Dead at First Sight, page 27
‘Who are you looking for, love?’ she said in a kindly voice.
‘James Pusey,’ he replied. It was from a list of names he had memorized for moments like this.
She turned and called, ‘Mick, do you know a James Pusey?’
A gruff voice called back, ‘No!’
‘A tall black guy – wears red shoes, usually?’ Tooth prompted.
‘Ah.’ She looked pensive. ‘Now I come to think of it, yes. We pretty much keep ourselves to ourselves here. But I’ve seen the chap you’re describing, I think. Yes.’ She pointed. ‘Number 507, over there. I think, but I can’t be sure.’
Tooth thanked her, waited for her to close the door then moved, stealthily, diagonally across the corridor. He stood outside the door, checking around for signs of anyone and listening hard.
He slipped his right hand under his jacket and gripped the heavy gun. Glancing around again in both directions, he switched off the safety catch; it was something he had practised endlessly in the long hours he’d had to kill waiting outside in his car.
He hadn’t had a chance to properly test the gun which the rude moron had given him in the toilet of the Stag pub. Not a big problem if it failed to discharge. He had been studying the martial arts since his early teens. He rarely read books or watched movies or television. Mostly he’d filled the endless hours of the void since leaving the US military, in between fishing for food, hiking with his associate and occasionally visiting his hooker, by teaching himself every martial arts discipline there was.
If the gun which he was now holding in his hand, finger on the trigger, failed him, it wasn’t a problem. Before Jules de Copeland even realized he hadn’t been shot, his neck would have been severed and the top half of his spine would have been powered up through the base of his neck, through his brain and into the roof of his skull.
With his free left hand, Tooth pressed the doorbell.
83
Wednesday 10 October
‘Healthy tonight, OK? Cod, quinoa, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad.’
‘Sure,’ Roy Grace said. ‘Sounds yum! Glenn told me I’m getting fat, so that would be good!’
‘He said what?’ Cleo peered at her husband. He was perched on the sofa, reading a paper, catching up on the news to switch off for a short while. ‘Well, OK, maybe there’s the tiniest bit of a tum visible.’
‘Thanks a lot! Is that the reason for the salad?’
‘No. We had the victims of a house fire in the PM room today,’ Cleo said. ‘You know how it always gets me.’
‘From that one yesterday?’
‘A chip pan on the gas hob. Two kids, the mother couldn’t get them out of the house. Poor woman.’
‘How do you ever recover from that?’
‘You don’t,’ she said, simply.
He stood up and put a comforting arm around her. ‘Poor love, you really are shaken, aren’t you?’
There were tears in her eyes and she was fighting back a sob. ‘It doesn’t get to me, not normally. I always think nothing can shock me any more, that I’ve seen it all. Then something like this comes along.’
‘It’s not just you, it’s every police officer and everyone in the emergency services. Children, that’s the one thing that gets us all.’
She sniffed. ‘Yep.’
Her kissed her tenderly on the cheek.
‘Are you going to be working over this weekend?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know yet. I’m not on call – are you?’
‘No. It would be nice to do something with the boys on Sunday, perhaps. Bruno’s at that party on Saturday – the one the boy at St Christopher’s is having on a gaming bus.’
‘It does sound an odd kind of party.’
‘I think it sounds fun – very modern, very zeitgeist!’
‘I guess anything that gets him out of his bedroom and mingling with other kids has to be a good thing. Zeitgeist or otherwise.’
She nodded in agreement. He stifled a yawn.
‘You should have an early night, you’ve barely slept this week – and you want to be looking your best for lovely Alison Vosper tomorrow. Maybe she’s going to tell you that she’s secretly craved your body for years!’
‘Ha ha – and now that I’m an old fatty, I’ll have to somehow cushion her disappointment.’
‘You will never be an old fatty,’ she said. ‘You take too much care of yourself.’
