Dead Simple

on the far bank. A fire engine, two ambulances, half a dozen police vehicles, including a crash recovery tender, were all parked down the lane.
    A crane had been driven onto the elderly bridge despite concerns about how much weight it could stand. Grace stood on the bridge himself, watching the recovery proceedings. Police frogmen were working hard to get the hooks of the lifting gear dangling from the crane onto secure fixings on the Toyota. The sky, which had been delivering spots of rain on and off all day, had lightened in the last hour and the sun was trying to break through.
    The tightly packed mud had made it impossible for the frogmen to get down any further, and the only hope that the occupants were alive rested on the windows having stayed intact and that there was air trapped inside the car. The amount of shards of glass strewn over the bridge made this seem more than a long shot.
    Two suitcases had been recovered from the abandoned Land Rover Freelander, but all they contained were women’s clothes; not one scrap of paper that could give a clue to Michael Harrison’s whereabouts. Grace had a grim feeling this car would yield something.
    Glenn Branson, standing next to Grace, said, ‘You know what this reminds me of? The original Psycho – 1960. When they winch the car with Janet Leigh’s body in out of the lake. Remember?’
    ‘I remember.’
    ‘That was a cool movie. The remake was shit. I dunno why people bother with remakes.’
    ‘Money,’ Grace said. ‘That’s one of the reasons why you and I have a job. Because people do an awful lot for money.’
    After a few more minutes the hooks were in place. Then the lifting began. Against the deafening roar of the crane’s engine, Grace and Branson barely heard the sucking and gurgling sounds of the mud, beneath the waters of the rising tide, yielding its prize.
    Slowly, in front of their eyes, and washed clean by the water, the bronze Toyota rose up in the air, its boot-lid open and hanging. Mud oozed slowly out of all of the window frames. The car looked badly smashed and the roof pillars were buckled. It didn’t look as if one single window had remained in place.
    And as the mud fell out, some in slabs, some in squitty streaks, at first just the silhouettes of the two occupants became visible, and then, finally, their inert faces.
    The crane swung the car over onto the bank, lowering it on its roof a few yards from a rotting houseboat. Several fireman, police officers and workmen who had come with the crane, unhooked the lifting gear then slowly righted the car. As it rolled back onto its wheels, the two figures inside jerked like crash-test dummies.
    Grace, with trepidation, followed by Branson, walked down to it, squatted and peered in. Even though there was some mud still stuck to her face, and her hair was much shorter than the last time he had seen her, there was no question it was Ashley Harper, her eyes wide open, unblinking. Then he shuddered in revulsion as a scrawny, long-legged crab crawled across her lap.
    ‘Jesus,’ Branson said.
    Who the hell was the man next to her, in the driving seat? Grace wondered. His eyes were open also, a powerful, thuggish-looking man with a shocked death mask.
    ‘See what you can find on her,’ Grace said, wrenching open the driver’s door, and checking the man’s sodden, muddy clothing for ID. He pulled out a heavy leather wallet from inside his jacket and opened it. Inside was an Australian passport.
    The photograph was the man in the car, no question. His name was Victor Bruce Delaney and he was forty-two years old. Under emergency contact was written the name Mrs Alexandra Delaney , and an address in Sydney.
    Glenn Branson wiped mud from a yellow handbag, unzipped it and after a few moments also pulled out a passport, this one British, which he showed to Grace. It contained a photograph that was, without doubt, Ashley Harper, but with close-cropped black hair, and it bore the name Anne Hampson. Under emergency contact nothing had been written.
    There were credit cards both in the man’s wallet and in a purse inside the handbag, but nothing else. Not a clue about where they had come from or where they might be headed.
    ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ Glenn Branson said quietly to Grace, but there was no humour in his tone.
    ‘We do.’ Grace stood up and turned away. ‘It’s suddenly a whole lot bigger than it was two hours ago.’
    ‘So how the hell are we going to find Michael Harrison