Dead Simple (39 page)

That night he had come back late to this apartment with mud on his car — had that been a guilt trip to the scene of the accident he should have died in with his friends? Possibly. But what was the damned aggression about at the wedding? That bit did not fit. He hadn’t had a good feeling about Mark Warren. The best man who didn’t know what the stag night plans were.

How likely was that?

He went back inside pensively. ‘Let’s just take a good look around for a few minutes,’ he said, and began by walking over to the cupboard door Mark had kept staring at earlier. But all it contained were two dusty flower vases and an empty box of Cohiba Robusto cigars.

Steadily he worked his way through each cupboard, opening every door and drawer. Glenn Branson began doing the same, while Allison watched. Then Grace reached the fridge in the open-plan kitchen and opened the door. Casting his eye across the cartons of skimmed milk, yoghurt pots, clumps of fashionable salad leaves and several bottles of white burgundy and champagne, he almost missed the Jiffy bag on the third shelf.

He pulled it out and peered inside, frowning. Then he tipped the small plastic bag it contained out on the black marble kitchen work surface.

‘Jesus,’ Branson said, staring at the fingertip.

‘OK,’ Robert Allison said. ‘Now this starts to make sense. I found it on the victim when I was looking for ID.’ He pulled a folded sheet of A4 paper from his pocket and handed it to Grace.

Grace and Branson both read it.

‘Check the fingerprints out and you’ll find it is your friend and business partner. Every 24 hours I will cut an increasingly bigger bit off him. Until you do exactly what I tell you.’

Grace read it again, and then a third time. ‘I think this tells us two things,’ he said.

Both detectives looked at him, but they had to wait some while before he spoke, finally.

‘The first is that I don’t think we’re looking at a suicide here. And secondly, if I’m right in that assumption, we’ll be lucky to find Michael Harrison still alive.’

The phone was ringing again! The third time! Each time before he had hit the buttons, trying to stop it in case Vic heard. Then he had fumbled with the keyboard, dialling 901. And each time got the same damned woman’s voice. ‘You have no messages.’

But now her voice said something different. ‘You have one new message.’ Then he heard, ‘Hello, Michael Harrison, this is Detective Sergeant Branson of Brighton CID responding to your text to Ashley Harper. Please call or text me on 0789 965018. The number again is 0789 965018.’

It was the sweetest sound Michael had ever heard in his life.

Again he fumbled with the keys, trying to text a reply in the dank darkness:
A‘88m breing h$ld
—

Then dazzling, blinding white light.

Vic.

‘Got a mobile you didn’t tell me about, have you, Mikey? Naughty boy, aren’t you? Think I’d better take that off you before you get yourself into trouble.’

‘Urrrr,’ Michael said through the duct tape.

The next moment he felt the phone being ripped from his hand. Followed by Vic’s reproachful voice.

‘That’s not playing the game fair, Mike. I’m very disappointed in you. You should have told me about the phone. You really should have done.’

‘Urrrr,’ Michael mumbled again, shimmying in terror. He could see eyes glinting through the hood above him, inches from his face, bright green eyes like a feral cat.

‘You want me to hurt you again? Is that what you’d like, Mikey? Let’s see who you were calling, shall we?’

Moments later Michael heard the police officer’s faint voice through the phone’s speaker again.

‘Well, fancy that,’ the Australian said. ‘How sweet. Calling your fiancée. Sweet, but naughty. I think it’s time for a punishment. Would you like me to cut off another finger — or clip the callipers back on your bollocks?’

‘Noorrrrrrr.’

‘Sorry, mate, you’ll need to articulate better. Talk me through what you’d like best. It’s all the same to me — and by the way, your mate Mark is a rude bastard. Thought you’d like to know he never said goodbye.’

Michael blinked against the light. He didn’t know what the man was talking about. Mark? Dimly he wondered where it was that Mark had gone.

‘Here’s something for you to think about, Mikey. That one million, two hundred thousand pounds you have salted away in the Cayman Islands. That’s one hell of a nest egg, wouldn’t you say?’

How much did this man know about him and his life, Michael wondered. Was that what he was after? He could have it, every damned penny, if he would just let him go. He tried to tell him. ‘Urrrrrrr. Ymmmgghvvvvvit.’

