Looking Good Dead (18 page)

‘Oh, er – hello, Janie, this is Susan, Mr Broom’s secretary. It’s quarter past eleven on Wednesday. Mr Broom was expecting you in at eight o’clock this morning to work with him on finishing the briefing notes to counsel. Can you please give me a call.’

Grace wrote the details down in his notebook.

There was another, similar message from the same woman, two hours later, then at three thirty in the afternoon a different woman, sounding younger and rather smart: ‘Hi, Janie, this is Verity. Bit worried that you haven’t turned up today. Are you OK? I might pop round later on my way home. Call me or text me or something.’

Then an hour later there was a different message from a woman with an overly jolly voice: ‘Oh, hi, Janie, this is Claire. I have something for you. Give me a call please.’

The next message was from Derek Stretton.

‘Hello, Janie, darling. Got your birthday card – you are so sweet. Longing to see you on Friday. I’ve booked at your favourite; we can go out and have a real seafood binge! Give me a call before if you have a mo. Lots and lots of love. Daddy!’

Then a rather coarse male voice: ‘Oh, hello, Miss Stretton. My name’s Darren. I’m calling from Beneficial to see if you’d like a quotation for household insurance from us. I will call you back.’

Then the jolly voice of Claire again, this time a touch concerned. ‘Oh, hi, Janie, this is Claire again. I’m worried that you might not have picked up my last message. I will try your mobile again, it was for tonight.’

Grace frowned. For tonight? Wednesday night. When she had been dead for around twenty-four hours?

There were several more messages from her office the following day, Thursday. And from the woman called Claire again, sounding very irritated. There was also another message from her father, an anxious one this time.

‘Janie, darling, your office have been in touch with me – they say you haven’t been in since Tuesday and they are extremely worried. Are you all right? Please give me a call back. Love you lots. Daddy.’

Grace wound the tape back to the first message from the perky Claire.

‘Oh, hi, Janie, this is Claire. I have something for you. Give me a call please.’

Something about this message bothered him, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. He checked the machine to see if it logged incoming phone numbers, but it did not appear to.

‘Glenn,’ he said. ‘You’re the closest I have to a resident techie. Can you get into her address file on the laptop?’

The Detective Sergeant walked over to the computer and flipped up the lid. ‘Depends on whether she’s been a good girl or not. Whether we have any password to . . . Ah, no – brilliant! No password!’

He pulled out the chair and sat down. ‘You want a name?’

‘Claire.’

‘Claire what?’

‘Just Claire.’ Grace could not be bothered to correct Glenn’s grammar.

After only a few moments tapping at the keyboard, Branson lifted his head. ‘There’s just one. I tried different spellings.’

‘Does it give an address?’

‘Just a number.’

‘OK, dial it.’

Branson dialled then handed Grace the receiver. It rang for a few moments then was answered by an abrupt male voice.

‘Yes, hello?’

‘May I speak to Claire?’

‘She’s on another line – who’s calling?’

Grace did a quick calculation. They had dropped Janie’s photograph off at the Major Incident Suite on their way here at the same time as they had picked up Glenn’s holdall. It would be a good couple of hours before copies were out in the media so no one outside the police and Janie’s immediate family would yet know she was dead. ‘I’m calling on behalf of Janie Stretton,’ he said.

‘OK, hold a sec; she’ll be with you in a minute.’

Grace heard a few moments of Vivaldi’s Spring, then the voice he recognized as Claire. ‘Hello?’ she said, a little wary.

‘Yes, hello. I’m returning a message you left for Janie Stretton on Wednesday afternoon.’

‘Who exactly are you, please?’ Very wary now. Too wary.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace of Sussex CID.’

The phone went dead.

Instantly, Grace hit the redial button. The phone rang several times until the voicemail finally kicked in. ‘I’m sorry, there is no one here to take your call at the moment—’

‘Bullshit!’ Grace said, hanging up. He pulled out his radio, dialled Bella, gave her the phone number and asked her to come up with an address. Then he phoned his assistant Eleanor and asked her to set up a press conference for later that afternoon. He was keen to get maximum exposure with the public before the world wound down for the weekend.

