The complexities were starting to hurt his brain. He wanted to go somewhere and sit in a quiet, dark corner and run through every element of the Bishop and Harrington cases. The SOCO team would be in the Bishops’ house for a good few days yet, and Grace was glad about that. He wanted the man to be uncomfortable, out of his natural habitat. In a hotel room, like a caged animal, he would be insecure and therefore would respond better to questioning.
They were definitely stacking up material against Bishop, but it was too early to arrest the man. If they did that, they could only keep him inside for twenty-four hours – with an extension of a further twelve hours – without charging him. There wasn’t enough hard evidence yet, and although the man’s alibi wasn’t watertight, there was enough room for doubt. Two independent witnesses to say he had been in London either side of the time of the murder, against one Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera, which said he hadn’t. There had been far too many cases of villains using copied number plates – particularly these days, to avoid speeding fines from cameras; a clever brief could easily sow doubt in a jury’s mind about whether this number plate was real or a fake.
He was also very interested in the artist that Katie Bishop had been seeing. At this point the man was a potential suspect, for sure.
Deep in thought, he entered the stark, bright glare of the post-mortem room. Sophie Harrington’s body was obscured from his view, crowded by green-gowned figures peering intently, like students in a classroom, as Nadiuska De Sancha pointed out something.
In the room, in addition to the pathologist, Cleo and Darren, were DCI Duigan and the lean figure of the Coroner’s Officer, Ronnie Pearson, a retired police officer in his early fifties.
Grace walked over to the pathologist’s side, and experienced the same uncomfortable surprise he got every time he saw a cadaver in here or anywhere else. They always looked almost ethereal, the skin of Caucasians – except for burnt or badly decomposed victims – a ghostly alabaster colour. It was as if the process of death made them appear in black and white, while everything around them remained in colour.
Sophie Harrington had been turned over on to her stomach. Nadiuska was pointing her latex-gloved finger at dozens of tiny dark crimson holes on the dead woman’s back. It was like a tattoo all the way down her torso, covering much of the skin.
‘Can you all read what it spells out?’ she asked.
As he looked closer, all Grace could see at first was an indecipherable pattern.
‘I would say, from the neatness and consistency of the holes, that it has been done with something like a power drill,’ the pathologist continued.
‘While the victim was alive?’ DI Murphy asked. ‘Or after she was dead?’
‘I would say post-mortem,’ Nadiuska responded, leaning over and peering closely at a section of the dead woman’s back. ‘These are deep holes and there’s very little bleeding. Her heart wasn’t pumping when they were made.’
Some small mercy for the poor woman, Grace thought. Then, like suddenly being able to read the hidden writing inside a visual puzzle, he could see the words clearly, now.
Because You Love Her
76
The grumpy cleaning woman left Cleo Morey’s house just after twelve thirty. The Time Billionaire made a note of this, from behind the wheel of his Toyota Prius. It was good timing, just minutes before his parking voucher expired. As she stomped off up the hill, talking angrily into her mobile phone, he wondered if she had spent the whole of the last three and a half hours on the phone. He was sure Cleo Morey would be interested to know what she was getting for the money she paid this woman. Although of course that wasn’t really his business.
He put the car in gear and, running silently on the electric motor, glided up past her, then threaded his way through the complex network of streets up to Queens Road, then down past the clock tower, and turned right along the seafront.
He drove across the Hove border, along past the King Alfred development, stopped at the lights at the bottom of Hove Street, then made a right turn a couple of streets further along, into Westbourne Villas, a wide terrace of large semi-detached Victorian houses. Then he made another right turn into a mews where there was a row of lock-ups. The ones he rented were at the end, numbers 11 and 12.
He parked outside number 11 and got out of his car. He then unlocked the garage door and hauled it up, went inside, switched on the light, then pulled the door back down hard. It closed with a loud, echoing clang. Then silence. Just the faintest whir from the two humidifiers.
Peace!
He breathed in the warm smells he loved in here: engine oil, old leather, old bodywork. This was his home. His
