Dead Simple (12 page)

Somehow he got around the bend, then saw a lay-by ahead and pulled in. He pressed the SatNav command button, then dialled in
Arlington Reservoir
. After a few moments the system’s disembodied female voice announced, ‘The route is being calculated.’

Twenty-five minutes later he pulled up at the start of the wooden jetty on the deserted hard of the yacht club of the five-mile-long reservoir and switched off the engine. Grabbing his flashlight, he climbed down and stood in the darkness, listening. The only sound was the clacking of rigging flailing in the wind. No lights on anywhere. The clubhouse was silent. He glanced at his watch. Ten after midnight.

He took the breathing tube from the footwell, then the two shovels from inside the tailgate and walked down to the end of the jetty. He and Michael had begun their sailing here, as kids, before they had become more adventurous and started ocean sailing. From his memory the water here was about twenty feet deep. Not perfect, but it should be adequate. He dropped the breathing tube and then the shovels into the inky, rippled surface and watched them disappear. Then he pulled off his boots and dropped them in too. They sank instantly.

Then he padded back to the car, pulled on the moccasin loafers he had brought and headed home, feeling suddenly very weary. He drove slowly, carefully, not wanting to get clocked by any speed cameras, nor attract the attention of any cop car.

His first task in the morning was going to be to drive straight to a car wash he knew, near Hove station. A place that was always busy, that local cab drivers used, where filthy cars were the norm, where there was always a queue, where no one would take the slightest notice of a BMW X5 caked in mud.

Grace took the smouldering stub of his cigar out of his mouth, yawned, then replaced the stub, gripping it with his teeth in a sudden burst of concentration as he scooped up his five cards off the rumpled green baize cloth. A small pile of fifty-pence chips lay in the centre of the table, the antes from each player. In front of him were tumblers of whisky, glasses of wine, piles of cash and chips, and a couple of overflowing ashtrays, surrounded by fragments of crisps and sandwich crumbs. There was a fug of smoke in the room, and outside rain and wind lashed the tall windows, which overlooked the English Channel and the lights of the Palace Pier.

They always played Dealer’s Choice, and each time it was his turn, Bob Thornton, a long-retired Detective Inspector, always chose Draw — the poker game Grace liked least of all. He glanced at his watch: 12.38 a.m. Following the tradition of their weekly Thursday-night poker games, the last full round had started at half past midnight, and there would be just two more hands after this one.

It had not been a good night for him; despite wearing his lucky turquoise socks and his lucky blue-striped shirt, he’d had unremittingly lousy cards, made a couple of bad calls, and had been seen on an expensive bluff. The whole game had gone the same way as just about everything else this week: south. One hundred and fifty quid down so far, and the last round was often the most vicious.

He glanced fleetingly at his cards, while concentrating on the reactions of his five colleagues to their own, and suddenly perked up a little. Three tens. The first decent hand he’d picked up in at least two hours. But a dangerous hand too — good enough that he’d be daft not to play it, but it was no slam-dunk.

Bob Thornton was a hard guy to read. In his mid-seventies, he was a big, energetic man who still played regular squash, with a hawkish face and liver-spotted hands that looked almost reptilian. He wore a green cardigan over a tartan open-neck shirt, corduroy trousers and tennis plimsolls. By a wide margin he was the oldest of the hard core of ten regular players, from whom enough to cobble together a game turned up to play every Thursday, week in, week out, year in, year out, each player taking it in turn to host the evening.

The game had been going on long before Grace had joined the Force. Bob had told them, more than once, that when he had joined the group decades ago he had been the youngest player. Thinking about his looming thirty-ninth birthday, Grace wondered if, like Bob, he would one day end up himself as the old fart of the group.

But age clearly brought some advantages. Bob was sharp as a tack, hard to read and a wily and very aggressive player. Grace could not remember many occasions over the years when Bob had not gone home with a profit — and true to form there was mountain of chips and cash in front of the man right now. Grace watched him hunch his shoulders as he inspected and sorted his cards, keeping them close to his chest, peering at them through his glasses with alert, greedy eyes. Then he opened and shut his mouth, flicking his tongue along his lips in a serpent-like manner, and Grace knew immediately he didn’t have to worry about Bob’s hand — unless he got lucky in the pick-up.

