Dead Simple (31 page)

He looked at DC Boutwood. ‘You can narrow the CCTV footage down from the mobile phone cell logs — you just need to pick the cameras in the area they throw up. Have you made any progress?’

‘Not yet, sir. I’ll be on it first thing in the morning — no one can help me today.’

Grace looked at his watch. ‘I have to be in court tomorrow at ten — I may or may not be needed there all day. So we meet here at eight-thirty first.’ He turned to Branson. ‘Our liaison at the East Downs is Detective Inspector Jon Lamb. He’s already got his team started — be good if you speak to him.’

‘I’ll call him in a few minutes.’

Grace fell silent, scanning the pages of the review, checking he had not missed anything. He needed to know more about the character of Michael Harrison and about his business relationship with Mark Warren, and also about Ashley Harper. Then he looked up at his team. ‘It’s now almost seven-thirty, on a Sunday evening. I think you should go home, get some rest — I think we’re going to have a full week ahead of us. Thanks for giving up your Sunday.’

Branson, wearing fashionably baggy slacks and a sharp, zip-up cotton top, walked out to the car park with him. ‘What’s your sense, old wise one?’ he asked.

Grace dug his hands in his pocket and said, ‘I’ve been too close to this for the past couple of days — what’s yours?’

Branson slapped his hands against his sides in frustration. ‘Man! Why are you always doing this to me? Can’t you just answer my questions?’

‘I dunno. Tell me?’

‘Shit, you really piss me off sometimes!’

‘Oh, so you had a nice weekend away with your family, leaving me to do your job, and that pisses you off?’

Indignant, Branson exclaimed ‘A
nice
weekend with my family. You call driving three hours up the M1 and three hours back, with a bolshy wife and two screaming kids, a
nice
weekend? Next time you drive them to Solihull, and I’ll stay here and do whatever crap job you want me to do. Deal?’

‘Bargain.’

Grace reached his car. Branson hovered. ‘So, what is your sense?’

‘It’s not all as it seems, Horatio, that’s my sense.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I can’t put it any more clearly — yet. I have a bad feeling about Mark Warren and about Ashley Harper.’

‘What kind of bad feeling?’

‘A
very
bad feeling.’

Grace gave his friend a warm pat on the back, then climbed into his car and drove to the security gate. As he pulled out on the main road, with its panoramic view across Brighton and Hove, right down to the sea, with the sun still high above the horizon in the cloudless cobalt sky, he punched the CD button for Bob Berg’s
Riddles
, and as he drove he began to chill. And for a few delicious moments his thoughts turned away from his investigations, to Cleo Morey.

And he smiled.

Then his thoughts turned back to work: to the long drive to south London and back he had ahead. If he was lucky, he might be home by midnight.

Mark, in sweatshirt, jeans and socks, paced around his apartment, a glass of whisky in his hand, unable to settle or to think clearly. The television was on, the sound mute, the actor Michael Kitchen striding, steely-faced, through a war-torn southern England landscape that looked vaguely familiar — somewhere near Hastings, he thought he recognized.

He had locked his door from the inside, bolted the safety chain. The balcony was safe, impenetrable, four floors up, and besides Michael had a fear of heights.

It was almost fully dark outside now. Ten o’clock. In just over three weeks it would be the longest day of the year. Through the glass doors to the balcony he watched a single light bobbing out at sea. A small boat, or yacht.

It had been weeks since he and Michael had taken out
Double-MM
, their racing sloop. He had planned to go to the Marina today and do some work on her. You could never leave a boat for long; there was always something leaking, corroding, tearing or peeling.

In truth, the boat was a damned chore for him. He wasn’t even sure he needed the hassle, and rough seas petrified him. Sailing was a big part of Michael’s life, always had been ever since Mark had known him. If he wanted to be Michael’s business partner, then sharing the boat with him went with the territory.

And sure, they had fun, lots of fun; plenty of good, wind-blown days out sailing under a brilliant sky, plenty of weekends down the coast to Devon and Cornwall, and sometimes across to the French coast or the Channel Islands. But if he never stepped on a yacht again, it wouldn’t bother him.

