Love You Dead (43 page)

‘Sure, sorry.’

He waited as their fresh drinks arrived, sipped his new Armagnac, then put the glass down. A warning voice inside his head was shouting,
Enough!
‘You know what I would love to
do?’

She shook her head and sipped her fresh Zombie.

‘You and I come from a very different Brighton. When I was a kid in the 1950s – brought up by my mum, a war widow – this was a seedy, tatty place. It was full of nasty people,
violent gangs. It was a dangerous place. Now it’s become the coolest city in the UK outside of London – one of the coolest cities on the planet. I’d love to take you on a tour of
the Brighton I grew up in. Do you have any free time before I fly back to California?’

‘Well,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I need to defrost my fridge. And I have some paint I need to watch drying. But I’m sure I could find a few minutes.’

He gave her a sideways look, and chuckled. ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.’

‘You wouldn’t be an inconvenience. You’d be a very lovely distraction.’

He smiled. ‘I’ve a busy morning tomorrow with my accountants and lawyers, but I’ve a clear afternoon.’

‘Great,’ she said. ‘How about I pick you up here? I’m a very good driver and I have a nice car. I would be more than happy to be your chauffeur!’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve arranged a chauffeured limousine through the hotel. I could pick you up from your home around lunchtime – we could get a bite to eat then do the tour.
How does that sound?’

‘Well . . .’ She hesitated for an instant. ‘Yes, that would be great, but I’m not actually sure where I’ll end up tomorrow morning. How about I meet you here
– what time would work?’

‘Half twelve?’

‘That sounds like a plan, if you’re really sure it’s no inconvenience?’

‘I’d be grateful for the company.’

‘I do have one condition for coming on this tour with you,’ she said.

‘And that is?’

‘That you allow me to cook you dinner at my house tomorrow evening. That is if you don’t have other plans?’

‘Well, you know, it’s a strange thing, but I don’t have a goddam thing in my diary for tomorrow night.’

‘So now you do!’

Noah had been grizzly all evening. Finally, past midnight, after numerous trips to his room to feed and soothe him, Roy and Cleo had both fallen asleep.

Almost immediately, it seemed, Roy was woken by the rasping sound of his phone. He had left it on silent but vibrate mode, in the hope that if it did ring, it wouldn’t wake Cleo, who was
knackered.

He grabbed it, the display showing
No Caller ID,
slipped out of bed, went through into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and switched on the light. ‘Roy Grace,’ he
answered quietly. The time on the display was 12.43 a.m.

‘Roy? It’s Norman – sorry – Paul.’

Potting sounded pissed, his voice alternating between his Devon burr and his assumed Transatlantic accent.

‘You shouldn’t be calling me direct. It’s all meant to go through your Cover Officer.’

‘I know that, Roy, but I just wanted to let you know as well – cut the bureaucracy out.’

‘It’s not so much red tape as protocol, Norman. OK. I appreciate you calling, but it’s dangerous, OK? This is a breach of procedure.’

‘OK, chief, if you say so.’

‘So?’

‘I’ve made contact.’

‘I’ve been informed from Surveillance.’

‘Had a pretty interesting evening.’

‘So it sounds.’

‘Huh?’

‘Boozy time?’

‘Well, I had to keep up with her. I think she likes me. She’s a fast mover. Our plan worked, I think she mus – must – have read the
Argus
piece and figured out
who I was. You know?’

‘Cornel.’

‘Thash– that’s– me!’

Alarm bells were ringing at the sound of his voice. ‘Nice work, Norman – sorry – Paul. So?’

‘I’m seeing her again tomorrow. She’s suggested going to hers – she’s cooking me dinner at home tomorrow evening, and you’ll be able to pick the address up
from my tracker when I get there.’

‘Good, well done, but don’t call me again.’

