Houdini?'
'It doesn't make much sense,' added Nicholl.
'The guy - Michael Harrison - has a reputation as a practical joker. It makes plenty of sense,' Grace retorted testily. He was starting to feel very tired and very grumpy and wished he wasn't here at all, but back in the pub, chatting with the warm and lovely Cleo Morey.
Realizing his blood sugar must be running low - he'd not eaten anything since a sandwich at lunchtime, and was now starving - he went out, down the corridor to a vending machine, and bought himself a double espresso, a bottle of water and a Mars Bar.
When he returned to the Incident Room, already munching on the Mars, Emma-Jane was holding a telephone receiver up for him.
'Ashley Harper - she's insisting on speaking to you and says it is very urgent.'
Grace swallowed his mouthful, and took the receiver. 'This is Detective Superintendent Grace,' he said.
'It's Ashley Harper,' she said, sounding frantic. 'I've just had a text message from Michael. He's alive!'
'What does he say?'
'Alive, call police. I think that's what it says.'
'You think?'
'The spelling's a bit strange - text messages come out a bit oddly sometimes, don't they?'
'That's all it says?'
'Yes.'
Thinking fast, Grace asked, 'From his own mobile?'
'Yes, his normal number.'
He could have dispatched Nick or Bella over to her, but he decided he wanted to see Ashley himself. 'Stay there. I'm coming over right now.'
75
Mark stared at his gloomy reflection in the smoked-glass mirror in the lift that was sweeping him up to the fourth floor of the Van Allen building. Everything seemed to be unravelling around him.
Less than a week ago he'd sat on the aeroplane flying back from Leeds, reading the road test on the Ferrari 365 and trying to decide whether he would buy one in red or in silver, and whether it should have Formula-One- style gear-shift paddles, or a conventional lever on the floor.
Now that car was fast receding towards the horizon, without him. And everything else seemed to be, too.
What was Ashley's problem? For months they had been so incredibly close, as close as he could ever imagine two human beings could be. They shared the same humour, the same taste in food, drink, the same interests; they fancied each other like crazy, making love whenever they could snatch a few precious moments - and on a couple of occasions coming perilously close to being caught by Michael. She was an amazing girl, smart, super- bright and yet so loving and caring. He had never met anyone remotely like her, and could not imagine life without her.
So why was she being so short with him now? OK, it had been stupid to get drunk at the wedding and to be rude to the smartarse cop. But all this talk about killing Michael really worried him. Murder had never been on the agenda. Ever. Now she was talking like it had been all the time. Her words of half an hour ago in the trattoria echoed in his head.
There's never been any question of him getting out alive, has there?
And yes, he'd gone along with her plan. Not actually to murder Michael - just to - to - to--
Not murder. Definitely not murder.
Murder was when you planned things, wasn't it? Premeditated? This had all just been circumstance. Burying Michael alive, then the accident. He had no love for Michael. Michael was always first every fucking thing. At school, Michael won the 100 metres and ji about every damn thing else. He was the one who got to score goals in football; he was the first of their group to lose his virginit women always gravitated to him, always, always. Mark would himself standing next to Michael in a crowded bar, and a couple i beautiful girls would come up to Michael, and he would say, 'This j my friend, Mark!' And the girls would smile and say, 'Hi, Mark!' then turn their backs on him for the entire evening. It didn't happe once, it happened time and time again.
It had been the same with Ashley, in the beginning. In that: interview six months back it had been Michael, as usual, who done all the talking and Ashley had seemed captivated by him, barely! even casting Mark a glance. (Later she'd told Mark that it was all anf act, because she had so desperately wanted the job and had been5^ tipped off that it was Michael who really controlled the company.)
During the first month or so, Mark had been able to see how interested Michael was in Ashley. He knew his friend well enough to read the signs - he was flirting with her through his jokes, questions, flattery, stories about himself, exactly the way he flirted with all the women he fancied, and Mark had watched Michael's continuing flirtation with her with huge amusement - and satisfaction. It was the first time ever he had pulled a girl that Michael had fancied - and it felt terrific, liberating, as if finally, after fifteen years of their friendship, he no longer felt under Michael's thumb.
The plan had been Ashley's idea. Mark had had no qualms about any of it, except the notion of Ashley and Michael on honeymoon. That he had found so hard to bear. That, he knew in his heart, had been the reason he'd driven out into the forest last Thursday night and removed the air tube.
But now to let this madman torture and mutilate his friend? To death? He wasn't sure he had the stomach to do that.
He unlocked his front door, and as he stepped inside, the landline phone rang. He slammed the door shut, ran across the room, glanced at the display, but there was no caller number showing.
