Love You Dead (3 page)

‘
Comprende!
’

‘And try not to get into any
bundles
with any villains for a while.’

‘I’m a detective superintendent, I don’t get into many fights with suspects.’

‘Oh, right, being a detective
superintendent
means you just get shot by them?’

He grimaced. ‘Yep, well, hopefully not too often.’

‘I hope not. A lot of people only get shot once, and it’s not a physiotherapist they need afterwards but an undertaker. Stay safe, isn’t that what you say?’

‘I’m impressed with your police lingo!’ He shook her hand, went out to the receptionist and paid the bill, carefully sticking the receipt in his wallet. Treatment for injuries
sustained whilst on duty were reimbursed out of police funds.

Twenty minutes later he arrived back at his office in Sussex House, feeling a sense of an era passing. Although in part a lateral, out-of-the-box thinker, Roy Grace was at
heart an extremely methodical man, the quality he had always admired and respected in those he had learned from in the past, and which he sought in anyone he selected to work with him. He was a
creature of habit, and didn’t like change, which he always found unsettling. And thanks to the government’s swingeing budget cuts to the police, massive changes had already happened and
there were more afoot.

The effect on morale was palpable. A decade ago he could guarantee that almost everyone in the force loved their job. Now, too many people were leaving before their retirement time, fed up with
the freezes on promotion, or with the alterations to their pensions foisted on them midstream in their careers, or with walking on eggshells in fear of the political correctness zealots. Being a
police officer had become a job where you were afraid to speak your mind or tell a joke. Yet, Grace knew only too well from his own experience, it was precisely that gallows humour the police were
so famous for that enabled officers to cope with the horrors they sometimes saw.

In truth, many of the changes had helped to create more tolerant, less corrupt, less sexist and less racist police forces than when Roy Grace had begun his career. There were many pluses. He did
still love his job and he tried not to let the negatives get to him, but there were moments, too, for the first time in the two decades he had served, that he had found himself contemplating
alternatives. Particularly during his month off in January convalescing, when he’d had time to think. But in his heart he knew nothing could ever give him the satisfaction that solving
murders did, despite all the changes.

And there was one very big change happening right here, to this building. Formerly the HQ CID, before the merger of the Major Crime Team with Surrey, this two-storey art deco building had been
his base for the past decade. Once it had been a hive of activity, filled with detectives, SOCOs, a forensic department, the Fingerprint, Imaging and High Tech Crime Units, and the hub for many
homicide and other serious crime investigations. But in a few months it would be no more, thanks to the brutal – and in his view highly short-sighted – government budget cuts inflicted
on his and other police forces in the UK.

The Imaging Unit had already moved to Surrey. Soon the High Tech Crime Unit would be moved a few miles north of Brighton to Haywards Heath. And while nothing was confirmed yet, the rumour was
that his branch of the Major Crime Team would be moved to the Sussex Police headquarters in Lewes.

Like most of the officers and support staff here, he had never really liked this building. Stuck on an industrial estate on the edge of the city, with no canteen, far too many people crammed
into it, and a heating and air-conditioning system that was unable to cope in any weather conditions, he should have been glad of the impending move. But now, with the building beginning to take on
the air of a ghost town, he was starting to feel nostalgic for it. All that would remain on this site, by this coming autumn, would be the custody block right behind it.

He walked through the large, deserted open-plan first-floor office that had until recently been the Detectives’ Room, passing the cleared desks of officers and civilian staff who had
already moved elsewhere, then entered his own office, one of the few enclosed ones.

He closed the door and sat behind his desk, staring out through the drizzle at the Asda superstore across the road which served as their canteen, thinking about Cleo’s first Mother’s
Day which was just a few weeks away. He needed to get her a present from Noah. Roy had an ongoing list on his phone of gifts to get Cleo for her birthday and for Christmas, one of which was
turquoise earrings – she loved the colour – and a rollerball pen. He added
book
, to remind himself to get down to City Books to pick up a novel she wanted, although he had
forgotten the title. He would have to tease it out of her, somehow.

Then he logged on to his computer terminal and checked the serials and emails that had come in since he’d been at the physio, noting an email trail that referred to the Sussex Police rugby
team. It reminded him he needed to find a new captain, as the current one was being sent to work on anti-terrorist training at the FBI’s base in Quantico, Virginia. He was also pleased to see
that the bread-making machine Cleo and he had ordered for the house was on its way.

He fired off some quick responses and forwarded the rugby emails to one of his predecessors, a retired former detective chief superintendent, David Gaylor, who had continued to be the team
manager. Next he turned his attention back to the case that had been consuming him ever since his return to work.

His assailant, Dr Edward Crisp.

He glanced at the photograph of the Hove general practitioner, who appeared to be staring back at him with a smug grin.

Crisp had murdered five women in their early twenties – or rather, five that they knew about. His tally could quite possibly be higher. Maybe a lot higher. They’d had him cornered in
an underground lair, but after shooting Grace in the leg with a shotgun, the man had made a seemingly impossible escape. No one knew how. One theory was that Crisp, an experienced potholer and
caver, had gone through the Brighton and Hove sewer system, and had emerged through one of the manholes in the complex network.

Southern Water, who controlled it, were initially adamant that it would not have been possible for anyone to have survived. If Crisp hadn’t drowned, he’d have ended up in one of the
filters that prevented objects larger than a fraction of an inch reaching the open sea. Yet their searches found no trace of a body. They’d been forced to admit, reluctantly, that it was
possible, however unlikely, that Crisp had survived.