Grace ended the call feeling worried. Many officers in Sussex Police felt that Potting, with his non-pc attitudes – albeit less extreme these days – was well past his sell-by date.
With the historic thirty-year service to retirement, few officers in Sussex Police were older than fifty-five. But with recent unpopular revisions to the pension scheme, working past the age of
fifty-five was going to become the norm. And the DS, a late entrant to the police, would not be completing his thirty years until he was almost sixty. Another few years to go. As one of the
officers to have worked closely with him over a number of years, Roy Grace saw qualities in the strange but kind character that eluded those who knew – or saw – only the old-school cop
in him, and the values that came with that. Grace knew better and had fought Potting’s corner several times in recent years, saving him from disciplinary action – and potential
dismissal on more than one occasion – because he believed in him.

He hoped to hell that Potting wasn’t going to let him down now. But even more importantly for the DS’s personal security, he hoped he wasn’t going to let his guard down. If
Grace was right – and he was pretty sure that he was – Jodie Carmichael wasn’t someone it was safe to get drunk with.

Tooth rose at 5.30 a.m., adrenalin pumping, not wanting to miss what should be the big event of the day. He went over to his desk, opened his laptop and checked the cameras in
Jodie Carmichael’s house. She was still asleep in bed, just like most of her fellow reptiles. The only activity in that room was in two of the glass vivariums – the one containing the
cockroaches and the other the mice. All of those crawling, wriggling, twitching, darting creatures, unaware that the sole reason for their existence was to be fed to their neighbours in the other
vivariums all around them.

Just as Jodie Carmichael was at this moment unaware of what lay ahead for her in her garage.

Enjoy your last few hours on earth, sweetheart
, he thought, squatting down on the floor to begin his regime of recuperation exercises.

When he’d finished, he showered and shaved, then began applying his Thelma Darby make-up. Shortly after 6.30 a.m., the breakfast he’d ordered on the card he’d hung on the door
last night arrived. ‘Thank you, madam,’ the young room-service boy said gratefully, palming his tip.

He ate whilst continuing to watch the sleeping woman, then packed his bag, slipped out of the hotel and headed over to his car. He didn’t plan to return, but he didn’t want the hotel
to know that. Let them think he was still here for the three more days he had booked and paid in advance for. It all helped to cover his tracks from smartass Detective Grace. But, with luck, by the
time the police came to the hotel looking for him, he’d long be back home with Yossarian.

Fifteen minutes later he drove along Roedean Crescent, checking out the stationary cars he remembered from last night. All of them had misted windows, including the Range Rover he had parked
behind.

He continued past No. 191 to the end of the street, made a U-turn and parked up on the opposite side to her house, a couple of hundred yards away, with a clear view of the entrance to her
driveway. He switched the engine off, moved his seat back, put his computer on his lap and logged on via his 4G phone connection, once more checking the cameras.

She was awake.

Good.

Jodie sat up in bed, sipping water, trying to resist taking some paracetamol for the hangover that seemed to be worsening by the minute, intending instead to go to the gym and
do an hour’s hard workout. She had drunk too much last night, far more than had been wise, and she was thinking hard for anything she might have let slip about her past to Paul Cornel. J.
Paul Cornel. Julius Paul Cornel. But she reckoned she had it covered, and he’d had a skinful too.

And she couldn’t believe her luck. Inside she was smiling. She had found him in the first bar she’d entered and they had got on so well. What a brilliant night, it had gone better
than she could have possibly imagined! And the bonus was she actually did like him, a lot. He really could be the cash jackpot she had been hunting for for so long. All that money and no children
alive! Her immediate task would be to prevent him from doing the stupid thing he had talked to the newspaper about, giving all his money away to charities. She needed to get that ring on her finger
fast. Sometime during their evening yesterday he’d said he was intending to return to California next Tuesday. Which gave her just the weekend. Between now and Monday she had to have him
invite her to go to California with him – and make him think it was all his idea. She did not want to risk any time apart. Not even a day.

He wasn’t the greatest looker in the flesh – he’d seemed more attractive in his newspaper photograph – but he had a sense of fun that she liked. And hell, she had slept
with a lot worse. She was going to give him the best night of his life. And the best morning in bed, too. By the end of the weekend he was going to be sated, and he was not going to want to be
without her. No man she’d slept with since she had matured ever had.

