coat tails. I sometimes think Mark's a bit jealous of him.'
'I thought they made a good team,' Ashley said.
Gill pulled a pack of Dunhills from her handbag, shook another cigarette out and stuck it in her mouth. 'I've always told him to watch out for Mark. Michael's innocent, he trusts people too easily.'
'What are you saying?'
She pulled a cheap plastic lighter from her bag and lit the cigarette. 'You have a good influence on Michael. You'll make sure he's all right, won't you?'
Bobo started whining again for a biscuit. Ignoring it, Ashley responded, 'Michael's strong. He's all right, he's fine.'
'Yeah, course he is.' She shot a glance across at the telephone on a table in the corner. 'He's all right. He'll call any time now. Those poor boys. They were so much a part of Michael's life. I can't believe--'
'I can't either.'
'You have your appointment with your dressmaker, dear. You should keep it. The show must go on. Michael will turn up, you do believe that, don't you?'
After a brief hesitation, Ashley said, 'Of course I do.'
'Let's speak later.'
Ashley stood up, walked over to her future mother-in-law, and hugged her hard. 'It's all going to be OK.'
'You're the best thing that ever happened to him. You are a wonderful person, Ashley. I was so happy when Michael told me that -that--' She was struggling now, emotion choking her words. 'That you-the two of you--'
Ashley kissed her on the forehead.
28
Grace sat, tight-lipped, in the blue Ford, holding the edges of his seat, watching the unfolding country road ahead nervously through the wipers and the heavy rain. Oblivious to his passenger's fear, Glenn Branson swept tidily through a series of bends, proudly demonstrating the skill he had recently acquired from a high-speed police driving course. The radio, tuned to a rap station, was far too loud for Grace.
'Doing it right, aren't I?'
'Uh - yep,' Grace said, deciding the less conversation, the less distraction to Branson, which in turn meant longer life expectancy for both of them. He reached forward and turned the volume down.
'Jay-Z,' Branson said. 'Magic, isn't he?'
'Magic'
They entered a long right-hander. 'They tell you to keep hard to the left, to open up the view; that's a good tip, isn't it.'
A left-hander was coming up and in Grace's view they were going too fast to get round it. 'Great tip,' he said, from somewhere deep in his gullet.
They got round it, then down into a dip.
'Am I scaring you?'
'Only slightly.'
'You're a wuss. Guess it's your age. Do you remember BullittV
'Steve McQueen? You like him, don't you?'
'Brilliant! Best car chase ever in a movie.'
'It ended in a bad car smash.'
'Brilliant, that film,' Branson said, missing his point - or more likely, Grace thought, deliberately ignoring it.
Sandy used to drive fast too. That was part of her natural recklessness. He used to be so scared that Sandy would have a bad accident one day, because she never seemed to be able to get her head around the natural laws of physics that determined when a car
would make it around a corner and when it would not. Yet in all the seven years they were together she never once crashed, or even scratched, her car.
Ahead of them, to his relief, he saw the sign - 'bolney car pound' - fixed to tall sheet-metal fencing, topped with barbed wire. Branson braked hard and turned in, past a guard dogs warning sign, into the forecourt of a large modern warehouse building.
Grabbing an umbrella from the boot, and huddling beneath it, they rang the bell on the entryphone beside a grey door. Moments later it was opened by a plump, greasy-haired man of about thirty, wearing a blue boiler suit over a filthy T-shirt, and holding a half eaten sandwich in a tattooed hand.
'Detective Sergeant Branson and Detective Superintendent Grace,' Branson said. 'I rang earlier.'
Chewing a mouthful, the guy looked blank for a moment. Behind him, several badly wrecked cars and vans sat in the warehouse. His eyes rolled pensively. 'The Transit, yeah?'
'Yup', Branson said.
'White? Came in Tuesday from Wheeler's?'
'That's the one.'
