auctioned at a charity, had gone to support a school in Kenya called Stahere. Yet another example of what a wonderfully kind and human person Gaia was. It was being sold by a Gaia fan in the UK, who had outbid Anna three years ago when it had originally been auctioned on eBay. Another Gaia collector had told her, confidentially, on a Gaia chatroom site, that this collector had lost his job and needed to raise cash.
Anna didn’t have any of the Gaia Special Cuvee Pinot Noir wine. It was one of the glaring gaps in her collection. There were known to be only twelve bottles with signed labels in the whole world. At this moment her pockets were feeling deep. She would bid high on this. Oh yes! No one out there was going to beat her today. Let them try, she thought, darkly.
When she met Gaia next week it would be good to tell her about this bottle. Maybe she’d even take it with her and get her to initial the date on it!
Twenty-eight minutes remaining on the auction time. She saw another bid pop up: ?375! That was ?100 more than the last one. The activity was hotting up.
But regardless, whoever it was stood no chance against her. Not in the mood she was in today. Her
There was a lot of anticipation about this new film the icon would be starring in,
Not that Anna would ever sell. She was a buyer, always a buyer. Always would be. She hated it when people started bidding stupidly against her. It was like people were trying to take something away that was rightfully hers. A coil of anger spiralled through her as she stared at this new bid, again.
24
Roy Grace drove straight from Tom Martinson’s office into Lewes, to his favourite flower shop, the Riverside Florist, and was pleased to see the proprietor Nicola Hughes there, cutting a display of blooms for a client. He waited until she had finished, then asked her for a massive bouquet for Cleo, wanting to cheer her up when he eventually got home.
While she was putting it together, he noticed she was limping. ‘I hope the other fellow came off worse!’ he joked.
‘Ha bloody ha!’ she replied. ‘Just had an ankle fusion. Ruddy well hurts but hey, you didn’t come here to listen to me complain!’
He carried the flowers out and put them in the boot of his car. Then before driving off to his appointment with Glenn Branson in Brighton, he stared at the photograph on his BlackBerry that Cleo had texted through to him. At the words carved on her car.
There was no mistaking its provenance. Amis Smallbone’s signature was all over it. No doubt, as before when the words had been carved on their lawn while Smallbone was securely banged up in a remand cell, he hadn’t carved them himself. A man like Smallbone would rarely get his hands dirty – except when he was having fun torturing someone, by cutting off their fingers or their ears or their genitals. But he was thinking hard about the significance.
In his view, if Smallbone had genuinely intended Cleo to be harmed, he would have had her attacked, not simply left a message on her car like that. He needed to think hard about her security, but at this moment, he did not believe she was under any direct threat. It was more a message of defiance. Amis Smallbone wanting to worry him. Letting him know he was out of prison and had not forgotten. And it was typical of the creep to breach his release conditions, taunting the authorities, seeing how far he could push them.
He was going to be very sorry, Grace vowed.
The premises of Gresham Blake occupied a modest corner frontage on Church and Bond Streets, not far from Cleo’s house. Grace had passed the place many times, glancing with curiosity at the flamboyant displays of men’s clothes, but had never gone inside. It always looked way beyond his price range – and lifestyle. It wasn’t until Glenn Branson had started nagging him to try to look younger and more cool, that he’d ever taken any interest in clothes at all. Like most detectives, he tended to wear the same functional, sober business suits, because you never knew where you were going, or who you might meet, in the course of a day.
At a few minutes to 11 a.m., he walked down from the Church Street multi-storey car park, the cost of which always made him wince, to see Glenn Branson standing outside the shop like he owned it, phone clamped to his ear. In the blazing sunshine, hordes of people were milling along the pavement. A marked police car screeched up the hill, siren howling, lights flashing, the sound so familiar in the city that few heads turned to look.
‘Any developments?’ Grace greeted him when he had ended the call and the din of the siren had faded.
Branson pocketed his phone. ‘Nothing so far.’ Then he glanced at his watch. ‘The post-mortem’s starting in the mortuary at midday. Are you coming along?’
‘Thought I’d leave that treat to you, if it’s all the same. I’m
Branson groaned. ‘That’s truly terrible.’
Grace grinned, although he was not in a humorous mood. The news about Amis Smallbone’s release and the vandalism of Cleo’s car preyed heavily on his mind.
‘Oh, there is one thing, chief, Bella’s mum had a stroke this morning, apparently. She’s been rushed to hospital, and I’ve let Bella go and see her.’
Grace nodded. Normally he never let anything personal interfere with work on an investigation, and particularly not during the crucial first days. But Bella Moy’s mother, he knew, was everything to the highly competent Detective Sergeant. The virtually bedridden woman was the reason why, in her mid-thirties, Bella was still living at home, caring for her, without any life of her own, so far as he was aware. ‘Sorry to hear that,’ he said.
‘She’s very upset.’
Grace followed Branson into the shop, which had a sumptuous, if higgledy-piggledy, feel. Clearly business premises that had been outgrown by success, he thought. There were shelves of shirts; racks of shoes crammed in a corner; a display of cufflinks. Their feet sunk into the deep carpet, and the air was filled with the scent of a dense, masculine cologne. Branson gave their names to a young man with topiaried hair, behind the counter, then fondled a bunch of ties hanging from a rack and turned to Grace. ‘You need a few of these, old timer. All your ties are rubbish. And we’ll definitely have to sort you out a new suit here.’ He pointed at a loud, chalk-striped blue jacket on a mannequin. ‘That would well give you an air of authority. Would make you look like a proper chief.’
Grace looked at it doubtfully; it was far too showy for his taste. The last time Glenn had taken him clothes shopping he’d managed to spend over ?2,500. He wasn’t about to be suckered into that again, especially with the looming costs of a baby.
Glenn then pointed at a white jacket. ‘You’d look good in that, too. Remember that Alec Guinness film,
Before he could reply, a pleasant but harassed-looking man in his mid-thirties, with brown hair that gave the impression of being perpetually untidy, came down a short flight of steps from an adjoining room. He wore a tweed suit that looked too warm for this early summer day, a soft shirt, a tie at half mast, and was perspiring slightly.
‘Hello, gentlemen, I’m Ryan Farrier.’
‘Glenn Branson, we spoke earlier.’ The DS stretched out his hand and shook the tailor’s, then said, ‘This is my guvnor, Detective Superintendent Grace.’
Grace also shook his hand. Then they were ushered up two flights of narrow, uneven stairs, into a room lined
