Looking Good Dead

I’m getting a watch.

A watch? Like a wristwatch?

Exactly! A wristwatch! There is something very significant. A wristwatch will lead you to something very satisfying to do with a case you are working on. This case, I think.

Can you elaborate?

No, I… No, that’s all. As I said, I don’t know if it means anything.

Any particular make?

No. Expensive, I think.

Sucking at his hand to staunch the bleeding, he turned to Nick Nicholl, who was closing a police car door on Ve

His colleague was white, shaking. In a bad way. Seriously in shock. ‘Not a lot. Why?’

Grace held up the watch he was holding. ‘What about this?’

Norman Potting piped up, ‘That’s a Breitling.’

‘What do you know about them?’

‘Only that I could never afford one. They’re expensive.’

A constable came ru

Suddenly seized with panic, Grace said, ‘Christ, where the hell are Mr and Mrs Bryce?’

‘It’s all right, sir,’ the constable said. ‘They’re in ambulances, on their way to hospital.’

‘Good man.’

87

Five minutes later, just as the first fire engine pulled up outside, the warehouse exploded. The blast blew out windows from buildings up to a quarter of a mile away. It was over two days before it was cool enough for the forensic investigators to enter and begin their grim task.

Three sets of human remains were eventually found. One would be identified in a few weeks’ time by his brother, still under police guard in hospital, from the partially melted gold medallion found around his neck. The second, just a human skull, would be identified from dental records as being Janie Stretton. The third would also be identified from dental records as being Andy Gidney.

The intense heat had made it impossible to determine, from what little remained of his bones, Gidney’s precise cause of death. And no one was able to offer any explanation of what he had been doing on the premises.

In a couple of months, Detective Sergeant Jon Rye of the High Tech Crime Unit would provide a report for the Coroner’s Court. And, for lack of evidence, the Coroner would have no option but to return an open verdict. More succinct but less informative than a shipping forecast.

It was half past four when Roy Grace finally left the blaze, which was a long way yet from being under control. He drove straight to the Royal Sussex County Hospital and went to find Gle

Gle

Next, in the intensive care unit, he met Emma-Jane’s parents, her mother an attractive woman in her forties who gave him a stoical smile, her father a very quiet man who sat squeezing a yellow te

When he left the hospital, he felt depressed, wondering what kind of a leader he was to let two of his team come so close to death. He stopped off at a workmen’s cafe, went in and had a massive fry-up and a strong cup of tea.

When he had finished, feeling considerably better now, he sat hunched over the Formica table and made a series of phone calls. As he stood up to leave, his mobile rang. It was Nick Nicholl, asking how he was, then telling him he hadn’t had a chance to report on his meeting with the officer from the Met, about the girl who had been found dead on Wimbledon Common with a scarab design on her bracelet. It had turned out to be a dead end. A coincidence. The girl’s boyfriend had confessed to her murder. Bella Moy, who had been working on all the other forces, had found no other murders with a scarab beetle at the crime scene.

Maybe we got lucky and caught them early? Grace wondered. But not early enough for poor Janie Stretton.

He told the young DC to go home, to put his arms around his wife, who was due to give birth any day, and tell her he loved her. Nicholl, sounding surprised, thanked him. But that was how Grace felt at this moment. That life was precious. And precarious. You never knew what was around the corner. Cherish what you had while you had it.

As he climbed back into his car, Cleo rang, sounding bright and perky.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘Sorry to be so long calling you back! Are you free to talk?’

‘Totally,’ he said.

‘Good. I’ve had one hell of a day. Four cadavers – you know what it’s like after a weekend!’

‘I do.’

‘One motorbike fatality, one fifty-year-old man who fell off a ladder, and two old ladies. Not to mention a male head that came in yesterday without much else left of him – but I think you know about that one.’

‘Just a little.’

‘Then I had to go into the centre of Brighton at lunchtime to buy an a

‘Aged whats?’

‘My parents!’

‘Ah.’

‘And I got my damned car stuck in the Civic Square car park. There was a bomb scare – can you bloody believe it?’

‘Really?’

‘When I finally got the car out, the whole bloody city was gridlocked!’

‘I did hear something about that,’ he said.

‘So how was your day?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you know – average.’

‘No big excitement?’

‘Nah.’

There was a strange but comfortable silence between them for some moments. Then she said, ‘I’ve been longing to speak to you all day. But I wanted to do it when we had some quality time. I didn’t want it to be just a hurried, Hi! Great shag last night. Bye!’

Grace laughed. And suddenly it seemed an awfully long time since the last time he’d laughed. It had been a long, long few days.

Later, much later, after hours in the office making a start on the mountain of paperwork that would keep him occupied for the rest of the week and beyond, Grace found himself back in Cleo’s flat.

That night, after they had made love, he slept in her arms like a baby. He slept the sleep of the dead. And for a few of those hours it was without any of the fears of the living.

88

On Thursday morning, his hands heavily bandaged and still hurting like hell from the acid burns, Tom Bryce went into his office for a couple of hours.

It was clear from the exuberant greetings from his staff and the stack of press cuttings on his desk that the front-page headlines he had made with Kellie, nationwide over the past couple of days, had done Bryceright Promotional Merchandise no harm at all. His two salesmen in the office, Peter Chard and Simon Wong, were over the moon – they couldn’t remember when they had last had this level of enquiries, from existing and potential customers.

‘Oh,’ Chard added, standing over his desk, ‘good news is that we’ve delivered the Rolexes to Ron Spacks. All twenty-five of them. Our margin is un-bloody-believable!’

‘I never saw the final artwork,’ Tom said, suddenly feeling a little concerned. If there had been a screw-up on the engraving of twenty-five Rolex watches, it would be a financial disaster.

‘No worries! I rang him yesterday to check all was kosher. He’s happy as Larry with them.’

‘Get me the paperwork on them, will you?’