didn't look as if it had ever been used. He hesitated, then pushed the remaining door, which opened onto a master bedroom, with a double bed that had clearly not been slept in. The curtains were drawn shut. He found the light switch and turned it on, and several ceiling spots lit up the room.
The place had a deserted feel, like a hotel room waiting for its next occupant. He saw an immaculate duvet over a queen-size bed, a flat-screen television, a clock radio plus a couple of Hockney swimming pool prints on the wall. No Ashley Harper. So where the hell was she? Feeling a stab of panic, Grace exchanged glances with Glenn Branson. They both knew that somewhere along the line they had been outsmarted, but where and how? For a moment all he could think of was the bollocking he would get from Alison Vosper if it turned out he had woken a JP in the middle of the night to get a search warrant for no good reason. And there could be all kinds of good reasons why Ashley Harper wasn't here tonight. For a moment he felt angry at his friend. This was all Glenn's fault. He'd suckered him into this damned case. It wasn't anything to do with him, not his problem. Now he owned the fucking problem and it was getting deeper. He tried to recap, to think how he would cover his arse if No. 27 hauled him in. There was Mark Warren's death. The note. The finger in the fridge. Emma-Jane's findings. There was a whole ton of things that were not right. Mark Warren, so belligerent at the wedding reception. Bradley Cunningham, so smooth, so upmarket at the wedding. Actually the pants are killing me . . . rented this lot from your wonderful Moss Bros, but I think I got given the wrong pants!' From the time he had spent in the United States and in Canada, and the conversations Grace had had about the differences in their language, he knew that classy Americans and Canadians might call ordinary trousers 'pants', but they would called dressier trousers 'trousers'. It had been an instant giveaway that Bradley Cunningham might not be who he made himself out to be. Not that that slender hypothesis would satisfy Alison Vosper.
'Take this place apart,' he told his team wearily. 'Look under every bloody stone. Find out who owns this place. Who owns the televisions, the hi-fi, the Audi outside, the carpets, the wall sockets. I want to know every damned detail about Ashley Harper. I want to know more about her than she knows herself. Everybody understand?'
After two hours of searching, so far no one had found anything. It was as if Ashley Harper had been through the place with some kind of super-Hoover. There was nothing other than the furniture, a bio yoghurt pot in the fridge together with some soya milk, a bunch of radishes and a half-drunk bottle of Sainsbury's own-label Scottish mineral water. Glenn Branson came up to Grace, who was busy lifting the mattress off the spare bed.
'Man, this is so weird - it's as if she knew we were coming, know what I mean?'
'So why didn't we know she was leaving?' Grace asked.
'There you go again. Another question.'
'Yes,' said Grace, tiredness making him snappy now. 'Maybe that's because you're always giving me questions instead of fucking answers.'
Branson raised a hand in the air. 'No offence, man.'
'None taken.'
'So where the fuck is she?'
'Not here.'
'I figured that one.'
'Roy! Take a look at this - I don't know if it's of any use?' DC Nicholl came into the room holding a small piece of paper, which he showed to Grace. It was a receipt from a company called Century Radio on Tottenham Court Road. On the receipt was printed: 'AR5000 Cyber Scan, 2,437 pounds 25 pence.
'Where was this?' Grace asked.
'In the dustbin in the back yard,' Nick replied, with pride.
'Two thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven pounds for a scanner?' Grace asked. 'What kind of scanner costs that much? Some kind of computer scanner?' After a few moments thought, he added, 'Why would anyone throw away the receipt? Even if you couldn't charge the scanner to your business, sure as hell you would keep the receipt in case it went wrong. Wouldn't you?'
'I sure as hell would,' Branson agreed.
Grace looked at the date on the receipt. Last Wednesday. Time of purchase showed as 14.25. On Tuesday night, her fiance1 disappears. On Wednesday afternoon she goes out and buys a two-and-a-halfthousandquid scanner. This didn't make sense - yet. His watch showed that two hours had elapsed so far, it was now just past 8 a.m. 'I don't know what time Century Radio opens - but we need to find out about that scanner,' he said.
'You have some thoughts about it?' Branson asked.
'Plenty,' Grace replied. 'Too many. Far too many.' Then he added. 'I have to be at Lewes Crown Court by quarter to ten.'
'For your good friend Suresh Hossain?'
'I'd hate to think he was missing me. How about some breakfast? A big fry-up - the works?'
'Cholesterol, man, bad for your heart.'
'You know what? Right now everything's bad for my heart.'
82
As Grace entered the large, bustling waiting area for the three courtrooms housed in the handsome Georgian Lewes Crown Court building with plenty of time to spare, he switched his phone to silent. At least Claudine seemed to have got the message and had stopped texting him. He yawned, his body feeling leaden, the massive fry-up he'd just eaten sapping his energy rather than fuelling it. He just wanted to lie down somewhere and have a kip. It was strange, he thought. A week ago this trial had dominated his life, his every waking thought. Now it was secondary; finding Michael Harrison was all that mattered. But this trial did matter a lot, too. It mattered to the widow and children of Raymond Cohen, the man beaten to a pulp with a spiked stick, either by Hossain or by his thugs. It mattered to every ordinary decent person in the City of Brighton and Have, because they had a right to be protected from monsters like him, and it mattered a very great deal to Grace's credibility. He had to shed his tiredness and concentrate. Finding a quiet corner in the room, he sat down and returned a call to Eleanor, who was dealing with his post and email for him.
Then he closed his eyes, grateful for the rest it gave them, and cradled his head in his hands, trying to catnap,