His phone rang. He glanced at the number before answering, ‘Fat Bastard’s phone.’
He heard Glenn Branson laughing at the other end. ‘Where are you? Working out on a treadmill?’
‘I’m giving my eyes a workout reading these trial documents. Did you just phone to insult me again or do you have anything interesting to tell me?’
‘I just had a call from one of Aiden Gilbert’s team. The burner Okonjo had on him when he was arrested has two numbers stored. They’re from Germany and he’s already passed them on to Marcel Kullen.’
Grace thanked him and immediately called the Munich detective.
84
Wednesday 10 October
Jules de Copeland heard the shrill ring of the doorbell. He’d been expecting that, or a knock on the door, for the past half hour, ever since he had watched the man who’d been sat most of the day in his Volkswagen Polo parked in a visitor’s bay enter the building.
Either he was a police officer – which he doubted from his erratic behaviour – or, more likely and more dangerously, he had been sent here, as he’d suspected, by his own former employer, Steve Barrey. Either way he was confident the unwelcome visitor could not know, for certain, which apartment he was in.
Since renting this place, some weeks back, he had been careful not to engage with any other resident, except for the caretaker, a bolshy Irishman called Joe, who lived in a ground-floor flat and vented spleen to him about the landlord not spending enough money on maintenance of the place, nor giving him a pay rise for the past three years.
A bung of £500, palmed to the grateful man, had, Joe assured Copeland, bought him his omertà.
When Copeland had looked puzzled, the caretaker explained. Omertà was the Mafia code of silence. His one previous visit here had been a quick in and out, to provision it with enough food to last him many days.
A few hours ago Joe had phoned him, as he had promised he would if anyone came sniffing around looking for him. ‘A shortarse with an American accent just accosted me round the back of the building when I was putting out the wheelie bins. He said he was in town for a couple of days and trying to look up his old buddy, Jules de Copeland. He described you as a tall black fellow, but said he had lost your phone number and flat number. Said he wanted to surprise you. I told him there wasn’t no one of that description living here, and that I knew everyone. He’s a shifty-looking one. And if you want my opinion, he doesn’t look right in the head.’
On his desk, Copeland had the most sophisticated voice-changing apparatus on the market. It gave him a whole range of male and female accents, and a whole range of regional ones in several languages. He selected the one he had prepared for just this situation now.
As he did, the bell rang again, followed by a rap on the door. He tiptoed in his socks and peered through the spyhole.
Although the lighting in the corridor was dim, and his face was distorted, there was no question it was the man who had been watching the building.
From the other side of the door, Tooth heard a haughty female voice call out. ‘Yes, hello, who is this?’
Thrown, with his head spinning and see-sawing, he took a step back. Remembering the words of the woman in the grey onesie in the apartment diagonally opposite: I think, but I can’t be sure.
Maybe she meant the one next door to it?
The giddiness was returning. The walls were moving. It felt like the floor was rising, pushing him up, then it dropped away beneath him and he fell, full length, onto the carpet. Fighting not to throw up.
He heard a door open and smelled a waft of perfume. Before he could get to his feet a voice said, ‘Oh my God, are you all right?’
He peered up. A young, well-dressed Asian couple were staring down at him with concern.
‘Yeah, I’m – I’m good.’
‘Shall I call an ambulance?’ the man asked. ‘Do you need medical assistance?’
Tooth scrambled to his feet. Their faces were blurry. He tried to bring them into focus. He was swaying. ‘I’m – I’m good.’ He touched the wall to try to steady himself.
‘Are you sure?’ the woman said in a kindly voice.
‘Yeah, I just tripped, you know.’
He was conscious they were looking at him oddly.
‘I’m a doctor. You don’t look right to me,’ the man said.
‘No, really, I’m good.’
They stared at each other in silence. Tooth wished they’d just go away.
