Want You Dead Read online

  Grace drained his glass of Coke then topped it up. ‘Yeah.’ He was remembering him well, too. Which accounted for his drinking binge last night, which he was now regretting in the cold light of day. After Pewe had returned to the Met with his tail between his legs, Grace had found out that Pewe had messed with evidence on a cold case he was looking into, and he had threatened him with arrest.

  What he had never known, and still did not, was that Cassian Pewe had had a brief affair with his wife, Sandy.

  He told Glenn Branson the latest news about the appointment.

  ‘I can’t believe it! Pewe? Assistant Chief Constable?’

  ‘Yeah, well you’re going to have to believe it.’

  ‘Remember that movie, The Sting?’

  ‘Robert Redford and Paul Newman?’

  ‘And Robert Shaw.’

  ‘What about it?’

  Branson shrugged. ‘I’ll set my mind to it. We’ll sort the bastard out, somehow.’

  For the first time since he had left Tom Martinson’s office last night, Grace smiled. ‘Thanks mate, I like your attitude. Maybe I should try a charm offensive first.’

  ‘Got a snake charmer, have you?’

  ‘I should try to find one on Google.’ Grace grinned again, then looked serious. ‘So, you didn’t come to hear my problems. Tell me.’

  ‘You asked me to go and talk to Ms Red Westwood last night, yeah?’

  Roy Grace nodded.

  ‘She’s a smart lady. Intelligent and rational. I’ll give you the full history and I think you’re going to agree with me when you’ve heard it that the doctor at Haywards Heath Golf Club – the burnt body and the suicide note – there might be something more going on there than we think.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning it might not be suicide.’

  ‘All the forensic evidence indicates he took his own life,’ Grace said, taking a sip of his coffee. ‘He was alive at the time the fire started. There was flame damage to his mouth and throat, and he had inhaled a lot of smoke.’

  ‘Hear me out,’ Branson said, pulling out his notebook, then going through everything he had written down in faithful detail.

  Twenty minutes later, Grace scrabbled through the piles of folders cluttering his desk and pulled out the one on Dr Karl Murphy. From it he extracted his copy of Murphy’s suicide note. Instantly his eyes went to the one sentence he found so curious.

  ‘How much did this lady tell you about Dr Murphy, Glenn?’

  Branson thought for some moments. Through the window Grace noticed a police patrol car slow down, indicating left as it travelled down the hill, then turning in towards the gates to the Custody Centre. He caught a glimpse of a hunched figure in the rear. A prisoner, arrested for some alleged offence, on his way to be processed. In his gloom, Grace’s thoughts momentarily digressed to his baby son, Noah. There were so many sodding miscreants out there, and they would only ever arrest a tiny percentage. How the hell could he ever make this world safe for his child?

  As Glenn Branson relayed all that Red Westwood had said about Karl Murphy, Grace made notes. The doctor was a keen golfer – which fitted with his body being found on a golf course – and, from what little he knew of the game, Haywards Heath had a high reputation.

  ‘Red said he liked puzzles,’ Branson continued. ‘He did The Times crossword every day – he’d told her proudly that his record time was just two minutes short of the world champion.’

  ‘You any good at crosswords?’ Grace asked him.

  Branson shook his head. ‘Don’t think I’m hardwired that way. Ari did them sometimes, used to ask me for help with some clues. I never understood them, except if they were to do with movies. She said I was thick.’ He looked sad suddenly, then shrugged. ‘Yeah, she was probably right. She was a lot smarter than me.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘We did have good times. Before . . .’

  Grace looked at him quizzically. It was the first time in a while that his friend had mentioned his wife. ‘Before?’

  Branson shrugged. ‘Before Sammy was born. That’s when it all changed. Suddenly I was no longer number one in her life. Don’t let that happen to you and Cleo.’

  Grace knew what he meant. He and Cleo had discussed this many times, and they’d both agreed that whilst the birth of Noah had changed things and they loved him truly, deeply, they would always make time for each other. He nodded. ‘We’re working on it.’