It was Grace’s turn to open the betting. He eyed the rest of his companions.

Tom Allen, thirty-four years old, a detective in Brighton CID, with a serious, boyish face and a mop of curly hair. Dressed in a sweatshirt over a T-shirt, he peered at his cards impassively. Grace always found him hard to read.

Next to Tom sat Chris Croke, a motorcycle cop in Traffic — or
Road Policing
, as the department was now called. With lean and wiry good looks, short blond hair, blue eyes and a quick-fire charm, Croke was a consummate ladies’ man, who seemed to live the lifestyle more of a playboy than of a cop. He was hosting tonight’s game in his flash, fifth-floor apartment in the coolest apartment block in Brighton, the Van Alen. Ordinarily a cop living such a ritzy lifestyle would have aroused suspicions in Grace, but it was well known that Croke’s ex-missus was a socialite heiress to a vast football pools fortune.

Croke had met her when he’d stopped her for speeding and it was his boast that, despite giving her a ticket, she had still married him. Whatever the truth, that was now history, but there was no question he had done well out of the marriage, because when she had finally got tired of the erratic hours that were the lot of any cop’s spouse, she had settled a pile of loot on him.

Croke was reckless and unpredictable. In seven years of playing with him, Grace found his body language hard to decipher. He never seemed to care whether he won or lost; it was much easier to read people who had something at stake.

Grace turned his focus on Trevor Carter, a quiet, balding man who worked in IT at Brighton police station. Dressed conservatively in a grey shirt, sleeves rolled up, unfashionably large glasses and drab brown trousers, Carter was a frugal, family man, who played the game as if the welfare of his four children depended on it. He rarely bluffed, rarely raised and as a result rarely finished any evening up. Carter’s giveaway was a nervous twitch of his right eye — the sure-fire signal that he had a strong hand. It was twitching now.

Lastly he looked at Geoff Panone, a Drugs Squad detective of thirty, dressed in a black T-shirt, white jeans and sandals, with near-shoulder-length black hair and a gold earring, who was puffing away on a massive cigar. Grace had learned from watching him over the past couple of years that when he had a good hand at Draw poker, he systematically rearranged the cards in his hand, and when he had a lousy hand, he didn’t. Worryingly, he was now rearranging his cards.

‘Your bet, Roy,’ Bob Thornton told him.

The limit was always the pot on the table. No one could bet higher, which kept the stakes to an affordable level. With six of them putting in a total ante of three pounds, that was the opening ceiling. Not wanting to give anything away, and at the same time wanting to keep everyone in, Grace opened with one pound. All of them came in until Trevor Carter, who raised by three pounds, the twitching of his eye even more pronounced now.

Geoff tossed in a further two pounds. Bob Thornton hesitated just for a fraction, just enough for Grace to know that he definitely did not have a good hand so far and was taking a chance because it was the last round. He decided to press his opportunity and raised by a further three pounds.

Everyone looked at him. They knew he’d had a bad night and this was a giveaway. But it was already too late to do anything about that.

Tom threw his cards down and shook his head. Chris hesitated for some moments, then tossed in five pounds. Trevor and Geoff upped their bets to match also. Bob Thornton followed.

‘How many cards?’ Bob asked Grace.

Changing two would have revealed he had three of a kind. But changing two would have given him better odds. Grace decided his strategy and changed just one, dumping his three of clubs, retaining a seven of spades. He picked up a seven of hearts.

His heart leapt.
A full house!
Not a top one, but a seriously strong hand. Tens on sevens. Now he was in business!

Certain from watching the change of cards of the others that he had the strongest hand, Grace decided to seize his opportunity and bet the ranch. To his dismay, each of the next three players in turn dropped out and he realized he’d pushed it too hard. But then to his relief Trevor Carter came in and raised him.

Confidently pulling out his wallet, Grace raised him further. Trevor then raised him several more times in succession, until Grace finally lost his nerve, peeled some more banknotes from his wallet and saw him.