While he was waiting he checked the emails on his Blackberry, in particular for any news from the Suresh Hossain trial – but that seemed bogged down in day after day of legal submissions at the moment.

Five minutes later, Bella, efficient as ever, radioed him back with an address near Hove station, about ten minutes drive away, going soberly, or ninety seconds with the blues and twos on. It was a business line in the name of BCE-247 Ltd. It meant nothing to him.

He turned to Branson. ‘Bag the computer up and bring it; we’re going to take a drive. I don’t like people who hang up on me.’

28

Grace buckled himself in tightly, told Branson to do the same, then floored the Alfa Romeo’s accelerator, driving as fast as he dared, weaving in and out of the traffic, horn blaring, flashing his headlights, wishing he was in a marked car.

As he crept over the line of his third red light in a row, all Grace could think was, If I hit anything, anything at all, I might as well start flat hunting in Newcastle.

The address Bella had given him was in a parade of shops in the street that ran south from Hove station. Grace screamed into a tight left-hander, passing a busy car wash on the right, then another tight left-hander, cutting dangerously across the bow of a taxi exiting from the station.

He saw a woman dressed in a trouser suit emerging hurriedly from the door between a bathroom tiling shop and a newsagent’s. She was about thirty, with a good figure, spiky red hair and a plain face with too much make-up caked on. She was carrying a large leather portfolio case.

Before the wheels of the Alfa had stopped turning, Grace was out of the car, running across the road, calling out to her: ‘Claire?’

She turned, too startled to deny who she was.

He flashed his warrant card at her. ‘Bit early to be knocking off for the day, isn’t it?’

Her eyes darted furtively to the right then left, as if she was looking for an escape route. ‘I . . . I was just – nipping out to get a sandwich.’ She spoke in a coarse east London accent.

‘We were talking on the phone a few minutes ago – I think we got cut off.’

‘Oh,’ she said evasively. ‘We were?’

‘Yeah, I thought it might be easier to nip round – you know what the phones are like . . .’

She watched his face warily, no hint of a smile.

‘Mind if we pop into your office and have a chat?’ Grace asked, watching Branson out of the corner of his eye walking across the road to join them.

Now she looked panic-stricken. ‘Well . . . I – I think I need to speak to my business partner.’

‘I’ll give you a choice,’ Grace said. ‘We can either do this the nice way or the nasty way. The nice way is we go to your office now, have a cup of tea and a cosy chat. The nasty way is I stay here with you while my partner goes off to get a search warrant, and he’ll come back with six police officers, who’ll take your office apart, floorboard by fucking floorboard.’

Grace saw the panic in her eyes turn to fear.

‘What exactly is all this about, officer?’

‘You mean apart from the fact I don’t like people hanging up on me?’

She blushed, not knowing what to say. A bus rumbled past, engine straining. Grace waited a moment. Then he said, ‘I’ll tell you exactly what it’s about. Janie Stretton is dead.’

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. ‘Janie?’

Grace sensed it was time to apply pressure. ‘On Tuesday night she was cut to ribbons by a maniac, stabbed to death and butchered. You’ve seen the news about the headless torso found in Peacehaven on Wednesday?’

All the blood was draining from the woman’s face, leaving her make-up looking even more vivid. She nodded, her fingertips toying with her lips.

‘Well, we’ve found out today that it’s Janie Stretton. OK to have that chat now?’

The office of BCE-247 Ltd was a second-floor room overlooking the street with a small kitchenette leading off. Apart from the outlay for a couple of gallons of a lurid shade of purple paint, which covered every wall and clashed with the pea-soup-coloured carpet, it did not look to Grace as if any effort had been made with the place for the purposes of appearances.

There were three plain, old wooden desks, three clapped-out-looking executive-style swivel chairs, four tall grey metal filing cabinets. It all looked as if it had been bought as a job lot from a second-hand office supplies store. Additionally there was a cheap-looking CD player and an equally cheap-looking television set, switched off. In contrast, on each desk were up-to-date computers and modern phones. One was ringing now, but Claire ignored it. She seemed in shock.