  ‘Work on it hard, mate. Our happiness graph hit rock bottom and stayed there. It got even worse after Remi was born and Ari became depressed.’

  He stopped suddenly, with a catch in his voice, and Grace saw a single tear trickle down his cheek. He leaned across his desk and patted Glenn on his shoulder. ‘She gave you hell that you never deserved, mate. Don’t forget that.’

  Glenn smiled and wiped away his tear with the back of his hand. ‘Yeah. I know. But I can’t help thinking back.’

  ‘You’d be a strange man if you didn’t.’

  Glenn nodded and sniffed. ‘Okay, let’s focus. One other thing, for what it’s worth, Red said that Karl Murphy’s wife, who died, was German-born, like his mother.’

  ‘Any significance in that?’

  Branson shook his head. ‘Well, nothing that she’s aware of.’

  Despite his head feeling like it had been stung by a thousand bees, Roy Grace drummed his fingers on his desktop, and for some moments was preoccupied with his thoughts. ‘I don’t like what I’m hearing from you about the fires.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘What we have against us is the pathologist’s report. But . . .’ He read through his notes. ‘This connection through the fires. Red Westwood is the one common link in all of them. I think I’d like to get a second opinion from Jack Skerritt.’

  Roy Grace was Head of Major Crime, and could make the decision to upgrade the enquiry into Dr Karl Murphy’s death into a murder investigation on his own. But because of his uncertainties, and both the time and financial costs to the force of a full-scale murder enquiry, it was normal practice to run his thoughts past his superior – as much to cover his own back as for any other reason, particularly as he knew that ACC Cassian Pewe would be looking for any errors of judgement to give him the chance to haul him over the coals.

  He called Skerritt’s assistant, to be told he was away today but had a thirty-minute window first thing the next morning.

  ‘I can take over the investigation for you while you’re on honeymoon,’ Glenn said. ‘I don’t want this to mess it up for you.’

  ‘My work comes first,’ Grace said.

  The DI shook his head. ‘That’s what screwed up your marriage to Sandy, and mine to Ari. Don’t let it happen to you again. You’ve got someone very special in Cleo.’

  ‘Karl Murphy was very special to some people, too,’ Grace said. ‘We need to find out the truth.’

  ‘I’m not letting you screw your life up, mate. You’d better understand that.’

  Grace stared back at his friend and colleague. And saw he looked deadly serious.

  50

  Tuesday, 29 October

  It was full daylight now, but still raining hard beneath a bitumen black sky. Back in his van, parked a short distance along from Worthing fire station, Bryce Laurent was glad of the cover the rain would give him. He saw the fire station doors rise. Moments later two appliances, blue lights strobing, sirens wailing, pulled out into the rush-hour traffic. It was shortly after 9 a.m. He noticed in the front passenger seat of the second fire engine the figure of Matt Wainwright. Crew Commander. He knew the routine.

  Ninety seconds after the klaxon sounded in the fire station, the crews would head out, following the instructions on the slip of paper printed out at the station, and the updates in real time on the computer screen inside the cab. He’d enjoyed his brief time as a Fire and Rescue officer with this crew here.

  But he hadn’t been so happy when they’d sacked him.

  That was so totally not deserved. Ma
tt was a wannabe magician. Laurent had helped him, shown him some of the tricks of the trade. Then the little shit had started taking some of his gigs. That had to be stopped.

  And, oh yes, he was going to stop this!

  The appliances screamed past him.

  And something screamed inside his head.

  His mother.

  He dug his fingers into his ears.

  But still he could hear her screams.

  That night.

  That night he became free.

  51

  ‘Are you ready for Mummy, darling?’

  She came staggering into his bedroom, naked except for her red high heels, as he lay reading Dennis the Menace in The Beano comic. She had a bent joint in her mouth, with an inch of ash on the tip, and fumes of alcohol filled the air, along with the pungent, rubbery smell of the burning drug.

  Moments later she sat heavily on the side of the bed, and looked down in surprise as the ash fell onto the carpet. Her long red hair tumbled around her face like a stage curtain coming down on the first act. She gave him the joint and told him to draw on it. He did so out of duty, then she told him to draw on it again, and slid her hand under the duvet, taking hold of him.

