Dead Simple (28 page)

He thought back as he drove. To the day Ashley had first come to the office in response to an ad they had put in the
Argus
for a PA. She had walked in, so smart, so beautiful, streets ahead of all the others they had interviewed before and after her. She was in a whole different league.

Having just split up with a long-term girlfriend, and being free, he’d fancied her in a way he’d never fancied anyone before. They’d connected from that first moment, although Michael had seemed blind to it. By the end of her second week working for them, unknown to Michael, they started sleeping together.

Two months into their secret relationship, she told Mark that Michael had the hots for her and had invited her out to dinner. What should she do?

Mark had felt angry, but had not revealed that to Ashley. All his life, ever since he had met Michael, he had lived in his shadow. It was Michael who always pulled the best-looking girls at parties, and it was Michael who somehow charmed his bank manager into giving him a loan to buy the first run-down property that he had made a big return on, while Mark had struggled on a meagre salary in a small accountancy practice.

When they had decided to go into business together, it was Michael who had the cash to fund it — and took two thirds of the shares for doing that. Now they had a business worth several million pounds. And Michael had the lion’s share.

When Ashley had walked in that day, it was the first time that a woman had looked at him first.

And then the shit had dared to ask her out.

What happened next had been Ashley’s idea. All she had to do was marry Michael and then engineer a divorce. Just set him up with a hooker and have a hidden cameraman. She’d settle for half his shares — and with Mark’s thirty-three per cent, that would give them a majority holding. Control of the company. Goodbye, Michael.

Dead simple, really.

Murder had never been on the agenda.

Ashley, in a white towelling dressing gown, her hair down and loose over her shoulders, opened the front door of her house and stared at the mud-spattered figure of Mark with a mixture of disbelief and anger.

‘Are you insane, coming here?’ she said as a greeting. ‘And at this hour. It’s twenty past twelve, Mark!’

‘I have to come in. I couldn’t risk phoning you. We have to talk.’

Startled by the desperate tone of his voice, she relented, first stepping out and looking carefully down the quiet street in both directions. ‘You weren’t followed here?’

‘No.’

She looked down at his feet. ‘Mark, what the hell are you doing? Look at your boots!’

He stared down at his filthy gum boots, pulled them off, then carried them inside. Still holding them, he stood in the open-plan living area, watching the winking lights from the silent wall-mounted stereo.

Closing the front door, she stared at him fearfully. ‘You look terrible.’

‘I need a drink.’

‘I think you had enough earlier today.’

‘I’m too bloody sober now.’

Helping him off with his anorak she asked, ‘What would you like? A whisky?’

‘Balvenie if you have some. Otherwise anything.’

‘You need a bath.’ She headed towards the kitchen. ‘So, tell me, was it awful? Did you get the Palm?’

‘We have a problem.’

Ashley spun round as if she’d been shot. ‘What kind of a problem?’

Mark stared at her helplessly. ‘He wasn’t there.’

‘Not there?’

‘No — he — I don’t know — he—’

‘You mean
he
wasn’t there? The
coffin
wasn’t there?’

Mark told her what had happened. Ashley’s first reaction was to go to each of the windows and draw the blinds tightly, then she poured him a whisky and made herself a black coffee. Then they sat down on opposite sofas.

‘Is it possible you went to the wrong place?’

‘You mean — like there’s two different coffins? No. I was the one who suggested that spot in the first place. We were going to leave him with a porno magazine and a bottle of whisky — both of those are in there — well the cap of the bottle is.’

‘And the coffin lid was screwed down — with earth on top?’ Clasping her coffee with both hands, she blew steam away from the top and sipped it. Mark watched as her dressing gown opened and part of her large white breasts was visible through the gap. And they made him want her, now, despite everything, despite all his panic; he just wanted to seize her in his arms and make love to her.

‘Yes — it was exactly how it was on Thursday when I—’

‘Took the breathing tube?’

He gulped some whisky. She was giving him a sympathetic smile now. Maybe he could at least get to stay an hour or two. Make love. He needed some release from this nightmare.

Then her expression darkened. ‘How sure are you that he was in there when you took the tube?’