Branson and Grace sat in two fake black-leather armchairs in front of the woman’s desk, each nursing a mug of tea. Grace had his notebook out but he was watching her eyes really closely.

‘So your full name is?’

He saw her eyes swivel to the left. To the memory side of her brain.

‘Claire Porter,’ she said.

Grace wrote it down. ‘And this is your company?’

‘Mine and my partner’s.’

‘And his name?’

Again her eyes swivelled to the left. It was unlikely she was lying about either her name or her business partner’s, so the movement of her eyes to the memory side of her brain told him this was where her eyes would go each time she told the truth. Which meant if they went to the opposite side, she would be lying.

‘Barry Mason.’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘BCE-247 Ltd,’ he said. ‘Barry and Claire Enterprises?’

She shook her head. ‘No, but close.’

Balancing the notebook on his knees, he held out his arms expansively. ‘So, would you like to tell us?’

He watched her eyes swivel furiously to the right. Construct mode. She was trying to think of a convincing lie.

Then suddenly she buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh fuck, I can’t believe it. Janie. She was such a nice girl; I really liked her.’

‘You left a message on her home phone at half-past four in the afternoon on Wednesday. You said’ – he paused to read from his notebook – ‘“I have something for you. Give me a call please.”’ He paused. ‘What was that about?’

She looked up, and again her eyes moved to the right and she appeared agitated.

Branson cut in, gentle, playing the classic soft man to Grace’s hard. ‘Claire, you might as well tell us. If you’ve got anything to hide, it will look much better for you if you tell us the truth.’

The words seemed to hit home. Her eyes raced around as if running for cover. ‘God, Barry’ll kill me. It stands for Barry and Claire Escorts Twenty-Four Seven. OK?’

Grace sat for some moments in stunned silence. ‘Janie Stretton was an escort? A hooker?’

Very defensive suddenly, Claire said, ‘We provide escorts for single men – and women. People in need of a date for a night out, that sort of thing. Not hookers.’

Grace noticed her eyes were still moving strongly to the right; they seemed to be trying to burrow their way as far to the right as they could get.

‘All innocent?’ Grace said.

She shrugged. ‘For us, yes.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Claire, I’ve heard it all before, OK? If the client wants to make a private arrangement with the young lady, that’s not your problem, right?’

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘I think I should call my solicitor.’

‘I’m not interested in busting your squalid little business,’ Grace said. ‘Call your solicitor and then I will bust you, just for the hell of it, I’ll bloody take you apart. I want to find Janie’s killer; that’s all I’m interested in. Help me with that and I won’t touch you. Do we understand each other?’

She grimaced. Then finally she nodded.

‘How much do you charge your punters?’

‘Sixty quid an hour.’

‘And how much do you get of that?’

‘Forty per cent.’

‘The girls keep the rest and any extras?’

‘They keep their tips,’ she said defensively.

‘Right. Who was she with on Tuesday night?’

She turned to her computer and tapped the keyboard. After some moments she said, ‘Anton.’

‘Anton? Anton who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know the names of your punters?’

‘Only if they want to tell me.’

‘And how many of them tell you?’

‘Quite a few. But I don’t know if their names are real or not.’

Grace found himself getting increasingly angry. ‘These girls sign up with you and you send them out on dates with single men – on which you get a fat commission – and you don’t even bother to find out their bloody names?’

There was another silence. ‘We always check on the girls, on a first date. We phone them after ten minutes. We have some code words; if they’re not happy, then we have security we can send over to help them. This was her fourth date with Anton. I wasn’t worried – I mean I didn’t feel I had any reason to be worried.’

‘It didn’t bother you that she was a young, innocent law student?’

‘We’ve lots of students on our books. They find it a good way to supplement their grants. Thanks to Tony Blair, most students leave uni with debts it will take them years to pay off. Doing escort work gives them an alternative. I like to feel we are doing our bit to help them.’

‘Well of course,’ Grace said, his voice corrosive with sarcasm. ‘I mean, all that cash coming in . . . all your altruism, and her private arrangements with Anton the butcher none of your concern.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking, then he asked, ‘How many girls do you have on your books?’

‘About thirty. And ten guys.’

‘You have pictures?’