‘I just need some air.’ Thinking fast and hard, he jerked a finger at the nearest door, saying, ‘Just had a bit of an argument – you know – my girlfriend. Bit of air. Thought I’d go out and walk around for a bit.’
‘We’ll come down with you, make sure you’re OK.’
‘Right, yes.’
The lift took an interminable time to arrive. And even longer, it felt, to descend. All the time the couple were looking at him curiously.
‘I don’t smell alcohol,’ the man said. ‘Are you on any medication?’
‘No, I’m – you know – just – you know – shock. Upset.’
The lift reached the ground floor. Tooth stepped out. ‘We’re going on down to the basement,’ the woman said. ‘Shall we come out with you?’
‘Thank you, no, you are very kind. I’m fine, just need some air.’ The doors closed on them, thankfully.
He hurried across the lobby, feeling like he was encased in a swirling mist. And walked straight into the glass front door with a bang that shook every bone in his body, shot agonizing pain through his nose and sent him reeling backwards.
He sensed warm liquid running from his nose. Put his hand to his face, pulled it away and saw blood on it.
He’d broken his nose, he realized. Then he saw the jagged crack in the glass.
‘Jeez.’
He opened the door and stumbled out into the darkness and rain and strengthening sea breeze. His car was less than fifty metres away. It felt like it was at the other end of the planet as he zigzagged unsteadily towards it, like it was a homing beacon.
Finally reaching it, he clutched the front of the car to steady himself and worked his way along the side with his hands, like a drunk, until he reached the driver’s door. He fumbled in his pocket for the key, hit the button and pulled the door open, then slumped gratefully inside, slamming the door shut against the elements.
Shivering, he turned on the engine and put the heating to full blast. As warmth seeped through him, he closed his eyes.
He was woken, moments later it seemed, by a sharp rap on the window. His instant reflex reaction was to go for his gun. He stopped himself just in time. A figure was standing by his window, barely visible in the ambient lighting from the building and the street lights.
He lowered the window. A bolshy-looking shaven-headed man with a missing front tooth was peering at him in hostile recognition.
‘You?’
Tooth instantly recognized the Irish accent of the caretaker he’d spoken to by the wheelie bins. He stared back at him, helplessly.
‘What the feck are you doing? This is visitors’ parking. Get out of here before I call the police or the tow company. Clear off.’
85
Thursday 11 October
It seemed far longer than just two years since Roy Grace had last seen his former Assistant Chief Constable, Alison Vosper. There had been two further ACCs in charge of Major Crime since her departure. The first, Peter Rigg, had gone on to a Chief Constable role. The second, to Grace’s chagrin, was still very much with him.
Rigg had been OK, he was a decent man. But compared to the current incumbent, vitriolic Cassian Pewe, Alison Vosper was Mother Teresa. Although every time Grace had faced her, back then, she’d made him feel like he was back, trembling, in his headmaster’s study at school.
It didn’t feel much different now as he entered the small Italian restaurant in Pimlico, near to Victoria Station. As the greeter led him through the room, he saw her, looking as starched as the pink linen tablecloth. She had her back to the far wall, of course, with a view of the whole establishment. The ‘policeman’s chair’.
He knew right away, even before he reached her, that she understood too what that meant for him. No copper would ever feel comfortable sitting with his back to the room and to the front door. She could have chosen one of the several empty side banquettes, where they could both have had this view, but instead she’d chosen the one that would put him at maximum discomfort.
He wondered if this was her regular lunchtime haunt and the table she always reserved, for tactical advantage.
In her mid-forties, with wispy blonde hair cut conservatively short, framing a hard but handsome face, Alison Vosper hadn’t changed at all since they had last met. Even the powerful floral scent, with its acrid tinge, was the same as he remembered. As was her outfit. She was power-dressed, just as she always had been, in a black two-piece with a crisp white blouse. If anything, she seemed younger.
Rising to greet him, with uncharacteristic friendliness, she said, ‘Roy! So very good to see you!’
