Looking Good Dead (44 page)

Kellie had gone. Her car had been burned out. Then he had responded to the email. And now she was lying across the room, all trussed—

He thought of the young woman on his computer screen, in her evening dress, the hooded man, the stiletto blade.

Pain welled in his bladder. ‘Please,’ he called out, ‘I need to pee.’

‘No one’s stopping you,’ the American said from the shadows.

Tom wriggled round. The man was stooped over Kellie. He ripped the tape away from her mouth. Tom winced at the sound.

Instantly she screamed at the man, ‘Fuck you! Fuck you, you bastard!’

‘Just be a little more ladylike; people will want to see you looking ladylike. Would you like a little more vodka?’

‘Fuck you!’

Oh, God, Kellie! It was so good to hear her voice, to know she was alive, that she was OK, that she had fight in her. Yet this wasn’t the way to deal with this situation.

He clenched his thighs together, and his abdomen, fighting the surge of pain from his bladder. Surely the man didn’t mean him to relieve himself where he lay?

‘Kellie, my darling!’ Tom called out.

‘Get this fucking bastard to get us out of here. I want Jessica and Max. I want my children. LET ME FUCKING GO!’

‘Do you want the tape back over your face, Mrs Bryce?’

She rolled over onto her stomach and lay still, sobbing hysterically, deep, gulping sobs. And Tom felt wretched, useless, so utterly, utterly useless. There had to be something he could do. Something. Oh God, something.

The pain in his bladder was stopping him thinking and his head felt like it had been split open. The torch beam was moving. As it did, Tom saw hundreds of dark-coloured drums, stacked floor to ceiling, huge bloody things, many bearing hazard labels. It was cold in here. There was a slightly sour smell in the chilly air.

Where the hell are we?

‘Oh Tom, please do something!’ she shrieked.

‘Do you want money?’ Tom called out to the man. ‘Is that what you want? I’ll rustle together whatever I can.’

‘You mean you’d like to subscribe?’

‘Subscribe?’ Tom said, pleased at last to get some sort of response to his questions. Engage the man in conversation, reason with him, try to find a—

‘You’d like to subscribe so you could watch yourself and your wife.’ The American laughed. ‘That’s rich!’

Tom’s spirits lifted a fraction. ‘Yes, whatever, however much you want!’

The beam shone straight into his eyes again. ‘You don’t get it, fuckwit, do you? How are you going to be able to see yourselves?’

‘I – I don’t – know.’

‘You’re even more stupid than I thought. You want to pay money so you and your vain little drunk of a wife can watch yourselves looking good dead?’

75

Roy Grace was on the phone non-stop as he drove in his Alfa, making one call after another: checking on Emma-Jane, then the progress of each of his team members in turn, driving them as hard as they could be pushed.

He headed east along the coast road, leaving behind the elegant Regency facades of Kemp Town for the open country, high above the cliffs, passing the vast neo-Gothic pile of Roedean girls’ school and then the art deco building of the St Dunstan’s home for the blind.

Nine fifteen tomorrow night.

The time was lasered into his consciousness; it formed part of every thought that he had. It was now 10.15 a.m., Monday. Just thirty-five hours to the broadcast – and how long before then would the Bryces be killed?

Janie Stretton had been late at the vet with her cat for a 6.30 p.m. appointment, and she hadn’t left until at least 7.40. In between then and approximately 9.15 p.m., when Tom Bryce claimed to have seen her on his computer, she had been murdered and the video of it broadcast. If the same pattern was followed now maybe they had until around 7.30 p.m. tomorrow. Just over thirty-three hours.

And still no live leads.

Thirty-three hours was no damn time at all.

Then he allowed himself just the briefest smile at the thought of Cassian Pewe in hospital. The irony of it. The incredible coincidence. And the fact that Alison Vosper had seen the funny side – showing him a rare side of herself, the human side. And the thing was – not a good thing, he knew, but he could not help it – he didn’t feel even the tiniest bit bad about it, or sorry for the man.

He was sorry for the innocent taxi driver, but not for that little shit, Cassian Pewe, who had arrived in Brighton newly promoted and with every intention of stealing his lunch. The problem hadn’t gone away, but with the man’s injuries it was at least deferred for a while.

