Not Dead Enough (16 page)

She would just have to wait for a more tactful time. Meanwhile, she remembered the text she’d had this morning from Holly, telling her about a party tomorrow night. That would be the sensible thing. Go to the party and hang out with some people her own age.

Her flat was on the third floor of a rather tired Victorian terrace, just north of the busy shopping street of Church Road. The lock on the front door had worked so loose in its rotting surround that anyone could have opened it with just a sharp push to shear the screws out of the wood. Her landlord, a friendly, diminutive Iranian, was forever promising to get it fixed, the same way he kept promising to have the drip in the loo cistern fixed, and never did.

She opened the door and was greeted by the smell of damp carpets, a faint aroma of Chinese takeaway and a strong whiff of dope. From the other side of the door leading into the ground-floor flat came a frenetic pounding, rhythmic, bass beat. The post lay spread out on the threadbare hall carpet, untouched from where it had fallen this morning. She knelt and checked it. The usual decimated rainforest-worth of pizza menus, summer sale offers, fliers for concerts, home insurance and a whole ton of other junk, with a few personal letters and bills interspersed.

Naturally tidy, Sophie scooped it up into two piles, one comprising rubbish mail, one the proper post, and put them both on the shelf. Then she eased herself past two bicycles, which were blocking most of the passageway, and up the balding treads of the staircases. On the first-floor landing, she heard the sound of Mrs Harsent’s television. Raucous studio laughter. Mrs Harsent was a sweet old lady of eighty-five who, fortunately for her, with the noisy students she had underneath, was deaf as a post.

Sophie loved her top-floor flat, which although small was light and airy, and had been nicely modernized by the landlord with beige fitted carpets, creamy white walls and smart cream linen curtains and blinds. She had decorated it with framed posters of some of the films from Blinding Light Productions and with large, moody black and white sketches of the faces of some of her favourite stars. There was one of Johnny Depp, one of George Clooney, one of Brad Pitt, and her favourite, Heath Ledger, which had pride of place on the wall facing her bed.

She switched on her television, channel-hopped, and found American Idol, a show she really liked. With the volume up loud, partly to drown out the sound of Mrs Harsent’s television and partly so she could hear it in her kitchenette, she took a bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon from her fridge, opened it and poured herself a glass. Then she cut open the avocado, removed the stone and dropped it in her waste bin, before squeezing some lemon over the avocado.

Half an hour later, having had a refreshing bath, she sat propped on her bed, wearing just a baggy white T-shirt, with her avocado and prawn salad, and her third glass of wine on the tray on her lap, watching a geeky-looking man in huge glasses reach sixty-four thousand pounds on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, which she had recorded earlier in the week. And finally, with the sky gradually darkening outside her window, her day was starting to improve.

She did not hear the key turning in the lock of her front door.

33

Roy Grace stood in the empty hotel room and dialled Brian Bishop’s mobile phone number. It went straight to voicemail. ‘Mr Bishop,’ he said. ‘This is Detective Superintendent Grace. Please call as soon as you get this message.’ He left his number. Then he rang Linda Buckley down in the lobby. ‘Did our friend have any luggage?’

‘Yes, Roy. An overnight bag and a briefcase – a laptop bag.’

Grace and Branson checked all the drawers and cupboards. There was nothing. Whatever he had brought here, Bishop had taken away with him. Grace turned to the duty manager. ‘Where’s the nearest fire escape?’

The man, who wore a name tag which said Roland Wright – Duty Manager, led them along a corridor to the fire escape door. Grace opened it and stared down the metal steps into a courtyard filled mostly with wheelie bins. A strong aroma of cooking rose up. He closed the door, thinking hard. Why the hell had Bishop left again? And where had he gone to?

‘Mr Wright,’ he said, ‘I need to check if our guest, Steven Brown, made or received any phone calls while he was here.’

‘No problem – we can go down to my office.’

Ten minutes later, Grace and Branson sat down in the lobby of the hotel with Linda Buckley. ‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘Brian Bishop received a phone call at five twenty.’ He checked his own watch. ‘Approximately two and a half hours ago. But we have no information who it was from. He made no outgoing calls from the hotel phone. Maybe he used his mobile – but we won’t know that until we get his records – which will be Monday at the earliest, from past experience with the phone companies. He’s slunk out, with his luggage, probably down the fire escape, deliberately avoiding you. Why?’