One thing that Roy Grace was certain of was Crisp’s cunning. The man’s estranged wife, Sandra, had been interviewed exhaustively, and exonerated from any complicity. She seemed very
happy – and relieved – to be away from him. The only one who appeared to be missing the doctor was the family dog, Smut, now living with her and apparently pining. Incredible though it
was, for all the years that they had lived together, she’d had no idea that the derelict house next door to their Brighton mansion, where Crisp had carried out some, if not all, of his
atrocities, had been owned by an offshore company set up by her husband.

Very recently the police had received possible evidence that Crisp had survived.

It was in the form of a sinister email that the doctor had subsequently sent to one of Roy’s team, some weeks after his disappearance – and presumed death.

The source of the email was apparently untraceable. An anonymous Hotmail account that could have come from anywhere in the world. And which, just possibly, could have been sent, on a time delay,
weeks earlier.

Fortunately, so far February had been a calm time, with no reported homicides in Sussex, leaving Roy Grace free to work, doggedly, through contacts at police forces throughout Europe, the USA,
Australia, Africa and the Far East for any signs of the doctor. He had also spent some time with a desk officer at Interpol, ensuring that Crisp’s details and photograph were circulated
around the world.

Crisp’s MO was to target women in their early twenties with long brown hair. Summaries of every unsolved murder matching this profile, from within the UK and overseas, were stacked all
round Roy and filled numerous folders on his computer.

And he was still no further forward. There were around two hundred countries in the world, and right now Dr Edward Crisp could be sitting in a hotel room, with his bald head and big glasses and
smug grin, in any one of them.

Although a few, especially Syria and North Korea, could probably be safely eliminated.

‘So where the hell are you, you bastard?’ Grace said aloud in frustration.

‘Right here, O master!’

He looked up, startled, to see his mate DI Glenn Branson, a black, shaven-headed man-mountain, standing in front of him with a broad smile.

‘You’re not looking a happy bunny,’ Branson said.

‘Yeah, you know why not? Because every time I start to feel a happy bunny, I see Edward bloody Crisp’s face grinning at me.’

‘Well, I’ve got some news for you.’

‘Tell me.’

Branson reached over and placed an email printout on Grace’s desk.

Grace read it, then looked up at his mate. ‘Shit.’

Shortly before 6 p.m., Jodie woke up with a start, on the big soft duvet in her Courchevel hotel room, to the sound of a helicopter flying low and fast over the resort. She
could see through the window it was almost dark outside. Her mouth was dry and she had a slight headache.

She drank some water, went over to the desk and flipped open the lid of her Mac laptop. She tapped in her password, then checked her emails. Immediately she smiled. Another one from him!

She typed her reply.

She signed it with a row of kisses and sent it. Then she carefully filed his email and her reply into a folder titled
Charities Local
, which was buried inside another folder marked
Charities.
Just in case, somehow, Walt had ever found his way into her computer. Not that there had ever been much likelihood, as he wasn’t particularly computer savvy.

She logged off, closed the lid and sat still for some minutes, gathering her thoughts, getting her story together. Slipping out of the dressing gown she’d worn back from the spa, she
pulled on a sweater and jeans and tied back her hair. She decided against putting on make-up, wanting to look pale and distressed.

She took the lift down three floors and walked towards the reception desk. As she approached, she saw a young, fair-haired man standing by it, dressed in a blue fleece jacket with the word
Gendarmerie
in white across the back of it.

The receptionist, to whom she had spoken several times during their short stay, was holding a phone in her hand, and replaced it as she saw Jodie.

‘Ah, Mademoiselle Bentley,’ she said, looking uneasy. ‘I was just calling your room.’ She pointed to the police officer. ‘This is Christophe Chmiel from the
Courchevel Gendarmerie – he wishes to have a word with you.’

‘What – what about?’ She turned to the policeman, feeling a genuine prickle of anxiety.

He gave her a concerned smile and spoke in good English. ‘Mademoiselle Bentley, is it possible please I have a private word with you?’

‘Yes – yes, of course. Is this about my fiancé, Walt? I’m really worried about him – we got separated skiing this morning, up at the top in the white-out –
and I’ve not seen him all day. Please tell me nothing’s happened to him? I’ve been waiting all afternoon for some news, I’m at my wits’ end.’

The receptionist spoke to the officer in French. ‘
Voulez-vous utiliser notre bureau?
’

‘
Oui, bien, merci
,’ he replied.

The receptionist led them behind the counter into a small office with two computer screens, several filing cabinets and two swivel chairs. Then she closed the door behind them.

The police officer gestured to one of the chairs and, looking as weak and anxious as she could, Jodie sat down. ‘Please tell me Walt’s safe, isn’t he?’ she asked.

He pulled out a small notepad and looked at it, briefly. ‘Mademoiselle Bentley, is your fiancé’s name Walt Klein?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘And you last saw him at what time today?’

She shrugged. ‘About ten o’clock this morning. We took the cable car up to the top of the Saulire. The visibility was terrible but he was keen for us to be up early to get the fresh
powder before it was skied out.’

He gave her a dubious look. ‘You are both good skiers?’

‘Yes – he’s better than I am – he’s an expert – I’m a bit nervous because I don’t know this resort very well yet. But we were told the weather was
improving. We couldn’t see a damned thing at the top, but there were some other skiers who were in the cable car with us. I saw them ski off and thought the best thing would be to follow
them. Walt told me to go first, in case I fell and he could help me. So I set off, trying to keep up with the others, but they shot off ahead of me, going too quickly. I stopped and waited for Walt
but he never appeared. Do you know where he is? I’ve been terrified he’s had an accident. Please tell me he’s all right.’ She began crying.