Before the man had time to react, Grace grabbed his right arm and pulled it up behind his back in a half nelson.
‘Get the fuck off me!’ the man screamed.
‘Corin Douglas Belling, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
‘Murder? What the fuck are you talking about?’
‘Your wife’s dead, and we believe you may have killed her,’ Grace said, pulling out his handcuffs with his free hand.
Like a serpent, Corin Belling twisted, breaking free of Grace’s grip, and a fist slammed, agonizingly, into the detective’s face, momentarily stunning him.
25
Thursday 21 April
Guy Batchelor continued his assessment of the crime scene, reminded all the time of Roy Grace’s words.
Assume nothing. Believe no one. Check everything.
Clear the ground under your feet.
Every contact leaves a trace.
Think the unthinkable.
The unthinkable.
A beautiful woman lay dead in a bathtub just a few feet away. From the marks round her neck it seemed someone had tried to strangle her. A hairdryer in the tub.
Think the unthinkable.
Had the husband killed her? Too obvious.
How had the hairdryer ended up in the bath?
Think the unthinkable.
If not the husband, who? Could she have hated someone so much she’d made it look as if someone had tried to strangle her, then committed suicide?
Unthinkable?
The fury of a woman scorned?
A history of being abused by her husband, dead in a secret bolthole. Had Belling done it or, perhaps, had he been fitted up?
26
Thursday 21 April
Roy Grace saw, through his haze of pain, the bastard running away. Belling was a hundred yards ahead of him, maybe more. He clambered, shakily, to his feet. His nose was hurting. Busted? That would be the third time in his career. But right now that wasn’t important. One thing and one thing only mattered. That fucker, Corin Belling.
Glancing round, he saw Exton lumbering towards him, speaking urgently on his phone. He broke into a loping trot, then stepped it up into a sprint. His eyes were watering. He was going to catch that wife-beating shit.
Going to catch him.
That bully boy.
Murderer.
He increased his pace. Faster. Faster. His right leg felt as if it was on fire, but he ignored the pain, running on through it. They were beside a main road now, heading towards a roundabout. There was a wide grass verge on either side. Corin Belling ran straight across it, onto the island, right in front of a motorcycle which had to swerve to avoid him, then on again, across to the far side, passing a sign that read BRIGHTON A23.
On along the road.
Grace took the same route, racing across in front of a lorry with blaring horn. His chest was hurting. His nose was agony. His leg was throbbing.
He blanked it all.
He was going to get the bastard. Going to get him. Going to see him in court.
Corin sodding Belling, you are breathing your last gulps of air as a free man for the next twenty years. Enjoy them, savour them, you miserable little wife-abusing murderous shit.
He was gaining on him.
Could see the man’s shirt stuck to his back with perspiration.
Perspiring from fear.
The pain in his right leg was fading. So was the pain in his chest. His speed was increasing.
Increasing.
The gap between them closing.
Fifty yards.
Thirty yards.
Twenty yards.
Corin Belling shot a glance over his shoulder.
Ten yards.
Five yards.
Another glance over his shoulder. His expression utter defiance. He turned sharp right, and raced back across the road, right across the path of a lorry bearing down on him.
The lorry blocked any view of the yellow Lamborghini that was overtaking it.
It was being driven by a potential customer of Bayross Supercars, the salesman encouraging him, as he said later in court, ‘To give it some wellie!’
The client was giving it wellie all right. The car was doing, so the officer from the Collision Investigation Unit established later, 85 mph at the time of impact. In a 40-mph zone.
27
Thursday 21 April
Grace stopped in his tracks, staring in disbelief. He heard the scream of tyres. Saw Belling cartwheeling up over the bonnet of the car, smashing into the windscreen, then hurtling thirty feet, maybe higher, into the air, clothes shedding from him, two long, broken sticks each flying off in different directions.
Vehicles swerved, brakes squealing.
There was a thud, like a sack of potatoes dropped from a great height.
Then a moment of utter silence.
For an instant it was as if someone had pressed a freeze-frame button on a video.
Momentarily numb with shock, Grace looked at the scene in front of him, trying to absorb it.
The blue sky. The wide, well-kept road. The surface so black it might recently have been painted. Cars, a grey van, a man in Lycra on a bicycle, all stopped, many at strange angles as if some unseen hand was playing with a giant set of Dinky Toys and hadn’t quite figured out where to put all the vehicles.
Then he saw a young man run to the middle of the road, towards the half-naked, crumpled heap, from where a long, dark stain of blood was spreading. He saw the man stop, turn away and throw up. Grace’s head was spinning.
A woman was screaming. Standing, holding on to the door of her purple Honda Jazz, shaking, screeching like a banshee.
Two men were climbing out of the Lamborghini, which had a dented bonnet and cracked windscreen. The front of the roof was buckled.
Pulling himself together, Grace’s professional training kicked in. He took out his phone, requested an ambulance and to be put through to the Ops-1 Inspector, informing him what had happened and requesting urgent police backup. Then, with the woman standing by the Honda still screeching, a piercing, terrible sound, he ran towards Belling.
And as he reached the body he had to swallow hard to avoid throwing up himself. He was looking down at a partially clad, legless torso. The head was split open, brain and blood leaking out. One leg, still covered by part of the grey suit trousers he had been wearing, was on the grass verge to his right; the other, bare, severed just above the knee, lay on the other side of the road, close to the cyclist.
A big, thuggish bloke of around thirty, in an anorak and baggy jeans, was walking towards the body, calmly filming with his phone.
In fury, Grace pulled out his warrant card. ‘Police! Put that away and step back!’
God, he felt sick. How long would it take for the first backup car to get here?
What a bloody mess.
The thug, as if in defiance, was now filming one of the severed legs.
Grace stepped up to him, grabbed the phone and said, ‘The taking of pictures is inappropriate.’
‘Hey! Hey!’ the man shouted. ‘You can’t take that!’
‘I just did. You’ll get it back when we’re finished at the scene with the photos wiped. You’re not Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.’
Leaving the man open-mouthed, Grace turned away, pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket, slipped the phone in and sealed it. At least, he thought, grimly, this made leaving Guy Batchelor in charge of the crime scene less important. Their prime suspect was dead. The fact that he’d bolted said volumes. Innocent men didn’t run away from the police. But a bully like Corin Belling might well have done — because bullies were often cowards.