He saw that one of his rare vinyl records, ‘Apache’ by the Shadows, was spinning round on the juke-box turntable, the needle stuck in the groove, making a steady click-scrape-click-scrape-click-scrape sound. His stereo was on also and part of his CD collection was scattered on the floor, along with several of his precious Pink Floyd LPs, out of their sleeves, an opened can of Grolsch lager, a couple of Harley-Davidson brochures, a set of dumb-bells and assorted other pieces of iron-pumping kit.
He stormed up the stairs, ready to yell blue murder at Glenn Branson, then stopped at the top, checking himself. The poor bastard was distraught. He must have gone home last night after the briefing meeting and been given his marching orders – hence the weights equipment. Let him sleep.
He looked at his watch. Five twenty. Although he felt tired, he was too wired to sleep. He decided he would go for a run, try to clear his head and energize himself for the heavy day ahead, which was starting with an eight-thirty team briefing, followed by a press conference at eleven a.m. And then he planned to have another session with Brian Bishop. The man smelled all wrong to him.
He went through to his bathroom, and immediately noticed the top was off the toothpaste. There was a large indent in the middle of the tube and some of the white paste had spewed out of the neck and on to the bathroom shelf. For some reason he could not immediately understand, this irked him even more than the mess downstairs.
Since entering this house just a few minutes ago, he was beginning to feel as if he’d slipped through a reality warp into the old TV sitcom Men Behaving Badly, with Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey playing bachelor slobs sharing a pad. And then he realized about the toothpaste: it had been one of the very few things that had irritated him about Sandy, the way she did that too. She always squeezed the damn tube in the middle rather than from the end, then left the top off so that part of the contents dribbled out.
That and the condition she always kept the interior of her car in – she treated the passenger side as a kind of permanent dustbin that never needed emptying. The rusty, battered little brown Renault was so littered with shopping receipts, discarded sweet wrappers, empty shopping bags, Lottery tickets and a whole raft of other debris that Grace used to think it looked more like something you’d want to keep chickens in than drive.
It was still in the garage now. He’d cleaned out the rubbish long ago, been through every scrap of it in search of a clue, and found none.
‘You’re up early.’
He turned and saw Branson standing behind him, wearing a pair of white underpants, a thin gold chain around his neck and his massive diver’s wristwatch. Although his body was stooped, his physique was in terrific shape, his muscles bulging through his gleaming skin. But his face was a picture of abject misery.
‘I need to be, to clear up after you,’ Grace retorted.
Either not registering this or deliberately ignoring it, Branson went on. ‘She wants a horse.’
Grace shook his head, unsure whether he had heard correctly. ‘What?’
‘Ari.’ Branson shrugged. ‘She wants a horse. Can you believe, on what I earn?’
‘More eco-friendly than a car,’ Grace replied. ‘Probably cheaper to run too.’
‘Very witty.’
‘What exactly do you mean, a horse?’
‘She used to ride – worked in stables when she was a kid. She wants to take it up again. She said if I agree to get her a horse, I can come back.’
‘Where can I buy one?’ Grace retorted.
‘I’m being serious.’
‘So am I.’
46
Roy Grace had been right. With Parliament long closed for its summer recess and the most significant world event during the past twenty-four hours being a train crash in Pakistan, the only stories vying for the front pages, particularly the tabloids, were the shock revelations of a Premiership footballer caught in a gay threesome, a panther apparently terrorizing the Dorset countryside and Prince Harry cavorting on a beach with an enviably pretty girl. All the nation’s news editors were hungry for a big story, and what better than the murder of a wealthy, beautiful woman?
The conference room for the morning press briefing he had called had been so tightly packed that some reporters had been left out in the corridor. He kept it short and tight, because he didn’t have a lot to tell them at this stage. No new information had come in overnight, and the earlier team briefing had been more about assigning tasks for the day than assessing any developments.
The one message he did put across clearly, to the sea of forty or so faces of press and media reporters and photographers in the room, was that the police were anxious to trace Mrs Bishop’s recent movements, and they would like to hear from any members of the public who might have seen her during the previous few days. The press were to be issued with a set of photographs Grace had chosen from the Bishops’ house, most of them from a montage of action pictures. One showed the dead woman in a bikini on a powerboat, another at the wheel of her convertible BMW, and in another she wore a long dress and a hat at a smart race meeting – Ascot or Epsom, Grace guessed.
He had chosen these photographs very carefully, knowing that they would appeal to news editors. They were the kind of pictures readers liked to feast their eyes on – the beautiful woman, the fast, glamorous lifestyle. With acres of column inches to fill, Grace knew they would be used. And wide coverage just might jog the memory of one key witness out there somewhere.
He slipped away quickly at the end, anxious to call Cleo before going into a further interview with Brian Bishop, which was scheduled for midday, leaving Dennis Ponds, the senior police public relations officer, to distribute the photographs. But only yards before reaching the security door leading through to the sanctuary of his office, he heard his name called out. He turned, and was irritated to see that the young Argus crime reporter, Kevin Spinella, had followed him.
‘What are you doing here?’ Grace said.
Spinella leaned against a wall, close to a display board on which was pinned a flow chart headed Murder Investigation Model, an insolent expression on his sharp face, chewing gum, holding his black notebook open and a pen in his hand. Today he had on a cheap, dark suit that he seemed to have not quite yet grown into, a white shirt that was also too big for him and a purple tie with a large, clumsy knot. His short hair had that fashionable, mussed, just-got-up look.
‘I wanted to ask you something in private, Detective Superintendent.’
Grace held his security card up to the lock. The latch clicked and he pulled open the door. ‘I’ve just said everything I have to say to the press at the conference. I’ve no further comment at this stage.’
‘I think you have,’ Spinella said, his smug expression irritating Grace even more now. ‘Something you omitted.’
‘Then speak to Dennis Ponds.’
‘I would have raised it at the conference,’ Spinella said, ‘But you wouldn’t have thanked me for it. The thing about the gas mask?’
Grace spun round, shocked, taking a step towards the reporter, letting the door click shut again behind him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I heard there was a gas mask discovered at the murder scene – that it might have been used by the killer – some kinky ritual or something?’
Grace’s brain raced. He was seething with anger, but venting it now wasn’t going to help. This had happened before. A couple of months back on another case, a vital piece of information about something found at a crime scene and withheld from the press – in that case a beetle – had been leaked to the Argus. Now it seemed it had happened again. Who was responsible? The problem was it could have been anyone. Although the information had been withheld from the press conference, half of Sussex Police would already know about it.