He drove through the smart, historic, cliff-top village of Rottingdean, along a sweeping rise then dip, followed by another rise, past the higgledy-piggledy post-war suburban sprawl of Saltdean, then to Peacehaven, near where Glenn Branson lived and where Janie Stretton had died.

He turned off the coast road into a maze of hilly streets crammed with bungalows and small detached houses, and pulled up outside a small, rather neglected bungalow with a decrepit camper van parked outside.

He ended a call to Norman Potting, who seemed well advanced with his search for sulphuric acid suppliers, downed another Red Bull and two more ProPlus, walked up a short path lined with garden gnomes and stepped into a porch, past motionless wind chimes, and rang the doorbell.

A diminutive, wiry man well into his seventies, bearing more than a passing resemblance to several of the gnomes he had just passed, opened the door. He had a goatee beard, long grey hair tied back in a ponytail, wore a kaftan and dungarees, and was sporting an ankh medallion on a gold chain. He greeted Grace effusively in a high-pitched voice, a bundle of energy, taking his hand and staring at him with the joy of a long-lost friend. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace! So good to see you again so soon!’

‘And you, my friend. Sorry I’m so late.’ It was just over a week since Grace had last called on his services – when Frame had undoubtedly helped save an innocent man’s life.

Harry Frame gripped his hand with a strength that belied both his years and his size, and stared up at him with piercing green eyes. ‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure this time? Come in!’

Grace followed him into a narrow hallway lit by a low-wattage bulb in a hanging lantern, and decorated in a nautical theme, the centrepiece of which was a large brass porthole on the wall, and through into a sitting room, the shelves crammed with ships in bottles. There was a drab three-piece suite, the backs draped with antimacassars, a television that was switched off, and a round oak table with four wooden chairs by the window, to which Frame ushered him. On the wall, Grace clocked, as he did on each visit here, a naff print of Anne Hathaway’s cottage and a framed motto which read, ‘A mind once expanded can never return to its original dimensions.’

‘Tea?’

‘I’m fine,’ Grace said, although he could have murdered a cup. ‘I’m in a mega-rush.’

‘Life’s not a race, Detective Superintendent Grace, it’s a dance,’ Harry Frame said in a gently chiding voice.

Grace grinned. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. I’ll put you on my card for a slow waltz at the summer ball.’ He sat down at the table.

‘So?’ Harry said, seating himself opposite. ‘Would you be here by any chance in connection with that poor young woman who was found dead here in Peacehaven last week?’

Harry Frame was a medium and clairvoyant, as well as a pendulum dowser. Grace had been to see the man many times. He could be uncannily accurate – and on other occasions totally useless.

Grace dug his hand in his pocket, pulled out three small plastic evidence bags and laid them on the table in front of Frame. He pointed, first, to the signet ring he had taken from Janie Stretton’s bedroom. ‘What can you tell me about the owner of this?’

Frame removed the ring, clasped it in his hand and closed his eyes. He sat still for a good minute, his wizened face screwed up in concentration.

The room had a musty smell – of old furniture, old carpet, old people.

Finally, Harry Frame shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Roy. Nothing. Not a good day for me today. No connection with the spirits.’

‘Nothing at all from the ring?’

‘I’m sorry. Could you come back tomorrow? We could try again.’

Grace took the ring back, put it in the plastic bag and pocketed it. Next he pointed in turn to the silver cufflinks he had taken from a drawer in the Bryces’ bedroom and a silver bracelet he had taken from Kellie Bryce’s jewellery box. ‘I need to find the owners of these. I need to find them today. I don’t know where they are but I suspect they are somewhere in the vicinity of Brighton and Hove.’

The medium left the room, and returned quickly holding an Ordnance Survey map of the Brighton and Hove area. Moving a candle in a glass holder out of the way, he spread it out on the table and pulled a length of string, with a small lead weight attached, from his trouser pocket.

‘Let’s see what we can find,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed, let’s see.’ He held the bracelet and the cufflinks in his left hand, then, resting his elbows on the table, he inclined his face towards the map and began to chant.

‘Yarummm,’ Frame said to himself. ‘Yarummmm. Brnnnn. Yarummm.’

Then he sat bolt upright, held the string over the map between his forefinger and thumb, and let the lead weight swing backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. After that, pursing his lips in concentration, he swung it vigorously in a tight circle, steadily covering the map inch by inch.

