‘Fine,’ he replied.
‘Fine? That’s all. Just
Grace chewed on the gum and gave a coy smile. ‘Well, probably a bit better than fine, I think.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I’m trying to remember; I drank too much.’
‘Did you get laid?’
‘It wasn’t that kind of date.’
Branson looked at him strangely. ‘Man, you’re weird sometimes! I thought that was the purpose of dates?’ Then he broke into a broad grin. ‘I want a blow-by-blow account later. Did she admire your gear?’
Grace glanced at his watch, conscious it was now past eight thirty. ‘All she said was that my tailor must have a terrific sense of humour.’ He pushed the door open and entered the room, with Branson following.
‘She didn’t say that? Are you serious? Old timer? Hey, come on!’
The whole team was seated around the workstation, all dressed casually except for Norman Potting, who appeared to be in his Sunday best – attired in a crisply pressed beige suit with a brightly coloured tie, and an even brighter handkerchief sprouting jauntily from his breast pocket.
Grace was dressed casually today also, partly because it was Sunday, partly because he was so damned tired he hadn’t felt like putting a suit on, but mainly because he had a date. It was with a very special young lady – his god-daughter Jaye Somers – and he did not want to look like a boring old fart by wearing a suit.
So he’d put on some of the new kit he had bought yesterday – a white T-shirt, jeans that were too tight in the crotch but which Glenn Branson had assured him looked
Jaye Somers’ parents, Michael and Victoria, were both police officers and had been two of his and Sandy’s closest friends – as well as being hugely supportive in those difficult months immediately following Sandy’s disappearance. And they’d stayed just as supportive during the years that followed. With their four children, aged two to eleven, they had become at one time almost a second family to him.
He had taken Jaye out the previous Sunday, intending to visit Chessington Zoo because she had a thing about wanting to see a giraffe. But their outing had been cut short within half an hour when he had been called to attend the scene of a murder. He had promised to take her out this Sunday instead.
He liked Jaye a lot; she was the kind of daughter he would have loved to have had – extremely intelligent, pretty, interested in all and everything and wise for her years. He hoped he was not going to have to disappoint her a second time. Apart from anything else it would not give her a great deal of confidence in the reliability of adults.
The first item on his agenda was Reginald D’Eath, the sex offender whose computer had been seized. Grace reported that DS Rye at the High Tech Crime Unit had discovered there were identical routings on this computer to the ones found on the computer belonging to Tom Bryce. These routings might have taken Bryce to the website where, Branson believed after questioning the man exhaustively, it seemed likely he really had witnessed the murder.
Grace told the team he was expecting a call by 10.00 a.m. from someone from the Witness Protection Scheme with D’Eath’s address. He delegated Norman and Nick to come with him to interview the man; for some reason he couldn’t explain he had a bad feeling about this interview and thought that a show of strength might be needed.
Nick Nicholl reported he had continued the sweep of all the bars, pubs and clubs in Brighton late into the night with the photograph of Janie Stretton, but had still drawn a blank.
Norman reported on his trawl through the clients of the escort agency, BCE-247. So far, he told them, it had not yielded any client who admitted to knowing Janie and none who fitted the identity of the one called Anton. ‘But,’ he said, ‘I have discovered something from another escort agency – it would appear Ms Stretton was registered with both of them.’
He held up a different, even raunchier, photograph of Janie Stretton to the one Grace had seen in the BCE-247 office. It showed her stark naked apart from tassels on her nipples, thigh-high patent leather black boots and studded leather wrist-cuffs, one hand on her hip, the other brandishing a cat-o’-nine-tails.
Grace was surprised at this sudden efficiency. Maybe he had misjudged Potting. ‘Where did you get this?’
‘From the internet,’ Potting said. ‘I did a search of all the girls on offer in the local agencies and recognized her face.’
Grace had imagined the net might be too much for an old-school detective like Potting to get his head around as a research tool. ‘I’m impressed, Norman,’ he said, quietly wondering whether Potting’s trawl through the agency girls had purely been research for this case.
Blushing a little, the Detective Sergeant said, ‘Thank you, Roy. There’s life in the old dog yet, eh!’ He directed a lecherous wink at Emma-Jane, who responded by looking down at her paperwork.
‘Great pair on her,’ Potting said, passing the photograph on to DS Nicholl, seated next to him, who studiously ignored the comment.
Apart from their workstation, MIR One had been almost empty when Grace arrived, but more people were coming in every few minutes, filling up the other two stations. Crime was no respecter of weekends. It would be business as usual for all the Major Incident Teams.
Emma-Jane reported on the overnight task she had been given by Grace. She’d contacted every minicab firm in the Bromley area, in search of the driver of the cab who had picked up a box of scarab beetles from Erridge and Robinson. But so far she’d had no luck.
They were interrupted by a loud burst of rap music. It was the new ringtone on Branson’s mobile. Looking up apologetically he said, ‘Sorry, my kid did that.’ Then he answered with a curt ‘DS Branson’.
A moment later, holding the phone to his ear, Branson stepped away from the workstation. ‘Mr Bryce,’ Grace heard him say, ‘what can I do for you?’
Branson was quiet for some moments, listening, then he said, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not a good line… Your wife, did you say? She didn’t come home last night? Still hasn’t? Can you give me a description of the car she was driving?’
Branson came back to the workstation, sat down and began writing on his notepad. ‘All right, sir. I’ll check with Traffic. An Audi A4 estate, sport. I’ll call you back – on this number?’
As he hung up, Nick Nicholl said, ‘An Audi estate, did you say?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
Nicholl typed on his keyboard, then leaned forward, scrolling up through the crime log on the Vantage screen. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought so.’
Grace looked at him quizzically.
‘Half past four this morning,’ Nicholl said, still staring at the screen. ‘An Audi estate was found torched up on Ditchling Beacon. The plates were burned off.’
Branson looked at him, his face a picture of deep unease.
46
Jessica, in her pink dressing gown, squatted on the kitchen floor stroking an extremely drowsy Lady. Max, standing above his sister – in a Harry Potter T-shirt which he had on the wrong way round – said very seriously, as if he were a leading authority in such matters, ‘It’s Sunday. I think she is having a Sunday lie-in!’ Then for a few moments he turned his attention to a cartoon on the television.
‘She’s not going to die, is she, Daddy?’ Jessica asked.
Tom, who had not slept a wink – unshaven, his hair a mess, barefoot in a T-shirt and jeans – knelt and put his arm around his daughter. ‘No, darling,’ he said, his voice shaky. ‘She’s just a little bit sick. She’s got a bug or something. We’ll see how she is in an hour or two. If she doesn’t seem better we’ll call the vet.’
He had phoned Kellie’s parents, all her close friends and all his, just in case she had gone to one of them for the night. He had even phoned her sister Martha, who lived in Scotland. No one had seen her, or heard from her.
