Then, holding his security card up to the grey Interflex eye beside the door, he entered the custody centre, walked across past the central pod, where, as usual, some sad bit of lowlife – this one a skinny Rasta youth in a grubby vest, camouflage trousers and sandals – was being booked in, and headed through an internal security door up the stairs to the first floor.
Jane Paxton was already seated in the small observation room, in front of the colour monitor, which was switched on but blank. Both the video and audio would be off to give Brian Bishop privacy with his lawyer, until the interview formally started. She had thoughtfully brought over two bottles of water for them. Grace put his notepad on the work surface in front of his empty chair, then went down to the small kitchenette at the end of the corridor and made himself a mug of strong coffee. It was a cheap brand in a big tin that looked like it had been there a while and smelled stale. Some prat had left the milk out and it had gone off, so he left his coffee black.
As he carried it back into the room he said, ‘You didn’t want any tea or coffee, did you?’
‘Never use them,’ she said primly, with a faint reprimand in her voice, as if he had just offered some Class A drugs.
As he set his mug down, the speaker crackled and the monitor flickered into life. Now he could see the four men in the interview room, Branson, Nicholl, Bishop and Lloyd. Three of them had removed their jackets. The two detectives had their ties on but their shirt sleeves rolled up.
In the observation room they had a choice of two cameras and Grace switched to the one that gave him the best view of Bishop’s face.
Addressing Bishop, with the occasional deferential glance at the man’s solicitor, Glenn Branson started with the standard opening of all interview sessions with suspects: ‘This interview is being recorded on tape and video, and this can be monitored remotely.’
Grace caught his fleeting, cheeky, upward glance.
Branson again cautioned Bishop, who nodded.
‘It is ten fifteen p.m., Monday 7 August,’ he continued. ‘I am Detective Sergeant Branson. Can each of you identify yourselves for the benefit of the tape?’
Brian Bishop, Leighton Lloyd and DC Nicholl then introduced themselves. When they had finished, Branson continued, ‘Mr Bishop, can you run us through, in as much detail as possible, your movements during the twenty-four hours leading up to the time when DS Nicholl and myself came to see you at the North Brighton Golf Club on Friday morning?’
Grace watched intently as Brian Bishop gave his account. He prefaced it by stating that it was normal for him to take the train to London early on Monday mornings, spend the week alone at his flat in Notting Hill, working late, often with evening meetings, and return to Brighton on Friday evenings for the weekend. Last week, he said, because he had a golf tournament that began early on Friday morning, as part of his club’s centenary celebrations, he had driven to London late on Sunday evening, in order to have his car up there, so that he could drive straight down to the golf club on Friday morning.
Grace noted this exception to Bishop’s normal routine down on his pad.
Bishop related his day at work, at the Hanover Square offices of his company, International Rostering Solutions PLC, until the evening, when he had walked down to Piccadilly to meet his financial adviser, Phil Taylor, for dinner at a restaurant called the Wolseley.
Phil Taylor, he explained, organized his personal annual tax planning. After dinner, he had left the restaurant and gone home to his flat, a little later than he had planned and having drunk rather more than he had intended. He had slept badly, he explained, partly as a result of two large espressos and a brandy, and partly because he was worried about oversleeping and arriving late at the golf club the next morning.
Keeping rigidly to his script, Branson went back over the account, asking for specific details here and there, in particular regarding the people he had spoken to during the day. He asked him if he could recall speaking to his wife, and Bishop replied that he had, at around two p.m., when Katie had rung him to discuss the purchase of some plants for the garden, as Bishop was planning a Sunday lunch garden party early in September for his executives.
Bishop added that he had phoned British Telecom for a wake-up call at five thirty a.m. when he had arrived home after his dinner with Phil Taylor.
As Grace was in the middle of writing that down, his mobile phone rang. It was a young-sounding officer, who introduced himself as PC David Curtis, telling him they were outside the Brighton and Hove Mortuary, that the lights of the premises were off, and everything looked quiet and in order.
Grace stepped outside the room and asked him if he could see a blue MG sports car outside. PC Curtis told him that the parking area was empty.
Grace thanked him and hung up. Immediately he dialled Cleo’s home number. She answered on the second ring.
‘Hi!’ she said breezily. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Are you OK?’ he asked, relieved beyond belief at hearing her voice.
‘Me? Fine! I’ve got a glass of wine in my hand and I’m about to dive into my bath!’ she said sleepily. ‘How are you?’
‘I’ve been worried out of my wits.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Jesus! You said there was someone outside the mortuary! You were going to call me straight back! I was – I thought—’
‘Just a couple of drunks,’ she said. ‘They were looking for Wood-vale Cemetery – mumbling about going to pay their respects to their mother.’
‘Don’t do this to me!’ he said.
‘Do what?’ she asked, all innocence.
He shook his head, smiling in relief. ‘I have to get back.’
‘Of course you do. You’re an important detective, on a big case.’
‘Now you’re taking the piss.’
‘Already had one of those, when I got home. Now I’m going to have my bath. Night-night!’
He walked back into the observation room, smiling, exasperated and relieved. ‘Have I missed anything?’ he asked Jane Paxton.
She shook her head. ‘DS Branson’s good,’ she said.
‘Tell him that later. He needs a boost. His ego’s on the floor.’
‘What is it with you men and ego?’ she asked him.
Grace looked at her head, poking out of her tent of a blouse, her double chin and her flat-ironed hair, and then at the wedding band and solitaire ring on her podgy finger. ‘Doesn’t your husband have an ego?’
‘He wouldn’t bloody dare.’
91
The Time Billionaire knew all about happy pills. But he had never taken one. No need. Hey, who needed happy pills when you could come home on a Monday night to find the postman had delivered to your doormat the workshop manual for a 2005 MG TF sports car that you had ordered on Saturday?
It was the last year that this model was manufactured before MG ceased production and were bought up by a Chinese company. It was the model that Cleo Morey drove. Navy blue. Now fitted with its matching blue hardtop, despite the blistering hot weather, because some jerk had vandalized the soft-top roof with a knife. What a son of a bitch! What a creep! What a goddamn piece of lowlife shit!
And it was Tuesday morning! One of the days that the stupid, grumpy cleaning woman with the ungrateful daughter didn’t come! She had told him that herself, yesterday.
Best of all, Brian Bishop had been arrested. It was the front-page splash of the morning edition of the Argus. It was on the local radio! It would be on the local television news, for sure. Maybe even the national news! Joy! What goes around comes around! Like the wheels of a car! Cleo Morey’s car!