‘Telscombe?’ he said. ‘Piddinghoe? Ovingdean? Kemp Town? Brighton? Hove? Portslade? Southwick? Shoreham?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not being shown anything in this area, sorry.’

‘Can we try a larger scale?’ Grace asked.

Frame went out again and returned with a map covering the whole of East and West Sussex. But again, after several minutes of swinging the weight with fierce concentration, he produced no result.

Grace wanted to pick the man up and shake him. He felt so damned frustrated. ‘Nothing at all, Harry?’

The medium shook his head.

‘They’re going to die if I don’t find them.’

Harry Frame handed him back the links and the bracelet. ‘I could try again later. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘This afternoon some time?’

Frame nodded. ‘If you want to leave them with me? I’ll spend all day; I’ll keep working on it.’

‘Thank you, I’d appreciate it,’ Grace replied. He was clutching at straws, he knew, as he left with a heavy heart.

76

After the eight thirty briefing, Jon Rye had spent two and three-quarter hours working on the laptop that had been taken from the wrecked Ford Transit. But it was defeating him.

At twenty past eleven, feeling drained and frustrated, he went out of the department to get himself a coffee from the vending machine, then returned, deep in thought. With any computer he could normally find a way around any password protection by using forensic software to go in via a back door and then through the computer’s entire internet history. But on this machine he was drawing a blank.

He held his security card to the door panel of the High Tech Crime Unit, then entered and crossed what he had jokingly christened the hamster’s cage, the caged area housing the child pornography investigation, Operation Glasgow, nodding to a couple of the six people poring over their screens who glanced up at him, and walked through into the main part of his department.

Andy Gidney and the rest of his team were at their desks, well stuck into their day’s work. He sat back down at his desk, the laptop itself secure in the Evidence Room, its cloned hard disk loaded into his computer.

Although he had been head of this unit for the past three years, Rye was smart enough to know his own limitations. He had been retrained from Traffic. Several of the younger members of his team were techies from the ground up, university graduates who had lived and breathed computers from their cradles. Andy Gidney was the best of the lot. If there was one person in here who could persuade this laptop to yield its secrets, it was Gidney.

He ejected the cloned hard drive from his processor tower, stood up and walked across to Gidney’s workstation. Gidney was still working on cracking the pass code on an online banking scam. ‘Andy, I need you to drop everything for the next few hours and help me out on this. We have two lives at stake.’

‘Ummm,’ Gidney said. ‘The thing is, I’m quite close now.’

‘Andy, I don’t care how close you are.’

‘But if I stop, I could lose this whole sequence! Here’s the thing!’ Gidney swivelled his chair to face Rye, his eyes burning with excitement. ‘I think I’m just one digit away!’

‘How long will it take you?’

‘Ummm, right, ummm,’ he said pensively. Then he closed his eyes and nodded furiously. ‘Ummm. Ummm.’ He opened his eyes again and looked down at the floor. ‘I would hope by the end of this week.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jon Rye said. ‘You’re going to have to park it. I need you on this right now.’

‘Ummm, the thing is, there’s nine of us in this department, Jon, right?’

Hesitantly Rye said, ‘Yes?’

Concentrating hard on the carpet, Gidney asked, ‘Why exactly me?’

Rye wondered if flattery would help. ‘Because you’re the best. OK?’

Gidney petulantly swivelled his chair, and, with his back now to DS Rye, raised his hand, sounding supremely irritated. ‘All right, gimme.’

‘The forensic image files are on the server under job number 340.’

‘So what exactly am I looking for?’

Rye did not like talking to his junior’s back, but he had learned from experience that there was no point trying to change this weirdo; it was best to humour him, if he wanted the best out of him. ‘Postal addresses, phone numbers, email addresses. Anything that could give us a clue where a couple called Mr and Mrs Bryce might be – Tom and Kellie Bryce.’ He spelled out their names.

‘Do what I can.’

‘Thanks, Andy.’

Rye returned to his desk, then was almost immediately called over to the far end of the room by another colleague, DC John Shaw, a tall, good-looking young man of thirty who he liked a lot. Shaw was extremely bright, also from a university background like Gidney, but the complete opposite of the other man in every way.