Peter James - Dead Simple

Grace and Branson both read it.

'Check the fingerprints out and you'll find it is your friend and business partner. Every 24 hours I will cut an increasingly bigger bit off him. Until you do exactly what I tell you.' Grace read it again, and then a third time. 'I think this tells us two things,' he said. Both detectives looked at him, but they had to wait some while before he spoke, finally. 'The first is that I don't think we're looking at a suicide here. And secondly, if I'm right in that assumption, we'll be lucky to find Michael Harrison still alive.'

The phone was ringing again! The third time! Each time before he had hit the buttons, trying to stop it in case Vic heard. Then he had fumbled with the keyboard, dialling 901. And each time got the same damned woman's voice. 'You have no messages.' But now her voice said something different. 'You have one new message.' Then he heard, 'Hello, Michael Harrison, this is Detective Sergeant Branson of Brighton CID responding to your text to Ashley Harper. Please call or text me on 0789 965018. The number again is 0789 965018.' It was the sweetest sound Michael had ever heard in his life. Again he fumbled with the keys, trying to text a reply in the dank darkness: A'88m breing h$ld-- Then dazzling, blinding white light.

'Got a mobile you didn't tell me about, have you, Mikey? Naughty boy, aren't you? Think I'd better take that off you before you get yourself into trouble.' 'Urrrr,' Michael said through the duct tape. The next moment he felt the phone being ripped from his hand. Followed by Vic's reproachful voice. 'That's not playing the game fair, Mike. I'm very disappointed in you. You should have told me about the phone. You really should have done.'

'Urrrr,' Michael mumbled again, shimmying in terror. He could see eyes glinting through the hood above him, inches from his face, bright green eyes like a feral cat.

'You want me to hurt you again? Is that what you'd like, Mikey? Let's see who you were calling, shall we?' Moments later Michael heard the police officer's faint voice through the phone's speaker again. 'Well, fancy that,' the Australian said. 'How sweet. Calling your fiancee. Sweet, but naughty. I think it's time for a punishment. Would you like me to cut off another finger - or clip the callipers back on your bollocks?'

'Noorrrrrrr.'

'Sorry, mate, you'll need to articulate better. Talk me through what you'd like best. It's all the same to me - and by the way, your mate Mark is a rude bastard. Thought you'd like to know he never said goodbye.'

Michael blinked against the light. He didn't know what the man was talking about. Mark? Dimly he wondered where it was that Mark had gone. 'Here's something for you to think about, Mikey. That one million, two hundred thousand pounds you have salted away in the Cayman Islands. That's one hell of a nest egg, wouldn't you say?' How much did this man know about him and his life, Michael wondered. Was that what he was after? He could have it, every damned penny, if he would just let him go. He tried to tell him.

'Urrrrrrr. Ymmmgghvwwit.'

'That's sweet of you, Mikey, whatever it is you're trying to tell me. I really appreciate all the efforts you are making. But here's the thing, you see. Your problem is, I already have it. And that means I don't need you any more.'

Shortly before midnight, Grace drove back into the car park of Sussex House, giving a weary nod to the security guard. They had said little on the drive back from the Van Allen building; Grace and Branson were both wrapped in their thoughts. As Grace pulled the car up, Branson yawned noisily.

'Think we can go home, go to bed, get some sleep?' 'No stamina, youth?' Grace chided. 'And you're wide awake, full of beans? Firing on all cylinders, yeah? I've heard when you get past a certain age you start needing less sleep; which apparently is just as well, since you spend half the night getting up to piss.' Grace smiled. 'I don't look forward to old age much,' Branson said. 'Do you?' 'To be honest, I don't think about it. I see a guy like Mark Warren, lying all broken, leaking his brains out on the pavement, and I remember he and I were talking just a few hours before; things like that make me believe in just living one day at a time.' Branson yawned again.

'I'm going back to work,' Grace said. 'You can fuck off home if you want.'

'You know, you can be such a bitch at times,' Branson said, reluctantly following him to the main entrance, through the doors and up the staircase past the displays of truncheons. Emma-Jane Boutwood, wearing a white cardigan tied around her neck and a pink blouse, was the only person still in the Incident Room. Grace walked over to her, then gestured at the empty work stations. 'Where's everyone, EJ?' She leaned forward as if to read some small print on her computer screen and said distractedly, 'I think they've all gone home.' Grace stared at her tired face, and gave her a light pat on her shoulder, his hand touching the soft wool of the cardigan.

'I think you should go home too; it's been a long day.'

'Can you just give me one minute, Roy? I have something I think is going to interest you - both of you.'

'Anyone like a coffee?' Grace asked. 'Water? Coke?'

'You buying?' Branson said.

'No, the ratepayers of Sussex are buying this time. They want us working at midnight, they can buy us coffee. This one's going on expenses.'

'I'll have a Diet Coke,' Branson said. 'Actually, no, change that. Make it a full-strength Coke; I need the sugar hit.'

'I'd love a coffee,' Emma-Jane said. Grace walked out, along the empty corridor to the rest area with its kitchenette and vending machines. Fumbling in his pocket he pulled out some change, bought a double espresso for himself, a cappuccino for Emma-Jane and a Coke for Branson, then carried them back to the Incident Room on a plastic tray. As he walked in, the young detective constable was pointing at something on her computer screen, and Branson, leaning over her shoulder, seemed engrossed.

Without turning his head, he said, 'Roy, come and take a look at this!'

Emma-Jane turned to Grace. 'You asked me to check up on Ashley Harper's background--' 'Uh huh. What have you found?' Almost swelling with pride she said, 'Actually, quite a lot.'

'Tell me.'

She flipped a couple of pages on a notepad covered in her neat handwriting, checking her notes as she spoke. 'The information you gave me was that Ashley Harper was born in England, and her parents were killed in a car crash in Scotland when she was three; that she was subsequently brought up by foster parents, in London first, then they moved to Australia. When she was sixteen she went to Canada and stayed with her uncle and aunt - and that her aunt died recently. Her uncle's name was Bradley Cunningham - I don't have her aunt's first name.'

Still reading from her pad she went on: Ashley Harper returned to England - to her roots - about nine months ago. You said that previously she had worked in real estate in Toronto, Canada and that her employers were a subsidiary of the Bay group.' Then she looked up to Grace and Branson as if for confirmation.

Grace replied. 'Yes, that's right.'

'OK,' she said. 'Earlier today I spoke to the head of Human Resources for the Bay group in Toronto - as you may know they are one of the largest department store chains in Canada. They do not have a real estate subsidiary, nor have they ever had an Ashley Harper work for them. I did some further checking and found there are no real estate firms anywhere in Canada with the name "The Bay" in them.' 'Interesting,' Branson said, flipping the ring-pull of his Coke. There was a sharp hiss. 'It gets even more interesting,' she said. 'There is no Bradley Cunningham listed in any phone directory for Toronto, nor for anywhere else in the whole of Ontario. I haven't had time to check out the rest of Canada yet. But. . .' she paused to sip some chocolate-covered froth off the top of her cappuccino, 'I have a journalist friend on the Glasgow Herald in Scotland. She's checked back in the archives of all the principal Scottish papers. If a three-year-old girl was orphaned in a car crash, it would have made the news, right?'