  His head began swimming and he felt a tingling deep in his belly. And burning embarrassment. Her grip on him was starting to feel deeply erotic. She slipped her flaccid, wrinkled body under the sheets beside him, and tossed his comic onto the floor, then gripped his penis harder in her hand and began to massage it gently. Despite himself, he felt it enlarging. Until suddenly it was so painfully stiff it hurt.

  ‘Mummy can make that better,’ she whispered. ‘Oooh, you’re such a big boy. So big! So handsome. So many women will want you, but they are dirty women, unclean women. You’re too good for the trash out there. You are Mummy’s very special boy, Mummy’s big boy. Let me feel my big boy inside me.’

  Now Bryce was remembering Valentine’s night, three months later, when he was sixteen. He had been out drinking, for the first time, with the only person he connected with at school. Ricky Heley. They were tall and mature-looking for their age, and no one had challenged them in the pubs. Ricky was an outsider like himself. He had a pretty face and a clumsy, gangly body. They were the only two boys in the class who didn’t have girlfriends – not even a crush – let alone dated a girl. Bryce didn’t dare chat any girl up – he was scared of how his mother would react.

  That morning he and Ricky had each received ten Valentine cards, much to the apparent astonishment of their classmates. They were filled with individual and deeply personal declarations of love and cravings from secret admirers. For a brief while they were taken in, until the smirks of their classmates gave the game away.

  That night he and Ricky went on a drinking binge. They walked through Kemp Town to a series of pubs, several where Ricky said he knew how to get free drinks. In each of them much older men stood them pints and whisky chasers, and chatted to them. In each pub, as soon as they had drained their glasses, Ricky would grab Bryce’s arm and lead him away, ignoring the pleas of whoever had bought them the drinks to stay.

  It was the first time Bryce had drunk alcohol, and as he staggered home up the steep hill, past Queen’s Park, veering unsteadily across the pavement and clinging to an equally unsteady Ricky Heley, he felt anger smouldering inside him. They staggered into Freshfield Road and crossed the wide street to the terraced house where he lived.

  ‘Thanks,’ he slurred to Ricky. ‘For helping me home. Not sure. Not sure how.’ He stopped, his vision blurry. Suddenly Ricky lunged forward, pressing his lips against his.

  ‘Hey!’ Bryce pushed him away.

  Ricky persisted, cupping Bryce’s face hard with his hands, pressing his lips against his mouth and pushing his tongue inside. Bryce responded by bringing his right leg up as hard as he could into Heley’s groin. As his friend staggered back, Bryce took several steps forward and punched him on the nose. Blood spattered around his friend’s mouth. Heley took a further few steps back and fell over.

  ‘Don’t ever fucking do that to me again, you poof,’ Bryce said. Then, leaving him lying on the pavement with blood pouring from his nose, Bryce let himself into the house and closed the front door behind him. As he did so, he heard his mother’s slurred voice.

  ‘That you?’

  ‘Urrr.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘You’ve been drinking?’ There was sharp accusation in her voice.

  ‘I’m sixteen.’

  ‘Have you been with any women?’

  ‘I haven’t, no.’

  ‘I need you so badly. Come to Mummy!’

  He climbed the stairs slowly, unsteadily, reluctantly, hating this, hating himself, hating what the other boys at school would say if they ever found out. He stumbled along the landing and stood in the doorway of his mother’s room. She was sitting up in her wide pink bed, a cigarette between her lips, an almost empty glass of wine in her hand, her breasts practically falling out of her low negligee, leering at him. ‘Come here, my baby,’ she said.

  ‘I’m tired, Mummy.’

  ‘Come and satisfy your mummy! Your mummy needs it so bad tonight, my baby.’ Without removing the cigarette from her lips, she drew on it, then snorted the smoke through her nostrils, and tapped the ash into a saucer overflowing with butts on the bedside table. A movie was playing on television, one of the hard-man action thrillers she watched incessantly. ‘Bring it here to me, darling,’ she said.