Where the fuck are you, Michael?

He drank some more whisky, sat on the sofa, leaned back, crossed his legs, feeling so damned confused. Michael and Ashley should have been jetting away on their romantic honeymoon today. He had not figured how he was going to cope with that, Ashley making love to Michael, loads of times probably. He would have expected that on a damned honeymoon, unless she feigned something — she had promised him she was going to feign something, but how could she keep that up for a fortnight?

And besides, he knew she and Michael had already slept together, it was part of their plan. At least she had told him Michael was lousy in bed.

Unless that was a lie.

He shook the ice cubes around in the glass and drank some more. He’d rung Pete’s, Luke’s and Josh’s widows, and Robbo’s father, each time on the pretext of finding out about the funeral plans — but in reality to pick their brains, to see if any of them had let anything slip before they’d gone out on Tuesday night. Anything that could incriminate him, or that could give him a clue to what they had been planning.

Michael had been there Thursday night, for sure. He had not imagined it. No way. So, he was there Thursday night, but not last night. The coffin lid was screwed down tight. And Michael was not Houdini.

So if Michael had been there Thursday and was not there now, someone must have let him out. And then screwed back the lid. But why?

Michael’s humour?

And if he had got out why didn’t he show up for the wedding?

Shaking his head he arrived back at his starting point. Michael was not in the coffin and he had imagined the voice. Ashley was convinced of that. There were moments when he convinced himself. But not strongly enough.

He needed to talk this through with Ashley some more. What if Michael had somehow got out and discovered their plans?

Then surely he would have confronted one or the other of them by now.

He stood up, wondering if he should go over to Ashley’s. She was worrying him, behaving so damned coldly towards him, as if this whole thing was his bloody fault. But he knew what she would say to him.

He stood up and paced around the room again. If Michael was alive, if he had got out of the coffin, what could he find out from the emails on his Palm?

Mark suddenly realized in the panic of the past few days he had overlooked one very simple way of checking. Michael always backed up the contents of his Palm onto the office server.

He went into his study, flipped open the lid of his laptop and logged on. Then cursed. The damned server was down.

And there was only one way to get it back up and running.

Max Candille was almost impossibly good-looking, Roy Grace always thought on each occasion he met him. In his mid-twenties, with bleached blond hair, blue eyes and striking features, he was a modern Adonis. He could surely have been a top model, or a movie star. Instead, in his modest semi-detached house in the suburban town of Purley, he had chosen to make his
gift,
as he called it, his career. Even so, he was quietly becoming a rising media star.

The bland exterior of the house, with its mock-Tudor beams, neat lawn and a clean Smart parked in the driveway, gave few clues about the nature of its occupant.

The whole interior of the house — the downstairs at least, which was all Grace had ever seen — was white. The walls, the carpets, the furniture, the slender modern sculptures, the paintings, even the two cats which prowled around like bonsai versions of Siegfried and Roy’s cheetahs, were white. And seated in front of him, in an ornate rococo chair, with a white frame and white satin upholstery, sat the medium, dressed in a white roll-neck, white Calvin Klein jeans and white leather boots.

He held his china demitasse of herbal tea delicately between his finger and thumb and spoke in a voice that was borderline camp.

‘You look tired, Roy. Working too hard?’

‘I apologize again for coming so late,’ Grace said, sipping the espresso Candille had made for him.

‘The spirit world doesn’t have the same time frames as the human one, Roy. I don’t consider myself a slave to any clock. Look!’ He put down his tea, held up both his hands, and pulled each sleeve back to reveal he wore no watch. ‘See?’

‘You’re lucky.’

‘Oscar Wilde is my hero when it comes to time. He was always unpunctual. One time when he arrived exceptionally late for a dinner party the hostess angrily pointed at the clock on the wall and said, “Mr Wilde, are you aware what the time is?” And he replied, “My dear lady, pray tell me, how can that nasty little machine possibly know what the great golden sun is up to?”’

Grace grinned. ‘Good one.’

‘So, are you going to tell me what brings you here today, or should I guess? Might we be concerned with something to do with a wedding? Am I warm?’

‘No prizes for that one, Max.’