‘Not exactly the actions of an innocent man,’ Glenn Branson said.

Grace, deep in thought, acknowledged the somewhat obvious comment with a faint nod. ‘He has two bags with him. So did he walk somewhere or take a taxi?’

‘Depends where he was going,’ Branson said.

Grace stared at his colleague with the kind of look he normally reserved for imbeciles. ‘So where was he going, Glenn?’

‘Home?’ Linda Buckley said, trying to be helpful.

‘Linda, I want you to get on to the local taxi companies. Call all of them. See if anyone picked up a man matching Bishop’s description in the vicinity of this hotel some time around five twenty, five thirty this afternoon. See if anyone called a cab to come here. Glenn, check the staff. Ask if anyone saw Bishop get into a taxi.’

Then he dialled Nick Nicholl. ‘What are you doing?’

The young DC sounded in something of a state. ‘I’m – er – changing my son’s nappy.’

How fucking great is that? Grace thought but restrained himself from saying. ‘I hate to drag you from your domestic bliss,’ he said.

‘It would be a relief, Roy, believe me.’

‘Let’s not run it by your wife,’ Grace said. ‘I need you to get down to Brighton station. Brian Bishop’s done another disappearing act on us. I want you to check the CCTVs there – see if he turns up on the concourse or any platforms.’

‘Right away!’ Nick Nicholl could not have sounded more cheerful if he had just won the Lottery.

Ten minutes later, terrified out of his wits, Roy Grace sat belted into the passenger seat of the unmarked police Ford Mondeo.

Having recently failed his Advanced Police Driving course – which would have enabled him to take part in high-speed chases – Glenn was now preparing to take it again. And although his head was full of the words of wisdom his driving instructor had imparted, Grace did not think that they had permeated his brain. As the speedometer needle reached the 100-mph mark on the approach to a gentle left-hander, on the road out of Brighton towards the North Brighton Golf Club, Grace was thinking ruefully, What am I doing, letting this maniac drive me again? This tired, hung-over, deeply depressed maniac who has no life and is suicidal?

Flies spattered on the windscreen, like red-blooded snowdrops. Oncoming cars, each of which he was convinced would wipe them out in an explosion of metal and pulped human flesh, somehow flashed past. Hedgerows unspooled on each side at the speed of light. Vaguely, out of the furthest reach of his retina, he discerned people brandishing golf clubs.

And finally, in defiance of all the laws of physics that Grace knew and understood, they somehow arrived in the car park of the North Brighton, intact.

And among the cars still sitting there was Brian Bishop’s dark red Bentley.

Grace climbed out of the Mondeo, which reeked of burning oil and was pinging like a badly tuned piano, and called the mobile of Detective Inspector William Warner at Gatwick airport.

Bill Warner answered on the second ring. He had gone home for the night, but assured Grace he would put an alert out for sightings of Brian Bishop at the airport immediately.

Next Grace rang the police station at Eastbourne, as it was responsible for patrolling Beachy Head, and Brian Bishop could now be considered a possible suicide risk. Then he called Cleo Morey, to apologize for having to blow out their date tonight, which he had been looking forward to all week. She understood, and asked him over for a late drink when he was finished instead, if he wasn’t exhausted.

Finally he got one of the assistants in the office to ring each of his team, in turn, telling them that because of Brian Bishop’s disappearance, he needed them all back at the conference room at eleven p.m. Following that, he rang CG99, the call sign for the duty inspector in charge of the division, in order to update him and get extra resources. He advised that the scene guard at the Bishops’ home in Dyke Road Avenue should be vigilant, in case Bishop attempted to break in.

As he returned to the Mondeo, he figured his next plan of action was to call the list of friends that Brian Bishop had been playing golf with that morning, to see if any had been contacted by him. But just as he was thinking about that, his phone rang.

It was the controller from one of the local taxi companies. She told him a driver of theirs had picked up Brian Bishop from a street close to the Hotel du Vin an hour and a half ago.

