a good minute, then, finally, he started to nod. 'Umm,' he said, his eyes still closed. 'Umm, yes, umm.' Then he opened his eyes with a start, looking at Grace and Branson as if surprised to find them still in the room. He moved closer to the map, then pulled a length of string, with a small lead weight attached, from his trouser pocket.
'Let's see what we can find,' he said. 'Yes, indeed, let's see. Is your tea all right?'
Grace sipped his. It was hot and faintly sour-tasting. 'Perfect,' he said.
Branson sipped his too, dutifully. 'Good,' he said.
Harry Frame beamed, genuinely pleased. 'Now, now...' Resting
his elbows on the table, he buried his face in the palm of his hands as if in prayer, and began to mutter. Grace avoided Branson's eye.
'Yarummm,' Frame said to himself. 'Yarummmm. Brnnnn. Yarummm.'
Then he sat bolt upright, held the string over the map between his forefinger and thumb, and let the lead weight swing backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. Then, pursing his lips in concentration, he swung it vigorously in a tight circle, steadily covering the map inch by inch.
'Uckfield?' he said. 'Crowborough? Ashdown Forest?' He looked quizzically at each man. Both nodded.
But Harry Frame shook his head. 'No, I'm not being shown anything in this area, sorry. I'll try another map, smaller scale.'
'We're pretty sure he is in this area, Harry,' Roy Grace said.
Frame shook his head determinedly. 'No, the pendulum is not telling me that. We need to look wider.'
Grace could feel Branson's scepticism burning like a furnace. Staring at the new map, which showed the whole of East and West Sussex, he saw the pendulum swinging in a narrow arc over Brighton.
'This is where he is,' Frame murmured.
'Brighton? I don't think so,' Grace responded.
Frame produced a large-scale street map of Brighton and set the pendulum swinging over it. Within moments it began to make a tight circle over Kemp Town. 'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, this is where he is.'
Grace stared at Branson now, as if sharing his thoughts. 'You are wrong, Harry,' he said.
'No, I don't think so, Roy. This is where your man is.'
Grace shook his head. 'We've just come from Kemp Town - we've been to talk to his business partner - are you sure you aren't picking up on that?'
Harry Frame picked up the copper bracelet. 'This is his bracelet? Michael Harrison?'
'Yes.'
'Then this is where he is. Mypendulum is never wrong.'
'Can you give us an address?' Branson asked.
'No, not an address - the housing is too dense. But that's where you must look, that is where you will find him.'
38
'Fucking weirdo/ Branson said to Grace as they drove away from Harry Frame's house.
Grace, deep in thought, did not say anything for a long while. In the past hour the rain had finally stopped, and streaks of late evening sunlight pierced the net of grey cloud that sagged low over the sea. 'Let's assume he's right for a moment.'
'Let's get a drink and something to eat,' Branson said. 'I'm starving; I'm about to keel over.'
The clock read 8.31 p.m.
'Good idea.'
Glenn called his wife on his mobile. Grace listened to Branson's end of the conversation. It sounded pretty heated and finished with him hanging up in mid-call. 'She's well pissed off.'
Grace gave him a sympathetic smile. He knew better than to make an uninformed comment on someone else's domestic situation. A few minutes later, in the bar of a cliff-top pub called the Badger's Rest, Grace cradled a large Glenfiddich on the rocks, noticing that his companion was making short work of a pint of beer, despite the fact he was driving.
'I went into the Force,' Branson said, 'so I'd have a career that would make my kids proud of me. Shit. At least when I was a bouncer, I had a life. I'd get to bath my Sammy and put him to bed and had time to read him a story before I went off to work. Do you know what Ari just said to me?'
'What?' Grace stared at the specials on the blackboard.
'She said Sammy and Remi are crying 'cause I'd promised to be home and read them stories tonight.'
'So go home,' Grace said gently, meaning it.
Branson drained his pint and ordered another. 'I can't do that, you know I can't. This isn't a fucking nine-to- five job. I can't just walk out of the office like some dickhead civil servant, and do a Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday stunt. I owe it to Ashley Harper and to Michael Harrison. Don't I?'
'You have to learn when to let go,' Grace said.
'Oh really? So when exactly do I let go?'
Grace drained his whisky. It felt good. The burning sensation first f In his gullet, then in his stomach. He held
