Dead Simple

business rival, Raymond Cohen. If this trial went the way it should, Hossain was going down for more years than he would survive, and several hundred decent citizens of Brighton and Hove would be able to enjoy their lives in their homes freed from the ugly shadow of his henchmen making every hour a living hell for them.
    His mind drifted back to last night. Claudine . Claudine bloody Lamont . OK, it hadn’t helped that he’d arrived for his date an hour and three-quarters late. But it hadn’t helped either that her photograph on the U-Date website was, charitably, a good ten years out of date; nor that she’d omitted to put on her details that she was a non-drinking, cop-hating vegan, whose sole interest in life appeared to be her nine rescue cats.
    Grace liked dogs. He had nothing in particular against cats, but he’d never yet met one that he’d connected with, in the way he almost instantly bonded with any dog. After two and a half hours in a dump of a vegetarian restaurant in Tunbridge Wells, being lectured and grilled alternately about the free spirits of cats, the oppressive nature of the British police and men who viewed women solely as sex objects, he had been relieved to escape.
    Now, after a night of troubled, intermittent sleep and a day of hanging around waiting to be called, he was about to be grilled again. It was still raining this afternoon, but the air was much warmer and clammy. Grace could feel perspiration walking down the small of his back.
    The defence silk, who had surprised the court by summoning him as a witness, had the floor now, standing up, arrogant stature, short grey wig, flowing black gown, lips pursed into a grin of rictus warmth. His name was Richard Charwell QC. Grace had encountered him before and it had not been a happy experience, then. He detested lawyers. To lawyers, trials were a game. They never had to go out and risk their lives catching villains. And it didn’t matter one jot to them what crimes had been committed.
    ‘Are you Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, stationed at CID headquarters, Sussex House, Hollingbury, Brighton?’ the silk asked.
    ‘Yes,’ Grace answered. Instead of his usual confident voice, his reply came out of the wrong part of his throat, more like a croak.
    ‘And have you had some dealings with this case?’
    ‘Yes.’ Another choked, dry-mouthed sound.
    ‘I now tender this witness.’
    There was a brief pause. No one spoke. Richard Charwell QC had the ear of the entire court. A consummate actor with distinguished good looks, he paused deliberately for effect before speaking again, in a sudden change of tone that suggested he had now become Roy Grace’s new best friend.
    ‘Detective Superintendent, I wonder if you might help us with a certain matter. Do you have any knowledge about a shoe connected with this case? A brown crocodile-skin slip-on loafer with a gold chain?’
    Grace eyeballed him back for some moments before answering. ‘Yes, I do.’ Now, suddenly, he felt a stab of panic. Even before the barrister spoke his next words, he had a horrible feeling about where this might be going.
    ‘Are you going to tell us about the person to whom you took this shoe, Detective Superintendent, or do you want me to squeeze it out of you?’
    ‘Well, sir, I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at.’
    ‘Detective Superintendent, I think you know very well what I’m getting at.’
    Judge Driscoll, with the bad temper of a man disturbed from a nap, intervened: ‘Mr Charwell, kindly get to the point, we haven’t got all day.’
    Unctuously, the silk responded, ‘Very well, your honour.’ Then he turned back to Grace. ‘Detective Superintendent, is it not a fact that you have interfered with a vital piece of evidence in this case? Namely this shoe?’
    The silk picked it up from the exhibits table and held it aloft for the entire court to see, the way he might have been holding up a sporting trophy he had just won.
    ‘I wouldn’t say I had interfered with it all,’ Grace responded, angered by the man’s arrogance – but, equally, aware this was the silk’s game plan, to wind him up, wanting to rile him.
    Charwell lowered the shoe, pensively. ‘Oh, I see, you don’t consider that you have interfered with it?’ Without waiting for Grace to answer, he went on. ‘I put it to you that you have abused your position by removing a piece of evidence and taking it to a dabbler in the dark arts.’
    Turning to Judge Driscoll, he