‘So he should.’
‘Indeed,’ Grace said. He studied his note pages again. ‘You are certain you didn’t go out anywhere in between having dinner with Mr Taylor and leaving in the morning?’
Brian Bishop hesitated, thinking about the bizarre phone conversation yesterday with Sophie, when she had been insisting that he slept with her after his dinner with Phil Taylor. That made no sense. There was no way on earth he could have driven an hour and a half down to her flat in Brighton, then back up to London again and not remembered.
Was there?
Looking at each police officer in turn, he said, ‘I didn’t. No. Absolutely not.’
Grace observed the man’s hesitation. Now wasn’t the moment to reveal the piece of information he had, that Bishop’s Bentley had been clocked by a camera heading towards Brighton at eleven forty-seven on Thursday night.
Grace had a number of detectives available to him in Sussex Police who were specifically trained in interviewing techniques and would put Bishop under pressure. He decided to hold back this nugget of information, so they could spring it on the man at the appropriate moment.
That interview process would begin when Grace decided to treat Bishop formally as a suspect. And he was fast approaching that decision.
47
On the two o’clock news on Southern Counties Radio, the murder of Katie Bishop remained the top story, as it had been on all of the bulletins he had caught throughout the past twenty-four hours. Each time he heard it, the story seemed a little more pepped up with carefully chosen words to make it increasingly glamorous. It was starting to sound like something from a soap opera, he thought.
Brighton socialite, Katie Bishop.
Wealthy businessman husband, Brian.
Millionaires’ row, Dyke Road Avenue.
The news presenter, whose name was Dick Dixon, sounded young, although he looked older in his photograph on the BBC website, craggier and very different from his voice. His picture was up on the screen now, quite mean-looking, like the actor Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs. Not a person you’d want to mess with, though you’d never have guessed that from his friendly voice.
With the help of the editorial team behind him, Dick Dixon was trying his best to turn this bulletin, in which there were no fresh developments to report on the murder investigation, into one which gave the impression that a breakthrough was imminent. A sense of urgency was created by cutting to the taped voice of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, from a press conference earlier today.
‘This is a particularly nasty crime,’ the Detective Superintendent said. ‘One in which the sanctity of a private home, protected by an elaborate alarm, was breached and a human life tragically and brutally destroyed. Mrs Bishop was a tireless worker for local charities and one of this city’s most popular citizens. We offer our deepest sympathy to her husband and all her family, and we will work around the clock to bring the evil creature who did this to justice.’
Evil creature.
As he listened to the officer, he sucked his hand. The pain was getting worse.
Evil creature.
There was noticeable swelling, he could see it clearly if he put his two hands together. And there was something else he did not like the look of: thin red lines seemed to be tracking out, away from the wound and up his wrist. He continued sucking hard, trying to draw out any poison that might be in there. A freshly brewed mug of tea sat on his desk. He stirred it, counting carefully.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Dick Dixon was speaking again now, talking about a growing protest movement over a proposed third terminal at Gatwick airport. A local MP’s voice came on, launching a savage attack.
Evil creature.
He stood up, fuming, and stepped away from his workstation, threading his way across the basement floor through stacks of computer equipment, piles of motoring magazines and motor car workshop manuals, towards the grimy bay window that was protected by net curtains. No one could see in, but he could see out. Looking up from his lair, as he liked to call it, he saw a pair of shapely legs cross his eye-line, striding by on the pavement, along the railings. Long, bare, brown legs, firm and muscular, with a mini-skirt that barely covered her bits.
He felt a prick of lust, then immediately felt bad about that.
Terrible.
Evil creature.
He knelt down on the spot, on the thin, faded carpet that smelled of dust, cupped his face in his hands and recited the Lord’s Prayer. When he had reached the end, he continued with a further prayer: ‘Dear God, please forgive my lustful thoughts. Please do not let them stand in my way. Please don’t let me squander all the time you have graciously given me on these thoughts.’
He continued to pray for some minutes, then, finally, stood up, feeling refreshed, energized, happy that God was with him in the room now. He walked back over to his workstation and drank some tea. Someone on the radio was explaining how to fly a kite. He had never flown a kite in his life, and it had never, before, occurred to him to try. But maybe he should. Perhaps it would take his mind off things. Might be a good way to spend some of that time that was piling up in his account.
Yes, a kite.
Good.
Where did you buy one? In a sports shop? A toyshop? Or the internet, of course!
Not too big a kite, because he was tight on space in the flat. He liked it here, and the place was ideal for him, because it had three entrances – or, more importantly, three exits.
Perfect for an evil creature.
The flat was on the busy thoroughfare of Sackville Road, close to the junction with Portland Road, and there were always vehicles passing by, day and night. It was a downmarket area, this end. A quarter of a mile to the south, closer to the sea, it became rapidly smarter. But here, close to an industrial estate, with a railway bridge running overhead and a few grime-fronted shops, it was a ragbag of unloved, modest-sized Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses, all of them split up into rooming houses, bedsits, cheap flats or offices.
There were always people around. Mostly students, as well as some transients and dossers, and the occasional dealer or two. Just sometimes, a few of Hove’s elderly, gentrified, blue-rinse ladies could be seen out and about in daylight, waiting at the bus stop or waddling to a shop. It was a place where you could come and go, twenty-four/seven, without attracting attention.
Which made it perfect for his purposes. Apart from the damp, the inadequate storage heaters and the leaking cistern which he kept fixing, over and over. He did all the maintenance down here himself. He didn’t want workmen coming in. Not a good idea.
Not a good idea at all.
One exit was up the front steps. Another was out the back, through a garden belonging to the ground-floor flat, above him. The owner, a wasted-looking guy with straggly hair, grew rust and weeds in it very successfully. The third exit was for Doomsday, when it finally came. It was concealed behind a false, plywood wall, carefully and seamlessly covered in the same drab floral paper as the rest of the room. Over it, like over most of the wall space down here, he had stuck cuttings from newspapers, photographs and parts of family trees.
One photograph was brand new – he had added it just a quarter of an hour ago. It was a grainy head and shoulders of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, from today’s Argus, which he had scanned into his computer, blown up, and then printed.