Not Dead Yet (Roy Grace 8) (55 page)

The woman officer said, ‘Yes, she’s okay, she’s in shock. I’ve radioed for an ambulance.’

‘Shall we get an ambulance for you, too, sir?’ one of the guards asked.

Grace shook his head, still getting his breath back. Then he saw the state of his hands. ‘I think I need tweezers,’ he said distantly, staring at Gaia again, trying to make sense of these last few moments. He stared at the four-foot-wide rectangular hole where the trapdoor had dropped down.

‘You’ve a nasty gash on your face.’

He put a hand up and it came away covered in blood. ‘You came in good time, guys. Thank you – for – getting me out of there.’

‘I used to be a bit of a weightlifter in my army days, sir. You were nothing compared to the weights I used to do.’

‘Thanks a lot!’

‘Take it as a compliment, sir.’

Grace gave a wry smile, then crossed over to Gaia. Their eyes connected and for an instant, her sobbing ceased.

‘You okay?’ he asked.

Through her tear-stained face she managed a weak smile. ‘Yes, guess I’m just a little wired.’

Grace grinned. Moments later he heard footsteps, and Glenn Branson charged into the room, then stopped and stared, open mouthed at Grace, then Gaia, then Grace again. ‘What’s happened? You all right? Everyone all right? Chief?’

The helicopter clattered past overhead, making conversation momentarily impossible as the din of its engine and blades echoed around the bare walls and bare floor. ‘We’re okay,’ Grace said.

Branson looked around wildly. ‘Where’s Whiteley? They said he was up here.’

Grace dropped down on his knees and crawled towards the edge of the hatch.

‘Careful, sir!’ one of the guards said.

Grace carried on to the edge, and looked down. Then he backed away and turned to the DS. ‘He’s in the kitchen.’

‘Kitchen?’

‘What – what’s – like – who’s with him? What’s he doing there?’

‘I’ll tell you what he’s not doing – he’s not cooking dinner.’

Ignoring his bleeding face and increasingly painful hands, Grace hurried down the spiral stairs with Branson close behind. When they reached the bottom, they ran along the corridor, into the Banqueting Room, where there was a bizarre mix of men and women in elegant Regency clothing mingled with the film crew who were mostly in jeans, trainers and T-shirts.

Larry Brooker called out, ‘Detective Grace, can you tell us what’s—?’

Grace ignored him, pushing the door open and running into the first of the kitchen rooms. It was a small, bare space, with beige walls and brown linoleum on which stood a stainless steel trolley that reminded him of a mortuary gurney. He looked up, but there was no hatch above, just a low ceiling.

Followed by Branson he pushed open a sludge-coloured door and went into the next room, which was similar, but smaller. There was a faint smell of human excrement. He crossed over and opened another door, which was slightly ajar. Both men recoiled at the sight.

‘Jesus,’ Branson said.

There was a strong stench of fresh human excrement.

Grace stared levelly ahead. At the man who had nearly killed Gaia, and had come close to killing him, too. He shot a quick glance up at the smashed ceiling, fifteen feet above, which Whiteley had crashed through, and saw the guard with the moustache, forty feet above that, peering curiously down. Then, holding his breath for some moments against the smell, he looked ahead again, at the bizarre sight in the centre of the room.

The wig had gone, and was lying a short distance away. A balding, middle-aged head, with grey hair, protruded from the neck of the elegant Regency dress. Whiteley appeared to have hit the floor feet first, then collapsed back against a stainless steel sink, which was supporting him, giving the illusion he was sitting upright of his own accord. The scarlet dress lay pooled all around him, as if carefully arranged so as not to get creased.

Two pale-coloured sticks, each about eighteen inches long, rose up through rips in the dress below his midriff, like a pair of ski poles. Except they had blood and small strips of sinew and skin on them. Grace realized with horror what they were. The lower sections of the man’s legs, driven up through his knees by the impact.

The stench of excrement was even worse now. He walked over, and looked at Whiteley’s make-up-caked face. The man was blinking, non-stop, three or four blinks a second, as if some wiring loop inside his head had short-circuited. Tiny moans were coming from his mouth, which was opening and closing slowly, gormlessly, like a goldfish. Grace took hold of Whiteley’s wrist and found a pulse. He did not bother to time it, but could tell it was dangerously low. ‘He’s still alive, just. Call for an ambulance.’

Branson, staring bug-eyed at the stricken man, pulled out his phone.

‘Would she have done the same for you?’ Cleo asked.

‘That’s not the issue.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘It was my job to protect her.’

‘You’re a trained hostage – and suicide – negotiator. You told me once, Roy, that part of what you were instructed was never to put your own life in danger. Well, you just did, didn’t you? Again.’

It was a warm Friday evening, a glorious summer night, and to celebrate Cleo’s last day at work before maternity leave, they’d booked a table at a country restaurant they liked called the Ginger Fox, a short drive out of Brighton. Cleo liked to remind him that with the birth of the baby increasingly imminent, each quiet dinner out together might be their last for a very long time. Roy never took much persuading. There were few things he enjoyed more in life than sitting in a restaurant with Cleo, with some good food and a decent glass of wine.

He ran the shower, removed his tie with difficulty, as his hands were so painful, and had several deep splinters still embedded in them. He took off his suit jacket and trousers, then sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his socks. He was hot and sweaty, and felt drained after what seemed like a very long week. And an even longer past two days.

Two press conferences in the past twenty-four hours; a referral to the Independent Police Complaints Authority, because he had been directly involved in the serious injury of a suspect; an enquiry by Professional Standards as to why he hadn’t brought up the issue of the information Kevin Spinella kept obtaining, much sooner than he had. Plus he had all the paperwork dealing with
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to go through. And as a bit of icing on the cake, there were major issues with the playing fields that the police rugby team, which he managed, would be using when the season started.