‘That’s sweet of you, Mikey, whatever it is you’re trying to tell me. I really appreciate all the efforts you are making. But here’s the thing, you see. Your problem is, I already have it. And that means I don’t need you any more.’

Shortly before midnight, Grace drove back into the car park of Sussex House, giving a weary nod to the security guard. They had said little on the drive back from the Van Alen building; Grace and Branson were both wrapped in their thoughts.

As Grace pulled the car up, Branson yawned noisily. ‘Think we can go home, go to bed, get some sleep?’

‘No stamina, youth?’ Grace chided.

‘And you’re wide awake, full of beans? Firing on all cylinders, yeah? I’ve heard when you get past a certain age you start needing less sleep; which apparently is just as well, since you spend half the night getting up to piss.’

Grace smiled.

‘I don’t look forward to old age much,’ Branson said. ‘Do you?’

‘To be honest, I don’t think about it. I see a guy like Mark Warren, lying all broken, leaking his brains out on the pavement, and I remember he and I were talking just a few hours before; things like that make me believe in just living one day at a time.’

Branson yawned again.

‘I’m going back to work,’ Grace said. ‘You can fuck off home if you want.’

‘You know, you can be such a bitch at times,’ Branson said, reluctantly following him to the main entrance, through the doors and up the staircase past the displays of truncheons.

Emma-Jane Boutwood, wearing a white cardigan tied around her neck and a pink blouse, was the only person still in the Incident Room. Grace walked over to her, then gestured at the empty work stations. ‘Where’s everyone, E-J?’

She leaned forward as if to read some small print on her computer screen and said distractedly, ‘I think they’ve all gone home.’

Grace stared at her tired face, and gave her a light pat on her shoulder, his hand touching the soft wool of the cardigan. ‘I think you should go home too; it’s been a long day.’

‘Can you just give me one minute, Roy? I have something I think is going to interest you — both of you.’

‘Anyone like a coffee?’ Grace asked. ‘Water? Coke?’

‘You buying?’ Branson said.

‘No, the ratepayers of Sussex are buying this time. They want us working at midnight, they can buy us coffee. This one’s going on expenses.’

‘I’ll have a Diet Coke,’ Branson said. ‘Actually, no, change that. Make it a full-strength Coke; I need the sugar hit.’

‘I’d love a coffee,’ Emma-Jane said.

Grace walked out, along the empty corridor to the rest area with its kitchenette and vending machines. Fumbling in his pocket he pulled out some change, bought a double espresso for himself, a cappuccino for Emma-Jane and a Coke for Branson, then carried them back to the Incident Room on a plastic tray.

As he walked in, the young detective constable was pointing at something on her computer screen, and Branson, leaning over her shoulder, seemed engrossed. Without turning his head, he said, ‘Roy, come and take a look at this!’

Emma-Jane turned to Grace. ‘You asked me to check up on Ashley Harper’s background—’

‘Uh huh. What have you found?’

Almost swelling with pride she said, ‘Actually, quite a lot.’

‘Tell me.’

She flipped a couple of pages on a notepad covered in her neat handwriting, checking her notes as she spoke. ‘The information you gave me was that Ashley Harper was born in England, and her parents were killed in a car crash in Scotland when she was three; that she was subsequently brought up by foster parents, in London first, then they moved to Australia. When she was sixteen she went to Canada and stayed with her uncle and aunt — and that her aunt died recently. Her uncle’s name was Bradley Cunningham — I don’t have her aunt’s first name.’

Still reading from her pad she went on: ‘Ashley Harper returned to England — to her roots — about nine months ago. You said that previously she had worked in real estate in Toronto, Canada and that her employers were a subsidiary of the Bay group.’ Then she looked up to Grace and Branson as if for confirmation.

Grace replied. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Earlier today I spoke to the head of Human Resources for the Bay group in Toronto — as you may know they are one of the largest department store chains in Canada. They do not have a real estate subsidiary, nor have they ever had an Ashley Harper work for them. I did some further checking and found there are no real estate firms anywhere in Canada with the name “The Bay” in them.’

‘Interesting,’ Branson said, flipping the ring-pull of his Coke. There was a sharp hiss.