Rays of sun were streaking through the window and, despite her headache, the day felt full of promise. She glanced at her clock. 7.05 a.m. She needed to get up and on it.

She was meeting Paul at the Grand at 12.30 p.m. He was going to take her for a bite of lunch, then on a tour of
his
Brighton, the Brighton he remembered from his youth. Then she planned
to cook him a meal here this evening. He’d already told her his favourite foods last night. If she got up now she’d have time to go to the gym, get her hair and nails done, do the food
shopping and be back in good time.

She pulled on her tracksuit and trainers, and went down to the kitchen, trying to remember the disturbing dream she’d had during the night, which she had woken from crying out for help,
but it eluded her. She put it out of her mind, focusing on what lay ahead. She took a strawberry yoghurt drink from the fridge, shook it and swallowed it, then went upstairs and opened the entrance
to the reptile room.

Everything looked fine. Pulling on her heavy-duty protective gloves, she removed a cockroach and dropped it into one of the vivariums containing a saw-scaled viper; moments later, she watched
the snake pounce on it. She fed the other three vipers similarly. Next she took a live white mouse by the tail and dropped it into the emperor scorpion vivarium. Then she took out another mouse and
carried it over to Silas the boa constrictor’s vivarium, unclipped and lifted the lid, and dropped the wriggling, terrified creature in.

She knew the snake must be hungry as it had excreted the last food she had given it. But instead of instantly coiling itself around the terrified-looking creature, as it normally would have
done, it did not move. Then she noticed the small bulge about a foot down its body, and frowned.

The bulge could only be caused by something it had eaten.

She felt a stab of panic. What was going on? She peered down into the foliage and saw, to her relief, the USB memory stick lying there. Then she stared back at the bulge. ‘What have you
eaten, Silas?’ she asked, out loud.

Tooth, watching her on the screen in his car, smiled.
Nice to see you worried. Don’t want you dying happy.

Jodie left the reptile room, closing the secure door behind her, mystified. That looked like a food bulge – the kind made by the snake swallowing a rodent. But she had
not fed it. Was Silas sick? Was it a tumour? How the hell could a rodent have got into the vivarium? She tried to think back to the rush she was in before leaving for the cruise. Was it a mouse she
had left him in his tank that she’d not noticed, and which he had only just now eaten?

Fretting, she went back downstairs, took her Mercedes key fob out of the hall table drawer, then went into the kitchen. She opened the door to the integral garage, switched the light on and
stared for a moment at the beautiful dark blue car. Although, if all went well in the coming days, she decided, maybe in time she would buy the car she had always really dreamed of, an Aston
Martin.

She pressed a button on the fob and the doors opened with a clunk, the indicators all winking together. She climbed in, picked up the garage door clicker and pressed it. The door began to rise.
She fired up the engine and watched the dials come to life, put on her seat belt, then let off the handbrake. She was about to move the gear shift to D when she suddenly noticed a distinct whiff of
alcohol. She frowned, placed her hand in front of her mouth and exhaled. The smell of booze was on her breath.

Just how much had she drunk last night?

She tried to calculate. How many units? A lot, for sure. And she actually wasn’t feeling that great, as if she still had plenty of the stuff in her system. She would feel a lot better
after a good workout in the gym, she knew. She pulled an open pack of chewing gum from the door pocket, popped a piece in her mouth and chewed, enjoying the instant minty taste explosion. But as
she put her hand on the gear shift her head swam.

Am I fit to drive? she wondered, thinking about the piece in the
Argus
yesterday, about the new police blitz in the city on morning-after drinkers.

That would not be clever, to be caught in one of those spot checks. Quite apart from the risk of blowing her date with Paul Cornel, the consequences of being arrested could be catastrophic if
any of her alternative identities were uncovered. She switched the engine off, walked round to the rear of the car, opened the boot and took out a breathalyser kit she had bought a long time back.
She read the instructions, clipped a mouthpiece into place, switched it on and blew into it as hard as she could.

The dial glowed red. It showed a reading of 51.

She cursed. The legal limit for a breath alcohol reading in England and Wales was 35 microgrammes per hundred millilitres of breath.