Dead Man's Grip

office – and found him dead in his cell. He’d hanged himself.’
    There was a momentary silence while the team absorbed this. Grace’s first reaction was that this news had not yet reached Spinella.
    DC David Howes asked, ‘What do we know about his circumstances? ’
    ‘He had two months to serve,’ Potting said. ‘Married with three young kids – all fine with the marriage apparently. Lisa Setterington knew him too. She assured me he was looking forward to getting out and spending time with his kids.’
    ‘Not someone with any obvious reason to top himself?’ Howes, who was a former Prison Liaison Officer, probed.
    ‘Doesn’t sound like it, no,’ Potting replied.
    ‘I’m just speculating, but what it sounds like to me,’ Howes went on, ‘is that possibly Warren Tulley knew where to find Preece.’ He shrugged.
    ‘Which might be why he died?’ Grace said. ‘Not suicide at all?’
    ‘They’re launching a full investigation, working closely with the West Area Major Crime Branch Team,’ Potting said. ‘Seems a bit coincidental to them.’
    ‘How hard would it be to hang yourself in Ford?’ Glenn Branson asked.
    ‘Easier than in a lot of prisons. They’ve all got private rooms, like motel rooms,’ Potting said. ‘Being an open prison, they’ve got much more freedom and are left alone much more than in a higher-category place. If you wanted to hang yourself, you could do so easily.’
    ‘And equally easily hang someone else?’ Howes asked.
    There was a long, uncomfortable silence.
    ‘One hundred thousand dollars is a lot of folding to someone inside,’ Glenn said.
    ‘It’s a lot of folding to anyone,’ Nick Nicholl replied.
    ‘More than enough to kill for,’ Howes said grimly.
    PC Alec Davies put up a hand. He spoke quite shyly. ‘Sir, I might be stating the obvious, but if Warren Tulley did know where Preece was, then if someone did kill him, he possibly did it for one reason. Because he knows where Preece is too.’

39
    Fernanda Revere sat restlessly on the edge of the green sofa. She gripped a glass in one hand and held a cigarette in the other, tapping the end impatiently, every few seconds, into a crystal ashtray. Then, with a sudden snort, she put down her cigarette, snatched up her cellphone and glared at it.
    Outside a storm raged. Wind and rain were hurtling in from Long Island Sound, through the dunes and the wild grasses and the shrubbery. She heard the rain lashing against the windows and could feel the icy blast through them.
    This huge living room, with its minstrel’s gallery, ornate furniture and walls hung with tapestries, felt like a mausoleum tonight. A fire crackled in the grate but she could get no warmth from it. There was a ball game on television, the New York Mets playing some other team, which her brother shouted at intermittently. Fernanda didn’t give a shit for baseball. A stupid men’s game.
    ‘Why don’t those stupid people in England call me back?’ she demanded, staring at her phone again, willing it to ring.
    ‘It’s the middle of the night there, hon,’ her husband replied, checking his watch. ‘They’re five hours ahead. It’s one in the morning.’
    ‘So?’ She took another angry drag on her cigarette and puffed the smoke straight back out. ‘So this associate , where is he? He’s going to show up? You sure? You sure about this, Ricky?’
    She stared suspiciously at her brother, who was sitting opposite her, cradling a whiskey and sucking on a cigar that looked to her the size of a large dildo.
    Lou, in a checked alpaca V-neck over a polo shirt, chinos and boat shoes, looked at Ricky, his face hard suddenly, and said, ‘He’s going to show, right? He’s reliable? You know this guy?’
    ‘He’s reliable. One of the best there is. He’s in the car – be here any moment.’
    Ricky picked up the brown envelope he had prepared, checked its contents once more, then put it down again, satisfied, and turned his focus back to the game.
    At forty, Ricky Giordino had the Italian looks of his father, but not the old man’s strong face. His face was weak, a tad pudgy, like a baby’s, and pockmarked. It shone with an almost permanent shiny patina of grease, from a congenital problem with his sweat glands. His black hair was styled with a quiff and his mouth was slightly misshapen, as if he’d had an operation for a harelip as a child. He was dressed in a thick black cardigan with metal buttons, baggy blue jeans which concealed