Dead Simple

his pocket. ‘Yes, at 12.29 a.m. and again at 12.40 a.m.’ Grace decided for the moment to say nothing about the results of the soil analysis that he’d been given at the briefing meeting, earlier. Like a lion closing in on a kill, he leaned forward. ‘You went for a late-night drive in Ashdown Forest, perhaps?’
    Now he watched Mark’s eyes rigidly. Instead of going back to the left, to the same side as when Mark answered his question about the sandwich, to the memory side, they swung wildly, right, then left, then right again, very definitely settling right now. Construct mode. He was intending to lie his way out of this one.
    ‘I may have done,’ he replied.
    ‘You may have done? Isn’t driving in a forest at midnight a little bit of an unusual thing to do? Wouldn’t you remember a bit more clearly?’
    ‘It’s not unusual for me,’ Mark responded, seizing his drink, his entire body language changing suddenly. It was Grace’s turn to feel uneasy now, wondering what was going on. Mark leaned back, swirled the whisky around in his glass, the ice cubes chinking. ‘You see, that’s where we are doing our new big property development. We got outline planning permission a couple of months back for twenty new houses on a five-acre site in the heart of the forest, and now we’re working on the details – because we’re getting a lot of hostility from the environmental groups. I go back and forward to the forest all the time, day and night – I have to check out the environmental factors, and a big part of that is the impact on the wildlife at night time. I’m working up a whole report to support our application.’
    Grace’s heart sank; he felt as if a rug had just been pulled away, quickly and very smartly, from beneath him. He’d just wasted the best part of a thousand pounds of his budget on the soil analysis, and he felt an idiot. Why hadn’t he known this? Why hadn’t Glenn or anyone on the team known it?
    His brain was spinning and he tried to slow it down and get some traction on this thoughts. Mark Warren still looked a wreck and he just did not get the impression it was from worrying about his business partner. The aggression he had shown at the wedding indicated something else altogether, but he didn’t know what.
    Then, for about the third time in the past ten minutes, he saw Mark Warren’s eyes flick across to a point on the far side of the room, as if someone was standing there. Grace deliberately dropped the cover of his BlackBerry on the floor and, in leaning down to get it, glanced back in the direction Mark kept looking at. But he couldn’t see anything of significance. Just the smart hi-fi set, some interesting modern art and a few cupboards.
    ‘I read about that young man – in the mortuary. Saw the piece in the paper today. Very sad,’ Mark said.
    ‘Might even have been on your land,’ Grace said, testing.
    ‘I don’t know exactly where it happened.’
    Fixing on his eyes again, and remembering the words on the sheet of notepaper in Davey’s bedroom, Grace said, ‘If you take the A26 outside Crowborough just past a white cottage, then over a double cattle grid. Is that where you are?’
    Mark didn’t need to respond. Grace could see all he needed to know from the rapid swivelling of his eyes, the furrowing of his forehead, the hunching of his entire frame and the change in tone of his face colour.
    ‘It could be – possibly – yes.’
    Now it was all starting to come clear to Grace. ‘If a bunch of you were going to bury your mate alive in a coffin, it would make sense to do it on land you own, wouldn’t it? Somewhere familiar to you?’
    ‘I – I suppose…’
    ‘You’re still insisting you had no idea of any plan to bury Michael Harrison in a coffin?’
    His eyes were all over the place for a few seconds. ‘Absolutely. Nothing at all.’
    ‘Good, thank you.’ Grace studied his BlackBerry for a moment. ‘I also have a number I wonder if you could help me with, Mark?’
    ‘I’ll try.’
    Grace read out the number that had been written on the same diagram.
    ‘0771 52136,’ Mark repeated. His eyes shot instantly to the left. Memory mode. ‘That sounds like Ashley’s mobile with a couple of digits missing. Why do you ask?’
    Grace drained his water and stood up. ‘It was found in Davey Wheeler’s home – the murdered boy. Along with the directions I just gave you.’
    ‘What?’
    Walking over to the window, Grace slid open the patio door and