Dead Like You

did not say, would be if you were about a thousand miles from here right now. If you stopped trashing my house. If you stopped trashing my CD and vinyl collections. That’s what would be really helpful.
    Instead, he looked up at the man he loved more than any man he had ever met before and said, ‘Do you want to fuck off, or do you want to really help me?’
    ‘Sweetly put – how could I resist?’
    ‘Good.’ Grace handed him Dr Julius Proudfoot’s file on the Shoe Man. ‘I’d like you to summarize that for me for this evening’s briefing meeting, into about two hundred and fifty words, in a form that our new ACC can absorb.’
    Branson lifted the file up, then flipped through the pages.
    ‘Shit, two hundred and eighty-two pages. Man, that’s a fucker.’
    ‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’

32
    Friday 9 January
    Roy Grace’s father had been a true copper’s copper. Jack Grace told his son that to be a police officer meant that you looked at the world differently from everyone else. You were part of a healthy culture of suspicion , he’d called it.
    Roy had never forgotten that. It was how he looked at the world, always. It was how he looked, at this moment, at the posh houses of Shirley Drive on this fine, crisp, sunny January morning. The street was one of hilly Brighton and Hove’s backbones. Running almost into the open countryside at the edge of the city, it was lined with smart detached houses way beyond the pocket of most police officers. Wealthy people lived here: dentists, bankers, car dealers, lawyers, local and London business people, and of course, as with all the smartest addresses, a smattering of successful criminals. It was one of the city’s aspirational addresses. If you lived in Shirley Drive – or one of its tributaries – you were a somebody .
    At least, you were to anyone driving by who did not have a copper’s jaundiced eye.
    Roy Grace did not have a jaundiced eye. But he had a good, almost photographic memory. As David Alcorn, in a smart grey suit, drove the small Ford up past the recreational ground, Grace clocked the houses one by one. It was routine for him. The London protection racketeer’s Brighton home was along here. So was the Brighton brothel king’s. And the crack cocaine king’s was just one street away.
    In his late forties, short, with cropped brown hair and smelling permanently of cigarette smoke, David Alcorn looked outwardly hard and officious, but inside he was a gentle man.
    Turning right into The Droveway he said, ‘This is the street the missus would like to live in.’
    ‘So,’ Grace said, ‘move here.’
    ‘I’m just a couple of hundred grand short of being a couple of hundred grand short of the down payment,’ he replied. ‘And then some.’ He hesitated briefly. ‘You know what I reckon?’
    ‘Tell me.’
    Grace watched each of the detached houses slide by. On his right, they passed a Tesco convenience store. On his left, a dairy with an ancient cobbled wall.
    ‘Your Cleo would like it here. Suit a classy lady like her, this area would.’
    They were slowing now. Then Alcorn braked sharply. ‘That’s it there on the right.’
    Grace looked for any signs of a CCTV camera as they drove down the short, laurel-lined driveway, but saw none. He clocked the security lights.
    ‘All right, isn’t it?’ David Alcorn said.
    It was more than sodding all right, it was totally stunning. If he had the money to design and build his dream house, Grace decided, this might be one he’d copy.
    It was like a piece of brilliant white sculpture. A mixture of crisp, straight lines and soft curves, some played off against each other in daring geometric angles. The place seemed to be built on split levels, the windows were vast and solar panels rose from the roof. Even the plants strategically placed around the walls looked as if they had been genetically modified just for this property. It wasn’t a huge house; it was on a liveable scale. It must be an amazing place to come home to every night, he thought.
    Then he focused on what he wanted to get from this crime scene, running through a mental checklist as they pulled up behind a small marked police car. A uniformed constable, a solid man in his forties, stood beside it. Behind him, a chequered blue-and-white crime scene tape closed off the rest of the driveway, which led up to a large integral garage.
    They climbed out and the Constable, a respectful old-school officer, briefed them