‘Bus, sir?’
Pewe shook his head, looking angry. ‘What you need to understand, Roy, is that we need to integrate multiple initiatives into a systems-level approach, OK?’
Grace stared at him blankly. He had no idea what his boss was talking about. The ACC had recently attended a management course at the police training college. He seemed to have taken away from it a load of gobbledygook, in Grace’s view, and not much else. With each recent meeting with him, Pewe seemed to be growing increasingly incoherent.
‘Have you considered a thought shower, Roy?’
‘A thought shower?’
Pewe banged his fist on his desk. ‘Do I need to spell everything out? Are you in the twenty-first century or the Middle Ages? A thought shower. Getting your whole team together and inviting their blue-sky views.’
‘I do that at every briefing, actually, and always have. I just don’t call it that name.’
‘Oh, so what do you call it?’
‘Just a briefing, sir,’ Grace replied, calmly.
‘Just a briefing?’ Pewe echoed. ‘Are you sure it’s not all getting lost in the shuffle? I’m worried that you’re not using your resources to the full, that you’re trying to solve all this on your own. You do understand the aggregation of marginal gains, don’t you, Roy?’
Pewe’s PA brought in his coffee. Grace took the cup, gratefully, blew on it and sipped. ‘I’m not entirely sure I do.’
‘It’s simple, Roy. There is no “I” in the word “team”.’
But there is one in obnoxious bastard, thought Grace, privately.
‘You think I’m a bit of a shit, don’t you, Roy?’
Grace stayed silent.
‘I just like to know where you and I stand. You see, a friend will always ultimately betray you, but an enemy stays the same.’
‘Meaning exactly what, sir?’
‘No pretence between us. You and I are both in the same war against criminals. I don’t like you and you don’t like me. I’m fine with that, it cuts out the bullshit and saves time. Two years ago, you got me transferred, and I’ve never forgotten that. You did something incredibly stupid yesterday, with that bomb. You broke all the rules about procedure and you know it. I’m considering having you suspended for risking your life, needlessly, and endangering the lives of others.’
‘I took a calculated risk, sir, and I’d be happy to go through my reasons. At least on this occasion I did have valid reasons.’
‘And there are other occasions when you didn’t?’ Pewe asked.
‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten, sir, eighteen months ago you were in a car that went over the edge of Beachy Head, with a sheer 500-foot drop beneath you. The car was hanging by a thread. I put my life in danger by climbing over the edge and helping to pull you out. If I hadn’t, you would be dead. So, it was OK to put my life on the line to save you, but not OK to put it on the line to save, potentially, hundreds of lives in the Amex? Is that going to look good — sir?’
For once, Pewe had no response.
64
Sunday 13 August
08.00–09.00
Kipp Brown had no response, either. He sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, in a loose shirt, jeans and loafers, unshaven, cradling a mug of coffee and staring at the wall. Stacey was still in her dressing gown, her face pale, with no make-up.
‘You are not serious?’ Stacey said.
He shrugged, set down the mug and dug, gloomily and with no appetite, into a bowl of muesli, aware he needed to eat something to keep up his strength after a near-sleepless night.
‘Kipp, you are not, seriously, going to play hardball with whoever’s taken him, over our son’s life? Please don’t say you are going to do that — you’re not, are you?’ Her eyes were red from crying.
He stood up and put an arm tenderly round her. She didn’t shrug it off. ‘I’m not playing hardball, Stace, honestly. I will do anything I can to get Mungo back safely, but I just don’t have that kind of money — not at the moment — I don’t have it.’
‘What do you mean? It’s all gone on the gaming tables and horses?’
‘I’m just in a bad cash-flow situation — temporarily — negative equity.’
‘Negative equity — what’s that in plain English? What do you mean, negative equity?’
He took a deep breath. ‘I’m flat broke, Stace. Skint. I’ve barely enough money to cover next month’s mortgage on this house. And Mungo’s school fees. I haven’t got the sort of money they’re asking for.’
‘You are not serious?’
‘I wish to hell I wasn’t, but I am.’
‘But you’ve got millions in your discretionary client account, you always have, you told me you keep a percentage of all your clients’ portfolios liquid, waiting for investment opportunities.’
‘I can’t touch that money.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not mine, it belongs to my clients.’
‘How much do you have there?’
‘Around fifteen million at the moment.’
‘Fifteen million?’
‘About that.’
‘Bloody hell! Kipp, two and a half million is peanuts, they wouldn’t notice it missing. You just tell them you invested it and the market moved the wrong way, or whatever bullshit speak you use.’
‘Sure, Stace. You’ll come and visit me in prison, will you?’
‘You know how to move money around, for God’s sake, you do it all the time for your clients!’
‘Yes, but I don’t steal it.’
‘It’s not stealing, it would just be borrowing, surely?’
‘Stace, I cannot take money from my client account. You want me to risk being banged away for a decade for embezzlement and my career over?’
‘So, you’d rather Mungo died?’
He stared at the wall again. At the antique Welsh dresser. At the framed picture of Mungo with his sister. Mungo was seven then, wearing a red school cap, a neat grey blazer and shorts, pulling an impish face at the camera.
Stacey said, tenderly, ‘Darling, do you remember soon after he was born? You came to the ward and held him in your arms, and looked down at him, and you said how much you loved him. That you would take a bullet for him?’
He nodded, bleakly.
‘But not any more? You wouldn’t take a bullet now? What’s changed?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You love him as much as you did that day?’
‘More.’
‘But not enough to take a bullet for him now?’
He stared down at his fingers. At his nails, which he normally kept immaculate, noticing several of them were bitten down to the quick. ‘Shit, Stace. Oh shit. Yes. Yes, of course I would.’
She kissed him. ‘I love you.’
It was the first time in a very long time he had heard those words.
‘I love you, too,’ he replied.
And meant it.
65
Sunday 13 August
09.00–10.00
Ordinarily on a Sunday, the Brighton and Hove City Mortuary would be as silent as — the grave, Cleo Morey thought. But at 9.30 a.m. today it was a hive of activity. Since its expansion, the postmortem room consisted of two separate spaces divided by an arch, with a separate isolation room, where Florentina Shima had lain overnight.
Inside the isolation room now, Cleo stood with her assistant, Darren Wallace, dressed like everyone present in white boots, green scrubs, gloves, a surgical cloth hat and gauze mask. Crime Scene Photographer James Gartrell was in the room as well, meticulously videoing every stage of the postmortem being carried out by the Home Office pathologist. Outside the door stood Coroner’s Officer Michelle Websdale and DI Nigel ‘Joey’ Roissetter, from Surrey, who had been appointed the SIO on this suspicious death.