Cook was on the phone, making what sounded like a private call, but waved him in, cheerily told the person at the other end that he would hold him to that drink and hung up. ‘Roy, has John Pringle contacted you yet about Cleo Morey’s car?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘I put him on it today – told him to report to you.’
‘Thanks, Brian.’ Changing the subject, Grace said, ‘Tell me something, what do you know about the DNA of twins?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘How close would the DNA of identical twins be?’
‘It would be identical.’
‘Completely?’
‘One hundred percent. The fingerprints would be different, interestingly. But the DNA would be an exact match.’
Grace thanked him and walked along to his own office. He went and closed the door, then sat quietly at his desk for some moments, planning what he was going to say very carefully before he rang the mobile number in front of him.
‘Leighton Lloyd,’ the man answered, his voice crisp and ready for a fight, as if he already knew who his caller was.
‘It’s Detective Superintendent Grace, Mr Lloyd. Can we have this conversation off the record?’
There was some surprise in the solicitor’s tone. ‘Yes. OK. We’re off the record. Do you have some new information?’
‘We have some concerns,’ Grace said, remaining guarded. He still didn’t trust the man. ‘Would you happen to know if your client has a twin?’
‘He hasn’t mentioned anything. Do you want to elaborate on this?’ Lloyd asked.
‘Not at this stage. It might be helpful to all of us if we could establish or eliminate this. Could you ask your client urgently?’
‘It’s after visiting hours. Can you authorize Lewes prison to let me speak to my client on the phone?’
‘Yes, I’ll get that done now.’
‘Would you like me to call you back tonight?’
‘I’d appreciate it.’
As Grace hung up, his phone rang again, almost immediately. ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered. The voice at the other end sounded very serious and pensive.
‘Detective Superintendent, it’s John Pringle. I’m with SOCO and I was asked to look at a fire-damaged MG motor car that was brought into the pound this morning. Brian Cook told me to report my findings to you.’
‘Yes, thank you. He said you’d be calling.’
‘I’ve just completed my examination of the vehicle, sir. Extensive fire damage to the interior has caused some of the wiring to melt, so I cannot give as complete a report as I would have liked.’
‘Understood.’
‘What I can say, sir, is that the fire wasn’t caused by anyone trying to steal the vehicle or by vandalism.’ There was a long silence.
Grace clamped the phone tighter to his ear and hunched over his desk. ‘I’m listening. What did cause it?’
‘The vehicle had been tampered with. Deliberate sabotage without any question. An extra set of fuel injectors had been added and positioned to spray petrol directly into the driver footwell when the ignition was switched on. A wiring loop had been connected from the starter motor so as to send out sparks into the footwell when it activated. Combined with that, although it is hard to be certain, because so much of the wiring has melted, it looks to me as if the wiring of the central door locking had been altered, so that once locked the doors could not be unlocked.’
Grace felt a cold prickle crawl down his spine.
‘This has been done by someone very clever, someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It wasn’t about harming the car, Detective Superintendent. In my view, they were intending to kill the driver.’
Grace sat on one of the two large red sofas in the downstairs room of Cleo’s house, with Cleo snuggled up beside him, the empty fish tank sitting on the table still filled with water. He had one arm draped around her and he was holding a large glass of Glenfiddich and ice with his free hand. Her hair smelled freshly washed and fragrant. She felt warm, alive, so intensely, beautifully alive. And so vulnerable.
He was scared as hell for her.
Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers was playing on the hi-fi. It was exquisite music, but it was too poignant, too sad for this moment. He needed silence, or something cheerful, but he didn’t know what. He suddenly felt that he didn’t know anything. Except for this. That he loved this beautiful, warm, funny creature he was holding. He loved her truly and deeply, more than he had ever imagined he could love anyone after Sandy. And that somehow he had to let Sandy go. He did not want her shadow destroying this relationship.
And he could not stop thinking what would have happened if that sad little villain, who was still fighting for his life, had not beaten her to her car.
If there had been no police stakeout. Nobody around to pull her out.
The thought was almost unbearable. Some psycho had planned to kill her and had gone to great trouble.
Who?
Why?
And if that person had tried once and failed, then was he – or she – going to try again?
His mind went back to Sunday, when someone had sliced open the soft-top of the MG. Was that just a coincidence or was there a connection?
Tomorrow a detective would sit down with her and go through a list of all the people she might have upset during her work. There were plenty of relatives of victims who got angry about their loved ones having post-mortems – and invariably they took their anger out on Cleo rather than on the coroner, who was actually the person responsible for that decision.
Cleo had initially greeted the news with disbelief, but during the past hour, since he had arrived home, it was starting to sink in, and the shock was now hitting her.
She leaned down, picked up her wine glass and drained it. ‘What I don’t understand is—’ She stopped in mid-sentence, as if a thought had struck her. ‘If someone was going to wire my car to blow up, wouldn’t they do it to make it look like an accident? They’d know that forensics would be crawling all over it afterwards. It sounds like what this person did made it look very obvious.’
‘You’re right. Whoever it was, they did, they made it very obvious. Although I doubt they could have easily disguised what was done. I’m not a mechanic, but it was a lot more elaborate than just crossing a couple of wires.’ It was vicious, sadistic, he thought but did not say. He hadn’t yet told her that her car was now being treated as a crime scene, the event categorized as a major incident, with a senior investigating officer being appointed and a full inquiry team.
She turned and looked at him with round, worried eyes. ‘I just can’t think of anyone who could have done this, Roy.’
‘What about your ex?’
‘Richard?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. ‘No, he wouldn’t go this far.’
‘He stalked you for months. You had to threaten him with a court order at one point – that was when he backed off, you said. But some stalkers don’t go away.’
‘I just cannot imagine him doing this.’
‘Didn’t you say he raced cars?’
‘He did, until God started occupying his weekends.’
Grace’s mobile rang. He put his glass down and disentangled himself from Cleo, to retrieve it from his jacket pocket. Glancing at the caller display, he saw it was Lloyd.
‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.
‘OK, I’ve spoken to my client,’ the solicitor said. ‘He was adopted. He doesn’t know anything about his birth parents.’
‘Does he know anything about his background at all?’
‘He only found out he was adopted after the death of his parents. After his mother died he was going through her papers and found his original birth certificate. It was a big shock – he didn’t know.’
‘Has he made any attempt to find his birth parents?’
‘He says he had been planning to quite recently, but hadn’t yet done anything about it.’
Grace thought for a moment. ‘Did he by any chance tell you where his birth certificate is?’
‘Yes. It’s in a filing cabinet in his office at Dyke Road Avenue. It’s in a folder marked Personal. Would you like to tell me any more?’
‘Not at this stage,’ Grace replied. ‘But thank you. I’ll let you know what I find.’
He ended the call, then immediately dialled the number of the Operation Chameleon incident room.