‘It gets even more interesting,’ she said. ‘There is no Bradley Cunningham listed in any phone directory for Toronto, nor for anywhere else in the whole of Ontario. I haven’t had time to check out the rest of Canada yet. But…’ she paused to sip some chocolate-covered froth off the top of her cappuccino, ‘I have a journalist friend on the
Glasgow Herald
in Scotland. She’s checked back in the archives of all the principal Scottish papers. If a three-year-old girl was orphaned in a car crash, it would have made the news, right?’

‘Usually,’ Grace said.

‘Ashley claims to be twenty-eight. I’ve had her go back twenty-five years, and then five years either side of that. The name Harper has not come up.’

‘She could have taken the name of her foster parents,’ Branson said.

‘She could,’ agreed Emma-Jane Boutwood. ‘But what I’m about to show you reduces that possibility.’

Grace looked admiringly at the young DC. She seemed to be growing in confidence in front of his eyes. She was exactly the kind of new blood the police force so badly needed. Smart, hard-working youngsters with determination.

‘I had the name Ashley Harper run through the Holmes network, as you requested,’ she said, addressing Grace.

Holmes-2 was the second phase in a computerized database of crimes, linking all police forces throughout the UK and Interpol and, more recently, other police networks overseas.

‘Nothing showed up under the name Ashley Harper,’ she said. ‘But this is where it gets interesting. Taking the initials “AH”, and linking them to a broad category heading of “property”, Holmes came up with the following. Eighteen months ago a young lady called Abigail Harrington married a wealthy property developer in Lymm, Cheshire, called Richard Wonnash. He was big into free-fall parachuting. Three months after their wedding, he died when his parachute failed to open during a jump. Four years ago, in Toronto, Canada, a woman called Alexandra Huron married a real estate developer called Joe Kerwin. Five months after their wedding he drowned in a sailing accident on Lake Ontario. Seven years ago, a woman called Ann Hampson married a property developer in London called Julian Warner. He was a high-profile society bachelor, with big holdings in London docklands around the time of the early 1990s property crash. Six months and two days after their wedding, he gassed himself in an underground car park in Wapping.’

She took another sip of her froth.

‘Same initials,’ Branson said. ‘But what does that prove?’

‘A lot of con artists keep the same initials when they change their names,’ she said. ‘I read about this at police training college. In itself it proves nothing. But here’s where it gets better.’ She tapped her keyboard and a black and white newspaper photograph of a young woman with close-cropped dark hair appeared. The face belonged to Ashley Harper — or her double.

‘This is from the
Evening Standard
article on the death of Julian Warner,’ she said.

There was a long silence while Grace and Branson studied the photograph. ‘Shit,’ Branson said. ‘Certainly looks like her.’

Saying nothing, she tapped the keyboard again. Another photograph, also in black and white, appeared. This showed a woman with shoulder-length fair hair. Her face looked even more like Ashley Harper. ‘This is from the
Toronto Star
, four years ago, reporting on the death of Joe Kerwin.’

Grace and Branson said nothing. Both were stunned.

‘This next one is from the
Cheshire Evening Post
, eighteen months ago, in an article about the death of Richard Wonnash. Abigail Harrington was the beautiful grieving widow.’ She tapped her screen and a new photograph appeared, in colour. The hair was red, styled in an elegantly short razor cut. The face yet again was, almost beyond doubt, Ashley Harper’s.

‘Bloody hell!’ Branson exclaimed.

Grace stared at the face, pensively, for a long time. Then he said, ‘Emma-Jane, well done.’

‘Thank you — Roy.’

Grace turned to Glenn Branson. ‘So,’ he said. ‘It’s twenty minutes to one. Which magistrate do you feel brave enough to wake up?’

‘For a search warrant?’

‘You worked that all out by yourself did you?’ Ignoring Branson’s grimace, Grace stood up. ‘Emma-Jane, go home; get some sleep.’

Branson yawned. ‘How about me? Do I get some sleep?’

Grace clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m afraid, my friend, your day’s only just begun.’

A few minutes later, Grace was on the phone to a very sleepy-sounding magistrates’ clerk, who asked if this couldn’t wait until the morning.

‘We’re investigating a possible abduction, and it’s a potential life-or-death situation,’ Grace informed her. ‘I need an evidential warrant and I’m afraid it absolutely cannot wait.’