Grace swallowed a mouthful of lightly chlorinated water, spluttered and coughed. By the time he had gained enough equilibrium to start swimming, Bruno had turned again and shot past him. But he barely noticed, he was so deep in thought.
Every killer had a motive.
Corin Belling was a seriously twisted individual.
Seymour Darling had a sick wife. He believed Lorna Belling had screwed him out of the money he had paid for her car. Was that really enough of a motive to kill her?
Kipp Brown was the wild card. What might his motive have been?
Suicide? That was another possibility. But Lorna Belling had no history of suicide attempts.
Just what was he missing here, in all this mix?
Something.
All his instincts were telling him he was missing something.
The obvious.
It might be staring him in the face, but he couldn’t see it.
He thought back, as he often did when stuck, to the words of Arthur Conan Doyle — through the mouth of Sherlock Holmes: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
The truth; Grace made a mental note. Then another: the improbable.
Bruno once more flip-turned past him, with an expression of grim determination, and powered away towards the far end of the pool. As if he was racing ahead of an unseen demon.
Lorna Belling. What demon killed you? One of the men in your life, or your own private, internal demon?
55
Monday 25 April
The electric wrought-iron gates slid open. When there was just enough of a space to squeeze through, Kipp Brown, impatiently revving the engine of his matt-black 911, tugged the paddle and the car moved forward towards the clogged morning rush-hour traffic on Dyke Road Avenue.
There was a gap between a white van and a shitty little Hyundai. The moment the Hyundai driver saw the nose of the Porsche, he moved to close the gap.
‘Tosser!’ Brown said, and pulled straight out, turning sharply left, causing the Hyundai to brake. The angry man at the wheel gave him a long blast of the horn. Some people hated Porsches but they didn’t want a collision with one and the hike in their insurance forever after.
‘Dad!’ his wuss of a son, Mungo, admonished.
As the Hyundai driver hooted again, angrily, Brown raised two fingers, making them clearly visible through the rear windscreen.
‘What?’ Brown challenged.
‘That was dangerous, we could have had an accident.’
He tousled his son’s dark-brown hair. Mungo shrank away from him.
‘You know what, old chap? Life’s dangerous. None of us get out alive.’
‘Yeah, well, we could have been killed just then.’
‘By a shit-heap doing ten miles an hour? I don’t think so.’
‘You’re a crazy driver.’
‘Fine, you’d rather walk to school? Be my guest — want me to pull over?’
‘Jeez!’
‘Jeez? What’s with Jeez? You’re not in America, you’re in England. That what they teach you at Brighton College?’
‘You know what, Dad, you’re an idiot.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yes. You’re making me late for school, again.’
‘We’d be even later if I hadn’t pulled out like that.’
Ignoring him, Mungo peered down at his phone, tapping the keys furiously. His father glanced down and saw he was on Snapchat. He saw the words ‘road rage’, accompanied by a scowling emoji. Then his own phone rang. It was his PA.
‘Yes, Claire?’ he answered on the hands-free.
‘When will you be in?’ she asked.
‘When Brighton and Hove council stop digging up every sodding road in the city at the same time! Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after at the rate we’re moving. What’s up?’
‘I’ve just had Jay Allan on the phone. He says he’s been offered a mortgage rate of.75 per cent below ours fixed for five years from another IFA.’
‘From who?’
‘Well, he was reluctant to say but I managed to get it out of him. Skerritts.’
‘Bloody Skerritts! That’s the third time in the past week they’ve undercut us.’
‘He wants to know if we can better it.’
‘Remind me of the value of the property?’
‘2.5 million.’
‘Tell him to piss off.’ He hung up.
His son looked up at him reproachfully.
‘What?’ he said, staring daggers at him.
Mungo shrugged and tapped on his phone again.
Thirty minutes later, and twenty minutes late for the start of school, Kipp Brown on the phone again, negotiating another mortgage deal, pulled up outside the grand, neo-Gothic front entrance of the school. His son shook his head at him, grabbed his rucksack from the rear seat and ran off through the archway.
Moments later, as he pulled away, shouting down the phone at a total twat at the North and Western Mercantile Bank, and pulling out a pack of cigarettes — his son didn’t like him smoking, nor did his other two kids, nor his wife, but he sure needed one now — Brown saw the blue flashing lights of a police car in his mirror. He pulled over to the kerb to let the car pass, but instead it slowed, pulling in behind him, flashing its headlights twice at him and giving him a whup-whup on its siren.
He halted the car, terminating the call abruptly in mid-sentence, then slid down his window as a uniformed traffic officer approached from the BMW, straightening his cap.
‘I was on hands-free,’ he said as the officer, a fair-haired man in his late thirties, knelt to peer in, moving his face close to his own, too close, sniffing his breath.
‘And I haven’t been drinking — I don’t drive my son to school drunk. Anything else I can do for you gentlemen?’
‘Is this your vehicle, sir?’ the officer said, politely.
‘No, it belongs to Bart Simpson — I’m his chauffeur. He’s in the back.’ He gave the officer a grin.
‘I see.’ The unsmiling officer stood up, walked round to the front of the car, then spoke into his radio. He returned to the driver’s door. ‘Where have you come from, sir?’
‘What is this? I’m really late for work.’
‘Where have you come from this morning, sir?’
‘Home.’
‘And where is that?’
‘Dyke Road Avenue.’
‘Can you give me your address?’
‘Wingate House, Dyke Road Avenue.’
‘And where are you heading, sir?’
‘To work.’
‘And where would that be, sir?’
‘My office, Kipp Brown Associates, Church Road, Hove. And I’m late — thanks to all the insane roadworks going on.’
The officer stood up and stepped away a few paces, speaking into his radio again.
Moments later he heard the wail of another siren. An unmarked silver Mondeo estate, blue lights flashing, pulled up in front of him, then reversed, coming so close he thought the car was going to ram him. Two men in suits climbed out. They walked up to the driver’s side of the Porsche and showed Brown their warrant cards.
‘Detective Inspector Batchelor and Detective Sergeant Exton,’ the older man said. ‘Would you mind stepping out of your vehicle and having a chat with us in our car, sir?’
‘What is this? I’m already late for work and I have a very busy day ahead in my office.’
‘Sir,’ Batchelor said firmly. ‘We can either have a chat in our car now, which shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, or we will have to ask you to accompany us to Brighton police station.’
‘Am I under arrest or something?’
‘No, sir, but if we have to arrest you, we will.’
‘Would somebody mind telling me just what this is about?’