Dead Simple

you planned things, wasn’t it? Premeditated? This had all just been circumstance. Burying Michael alive, then the accident. He had no love for Michael. Michael was always first in every fucking thing. At school, Michael won the 100 metres and just about every damn thing else. He was the one who got to score the goals in football; he was the first of their group to lose his virginity – women always gravitated to him, always, always. Mark would find himself standing next to Michael in a crowded bar, and a couple of beautiful girls would come up to Michael, and he would say, ‘This is my friend, Mark!’ And the girls would smile and say, ‘Hi, Mark!’ and then turn their backs on him for the entire evening. It didn’t happen once, it happened time and time again.
    It had been the same with Ashley, in the beginning. In that first interview six months back it had been Michael, as usual, who had done all the talking and Ashley had seemed captivated by him, barely even casting Mark a glance. (Later she’d told Mark that it was all an act, because she had so desperately wanted the job and had been tipped off that it was Michael who really controlled the company.)
    During the first month or so, Mark had been able to see how interested Michael was in Ashley. He knew his friend well enough to read the signs – he was flirting with her through his jokes, questions, flattery, stories about himself, exactly the way he flirted with all the women he fancied, and Mark had watched Michael’s continuing flirtation with her with huge amusement – and satisfaction. It was the first time ever he had pulled a girl that Michael had fancied – and it felt terrific, liberating, as if finally, after fifteen years of their friendship, he no longer felt under Michael’s thumb.
    The plan had been Ashley’s idea. Mark had had no qualms about any of it, except the notion of Ashley and Michael on honeymoon. That he had found so hard to bear. That, he knew in his heart, had been the reason he’d driven out into the forest last Thursday night and removed the air tube.
    But now to let this madman torture and mutilate his friend? To death? He wasn’t sure he had the stomach to do that.
    He unlocked his front door, and as he stepped inside, the landline phone rang. He slammed the door shut, ran across the room, glanced at the display, but there was no caller number showing.
    ‘Hello?’ he answered.
    The same Australian voice he had heard before said, ‘Hi, mate, Vic here. I’m a little curious about the copper who popped round to see you earlier. Thought I told you about not speaking to the cops.’
    ‘I didn’t,’ Mark said. ‘This is a Detective Superintendent investigating Michael’s disappearance – I had no idea he was coming.’
    ‘I don’t know if I believe you or not, mate. Want to have another chat with Mike about it, or are we cool?’
    Trying to follow what he meant, Mark said, ‘I think we’re cool.’
    ‘So you are going to do what I tell you?’
    ‘I’m listening.’
    ‘Just go to your office right now, open the safe, take out the documents signed by you and Mike giving power of attorney to a lawyer in the Cayman Islands called Julius Grobbe and fax it to him. At the same time you phone Julius Grobbe and tell him to transfer one million, two hundred and fifty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve pounds from your bank account there to the numbered account in Panama I have already faxed to him. I’ll phone you back here in exactly one hour and you can tell me how you got on. If you don’t pick up the receiver, your friend loses another bit of his body, and this bit will really hurt him. Copy?’
    ‘Copy.’
    One million, two hundred and fifty-three thousand, seven hundred and twelve pounds was the exact total Mark and Michael had in their joint account.

76
    Roy Grace and Glenn Branson – who had arrived back at Sussex House just as Grace was leaving – sat down in Ashley’s cool, minimalistic sitting room and studied the very badly texted message on her dinky Sony Ericsson phone.
     
    aliVe. *£ cAlll ponlice
     
    Ashley sat opposite them, wringing her hands, her face pale, eyes watery. She looked as if she had been out somewhere, Grace thought, staring at her ragged cream blouse, her hair, linen skirt, and smelling the powerful aroma of perfume she exuded. Where? With whom?
    He ought to be feeling sorry for her, he knew. Her fiancé had vanished, their wedding had been called off and tonight,