  And suddenly, as if the anger smouldering deep within him had set light to the kindling, there was a burning explosion inside him. He stared with absolute hatred, clenching his fists. He looked at her mahogany Victorian dressing table. At the mass of perfume bottles and make-up containers, bottles and tubes of cream and lotions, and a canister of hairspray.

  The hairspray.

  Suddenly, despite his drunkenness, he was thinking with clarity. He dug his left hand into his pocket and wiggled his handkerchief out.

  ‘Come to Mummy!’

  ‘I have to blow my nose.’

  She frowned as instead of blowing his nose he wound the handkerchief around his right hand.

  ‘What are you doing, my darling?’

  He stumbled over to the dressing table, grabbed the hairspray in his handkerchiefed right hand, pushed off the top with his thumb, then lunged at his mother, pressing the button down hard, directing the jet straight at her face.

  She stared at him with a look of total surprise. An instant later, as the spray flared up the burning cigarette, there was a fierce roaring sound and it erupted into flame. She screamed. He kept his finger on the button. Kept spraying as flames caught hold of her hair. She screamed again, wriggled desperately. Her nightdress was on fire now, and the bedclothes. Still he kept the button pressed down. As the flames blackened her skin her screams became less and less strong, turning into a rasping gasp. Until she fell silent, her face all black now, her eyes moving but sightless, two tiny white orbs swivelling in their darkened sockets, her mouth opening and shutting.

  The whole bed was burning now. He backed away, and stood watching in the doorway as the curtains caught fire and the flames crept up to the ceiling. He could still see his mother, her body making small movements, and he could smell roasting meat.

  Then, with his handkerchief still around his hand, he put the spray back on the bedside table, picked the top off the floor and pushed it back on, then backed out of the room, leaving the door open, and went through to his own room. Keeping the light off, he peered down into the street. Heley had gone. Good. There was no one there. Good. As quietly as he could, he opened the window, letting in the night air. Opened it as wide as it would go. Moments later he heard the roar of flames intensify.

  Hastily he removed his clothes, pulled on his pyjamas and dressing gown, with the glow of the streetlamps outside giving him just enough light to see by, pushed his feet into his slippers and staggered, still unsteadily, back out onto the la
nding. His mother’s entire bedroom was now an inferno. The heat was burning his own face. But still he waited, until her door frame started burning and the flames began licking their way along the landing.

  He walked slowly downstairs, steadying himself on the handrail, smiling, removing the handkerchief then cramming it back into his pocket.

  He waited at the bottom of the stairs for some more minutes until the entire upstairs was burning fiercely. Then he pushed open the front door and stumbled out, screaming and sobbing for help.

  ‘Fire! God, fire, fire, fire! Help me! Help me!’

  He stumbled around to the next-door neighbour’s and rang the bell, pounding on the door frantically. ‘Fire! Please help, my mother’s trapped, please help me!’

  52

  Wednesday, 30 October

  Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Skerritt was a popular man within Sussex Police, a hard man, an old-school no-nonsense copper who had little truck with political correctness or bleeding-heart liberals. A former Commander of Brighton and Hove, he’d had a high level of experience both in uniform and in the CID. Fifty-two years old, he was due to retire at the end of the year. He had told Grace a few months back, over a drink at another officer’s retirement party, that what he looked forward to most of all about retirement was the idea of being able to go into a pub and tell people what he really thought about any issue, without being quoted in the press the following day – and then harangued. His views were, in general, pretty right wing, but he was no bigoted fool.

  Skerritt was not in a good mood this morning; he was close to apoplectic over the news of Cassian Pewe’s appointment. Grace and Branson sat at the twelve-seater meeting table in his spacious office, along from Grace’s office in the mostly open-plan CID area on the first floor of Sussex House, while the Detective Chief Superintendent vented spleen. ‘Tom Martinson’s a top bloke,’ he said. ‘I don’t get this. I’m going to be having words with him. Bringing that bastard back is like putting a lunatic in charge of the asylum. Shit!’