‘Gold Rolexes? Real ones?’
‘Don’t want no copy rubbish – the real deal. Want ’em etched with a logo. Can you get me a price? Need ’ em quickly. Middle of next week.’
Tom tried not to show his surprise, particularly after Spacks had told him he didn’t want anything fancy. Now he was talking about watches that cost thousands of pounds each. Then the phone rang again.
It was Kellie once more, and this worried Tom; ordinarily she would just have left a message. Maybe one of the kids was ill? ‘Mind if I answer?’ he said to Spacks. ‘My wife.’
‘She who must be obeyed must be answered. The Oyster – that’s the classic Rolex, innit?’
Tom, who knew about as much of the world of gold Rolexes as he did about chicken farming in the Andes, said, ‘Yep, definitely.’ Then with a nod to Spacks he picked up the phone and accepted the call. ‘Hi, honey.’
Kellie sounded strange and vulnerable. ‘Tom, I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve had a phone call that’s spooked me.’
Standing up and moving away from Spacks, Tom said, ‘Darling, what happened? Tell me.’
‘I went out to have my nails done. About five minutes after I got back in the phone rang. A man asked if I was Mrs Bryce, and I – I said yes. Then he asked was I Mrs Kellie Bryce, and I said yes. Then he hung up.’
Outside it was a damp, rain-flecked day and the air conditioning made this room unnecessarily cold. But suddenly something far colder squirmed deep inside him, cupping hard, icy fingers around his soul.
The threat last night? The threat in those seconds before his computer memory had been erased. Was this call connected with that email he had received?
If you inform the police about what you saw or if you ever try to access this site again, what is about to happen to your computer will happen to your wife, Kellie, to your son, Max, and to your daughter, Jessica.
Except of course he had not informed the police or tried to access the site again. He tried to think through the possibilities. ‘Did you try and do a ring-back? One four seven one?’
‘Yes. It said number withheld.’
‘Where are you now, darling?’ he asked.
‘Home.’
He looked at his watch and saw his hand was shaking. It was just past midday. ‘Listen, it’s probably nothing, probably just a wrong number. I don’t know. Maybe someone checking an eBay delivery or something? There could be a ton of reasons,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring, but not doing a good job of convincing himself. In his mind all he could see was the beautiful long-haired young woman in the room, being butchered by the man.
‘I’m just in a meeting. I’ll call you back as quickly as I can.’
‘I love you,’ she said.
Glancing at Spacks, who was thumbing through more pages of the catalogue, he said, ‘Me too. I’ll be five minutes, ten max.’
‘Wimmin!’ Spacks said sympathetically when he hung up.
Tom nodded.
‘Can’t win with wimmin.’
‘No,’ Tom agreed.
‘So. Rolex watches. I need a price for twenty-five men’s gold Rolex watches. With a small engraving on them. Delivery end of next week.’
Tom was so concerned about Kellie that the potential value of the request barely registered. ‘What kind of engraving?’
‘A microdot. Tiny.’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll get back to you. I’ll get you the best price.’
‘Yeah.’
16
Glenn Branson’s driving had always made Grace uneasy, but since Branson had taken his advanced police driving course, as part of his application to transfer to the National Crime Squad, it scared him witless. To make things worse, his colleague always had the car radio tuned to a rap station, with the volume loud enough to make Grace’s brain feel like it was inside a blender.
The APD course enabled drivers to take part in high-speed pursuits, so in order to show off his prowess, Branson had chosen the only route that took them along a stretch of road where it would be possible to have a really bad high-speed smash without trying too hard. It was a mile-and-a-half-long stretch of two-lane tarmac, which ran like a spine across the open Downland countryside that lay between the industrial estate where CID headquarters was and central Brighton.
It was like a racetrack. Grace could see the road for a mile ahead: the two gentle bends, the straight, the sharp right-hander at the end of it, and then half a mile on the sharp left-hander where there had last been a fatal smash less than a week ago. He eyed a lorry heading towards them and then looked at Branson, hoping he had noticed that they would probably hit the right-hander at about the same time. But Branson was concentrating on the fast, sweeping left-hander coming up.
The speedometer showed an illegal 95 mph and was climbing. Drops of drizzle flecked the windscreen. ‘See, man!’ Branson shouted above the hammering voice of Jay-Z. ‘You move out to the right, gives you the best view around the bend, then you clip the apex. That’s how they do it in Formula One.’
Grace whistled through his teeth as they clipped the apex as well as a chunk of mud, grass and nettles from the verge. The car lurched alarmingly. His shirt felt clammy.
The lorry was getting nearer.
Grace checked the tensioning on his seat belt, then the speedometer. The unmarked police Vectra was now doing 110 mph. He considered asking whether his colleague was going to brake at all before they reached the ninety-degree right-hander now only a few hundred yards ahead, but he was nervous that any conversation might distract Branson. Up on a windy knoll to his left, Grace saw two men pulling golf trolleys.
He wondered if his last moments on earth would be spent in the mangled wreckage of a police Vauxhall that smelled of stale burgers, cigarettes and someone else’s sweat, being gawped at through the busted windscreen by two helpless old geezers in golfing gear while a rapper he had never met shouted abuse at him.
‘So, my hunch,’ Branson said, right on the apex of the bend, the front of the massive truck just a hundred yards in front of them.
Grace gripped both sides of his seat.
Defying all the laws of physics, the car somehow made it around the bend, still pointing in the right direction. Now there was just one more dangerous bend and then they would be in a 40 mph zone and relative safety.
‘I’m all ears.’
‘All I can hear is your heartbeat,’ Branson said with a grin.
‘I’m lucky to still have one.’ Grace turned the radio down. As if in response, Branson slowed the car down.
‘Teresa Wallington, she’s living with her fiance, right. So they plan an engagement party at Al Duomo restaurant for Tuesday night – has to be midweek cos he works strange shifts. Got relatives and friends from all over the country to come down, right?’
Grace said nothing. Although they were in the calmer waters of a 40 mph limit they were not out of danger yet. While Branson was talking, and fiddling with the radio at the same time, the car was drifting steadily across the road into the path of an oncoming bus. Just as Grace was about to grab the wheel in panic, Branson appeared to notice the bus and unhurriedly manoeuvred the car back on to the left-hand side of the road.
‘Then she doesn’t show,’ Branson said. ‘No phone call, no text,
‘So the fiance murdered her?’
‘I’ve got him coming in this afternoon. Thought we’d put him in the suite, take a look at him.’
There was a small Witness Interview Suite at Sussex House, which could be monitored through a camera from an adjoining room. Its main purpose was to talk to vulnerable witnesses. By watching and filming them