On top of everything else, he’d had to travel up to London today, as he’d been called as a witness earlier than he’d expected in the Carl Venner trial. Except, having got all the way to the Old Bailey, he was told he now would not be needed until next Tuesday.

A shower, followed by a blast out into the countryside in Cleo’s Audi TT with the roof down, a cold beer and a few glasses of wine and he would feel a lot better. He might even treat himself to a cigarette. One big advantage of Cleo’s pregnancy was there were no drink-driving issues, no arguments about who would drive home.

‘It’s not a question of training, my darling,’ he replied. ‘There was a scandalous hoo-hah a few years back when two PCSOs in another county didn’t jump into a lake to try to save a drowning boy, because their training forbade them. That’s pretty rare – I don’t think I’ve met a single police officer in Sussex who would have held back from jumping in. It’s not about training, it’s something any human being would do. You can’t just stand by and watch someone die.’

She kissed him. ‘You know, I’ve never been a worrier.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘Not until I met you.’

‘Are you sure it’s not part of the package? All the stuff we’ve read, we both know that pregnancy messes with the mother’s hormones. Worry is one aspect of the protective mothering instinct. You don’t have to worry about me.’

‘It’s not the baby, Roy. It’s you. Every time you walk out the front door, I wonder if you’ll be coming back. Or whether it will be two of your colleagues knocking on the door instead.’

‘Cleo, darling!’

‘Did Sandy have to put up with all this? The same fears?’

The reminder of Sandy stung. The mention of her name invariably set off a small pang of sadness and loss, despite the good mental place that he was in, and all he now had. He shrugged. ‘She never said anything – not about danger. Her gripe was always my unpredictable hours.’

‘I’m sorry that I worry, I can’t help it, I love you. But just look at all the crazy stuff you’ve done in the past year. You’ve been in a burning building. Over a cliff in a car.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘The car went over a cliff, Roy.’

‘Yes, okay, but I wasn’t in it.’

‘You were in it ten seconds before it went over.’

He smiled. ‘True.’ He stood up and pulled his boxer shorts down.

‘You dived into Shoreham Harbour in front of a ship.’

It was strange, he thought. He felt perfectly comfortable standing naked in front of Cleo. But Sandy had an almost Victorian prudery about nudity. Except in bed where she could be wild, she always had something wrapped around her, and would insist that he put something on, even if it was just to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom. And she had a thing about the toilet, as well, an obsessive privacy. He once, way back, had joked to a friend that in all the years he and Sandy had lived together as man and wife, so far as he knew, she had not yet been to the toilet.

‘I didn’t have any choice with Gaia,’ he said. ‘If I hadn’t done what I did, she would be dead or maimed. My career would have been over. But that was not the reason I did it.’

‘The police force isn’t the only job in the world, Roy. If you ever got demoted or got the sack, I wouldn’t love you any the less. Okay?’

‘And if someone died because I had been a coward?’

The question hung in the air.

‘History is full of dead heroes, Roy. I’m not ready for you to be history.’

He blew her a kiss and stepped into the bathroom, then checked his face in the mirror. The gash on his left cheek had required three stitches, but it looked to be healing all right. As he turned on the taps, his mobile phone, lying on the bed, pinged twice with text messages.

‘Could you see if there’s anything urgent!’ he called out.

She picked up the phone. The first message was from Jason Tingley.

The second was from a number that meant nothing to her. She opened it.

Roy Grace adjusted the shower temperature then, before stepping into it, called, ‘Anything important?’

‘Jason Tingley wants to play golf tomorrow. And Gaia wants to have sex with you.’

He grinned and closed the shower door behind him.

*

Five minutes later as he came back into the bedroom, with a towel wrapped around him, Cleo paraded the loose, turquoise dress she had chosen. She looked stunning.

‘What do you think? This or my black one? Or the beige one you like?’

He could not remember either the black or the beige ones. ‘This looks great.’

‘Which shoes?’

‘Which ones were you thinking of?’

‘Well, I can’t wear anything with heels. So I’m not going to be able to compete with Gaia, am I?’ Her tone was unusually sarcastic.

‘Hey, come on!’ He picked up the phone and looked at the text, then smiled, proudly. Not every cop got a text from one of the world’s greatest stars. And a row of kisses.

‘So would you?’ she said.

‘Would I what?’

‘Go to bed with her, if you had the chance?’ She was staring at him strangely.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, absolutely not! Hey, come on, let’s not go there.’

He picked up the Alfa Romeo brochure that was lying on his bedside table, and flicked through it for distraction, to avoid having to look back at her. He stopped on the Giulietta page, and stared at the car with longing.

Cleo looked over his shoulder. ‘Go with your heart!’ she said. ‘You love that car, right?’

He shrugged. ‘Yes.’

‘So, you’ve nearly died I don’t know how many times in your career, and you’ve still got a third of it to go. You’re probably not going to make old bones, so go on, treat yourself while you can. Enjoy!’

‘I’m tempted,’ he said.

‘It’ll suit you. And, hey,
Mr Paul Newman Eyes
, Gaia will think you are so cool.’

Over the course of the following week, to Roy Grace’s relief, press coverage about his rescue of Gaia began to move from the front page and dwindled, although the jibes from his friends and colleagues continued. He gradually reduced the
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team numbers, until by the following Friday’s morning meeting there was just himself, Glenn Branson, Norman Potting, Bella Moy, Nick Nicholl and a handful of others.