‘Of course he was bloody in there. I heard him shout. Christ!’

‘You didn’t imagine it?’

‘Imagine him shouting?’

‘You were in a pretty bad state.’

‘You would have been too. He was my business partner. My best friend. I’m not a bloody murderer — I—’

She gave him a richly cynical look.

‘I’m only doing this — because — because I love you, Ashley.’ He drank some more whisky.

‘He could be out there right now,’ she said. ‘Prowling in the dark, watching, couldn’t he?’

Mark shook his head. ‘I don’t know. If he wasn’t in the coffin, why didn’t he come to the wedding? But he was — or someone was — there are marks inside the lid; someone had been trying to scrape their way out.’

Ashley took the news impassively.

‘Maybe he knows about us — that’s all I can think. That he fucking
knows
about us.’

‘He doesn’t,’ Ashley said. ‘He has no idea. He talked to me a lot about you, how much you wanted to settle down with the right woman and have kids, and that you never seemed to be able to find a steady girlfriend.’

‘Oh great, he always gave my ego a real boost.’

‘Not in a nasty way, Mark. He cares about you.’

‘You’re being very defensive about him.’

‘He is my fiancé.’

‘Very funny.’ Mark set his glass down on the square coffee table, then buried his face in his hands.

‘You need to pull yourself together. Let’s look at this logically, OK?’

Still with his face in his hands, he nodded.

‘Michael was there on Thursday night. You took the tube, plugged the air hole, right?’ Mark made no comment.

‘We know he is a big practical joker. So, somehow he gets out of the coffin, and he decides to make it look as if he is still in there.’

Mark stared at her, abjectly. ‘Great joke. So he’s out and he knows I took the breathing tube — and there could only be one reason why I did that.’

‘You’re wrong. How would he know it was you? Could have been anyone out walking in the woods.’

‘Come on, Ashley, get real. Someone walking in the woods stumbles across a grave, with a breathing tube sticking out of the coffin, removes the tube and heaps a ton more earth on top of the coffin?’

‘I’m just trying to throw thoughts out.’

Mark stared at her, the thought suddenly going through his mind that perhaps Ashley and Michael had hatched something between them. To trap him.

Then he thought about all those days and evenings he had spent with Ashley over the past months, the things she had said to him, the way they had made love, planned — and the scornful way she always spoke about Michael, and he dismissed that thought completely.

‘Here’s another idea,’ she said. ‘The others — Pete, Luke, Josh and Robbo — all knew you were going to be arriving late. Perhaps they were setting up a practical joke on you — with Michael — and it backfired?’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Even supposing Michael wasn’t in that coffin when I went there, and I imagined him calling out, then where the hell is he? Where has he been since Tuesday night? Why hasn’t he been in touch; why didn’t he turn up to the wedding? Can you answer me that?’

‘No. Unless the others were pulling a stunt on you and him — and he’s tied up or locked up in some other place.’

‘Or done a runner?’

‘He hasn’t done a runner,’ Ashley said. ‘I can tell you that.’

‘How can you be sure?’

Her eyes rested on Mark’s. ‘Because he loves me. He really, genuinely loves me. That’s why I know he hasn’t done a runner. Did you put everything back as it was?’

Mark hesitated, then lied, not wanting to admit he’d fled in panic. ‘Yes.’

‘So either we have to wait,’ she said. ‘Or you go find him — and deal with him.’

‘Deal with him?’

Her look said it all.

‘I’m not a killer, Ashley. I might be a lot of things—’

‘You might not have a choice, Mark. Think about it.’

‘He won’t be able to nail anything on me. Nothing that he can stick.’ He fell silent, thinking. ‘Can I wait here?’

She stood up and walked over to him, placed her hands on his shoulders and gently massaged his back. Then she kissed his neck. ‘I would love you to stay,’ she whispered. ‘But it would be madness. How do you think it would look if Michael turned up? Or the police?’

Mark turned his head and tried to kiss her on the lips. She allowed him one quick peck then pulled away. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Vamoosh! Find Michael, before he finds you.’

‘I can’t do that, Ashley.’

