Much of the space in the room was taken up by a bed and an unstable television flickering between colour and black and white, on which he saw the credits running for Law and Order. Grace never liked watching British cop shows - they always managed to irritate him by showing wrong procedures or stupid decisions by the investigating officers. US cop shows seemed more exciting, more together. But maybe that was because he didn't know US police procedures well enough to be critical.
Glancing around, he saw adverts which looked like they had been torn from magazines plastered all over the walls. Looking more closely, he identifed all of them as being for things American - cars, guns, food, drink, vacations.
Stepping past the burger container, he looked down at a very old Dell computer, with a floppy disk protruding from the front of the processor, sharing a work surface that sufficed for a desk with a carton of Twinkie bars, a six-inch-tall plastic Bart Simpson and a large scrap of lined notepaper on which there were ballpoint jottings in child-like handwriting.
Grace looked carefully at the jottings and realized it was a crude diagram. Beside two sets of parallel lines was scrawled: 'A 26. NORTH KROWBURG. DUBBLE KATTLE GRYD. 2 MYLES. WITE COTIDGE.'
It was a map.
Below it, he saw a sequence of numbers: 0771 52136. It looked like a mobile number, and he tried dialling it, but nothing happened.
He spent another twenty minutes rummaging through everything in the room, opening every drawer, but he found nothing else
of interest. Then he took the sheet of paper back to the bungalow and showed it to Phil Wheeler.
'Did Davey talk to you about this?'
Phil Wheeler shook his head. 'No.'
'Do the directions mean anything to you?'
'Double cattle grid, two miles, white cottage? No, don't mean anything.'
'The number? Do you recognize this?'
He looked at the number, reading out each digit aloud. 'No, not any number I know'
Grace decided he had got about as much out of the man as he was going to get tonight. He stood up, thanked him, and told him again how sorry he was about his son.
'Just catch the bastard who did it, Detective Superintendent. Do that at least, for me and Davey, will you?'
Grace promised to do his best.
70
Mark Warren, dripping with perspiration, jigged the key in the front door lock of his apartment, panicking for a moment that the lock was Jammed. Then he pushed the door open fearfully, stepped inside, closed it, locked it and engaged the safety chain.
Ignoring the bundle of post awaiting him, he set down his briefcase, ripped off his tie, unbuttoned his shirt collar, then slung both his jacket and the tie on the sofa. He poured himself four fingers of Balvenie, chinked some ice cubes out of the fridge straight into the glass, then gulped down some of the whisky.
He opened his leather laptop bag and removed the Jiffy bag that had arrived earlier, holding it at arm's length, hardly daring to look at it. He put it on a black lacquered table on the far side of the room, took out the note which he had already looked at earlier, in the office, then walked over to the coffee table, took another deep gulp of his whisky and sat down.
The note was short, printed off a computer on blank A4 paper. It said: 'Have the police check the fingerprints out and you'll find it is your friend and business partner. Every 24 hours I will cut an increasingly bigger bit off him. Until you do exactly what I tell you.'
There was no signature.
Mark drank some more whisky, draining the glass. He refilled it another four fat fingers but the same ice cubes, and read the note again. Then again. He heard a siren somewhere outside and flinched. Then the door intercom buzzed, throwing him into a flat spin of panic. Marching across to the CCTV panel, he desperately hoped it was Ashley. Her phone had been off when he tried to call her from the office and it had still been off when he had called her again minutes ago coming up in the lift.
But it wasn't Ashley; it was the face of a man he was starting to see too much of, for his liking, Detective Superintendent Grace.
For some moments he wondered whether to ignore him, let him go away, come back some other time. But maybe he had news.
He picked up the receiver and told Grace to come in, then pressed the button for the electronic door catch.
It seemed only seconds later that Grace was knocking on his door, and he'd barely had time to scoop up the note and the Jiffy bag and stuff them in a cupboard.
'Good evening, officer,' Mark said as he opened the door, conscious suddenly that he was feeling a tad muzzy from the drink and that his voice was affected, too. He kept a full arm's length as he shook Grace's hand, so that the policeman wouldn't notice the alcohol on his breath.
'Mind if I come in for a few minutes, or are you busy?'
'Never too busy for you, officer - I'm around to help you seventwofour. What news do you have? Can I get you a drink?'
'A glass of water, please,' Grace said, feeling parched.
They sat down opposite each other on the deep leather sofas, and Grace watched him for a little while. The man looked in a bad state of nerves; he seemed a little uncoordinated and smelled strongly of alcohol. Watching
