She sent her a text.
Hi, Mrs Driver, have you any more news for us? Could you update us before you leave? All best, DC Williams
By the end of the meeting, twenty minutes later, there had been no reply. She made a note to try calling her later.
26
Monday 1 October
Roy Grace generally had an even temper and lost it rarely, but this evening he was close to boiling point, with a raging toothache not helping. The day had started welclass="underline" a glorious early-morning jog with Humphrey across the fields, through an autumnal dawn — their rescue Labrador-Border Collie cross was loving their move to the country.
Then it had begun going downhill soon after, when his beloved Alpha Romeo wouldn’t start. It had a flat battery, for no apparent reason. He’d jump-started it and it had got him to the office, then wouldn’t start again. The RAC had duly arrived and cheerily given him the good and bad news. The bad was that the battery was knackered. The good was that they had a spare on board, for which they relieved him of nearly £200.
He’d then had a two-hour meeting with a solicitor at the Crown Prosecution Service, who was pedantically questioning Roy’s identification of a Brighton GP, Edward Crisp, a suspected serial killer. How much veracity did you need to identify a man who had fired a twelve-bore shotgun at you from ten feet and nearly blown your leg off?
Next he’d had to endure a performance review by his immediate boss — and nemesis — Assistant Chief Constable Cassian Pewe. There had been, unsurprisingly, high-level repercussions over a kidnapping case Grace had handled six weeks ago, Operation Replay, because of the high body count, mostly within the Brighton Albanian community. Pewe wasn’t interested that Roy had nearly died in the process of achieving a successful outcome, saving a fourteen-year-old boy from what would otherwise have been certain death. He was only concerned to personally come out smelling of roses from the Independent Office for Police Conduct enquiry into seven deaths related to the kidnap.
On top of it all, it was his week to be the Duty Force Gold Commander. This was a responsibility that came around every four months, on a roster that included the Chief, Deputy and Assistant Chief Constables, as well as all the force’s Chief Superintendents. It was the role of a Gold Commander to take strategic charge of any major incident in the county, and to authorize, if required, the deployment of firearms.
It meant no alcohol all that week, and he was badly in need of a drink at this moment. A large one. A very large one. He craved an ice-cold vodka Martini, which would do the trick nicely. But that wasn’t an option all the time he was on-call.
Instead, being home from work in time for once, he read to Noah, their fourteen-month-old son, his favourite book, about a hungry caterpillar, and put him to bed. He’d done this every night during the past fortnight he had been off, and he loved it. Loved the trust in his son’s eyes. Noah’s giggles and little laughs, and his naughtiness, splashing his arms in the bathwater, soaking himself and Cleo, and giggling even harder each time he did it.
Oftentimes during this he found himself reflecting on Bruno, all the missed childhood years. It made him even more determined to spend as much time as he could with both his sons.
When Noah was finally settled, Cleo, himself and Bruno had supper in the kitchen. Tonight, Bruno sat at the table, very upright, in a clean T-shirt, eating, but, as normal, saying nothing. Humphrey did his usual routine of moving around the table, sitting beside each of them in turn for some minutes in the hope a scrap would fall his way. Grace was less tolerant of the boy’s silence than his wife. It seemed to him it was, in his son’s mind, a way of getting back at them — punishing them — for uprooting him from Germany. Except what choice had they had? Boarding school was one but they didn’t feel that would be right. The only other option for Bruno would have been to go and live with his ghastly grandparents in Seaford — and life in their home, with their legendary meanness, would have been hellish for him. But Bruno did not seem to appreciate anything. At this moment he was toying with a piece of vegetarian sausage he had cut off and pronged with his fork, examining it suspiciously like a pathology specimen.
‘They’re Linda McCartney’s, Bruno,’ Cleo said.
‘Who is that?’
‘She was married to Paul McCartney.’
He looked blank.
‘One of the Beatles. Maybe you don’t know them — you’re too young.’
Ignoring her, he sniffed the morsel, turning it round with his fork as if concerned it might escape if he took his eye off it. ‘This does not even smell like meat.’
‘It’s not meant to,’ Cleo said. ‘It’s vegetarian.’
The boy smirked, but there was more supercilious mockery — and almost pity — in his expression than humour. ‘If people want to be vegetarian they should eat vegetables that look like what they are. My mother would never have eaten something as ridiculous as this. A beetle would taste better.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Cleo saw Roy was about to react, and she mouthed for him to hold off. ‘You told me your mother was vegan,’ she said.
‘She was a correct vegan. She cared about not eating animals. Meine Mutter would never have eaten a fake sausage or a fake hamburger,’ he sneered. ‘That’s just silly. If you want to be a vegetarian or a vegan, do that, but don’t make it look like meat and mess with everyone’s heads.’
Roy and Cleo shot a glance at each other. ‘So you didn’t become a vegan yourself, Bruno?’ Grace asked.
‘I’m blood-type A,’ Bruno said, solemnly. ‘It is important to eat according to your blood type. If you are type A you need proper meat.’ He pushed his plate aside and stood up, abruptly. ‘I go to my room.’
Again Roy Grace was about to rebuke him, when Cleo signalled for him to be quiet.
‘You’ve not eaten anything,’ she said. ‘You must have something.’
Bruno stared at his stepmother strangely. It was a look Roy Grace had seen many times before, during his career. It was the gleam in the eyes of a prosecution counsel, in court, who is just about to deliver a crushing rebuke to a key defence witness.
‘If you get me some proper food, I will,’ he said. ‘Why did you think I would wish for vegetarian?’
Smiling, as if determined not to be riled by him, Cleo asked, ‘What kind of proper food would you like me to get you, Bruno?’
‘Sausages,’ he said. ‘Proper German sausages: Weisswurst, Frankfurters, Bratwurst, Blutwurst, Bockwurst, Bregenwurst, Knackwurst, Gelbwurst, Teewurst, not the crap you have in butcher’s here.’
‘OK,’ she said, brightly. ‘German sausages it will be. Which kind would you would most like me to get you?’
‘Weisswurst and Bratwurst.’
‘OK, I’ll get some in for you.’
Without a word of acknowledgement, Bruno turned his back, walked away from the kitchen table, through the open-plan living room and up the stairs.
‘The word is thanks,’ Roy Grace murmured, so quietly only Cleo could hear. He looked at her and she gave him a what-can-you-do look back. Then she reached out a hand and covered his.
‘Gently,’ she said quietly, almost whispering. ‘Gently, gently, gently.’
Almost whispering back, Grace said, ‘Yes, that’s how I’d like to throttle him. Gently.’
She grimaced.
To add to his bad mood, there was a bunch of bills that had arrived in today’s post, which he always liked to settle promptly. He glanced through them. The first was for new netting for the chicken run. ‘Blimey!’ he said, wincing at the amount. ‘I hate to think how much each egg costs us!’