By twenty past three in the morning, when he finally decided to call it quits, he was just over £5,000 down. His worst loss ever on a single night.
Despite that, he still tipped the coat-check girl and the valet-parking guy their regular, crisp, fresh £10 note each.
24
Roy Grace, dressed in his tracksuit, baseball cap and jogging shoes, let himself out of Cleo’s front door just before half past five. In the glow of the street lights, the pre-dawn darkness was an amber mist and a cold wind blew salty drizzle on to his face.
He was burning with excitement and had barely slept, thinking about Cleo and the baby growing inside her. It was an incredible feeling. If he had been asked to put it into words he could not, at this moment, have done so. He felt a strange sense of empowerment, or responsibility, and, for the first time in his career, a shift in his priorities.
He walked across the yard and let himself out of the gate, glancing up and down the street, checking for anything that might look wrong. Every police officer he had ever met was the same. After a few years of being in the force you automatically clocked everything around you, constantly, whether you were in a street, a shop or a restaurant. Grace jokingly called it a healthy culture of suspicion, and there were plenty of times in his career when that had served him well.
As he set off on this late November Thursday morning, feeling more protective of Cleo than ever, nothing he saw on the deserted streets of Brighton aroused any suspicion in him. Ignoring the pain in his back and ribs from his car roll-over, he ran along the narrow pedestrianized cobbles of Kensington Gardens, past its cafés and boutiques, a second-hand furniture store and an antiques and bric-à-brac market, then along Gardner Street, past Luigi’s, one of the shops where Glenn Branson, his self-appointed style guru, insisted on taking him from time to time to spruce up his wardrobe.
As he reached deserted North Street, he saw headlights and heard the roar of a powerful engine. Moments later a black Mercedes SL sports coupé flashed past, its driver barely visible through the darkened windows. A tall, lean male figure was the sense of him that Grace got, but that was all. He wondered what the man was doing out at this hour. Returning from a party? Rushing to a ferry port or airport? You didn’t see many expensive cars this early in the morning. Mostly it was the cheaper cars and vans of manual workers. There were, of course, any number of legitimate reasons why the Mercedes would be on the road, but all the same he memorized the number: GX57 CKL.
Crossing over, he ran on through the narrow streets and alleys of the Lanes and then finally reached the seafront promenade. It was deserted except for a solitary man walking an elderly, plump dachshund. Limping less as he warmed up, he ran down the ramp, past the front of a large nightclub, the Honey Club, which was dark and silent, then stopped for some moments and touched his toes several times. Then he stood still, breathing in the tangs of the beach, of salt, oil, putrid fish, boat varnish and rotting weed, listening to the roar and sucking of the sea. The drizzle felt like cooling spray against his face.
This was one of the places he loved most in the city, down at sea level. Especially now, early morning, when it was deserted. The sea had a hold on him. He loved all of its sounds, smells, colours and changing moods; and especially the mysteries it contained, the secrets it sometimes yielded, such as the body last night. He could never imagine living somewhere landlocked, miles away from the sea.
The Palace Pier, one of the great landmarks of the city, was still lit up. New owners had changed its name to Brighton Pier a few years back, but to him and to thousands in the city it would always be the Palace Pier. Tens of thousands of bulbs burned along its length, along the rooftops of its structures, making the helter-skelter look like a beacon rising into the sky, and he wondered, suddenly, how long it would be before the pier was obliged to switch everything off at night to save energy.
He turned left and ran towards it, and then into the shadows beneath its dark, girdered mass – the place where, twenty years ago, he and Sandy had had their first kiss. Would his child one day kiss his – or her – first date here too, he wondered, as he emerged on the far side. He covered a further half-mile, then headed back to Cleo’s house. A short circuit today, just over twenty minutes, but it left him feeling refreshed and energized.
Cleo and Humphrey were still asleep. He had a quick shower, microwaved the bowl of porridge Cleo had left out for him, gulped it down while flicking through the pages of yesterday’s Argus, then headed off to the office, pulling into his parking space at the front of Sussex House, the CID headquarters, at a quarter to seven.
If he didn’t get interrupted, he would have a clear hour and a half to deal with his overnight emails and the most urgent of the paperwork before heading to the mortuary for the post-mortem on the Unknown Male, as the body hauled up by the dredger was named at this moment.
First he logged on to the computer and ran his eye over the overnight serials. It had been a quiet night. Among the highlights were a street robbery on a male in Eastern Road, an office break-in, a drunken brawl at a wake at a council estate in Moulescoomb, a trailer overturned on the A27, and six cars broken into in Tidy Street. He paused to read that item thoroughly, as it was just around the corner from Cleo’s home, but the report did not say much. He moved on to a fight at a bus stop on the London Road in the early hours, then the reported theft of a moped.
All minor stuff, he noted as he continued, scanning the entire list. Moments later he heard his door open, followed by an all-too-familiar voice.
‘Yo, old-timer! You come in early, or are you just leaving for the night?’