Candille grinned. Grace rated the man. He didn’t always get things right, but his hit rate was high. In Grace’s long experience, he didn’t believe that any medium was capable of always getting everything right, which is why he liked to work with several, sometimes cross-checking one against another.

No medium he had worked with so far had been able to tell him what had happened to Sandy — and he had been to many. In the months following her disappearance he visited every medium he could find who had any kind of a reputation. He had tried a few times with Max Candille, who had been honest enough at their very first meeting to tell him that he simply did not know, that he was unable to make a connection with her. Some people left a trail behind, all kinds of vibrations in the air, or in their belongings, Max had explained. Others, nothing. It was as if, Max told him, Sandy had never existed. He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t say whether she had covered her own tracks, or if someone had done it for her. He didn’t know whether she was alive or not.

But he seemed very much more definite about Michael Harrison. Taking the bracelet Ashley had given Grace, he thrust it back at the police officer within seconds, as if it was burning his hand. ‘Not his,’ he said, emphatically. ‘Absolutely not his.’

Frowning, Grace asked, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure, absolutely.’

‘It was given to me by his fiancée.’

‘Then you need to ask her and yourself
why
. This absolutely does not belong to Michael Harrison.’

Grace wrapped the bracelet back in a tissue and carefully pocketed it. Max Candille was emotional — and
not
always accurate. However, combining his comments on the bracelet with Harry Frame’s, something did not feel right about it.

‘So what can you tell me about Michael Harrison?’ Grace asked.

The medium sprang up from his chair, went out of the room, pausing to blow kisses at the cats, then returned moments later holding a copy of the
News of the World.
‘My favourite paper,’ he informed Grace. ‘I like to know who’s screwing who. Far more interesting than politics.’

Grace enjoyed reading it himself, sometimes, but wasn’t about to admit that now. ‘I’m sure,’ he said.

The medium folded back a couple of pages then held the paper up so Grace could see the headline, with Michael Harrison’s photograph beneath. ‘MANHUNT FOR AWOL FIANCE’.

Then the medium looked at it himself for some moments. ‘Well, see, you are even quoted in here. “‘We are now regarding Michael Harrison’s disappearance as a Major Incident,’ said Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of Sussex Police, ‘And are stepping up police manpower to comb the area he is believed to be in…’”’

Then he looked up at Grace again. ‘Michael Harrison’s alive,’ he said. ‘Definitely alive.’

‘Really? Where? I need to find him — that’s what I need your help for.’

‘I see him somewhere small, dark.’

‘Could it be a coffin?’

‘I don’t know, Roy. It’s too blurred. I don’t think he has much energy.’ He closed his eyes for some moments and slowly swivelled his head from left to right. ‘No, very little there. The battery’s almost flat, poor thing.’

‘What do you mean?’

The medium closed his eyes again. ‘He’s weak.’

‘How weak?’ Grace asked, concerned.

‘He’s fading, his pulse is low, much too low.’

Grace watched him, wondering.
How did Max know this?
Was he connected across the ether? Just making a guess on a hunch? ‘This small dark place — is it in the woods? In a town? Under ground or above ground? On water?’

‘I can’t see, Roy. I can’t tell.’

‘How long has he got?’ Grace asked.

‘Not long. I don’t know if he’s going to make it.’

‘You see, here’s the thing, Mike. Not everyone gets to have a lucky day on the same day. So we have a sort of irregular situation here — this is your lucky day and it’s my lucky day. How lucky is that?’

Michael, weak, shivering from fever and near-delirious, stared up, but all he could see was darkness. He did not recognize the man’s voice; it sounded a hybrid of Australian and south London, spoken quickly, with fast, nervy inflections. Davey with another of his accents? No, he did not think so. His brain swirled. Confused. He did not know where he was. In the coffin?

Dead?

His head pounded, his throat was parched. He tried to open his mouth, but his lips would not part. Ice squirmed through his veins.

I’m dead.

‘You were in a horrible wet coffin, getting all soggy and rheumatoid, now you’re in a nice, dry, cosy cot. You were going to die. Now maybe you aren’t going to die — but I want to stress that’s a pretty big
maybe
!’