34

Chris Tarrant cradled his chin in his hand. The audience fell silent. Harsh television studio lights flared off the unfashionably large glasses of the studious, geeky-looking man in the chair. The stakes had risen rapidly. The man was going to spend the money he won – if he won – on a bungalow for his disabled wife, and was popping beads of sweat on his high forehead.

Chris Tarrant repeated the question. ‘John, you have sixty-four thousand pounds.’ He paused and held the cheque in the air for all to see. Then he put it down again. ‘For one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds, where is the resort of Monastir? Is it a) Tunisia, b) Kenya, c) Egypt or d) Morocco?’

The camera cut to the contestant’s wife, sitting in her wheelchair among the studio audience, looking as if someone was about to hit her with a cricket bat.

‘Well,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think it’s Kenya.’

On her bed watching the television, Sophie took a sip of her Sauvignon. ‘It’s not Morocco,’ she said out aloud. Her knowledge of geography wasn’t that great, but she had been on holiday to Marrakech once, for a week, and had learned a fair amount about the country before going. Monastir rang no bells there.

Her window was wide open. The evening air was still warm and sticky, but at least there was a steady breeze. She’d left the bedroom door and the windows in the sitting room and kitchen open to create a through-draught. A faint, irritating boom-boom-boom-boom of dance music shook the quiet of the night out in the street. Maybe her neighbours below, maybe somewhere else.

‘You still have two lifelines,’ Chris Tarrant said.

‘I think I’m going to phone a friend.’

Was it her imagination, or did she just see a shadow move past the bedroom door? She waited for a moment, only one ear on the television now, watching the doorway, a faint prickle of anxiety crawling up her back. The man had decided to phone a friend called Ron. She heard the ring tone.

Nothing there. Just her imagination. She put her glass down, picked up her fork, skewered a prawn and a chunk of avocado and put them in her mouth.

‘Hi, Ron! It’s Chris Tarrant here!’

‘Hi, Chris. How you doing?’

Just as she swallowed, she saw the shadow again. Definitely not her imagination this time. A figure was moving towards the door. She heard a rustle of clothes or plastic. Outside a motorcycle blattered down the street.

‘Who’s there?’ she called out, her voice a tight, anxious squeak.

Silence.

‘Ron, I’ve got your mate John here. He’s just won sixty-four thousand pounds and he’s now going for one hundred and twenty-five thousand. How’s your geography?’

‘Yeah, well, all right.’

‘OK, Ron, you have thirty seconds, starting from now. For one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds, where is the resort of Monastir? Is it—’

Sophie’s gullet tightened. She grabbed the remote and muted the show. Her eyes sprang to the doorway again, then to her handbag containing her mobile phone, well out of reach on her dressing table.

The shadow was moving. Jigging. Someone out there, motionless, but not able to stand without swaying a fraction.

She gripped her tray for an instant. It was the only weapon she had, apart from her small fork. ‘Who’s there?’ she said. ‘Who is that?’

Then he came into the room and all her fear evaporated.

‘It’s you!’ she said. ‘Jesus Christ, you gave me a fright!’

‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d be pleased to see me.’

‘Of course I am. I – I’m really pleased,’ she said. ‘I so wanted to talk to you, to see you. How are you? I – I didn’t think—’

‘I’ve brought you a present.’

35

When he was a child growing up here, Brighton and Hove had been two separate towns, each of them shabby in their own very different way. They were joined at the hip by a virtual border so erratic and illogical it might have been created by a drunken goat. Or more likely, in Grace’s view, by a committee of sober town planners, which would have contained, collectively, less wisdom than the goat.

Now the two towns were enshrined together, forever, as the City of Brighton and Hove. Having spent most of the last half-century screwing up Brighton’s traffic system and ruining the fabled Regency elegance of its seafront, the moronic planners were now turning their ineptness on Hove. Every time he drove along the seafront, and passed the hideous edifices of the Thistle Hotel, the Kingswest, with its ghastly gold-foil roof, and the Brighton Centre, which had all the architectural grace of a maximum-security prison, he had to resist a desire to drive to the Town Hall, seize a couple of planning officers and shake their fillings out.

Not that Roy Grace was against modern architecture – far from it. There were many modern buildings that he admired, the most recent one being the so-called Gherkin, in London. What he hated was seeing his home city, which he so loved, being permanently blighted by whatever mediocrity went on behind the walls of that planning department.