‘Very funny,’ Grace said, looking up at his friend – and now permanent lodger – Glenn Branson, who looked, like he always did, as if he was all suited and booted to go partying. Tall, black, his shaved head shiny as a snooker ball, the Detective Sergeant was a sharp dresser. Today he wore a shiny grey three-piece suit, a grey and white striped shirt, black loafers and a crimson silk tie. He was holding a mug of coffee in his hand.
‘Heard you were bigging it up with the new CC last night,’ Branson said. ‘Or should I say brown-nosing?’
Grace smiled. He’d been so excited by Cleo’s news that he had struggled to think of anything intelligent to say to the Chief Constable when he’d finally had a few moments with him at the party, and he knew he had failed to make the impression on him that he had hoped for. But that didn’t matter. Cleo was pregnant! Carrying their child. Did anything else really matter? He would have loved to tell Glenn the news, but he and Cleo had agreed last night to keep it quiet. Six weeks was too soon; a lot could happen. So instead he said, ‘Yep, and he’s very concerned about you.’
‘Me?’ Glenn said, looking worried suddenly. ‘Why? What did he say?’
‘It was something about your music. He said that anyone with your taste in music would make a crap police officer.’
For a moment, the DS frowned again. Then he jabbed a finger towards Grace. ‘You bastard!’ he said. ‘You’re winding me up, right?’
Grace grinned. ‘So, what news? When do I get my house back?’
Branson’s face fell. ‘You throwing me out?’
‘I could murder a coffee. You could make me a coffee in lieu of the next month’s rent. Deal?’
‘Bargain. Could have this one but it’s got sugar in it.’
Grace wrinkled his face in disapproval. ‘Kills you, that stuff.’
‘Yeah, well, sooner the better,’ Branson said bleakly, and disappeared.
Five minutes later Branson was sitting on one of the chairs in front of the Detective Superintendent’s desk, cradling his mug of coffee. Grace peered dubiously at his. ‘Did you put sugar in this?’
‘Oh shit! I’ll make you another.’
‘No, it’s OK. I won’t stir it.’ Grace stared at his friend, who looked terrible. ‘Did you remember to feed Marlon?’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded pensively. ‘Me and Marlon, we’ve bonded. We’re like soulmates.’
‘Really? Well, don’t get too close to him.’
Marlon was the goldfish Grace had won at a fairground nine years ago and the fish was still going strong. It was a surly, antisocial creature that had eaten every companion he’d bought for it. Although the six-foot two-inch detective sergeant was probably beyond even that greedy creature’s appetite, he decided. Then he quickly glanced back at the screen, noting a sudden update on the cars broken into in Tidy Street. Two youths had been arrested breaking into a car directly beneath a CCTV camera around the corner, in Trafalgar Street.
Good, he thought with some relief. Except they would probably be released on bail and be back on the streets again tonight.
‘Any developments in the Branson household?’
A few months ago, in an attempt to salvage his marriage, Branson had bought his wife, Ari, an expensive horse for eventing, using compensation he had received for an injury. But that turned out to have resulted in little more than a brief truce in a terminally hostile relationship.
‘Any more horses?’
‘I went over last night to see the kids. She told me I’ll be getting a letter from her solicitor.’ Branson shrugged.
‘A divorce lawyer?’
He nodded glumly.
Grace’s sadness for his friend was only slightly tempered by the realization that this meant Branson would be lodging at his house for a considerable time to come – and he did not have the heart to throw him out.
‘Maybe we could have a drink tonight and chat?’ Branson asked.
Much though he loved this man, Grace responded with a less than enthusiastic, ‘Yup, sure.’ His chats with Glenn about Ari had become interminable, always going over and over the same ground. The reality was that Glenn’s wife not only no longer loved him, but didn’t even like him. Privately, Grace thought she was the kind of woman who would never be satisfied with what she had in any relationship, but each time he tried to tell his friend that, Glenn responded defensively, as if he still believed there was a solution, however elusive.
‘Actually, tell you what, mate,’ Grace said, ‘are you busy this morning?’
‘Yeah – but nothing that can’t wait a few hours. Why?’
‘Got a body hauled up by a dredger yesterday. I put DI Mantle in charge, but she’s on a course up in Bramshill Police College today and tomorrow. Thought you might like to come to the postmortem.’
Branson’s eyes widened as he shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘Boy, you really know how to treat someone when they’re down, don’t you! You’re going to cheer me up by taking me to see a floater having a post-mortem, on a wet November morning. Man, that’s guaranteed to be a laugh a minute.’
‘Yep, well, it might do you good to see someone worse off than yourself.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Besides, Nadiuska’s performing it.’
Quite apart from her professional skills and her cheery personality, Nadiuska De Sancha, the forty-eight-year-old Home Office pathologist, was a striking-looking woman. A statuesque redhead with Russian aristocratic blood, she looked a good decade younger than her years and, despite being happily married to an eminent plastic surgeon, enjoyed flirting and had a wicked sense of humour. Grace had never encountered any officer in the Sussex Police Force who did not fancy her.
‘Ah!’ Branson said, perking up suddenly. ‘You didn’t tell me that bit!’
‘Not that you are so shallow it would have made any difference to your decision.’
‘You’re my boss. I do whatever you tell me.’
‘Really? I’ve never noticed.’