Peter James - Dead Simple

'Usually,' Grace said.

'Ashley claims to be twenty-eight. I've had her go back twenty five years, and then five years either side of that. The name Harper has not come up.'

'She could have taken the name of her foster parents,' Branson said.

'She could,' agreed Emma-Jane Boutwood. 'But what I'm about to show you reduces that possibility.' Grace looked admiringly at the young DC. She seemed to be growing in confidence in front of his eyes. She was exactly the kind of new blood the police force so badly needed. Smart, hardworking youngsters with determination. 'I had the name Ashley Harper run through the Holmes network, as you requested,' she said, addressing Grace. Holmes-2 was the second phase in a computerized database of crimes, linking all police forces throughout the UK and Interpol and, more recently, other police networks overseas.

'Nothing showed up under the name Ashley Harper' she said. 'But this is where it gets interesting. Taking the initials "AH", and linking them to a broad category heading of "property", Holmes came up with the following. Eighteen months ago a young lady called Abigail Harrington married a wealthy property developer in Lymm, Cheshire, called Richard Wonnash. He was big into free-fall parachuting. Three months after their wedding, he died when his parachute failed to open during a jump. Four years ago, in Toronto, Canada, a woman called Alexandra Huron married a real estate developer called Joe Kerwin. Five months after their wedding he drowned in a sailing accident on Lake Ontario. Seven years ago, a woman called Ann Hampson married a property developer in London called Julian Warner. He was a high-profile society bachelor, with big holdings in London docklands around the time of the early 1990s property crash. Six months and two days after their wedding, he gassed himself in an underground car park in Wapping.'

She took another sip of her froth.

'Same initials,' Branson said.

'But what does that prove?'

'A lot of con artists keep the same initials when they change their names,' she said. 'I read about this at police training college. In itself it proves nothing. But here's where it gets better.' She tapped her keyboard and a black and white newspaper photograph of a young woman with close-cropped dark hair appeared. The face belonged to Ashley Harper - or her double. 'This is from the Evening Standard article on the death of Julian Warner,' she said.

There was a long silence while Grace and Branson studied the photograph. 'Shit,' Branson said. 'Certainly looks like her.' Saying nothing, she tapped the keyboard again. Another photograph, also in black and white, appeared. This showed a woman with shoulder-length fair hair. Her face looked even more like Ashley Harper. 'This is from the Toronto Star, four years ago, reporting on the death of Joe Kerwin.' Grace and Branson said nothing. Both were stunned. 'This next one is from the Cheshire Evening Post, eighteen months ago, in an article about the death of Richard Wonnash. Abigail Harrington was the beautiful grieving widow.' She tapped her screen and a new photograph appeared, in colour. The hair was red, styled in an elegantly short razor cut. The face yet again was, almost beyond doubt, Ashley Harper's. 'Bloody hell!' Branson exclaimed. Grace stared at the face, pensively, for a long time.

Then he said, 'Emma-Jane, well done.'

'Thank you Roy.' Grace turned to Glenn Branson.

'So,' he said. 'It's twenty minutes to one. Which magistrate do you feel brave enough to wake up?'

'For a search warrant?'

'You worked that all out by yourself did you?'

Ignoring Branson's grimace, Grace stood up. 'Emma-Jane, go home; get some sleep.'

Branson yawned. 'How about me? Do I get some sleep?'

Grace clapped a hand on his shoulder. 'I'm afraid, my friend, your day's only just begun.'

81

A few minutes later, Grace was on the phone to a very sleepy sounding magistrates' clerk, who asked if this couldn't wait until the morning. 'We're investigating a possible abduction, and it's a potential lifeordeath situation,' Grace informed her.

'I need an evidential warrant and I'm afraid it absolutely cannot wait.'

'OK,' she said reluctantly. 'The duty magistrate is Mrs Quentin.'

