Now he was getting angry. ‘I’m sorry; this is just not fair, and you know it.’
‘This is not about what’s fair, Roy; this is about the police being seen to be competent, protecting the public.’
‘Those two who died in the car – they were guilty as hell, and they were dangerous. They’d driven through roadblocks, they hijacked two cars, they knocked an officer off his motorcycle. Would you rather we had just let them go?’ He shook his head in exasperation.
‘What I’m saying to you, Roy, is that it might be better to move you to an area where you aren’t known. Up north somewhere, perhaps. Somewhere busy that can use your skills. Somewhere like Newcastle. I’ve been asked by one of my colleagues there for the services of an experienced SIO for a sensitive investigation that could take several months, maybe a year. And I think you are the right person for that.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. This is my home. I don’t want to be transferred anywhere. I’m not even sure I’d want to stay in the force if that happened.’
‘Then pull yourself together and make sure it doesn’t. I’m drafting in another officer to share your cold-case workload as I don’t think you are making as much progress there as you should. He’s a former Detective Inspector from the Met, and we’ve promoted him to the same rank as you.’
‘Do I know him?’
‘His name is Cassian Pewe.’
Grace thought for a moment, then groaned inwardly. Detective Inspector Cassian Pewe, now to be Detective Superintendent Cassian Pewe. Grace had had a run-in with him a couple of years ago, when the Met had sent in reinforcements to help police Brighton during the Labour Party conference. He remembered him as deeply arrogant. ‘He’s coming here?’
‘He starts on Monday. He’ll be working out of an office here. Do you have a problem with that?’
Yes, he wanted to say, his brain spinning. Of course, teacher’s pet. Where else would she station him? Here was perfect, so that she and Pewe could have regular cosy chats – about how and where to undermine pain-in-the-arse Roy Grace.
But he had no choice but to say, ‘No.’
‘Your card is marked, Roy. OK?’
He felt so choked he could only nod his reply. Then his phone rang. She signalled for him to answer it.
He stepped away from her desk and looked at the display. It was from the Major Incident Suite. ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.
It was DC Nicholl, calling him excitedly to tell him they had heard back from the lab at Huntingdon. They had a positive DNA match for the body.
24
‘I can’t believe your music, man,’ Branson said. ‘It’s crap, it’s just total crap. There’s no other word for it.’
They were on a long stretch of downhill dual carriageway heading west, past the grassy expanse of the old World War II fighter base, down to their left, that had now become Shoreham Airport, a busy base for private aircraft and commercial flights to the Channel Islands, and in the direction of Southampton.
Shoreham was the extreme western suburb of Brighton, and Grace always felt a strange mixture of relief and loss when he left it behind him. Loss, because Brighton was where he really felt at home, and anywhere else felt like uncharted waters where he was out of his depth, a little insecure. And relief, because all the time he was in the Brighton and Hove City conurbation he felt a sense of responsibility, and away from it he could relax.
After his years in the force it was his second nature to subconsciously assess every pedestrian and the occupants of every car on the street. He knew most of the local villains, certainly all of the street drug dealers, and some of the muggers and burglars; knew when they were in the right place and when in the wrong place. That was one of the things so ridiculous about Alison Vosper’s threat to transfer him. A lifetime of knowledge and contacts down the pan.
Roy Grace had decided to drive, because his nerves wouldn’t take another journey with Branson showing off his high-speed pursuit skills. Now he wasn’t sure his nerves could take any more of the Detective Sergeant’s poking about with the CD player. But Branson wasn’t finished with him yet.
‘The Beatles? Who the hell listens to the Beatles in their car these days?’
‘Me, I like them,’ Grace said defensively. ‘Your problem is you can’t differentiate between loud noise and good music.’ He brought the Alfa Romeo to a stop at a red light, the junction with the Lancing College road. He had decided to take his own car because it hadn’t had a long run in a while and the battery needed a good charge. More importantly, if he had taken a pool car, Branson would probably have insisted on driving and been hurt if he hadn’t let him.
‘That’s well funny, coming from you,’ Branson said. ‘You just don’t get music!’ Then suddenly changing the subject, he pointed at a pub across the road. ‘The Sussex Pad. Do good fish there, went there with Ari. Yeah, it was good.’ Then he turned his attention back to the CD player. ‘Dido!’
‘What’s wrong with Dido?’
Branson shrugged. ‘Well, if you like that kind of thing, I suppose. I hadn’t realized how sad you were.’
‘Yeah, well I do like that kind of thing.’
‘And – Jesus – what’s this? Something you got free with a magazine?’
‘Bob Berg,’ Grace said, getting irritated now. ‘He happens to be a seriously cool modern jazz musician.’
‘Yeah, but he’s not black.’
‘Oh, right, you have to be black to be a jazz musician?’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘You are! Anyhow he’s dead – he was killed in a crash a few years ago and I love his stuff. Just an awesome tenor saxophonist. OK? Want to pull anything else apart? Or shall we talk about your hunch?’
A tad sullenly, Glenn Branson switched on the radio and tuned it into a rap station. ‘Tomorrow, right, I’m taking you clothes shopping? Well I’m going to take you music shopping as well. You get a hot date in this car and she sees your music, she’s going to be looking in the glove locker for your pension book.’
Grace tuned him out, turning his mind back to the immediate task ahead of them and all the other balls he had to keep in the air simultaneously.
His nerves were frayed this morning, both from his meeting with Alison Vosper, which had left him feeling very down, and from the task that was facing him in about an hour’s time. Ordinarily, Grace could have said with complete honesty that he liked almost every aspect of police work – except for one thing, and that was breaking the news of a death to a parent or loved one. It wasn’t something he had to do very often these days as it was a task for family liaison officers, detectives who were specially trained. But there were some situations, like the one he was going to now, where Grace wanted to be present himself to gauge the reaction, to glean as much information as he could in those key early moments after the news was broken. And he was taking Glenn Branson because he thought it would be good training for him.
Newly bereaved people followed an almost identical pattern. For the first few hours they would be in shock, totally vulnerable, and would say almost anything. But rapidly they would start to withdraw, and other members of the family would close ranks around them. If you wanted information, you had to tease it out within those first few hours. It was cruel but almost always effective, and otherwise you were stuffed for weeks, maybe months. Newspaper reporters knew that, too.
He recognized the two family liaison officers, DC Maggie Campbell and DC Vanessa Ritchie, sitting in their car, a small grey unmarked Volvo parked over on the grass verge of the lane outside the entrance to the house, and pulled the Alfa up just past them. Their two faces, frosty with disapproval, stared through the Volvo’s windscreen at him.