Cleo Morey had the top of the range, the TF 160, with its variable valve controlled engine. He listened to it now, 1.8 litres revving up sweetly in the cool, early-morning air. Eight o’clock. She worked long hours, had to credit her that.
Now she was pulling out of her parking space, driving up the street, holding first gear too long, but maybe she was enjoying the echoing blatter of the exhaust.
Getting in through the front gates of the courtyard development where Cleo Morey lived was a no-brainer. Just four numbers on a touch pad. He’d picked those up easily enough by watching other residents returning home through his binoculars, from the comfort of his car.
The courtyard was empty. If any nosy neighbour was peeking from behind their blinds, they would have seen the same neatly dressed man with his clipboard, the Seeboard crest on his jacket pocket, as yesterday and assumed he had come to recheck the gas meter. Or something.
His freshly cut key turned sweetly in the lock. Thanks to God’s help! He stepped inside, into the large, open-plan downstairs area, and shut the door behind him. The silence smelled of furniture polish and freshly ground coffee beans. He heard the faint hum of a fridge.
He looked around, taking everything in, which he had not had the time to do yesterday, not with the grumpy woman on his back. He saw cream walls hung with abstract paintings that he did not understand. Modern rugs scattered on a shiny oak floor. Two red sofas, black lacquered furniture, a big television, an expensive stereo system. A copy of Sussex Life magazine on a side table. And unlit candles. Dozens of them. Dozens and bloody dozens, on silver sticks, in opaque glass pots, in vases – was she a religious freak? Did she hold black masses? Another good reason why she had to go. God would be happy to be rid of her!
Then he saw the square glass fish tank on a coffee table, with a goldfish swimming around what looked like the remains of a miniature Greek temple.
‘You need releasing,’ the Time Billionaire said. ‘It’s wrong to keep animals imprisoned.’
He wandered across to a wall-to-ceiling row of crammed bookshelves. He saw Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock. Then a James Herbert novel, Nobody True. A Natasha Cooper crime novel. Several Ian Rankin books and an Edward Marston historical thriller.
‘Wow!’ he said aloud. ‘We have the same taste in literature! Too bad we’ll never get a chance to discuss books! You know, in different circumstances you and I might have been pretty good friends.’
Then he opened the drawer in a table. It contained elastic bands, a book of parking vouchers, a broken garage-opener remote control, a solitary battery, envelopes. He rummaged through but did not find what he was looking for. He closed it. Then he looked around, opened two more drawers, closed them again, without luck. The drawers in the kitchen yielded nothing either.
His hand was still hurting. Stinging all the time, getting worse, despite the pills. And he had a headache. His head throbbed constantly and he was feeling a little feverish, but it was nothing he couldn’t cope with.
He wandered upstairs slowly, taking his time. Cleo Morey had only just gone to work. He had all the time in the world. Hours of the stuff if he wanted!
On the second floor he found a small bathroom. Opposite was her den. He went in. It was a chaotically untidy room, lined again with crammed bookshelves; almost all of the books seemed to be on philosophy. A desk piled with papers, with a laptop in the middle of them, sat in front of a window overlooking the rooftops of Brighton, towards the sea. He opened each drawer of the desk, tidily inspecting the contents before closing them carefully. Then he opened and shut each of the four drawers of the metal filing cabinet.
Her bedroom was on the next floor, on the other side of a spiral staircase that appeared to lead up to the roof. He went in and sniffed her bed. Then he pulled back the purple counterpane and pressed his nose into her pillows, inhaling deeply. The scents tightened his groin. Carefully he peeled back the duvet, sniffing every inch of the sheet. More of her! More of her still! No scents of Detective Superintendent Grace! No semen stains from him on the sheet! Just her scents and smells! Hers alone! Left there for him to savour.
He replaced the duvet, then the counterpane carefully. So carefully. No one would ever know he had been here.
There was a modern, black lacquered dressing table in the room. He opened its one drawer and there, nestling in between her jewellery boxes, he saw it! The black leather fob with the letters MG embossed in gold. The two shiny, unused keys, and the ring that was hooped through them.
He closed his eyes and said a brief prayer of thanks to God, who had guided him to them. Then he held up the keys to his lips and kissed them. ‘Beautiful!’
He closed the drawer, pocketed the keys and went back downstairs, then made his way straight over to the fish tank. He pushed up the cuff of his jacket, then the sleeve of his shirt, and sank his hand into the tepid water. It was like trying to grab hold of soap in the bathtub! But finally he managed to grip the wriggling, slippery goldfish, closing his fingers around the stupid creature.
Then he tossed it on to the floor.
He heard it flipping around as he let himself back out of the front door.
92
The joint morning briefing for Operations Chameleon and Mistral ended shortly after nine o’clock. There was a mood of optimism now that a suspect was in custody. And this was heightened by the fact that there was a witness, the elderly lady who lived opposite Sophie Harrington and had identified Brian Bishop outside her house around the time of the murder. With luck, Grace hoped, that DNA analysis on semen present in Sophie Harrington’s vagina would match Bishop’s. Huntington was fast-tracking the analysis and he should get the results later today.
There was now little doubt in anyone’s mind that the two murders were linked, but they were still keeping the exact details back from the press.
Names of people and times given by Bishop in his first interview were being checked out, and Grace was particularly interested to see whether the British Telecom phone records would confirm that Bishop had requested an early-morning alarm call after he had returned to his flat on Thursday night. Although, of course, that call could have been made by an accomplice. With three million pounds to be gained from the life insurance policy on his wife, the possibility that Bishop had an accomplice – or indeed more than one – had to be carefully explored.
He left the conference room, anxious to dictate a couple of letters to Eleanor, his MSA, one regarding preparations for the trial of the odious character Carl Venner, who had been arrested on the last murder case Grace had run. He walked hurriedly along the corridors and through into the large, green-carpeted, partially open-plan area that housed all the senior officers of the CID and their support staff.
To his surprise as he went through the security door that separated this area from the Major Incident Suite, he saw a large crowd of people gathered around a desk, including Gary Weston, who was the Chief Superintendent of Sussex CID and technically his immediate boss – although in reality it was Alison Vosper to whom he answered mostly.
He wondered for a moment if it was a raffle draw. Or someone’s birthday. Then, as he got closer, he saw that no one seemed to be in a celebratory mood. Everyone looked as if they were in shock, including Eleanor, who tended to look that way most of the time.