'A bit like your birthday party's going to be. No show from the host'
'No surprise there. Tell me - how many of Ashley Harper's relatives turned up?'
'Just one that I saw,' Grace said. 'An uncle.' He halted at a traffic light. 'I wanted to ask you, have you checked on Michael Harrison's bank account and credit cards?'
'Got a constant monitor on them. Nothing since Tuesday afternoon. Same with his mobile. Any developments your end?'
'The helicopter's been up again but seen nothing. Nicholl and Moy are working over the weekend - they're getting Michael's photograph circulated to the press, and they're collecting all the CCTV camera footage in the suspect area - I have a team starting work viewing it. We're going to have to make a decision about calling in specials and getting a full-blown search of the area. And I'm getting unhappier by the minute with his business partner, Mark Warren.'
'Tell me?'
'Nothing specific yet, but I think he knows something he isn't telling. We need to run some background checks on him.'
'I have the Holmes team doing that already.'
'Good boy. Hang on--' Grace concentrated for a moment as he
pulled away from the lights. 'I think we should take a close look at tiieir company, Double-M Properties. See what their insurance policies are.'
'I have that under way, too - and I'm having their Cayman Islands Company checked out. What do you make of Ashley?'
'I don't know,' Grace said. 'I don't have a view. She's giving a convincing performance. I think we should check her out, too. You know What's odd about her?'
'This no relatives thing? You ever see that movie The Last Seduction, with Linda Fiorentino?' The phone signal weakened suddenly and Branson's voice became crackly.
'I don't remember it.'
'Bill Pullman was in it, too.'
'Doesn't ring a bell.'
'She was in Men in Black too.'
'OK.'
'Worth seeing - The Last Seduction. Had a predatory woman. Dark ending. She kind of reminds me of Ashley.'
'I'll check it out.'
'Get it on DVD. Play.com - great value.'
'How many twenty-seven-year-olds do you know that don't have relatives? You're twenty-seven, you are getting married, the biggest day of your life, and you can only produce one relative to turn up to your big day.'
'She could be an orphan. We need to check her background out.'
'I'll go and talk to Michael's mother - she must know about her future daughter-in-law.'
'Mine knew more about Ari than I did before I got hitched.'
'Precisely/ Grace said.
Ten minutes later Grace was walking along the corridor of the Major Incident Suite of the CID headquarters, lugging the black plastic bag from the mortuary. He stopped by a white sheet pinned to a red board which was headed 'DIAGRAM - COMMON POSSIBLE MOTIVES'. It was helpful, sometimes, to refresh his mind from these charts, although most of it was ingrained in his brain. He read the chart:
Sexual. Jealousy. Racism. Anger/fright. Robbery. Power control. Maintain active lifestyle. Gain. Payment. Homophobia. Hate. Revenge. Psychotic.
He moved on to the next board, which was headed, 'FAST TRACK'. Below was printed:
1. Identify suspects 2. Intelligence opportunities 3. Scene forensics 4. Crime scene enquiries 5. Witness search 6. Victim enquiries 7. Possible motives 8. Media 9. Postmortems
10. Significant witness interview 11. Other critical actions
Media, he thought. This was a good story for the media. He would phone his contacts, start getting the story out. Maybe that would get the ball rolling. He walked on and entered the small, pristine SOCO Suite. He would phone the Argus reporter Kevin Spinella for starters, he decided.
Joe Tindall was ready for him in the first of the two rooms, known as the wet room. There was a cluster of brown paper sacks on the floor, each labelled, in black print 'Evidence Bag', a roll of brown paper on a worktop, a sink and a tall air box.
'Thanks,' Joe Tindall said, as he handed him the bag, his tone a lot less friendly than when they had met earlier, but at least he was calmer.
The SOCO officer opened the black bin liner and pulled out the individual bags of soil, then the bags of clothes. Most of the clothes were heavily bloodstained. The stench of putrefaction began to rise from the clothes bags. 'These soil samples taken from the victims' fingernails and shoes,' he said. 'You want to see if we can establish a match with the soil sample you brought in earlier?'
'From the suspect vehicle, yes. How quickly could you do this?'
'The person to do this is Hilary Flowers - appropriate name, don't you think?'
Grace smiled. 'I've used her before. She's good.'
'She's a genius on pollens. She's got me several results from pollen scrapings from victims' nostrils. But she's expensive.'
Grace shook his head in frustration. When he had first joined the police it was about solving crimes. These days, with everything farmed out to private companies, it was more about budgets. 'How quick is she?'
'She normally works on about two weeks' turnaround.'
'I don't have two weeks - we're talking about someone who might be buried alive. Every hour counts, Joe.'
Tindall looked at his watch. 'Twenty past six on a Saturday night. You're going to be lucky.' He picked up the phone and dialled. Grace watched his face, anxiously. After some moments, Tindall shook his head and whispered back, 'Voicemail.'
He left a message, asking her to call him back, urgently, then replaced the receiver. 'That's all I can do, Roy. If there's a match, she'll find it. Pollen, insect larvae, fossils, soil composition, you name it.'
'Nobody else you can think of?'
Joe Tindall looked at his watch again. 'It's Saturday night, Roy. If I leave now and drive like the clappers, I might just make the second half of the U2 concert - and get a shag afterwards. I think you're going to find that everyone else on this planet who might be able to identify soil samples also has plans for tonight.'
'My guy who's buried alive had plans for today, Joe. He was meant to be getting married.'
'Bummer.'
'You could say that.'
'I don't mean to be frivolous. But I have worked one hundred and ten hours this week, so far.'
'Join the club.'
'I can't do anything, Roy. Nothing. You know me well enough - if there was anything at all that I could suggest, I would tell you. If there was anyone, anywhere in England right now who could give us the
analysis on this soil tonight, I'd get in the car and drive to them. But I don't know anyone else. Hilary is the woman. I'll give you her number and you can keep trying. That's all I can say' Grace wrote the number down.
51
As he climbed back into his Alfa, his mobile beeped with a text mesMge.
Who's talking about a relationship? I'm just talking about sex. XXX
Grace shook his head, despairing of ever understanding women. On Tuesday night Claudine had been vile to him, berating him about the police for the best part of three hours. Now in response to his text this morning she wanted to sleep with him?
And the worst part of it was that he actually felt horny. For the first time in years. Claudine was no beauty, but she wasn't a paper- bag job either. With another empty Saturday night stretching out ahead of him, the prospect of driving to Guildford and making out with this cop-hating vegan was almost appealing.
But not appealing enough. And at this moment, his head was full of more prosaic thoughts, listing everything he needed to do in the search for Michael Harrison.
Shortly after seven o'clock, with the rain easing, accompanied by Linda Buckley, a uniformed WPC in her mid-thirties with short blonde hair and a kind but alert face, he walked from his car up the path of the neat front garden of Gillian Harrison's bungalow and rang the doorbell. It triggered a loud yapping sound from within. Moments later the door opened and a small white dog, with a pink bow on its head, rushed out and began worrying his shoes.
'Bobo! Come here! Bobo!'
He flashed his warrant card at the woman he recognized from the aborted wedding this afternoon. 'Mrs Harrison? Detective Superintendent Grace from Brighton CID, and this is the Family Liaison