the old-fashioned romantic in him. People were right, he did need to move on, somehow. He could count the dates he'd had in the past eight and three-quarter years on just one hand. He simply could not accept there might be another Miss Right out there. That there could ever be anyone who matched up to Sandy.

Maybe tonight that feeling would change?

Claudine Lamont. Nice name, nice voice.

Turn those sodding fog lamps off!

He smelled the sweet scent of the flowers. Hoped he smelled OK, too.

In the ambient glow from the Alfa's dash and the tail lights of the

car in front, he stared up at the mirror, unsure what he expected to see. Sadness stared back at him.

You have to move on.

He swallowed more water. Yup.

In just over two months he would be thirty-nine. In just over two months also another anniversary loomed. On 26 July Sandy would have been gone for nine years. Vanished into thin air, on his thirtieth birthday. No note. All her belongings still in the house except for her handbag.

After seven years you could have someone declared legally dead. His mother, in her hospice bed, days before she passed away from cancer, his sister, his closest friends, his shrink, all of them told him he should do that.

No way.

John Lennon had said, 'life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.' That sure as hell was true.

By thirty-six he had always assumed Sandy and he would have had a family. Three kids had always been his dream, ideally two boys and a girl, and his weekends would be spent doing stuff with them. Family holidays. Going to the beach. Out on day trips to fun places. Playing ball games. Fixing things. Helping them at nights with homework. Bathing them. All the comfortable stuff he'd done with his own parents.

Instead he was consumed with an inner turbulence that rarely left him, even when it allowed him to sleep. Was she alive or dead? He'd spent eight years and ten months trying to find out and was still no nearer to the truth than when he had started.

Outside of work, life was a void. He'd been unable - or unwilling - to attempt another relationship. Every date he'd been on was a disaster. It seemed at times that his only constant companion in his life was his goldfish, Marlon. He'd won the fish by target shooting at a fairground, nine years ago, and it had eaten all his subsequent attempts to provide it with a companion. Marlon was a surly, antisocial creature. Probably why they liked each other, Roy reflected. They were two of a kind.

Sometimes he wished he wasn't a policeman, that he did some less demanding job where he could switch off at five o'clock, go to

the pub and then home, put his feet up in front of the telly. Normal iUfe. But he couldn't help it. There was some stubbornness or deter lation gene - or bunch of genes - inside him - and his father before him - that had driven him relentlessly throughout his life to |jHirsue facts, to pursue the truth. It was those genes that had brought

him up through the ranks, to his relatively early promotion to Detecjftlve Superintendent. But they hadn't brought him any peace of mind.

His face stared back at him again from the mirror. Grace grimced at his reflection, at his hair cropped short, to little more than a light fuzz, at his nose, squashed and kinked after being broken In a scrap when he'd been a beat copper, which gave him the appearance of a retired prize fighter.

On their first date, Sandy had told him he had eyes like Paul Newman. He'd liked that a lot. It was one of a million things he had liked about her. The fact that she had loved everything about him, unconditionally.

Roy Grace knew that he was physically fairly unimpressive. At five foot, ten inches, he had been just two inches over the minimum height restriction when he'd joined the police, nineteen years back. But despite his love of booze, and an on-off battle with cigarettes, through hard work at the police gym he had developed a powerful physique, and had kept in shape, running twenty miles a week, and still playing the occasional game of rugger - usually on the wing.

Nine-twenty.

Bloody hell.

He seriously did not want a late night. Did not need one. Could not afford one. He was in court tomorrow, and needed to bank a full night's sleep. The whole thought of the cross-examination that awaited him pressed all kinds of bad buttons inside him.

A pool of light suddenly flooded down from above him, and he heard the clattering din of a helicopter. After a moment the light moved forward, and he saw the helicopter descending.

He dialled a number on his mobile. It was answered almost immediately.

'Hi, it's Detective Superintendent Grace speaking. I'm sitting in a traffic jam on the A26 south of Crowborough, there seems to be an accident somewhere ahead - can you give me any information?'

He was put through to the headquarters operations room. A male voice said, 'Hello, Detective Superintendent, there's a major accident. We have reports of fatalities and people trapped. The road's going to be blocked for a while - you'd be best turning around and using another route.'

Roy Grace thanked him and disconnected. Then he pulled his Blackberry from his shirt pocket, looked up Claudine's number and texted her.

She texted back almost instantly, telling him not to worry, just to get there when he could.

This made him warm to her even more.

And it helped him forget about tomorrow.

Drives like this didn't happen very often, but when they did, boy, did Davey enjoy them! He sat strapped in the passenger seat next to his dad, as the police car escort raced on in front of them, blue lights flashing, siren whup, whup, whupping, on the wrong side of the road, overtaking mile after mile of stationary traffic. Boy, this was as good as any fairground ride his dad had taken him on, even the ones at Alton Towers, and they were about as good as it gets!

'Yeeeha!' he cried out, exuberantly. Davey was addicted to American cop shows on television, which was why he liked to talk with an American accent. Sometimes he was from New York. Sometimes from Missouri. Sometimes Miami. But mostly from LA.

Phil Wheeler, a hulk of a man, with a massive beer belly, dressed in his work uniform of brown dungarees, scuffed boots and black beanie hat, smiled at his son, riding along beside him. Years back his wife had cracked and left from the strain of caring for Davey. For the past seventeen years he had brought him up on his own.

The cop car was slowing now, passing a line of heavy, earth moving plant. The tow-truck had 'wheeler's auto recovery' emblazoned on both sides and amber strobes on the cab roof. Ahead through the windscreen, the battery of headlights and spotlights picked up first the mangled front end of the Transit van, still partially embedded beneath the front bumper of the cement truck, then the rest of the van, crushed like a Coke can, lying on its side in a demolished section of hedgerow.

Slivers of blue flashing light skidded across the wet tarmac and shiny grass verge. Fire tenders, police cars and one ambulance were still on the scene, and a whole bunch of people, firemen and cops, mostly in reflective jackets, stood around. One cop was sweeping glass from the road with a broom,

A police photographer's camera flashed. Two crash investigators were laying out a measuring tape. Metal and glass litter glinted

everywhere. Phil Wheeler saw a wheel-wrench, a trainer, a rug, a jacket.

'Sure looks a goddamn bad mess, Dad!' Missouri tonight.

'Very bad.'

Phil Wheeler had become hardened over the years, and nothing much shocked him any more. He'd seen just about every tragedy one could possibly have in a motor car. A headless businessman, still in a suit jacket, shirt and tie, strapped into the driver's seat in the remains of his Ferrari, was among the images he remembered most vividly.