Then he puffed nervously on his cigar as Carter flipped over his cards, one by one.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

A running flush — 7,8,9,10, Jack on the bounce.

‘Bloody brilliant!’ Croke said.

‘’Well played!’ Bob Thornton exclaimed. ‘My God, that was well hidden!’

‘I picked them up,’ a near-ecstatic Trevor Carter said. ‘I picked them up!’

Grace sat back in dismay. It was a hand in a million — maybe even longer odds than that. Impossible to have predicted. And yet he should have realized, from the uncharacteristic strength of Trevor’s betting, that Trevor knew he had him beat — and seen him much sooner.

‘I reckon your supernatural powers need a bit of topping up, Roy,’ chirped Croke.

Everyone laughed.

‘Fuck off!’ retorted Grace more good-naturedly than he felt. Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper was right. People
were
laughing at him. Here it was light-hearted, among friends. But there were others in the Force for whom there was no joke. If he wasn’t careful his career could be stalled and he could find himself sidelined.

And right now he was down the best part of three hundred quid.

And by the time the remaining three games had been played, Grace had managed to increase his losses for the evening to four hundred and twenty-two pounds and fifty pence.

He was not a happy bunny as he took the lift down to the underground car park of the block. As he walked towards his Alfa Romeo parked in the visitors’ section, he was still so cross with himself and his friends that he barely noticed the mud-streaked BMW X5 that was driving in.

‘Yeeha!’ Davey, soaking wet, unlocked the door of his Portakabin, then kicked it wide open and strutted in. ‘Yeeha!’ he announced to the television screen, which was always on, to all his buddies who hung around on the screen. He paused, water trickling down his baseball cap and off his oilskins and muddy wellingtons onto the foam carpet, to check them out. James Spader was in an office, talking to some chick he did not recognize.

‘Wasted ’bout two hundred of them darned vermin. Know what I’m saying?’ Davey said to James Spader in his best Southern drawl.

But Spader simply ignored him, kept on talking to the chick. Davey picked the remote off his bed and pointed it at the television. ‘Yeah, well, I don’t need you either, know what I’m saying?’ He changed channels. Now he saw two guys he did not know, face to face, arguing with each other. Click.

James Gandolfino was walking through the cars in a Mercedes-Benz dealership, towards a handsome woman with long black hair.

Davey zapped him and he was gone.

He surfed through a whole bunch of channels, but there didn’t seem to be anyone interested in talking to him. So he walked over to the fridge. ‘Just gonna git me a beer from the minibar,’ he announced, pulled out a Coke, flipped it open with one hand, drained half the can, then sat on the bed and belched. His watch said 2.21.

He was wide awake. Wanted to talk to someone, to tell them about all the rabbits he and his dad had shot tonight.

‘Here’s the thing,’ Davey said, then he belched again. He checked the pockets of his oilskins, pulled out a couple of live shotgun cartridges, then hung the oilskins on their hook on the door. He sat on the edge of his bed, wearily, the way he’d seen Clint sit when he was easing off his boots, and dropped his wellingtons one after the other onto the floor.

Then he fondled the two unspent cartridges. ‘They’ve got your name on them,’ he informed Sean Penn, who was walking towards him. But Sean Penn wasn’t in the mood for conversation either.

Then Davey remembered. There was someone who would talk to him. He knelt down on the floor, reached under the bed for the walkie-talkie, then pulled out the aerial as far as it would go.
Kerloink!

He pressed the
listen
button and heard the crackle of static. Then he tried the
talk
button.

Michael, wide awake, was crying. He did not know what to do, he felt so utterly helpless. It was after two in the morning, Friday morning, he was meant to be getting married tomorrow. There were a million things that needed to be done.

Who or what the hell had taken the breathing tube? Could it have been a badger taking something to its lair? What would a badger want with a length of rubber tubing? Besides, the footsteps had been too heavy. It had been a human, for sure.

Who?

Why?

Where was Ashley, his beloved, darling, gorgeous, caring Ashley? What was she thinking right now, what was going through her mind?

He kept hoping, every moment, that this was some terrible nightmare and in a minute he would wake and be in his bed with Ashley beside him. It just did not make any sense.