bring it here. And tell them to shift!’
Then, as he was staring, again, at the red ring around the words
Grace walked down a short passageway into a dank, windowless bedroom, with a narrow borrowed light high up. The room was lit by a solitary, naked, low-wattage bulb hanging from a cord above a bed, neatly made, with a cream candlewick counterpane.
Lying on the counterpane was a long, brown-haired wig, a moustache, a beard, a black baseball cap, and a pair of dark sunglasses.
‘Jesus!’ he said.
Glenn Branson’s response was simply to point with his finger past him. Grace turned. And what he saw chilled every cell in his body.
Taped to the wall were three blown-up photographs, each taken, he reckoned, from his limited knowledge of the craft, through a long lens.
The first was of Katie Bishop. She was wearing a bikini swimsuit, leaning back against what looked like the cockpit rail of a yacht. A large red-ink cross was scrawled over her. The second was of Sophie Harrington. It was of her face, in close-up, with what looked like a blurred London street behind her. There was also a red-ink cross scrawled over her.
The third was a picture of Cleo Morey, turning away from the front entrance door of the Brighton and Hove Mortuary.
There was no cross.
Grace pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled her home number. She answered on the third ring.
‘Cleo, are you OK?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Never better.’
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’m being serious.’
‘I’m listening to you, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace,’ she slurred. ‘I’m hanging on to every word.’
‘I want you to lock your front door and put the safety chain on.’
‘Lock the front door,’ she echoed. ‘And put the safety chain on.’
‘I want you to do it now, OK? While I’m on the phone.’
‘You’re so bossy shometimes, Detective Shuperintendent! OK, I’m getting up from the sofa and now I’m walking over to the front door.’
‘Please put the safety chain on.’
‘S’ham doing it now!’
Grace heard the clank of a chain. ‘Do not open the door to anybody, OK? Nobody at all until I get to you. OK?’
‘Do not open the door to anybody, until you get to me. I’ve got that.’
‘What about your roof terrace door?’ he asked.
‘That’s always locked.’
‘Will you check it?’
‘Right away.’ Then, jokingly repeating the instruction back to him, she said, ‘Go up to roof terrace. Check door is locked.’
‘There’s no outside door, is there?’
‘Not last time I looked.’
‘I’ll be there as quickly as I can.’
‘You’d better!’ she slurred, and hung up.
‘That’s very good advice you’ve been given,’ a voice behind her said.
115
Cleo felt as if her veins had filled with freezing water. She turned, in terror.
A tall figure was standing inches behind her, brandishing a large claw hammer. He was garbed head to foot in an olive-green protective suit that reeked of plastic, latex gloves and a gas mask. She could see nothing of his face at all. She was staring at two round, darkened lenses set into loose-fitting grey material, with a black metal filter at the bottom in the shape of a snout. He looked like a mutant, malevolent insect.
Through those lenses, she could just make out the eyes. They weren’t Richard’s eyes. They were not any eyes she recognized.