Grace smiled to himself. Hermione Quentin was one magistrate he particularly disliked, having had a run-in with her some months back in court over a suspect he had wanted to hold in custody; she had refused. She was the worst kind of magistrate in his view, married to a wealthy stockbroker, living in a vulgar ostentatious house, a middle-aged glamour queen with no experience of the real world and some kind of zealous personal agenda to change the way the police in general viewed criminals. It would give him the sweetest pleasure to get her out of bed to sign the warrant in the small hours of the morning. Grace and Branson then spent a further ten minutes on the phone, organizing a team to assemble at Sussex House at 5 a.m. Then, taking pity on Branson, Grace sent him home to get a couple of hours' kip. Next he rang DC Nicholl, and apologized for disturbing him, then instructed him to head for Ashley Harper's house and keep watch on it for any movement. At 2 a.m., with the signed warrant in his hand, Grace arrived back at his home, set his alarm for 4.15, and crashed out.

When he hit the alarm button and jumped automatically out of bed in the dark room, he could hear the first twitterings of the dawn chorus, reminding him as he stepped into the shower that, although summer had not yet begun, they were less than a month shy of the longest day, 21 June. At 5 a.m. he was back at Sussex House, feeling remarkably perky on his two and a bit hours' sleep. Bella and Emma-Jane were already there, as was Ben Farr, a round-faced, bearded Sergeant in his late forties who was to be the Exhibits Officer, and Joe Tindall. Glenn Branson arrived a few minutes later. Over cups of coffee, Grace briefed them. Then, shortly after half past five, all wearing protective waistcoats, they set off in a police Transit van and a marked car, which Branson drove, Grace in the passenger seat. Reaching Ashley's street, Grace told Branson to pull up alongside Nick's unmarked Astra, and wound his window down. 'All quiet,' Nicholl reported. 'Good boy,' Grace said, noting that Ashley Harper's Audi TT was in its usual place outside her house. He told Nicholl to cover the street behind, then they drove on. There were no free spaces in the street, so they double parked beside the Audi. Grace gave Nick Nicholl a couple of minutes to get in place, then, leading the posse, marched up to the front door, in full daylight now, and rang the bell. There was no response. He rang again, then, after a minute, rang yet again. Then he nodded to Ben Farr, who went over to the Transit and removed a heavy-duty ram, the size of a large fire extinguisher. He hefted it up to the front door, swung it hard and the door flew open.

Grace went in first. 'Police!' he shouted. 'Hello? Police!'

The silent, winking lights of the hi-fi system greeted him. Followed by the rest of his team, he walked up the stairs and paused on the first-floor landing. 'Hello!' he called out again.

'Miss Harper?'

Silence. He opened one door, onto a small bathroom. The next door was to a small, bland spare bedroom that didn't look as if it had ever been used. He hesitated, then pushed the remaining door, which opened onto a master bedroom, with a double bed that had clearly not been slept in. The curtains were drawn shut. He found the light switch and turned it on, and several ceiling spots lit up the room.

The place had a deserted feel, like a hotel room waiting for its next occupant. He saw an immaculate duvet over a queen-size bed, a flat-screen television, a clock radio plus a couple of Hockney swimming pool prints on the wall. No Ashley Harper. So where the hell was she? Feeling a stab of panic, Grace exchanged glances with Glenn Branson. They both knew that somewhere along the line they had been outsmarted, but where and how? For a moment all he could think of was the bollocking he would get from Alison Vosper if it turned out he had woken a JP in the middle of the night to get a search warrant for no good reason. And there could be all kinds of good reasons why Ashley Harper wasn't here tonight. For a moment he felt angry at his friend. This was all Glenn's fault. He'd suckered him into this damned case. It wasn't anything to do with him, not his problem. Now he owned the fucking problem and it was getting deeper. He tried to recap, to think how he would cover his arse if No. 27 hauled him in. There was Mark Warren's death. The note. The finger in the fridge. Emma-Jane's findings. There was a whole ton of things that were not right. Mark Warren, so belligerent at the wedding reception. Bradley Cunningham, so smooth, so upmarket at the wedding. Actually the pants are killing me . . . rented this lot from your wonderful Moss Bros, but I think I got given the wrong pants!' From the time he had spent in the United States and in Canada, and the conversations Grace had had about the differences in their language, he knew that classy Americans and Canadians might call ordinary trousers 'pants', but they would called dressier trousers 'trousers'. It had been an instant giveaway that Bradley Cunningham might not be who he made himself out to be. Not that that slender hypothesis would satisfy Alison Vosper.