‘And you, ma’am.’
‘Alison, please!’
They both sat down. A bottle of Perrier sat on the table and her glass was half full of sparkling water.
‘What would you like to drink, Roy? A cocktail? Some wine?’
He felt like asking for a large Martini. Instead, he said, ‘Perrier would be fine – I’ve a meeting with counsel this afternoon.’
She filled his glass for him, then looked at him more warmly than he ever remembered. ‘So, how’s everything in Sussex?’
‘Domestically? Great. I’ve remarried since I last saw you, ma’am.’
‘Alison.’
‘Sorry, ma’am – Alison.’
She smiled, disarmingly.
‘We have a baby son, Noah, and I’ve also found out I have a son from my previous marriage to Sandy.’
‘Your wife who disappeared?’ She looked puzzled.
‘Long story.’
‘Want to tell me? I know her disappearance had a big impact on your life – although professionally you never let it show, to your credit.’
As he brought her up to speed, he was thinking that Alison Vosper had softened since she left Sussex. Whilst she used to alternate between sweet and sour, now – at this moment anyway – she just seemed to be sweet. And compared to asshole Pewe, he now realized she had been a dream ticket.
When he had finished she encouraged him to look at the menu and order. ‘What are you going to have?’ he asked.
‘Dover sole.’
The most expensive item. Clearly the austerity measures biting the police weren’t affecting her expenses budget. ‘That will do me fine,’ he said.
They ordered, then she said, ‘I can see you’ve been working hard, Roy, it’s starting to show. A lot of stress?’
‘A fair bit.’
‘Maybe you need a change of scenery?’
Roy thought to himself, in mild panic, Shit, I’m travelling in one direction and Alison Vosper in another. She looks five years younger and I’m looking a decade older.
‘If you want to know the truth, Alison, trying to get on with my job and having to answer to Cassian Pewe at the same time makes me feel like I’m a coconut in a two-sided shy.’
‘I can see it, Roy. You don’t look a happy man.’
He shrugged. ‘I should look happy because I am happy. I love my family, I love my job. But . . .’ He fell silent.
‘But?’
‘I love my job. It’s my dream job. I’m doing what I always wanted to do.’
‘And the but?’
‘I don’t know how much longer I can go on working for my current ACC.’
‘Isn’t he doing a good job. Roy?’
‘A good job?’
‘There seems to be a very high murder clear-up rate in Sussex – Cassian Pewe’s track record is very impressive. Wouldn’t you agree?’
Roy Grace bit his tongue. ‘Cassian Pewe’s track record?’
‘It’s not gone unnoticed.’
He stared at her, dumbfounded. ‘His track record?’
He saw the twinkle in her eyes. ‘Roy,’ she said, ‘I’m not exactly here as your fairy godmother, but I want to offer you a possible alternative to your current – perhaps uncomfortable – situation. You’re aware of the knife-crime epidemic we currently have in London?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s not so bad in Brighton, is it?’
‘Not so far, touch wood.’
‘I’m setting up a new dedicated team here in the Met,’ she said. ‘It will be a multi-agency team putting together a long-term strategy dealing with education, enforcement, investigation, the judicial process and rehabilitation. It’s highly political, because knife crime is having a massive impact across the capital. It’s harming confidence in the city, it’s impacting on tourism and, very importantly, on the well-being of London’s resident citizens. This is big politics, top down from the Prime Minister, the Mayor of London and the Commissioner of the Met. I want you for the Commander role. You won’t ever get a bigger job opportunity than this. Initially for six months, it will be a temporary promotion to Commander, but who knows, you might decide to stay in the city.’
‘Commander?’ he replied.
‘If it helps, that would put you on equal footing with ACC status, but more prestigious.’
‘Cassian Pewe won’t like that.’
‘I thought that might appeal,’ Vosper said.
He was thinking hard about the implications on his family life. The commute to London. Even longer hours than he was currently working.