‘You can. You already did it on Thursday night. It might not have worked, but you proved you
can
do it. So
go
do it.’

He padded dejectedly across the floor to get his boots, and Ashley brought over his sodden, muddy anorak. ‘We need to be careful what we say over the phone — the police are getting nosy. We should start assuming the phones are tapped,’ she said. ‘OK?’

‘Good thinking.’

‘Talk to you in the morning.’

Mark opened the door warily, as if expecting to find Michael there with a gun or a knife in his hand. But there was just the glow of the streetlamps, the dull shine of silent cars and the still of the urban night punctuated only by the distant screech of two fighting cats.

Every couple of months, Roy Grace took his eight-year-old goddaughter, Jaye Somers, out for a Sunday treat. Her parents, Michael and Victoria, both police officers, had been some of his and Sandy’s closest friends, and they had been hugely supportive in the difficult years following her disappearance. With their four children, aged two to eleven, they had become almost a second family to him.

Today he’d had to disappoint Jaye by explaining when he collected her that he could only spare a couple of hours, as he had to go back to work to try to help someone who was in trouble.

He never told Jaye in advance what the treat would be, so she always enjoyed the guessing game for the first few minutes of their car journey.

‘I think we are going to see animals today!’ Jaye said.

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

She was a pretty child, with long silvery blonde hair, a cherubic, happy face and an infectious laugh. Today she was smartly dressed, as usual, in a green frock with white lace trim and a tiny pair of pink trainers on her feet. Sometimes her expressions, and the things she said, could seem incredibly grown-up. There were moments when Grace felt he was out with a miniature adult, not a child.

‘So what makes you think that?’

‘Umm, let me see.’ Jaye leaned forward and twiddled the dials on Grace’s car radio, selected the CD and punched a number. The first track of a Blue album began to play. ‘Do you like Blue?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘I like the Scissor Sisters.’

‘Do you?’

‘They’re cool. Do you know them?’

Grace remembered that Glenn Branson was into them. ‘Of course.’

‘We’re definitely going to see animals.’

‘What sort of animals do you think we’re going to see?’

She turned the music up, swaying her arms to the beat. ‘Giraffes.’

‘You want to see giraffes?’

‘Giraffes don’t dream much,’ she informed him.

‘Don’t they? You talk to giraffes about their dreams?’

‘We have a project in school about animals dreaming. Dogs dream a lot. So do cats.’

‘But not giraffes?’

‘No.’

He grinned. ‘OK, so how do you know that?’

‘I just do.’

‘How about llamas?’

She shrugged.

It was a fine late-spring morning, the sun bright and warm and dazzling through the windscreen, and Grace pulled his sunglasses out of the glove compartment. There was a hint, today at any rate, that the long spell of bad weather might be over. And Jaye was a sunny person, he enjoyed her company a lot. He normally forgot his troubles during the few precious hours he was with her.

‘So what else have you been up to at school?’

‘Stuff.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘School’s boring at the moment.’

Grace drove extra carefully with Jaye on board, slowly heading out of Brighton into the countryside. ‘Last time we went out you said you were really enjoying school.’

‘The teachers are so stupid.’

‘All of them?’

‘Not Mrs Dean. She’s nice.’

‘What does she teach?’

‘Giraffe dreams.’ She burst into giggles.

Grace pulled up as the traffic queued for a roundabout. ‘That’s all she teaches?’

Jaye was quiet for a moment, then said suddenly, ‘Mummy thinks you should get married again.’

Surprised, he said, ‘Does she?’

Jaye nodded very definitely.

‘And what do you think?’

‘I think you’d be happier if you had a girlfriend.’

They reached the roundabout. Grace took the second exit, onto the Brighton bypass. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘who knows?’

‘Why don’t you have a girlfriend?’ she asked.

‘Because…’ He hesitated. ‘Well — you know — finding the right person is not always that easy.’

‘I have a boyfriend,’ Jaye announced.

‘You do? Tell me about him.’

‘His name is Justin. He’s in my class. He told me he wants to marry me.’

Grace shot her a sideways glance. ‘And do you want to marry him?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘He’s yuck!’