Dead Simple

who was in today. She was also one of the detectives he had tasked with working through the mountains of bureaucracy required by the Crown Prosecution Service for Operation Neptune , a large and harrowing human-trafficking investigation he had been running in the weeks before Christmas.
    It took her only a few moments to reach him from her desk in the large, open-plan Detectives’ Room just beyond his door. He noticed she was limping a little as she came into his office – still not fully recovered from the horrific injuries she had sustained in a pursuit last summer, when she had been crushed against a wall by a van. Despite multiple fractures and losing her spleen, she had insisted on cutting short her advised convalescence period to get back to work as quickly as possible.
    ‘Hi, E-J,’ he said. ‘Have a seat.’
    Grace had just begun to run through the sketchy details David Alcorn had given him and to explain the delicate political situation when his internal phone suddenly rang again.
    ‘Roy Grace,’ he answered, raising a finger to E-J to ask her to wait.
    ‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ said a chirpy, friendly voice with a posh, public-school accent. ‘How do you do? This is Peter Rigg here.’
    Shit, Grace thought again.
    ‘Sir,’ he replied. ‘Very nice to – er – um – hear from you. I thought you weren’t actually starting until Monday, sir.’
    ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
    Oh boy, Roy Grace thought, his heart sinking. The New Year was barely twelve hours old and they had their first serious crime. And the new ACC hadn’t even officially started and he’d managed to piss him off already.
    He was conscious of E-J’s eyes on him, and her ears scooping this all up.
    ‘No, sir, absolutely not. This is actually fortuitous timing. It would seem we have our first critical incident of the year. It’s too early to tell at this moment, but it has potential for a lot of unwelcome media coverage.’
    Grace then signalled to E-J that he needed privacy and she left the room, closing the door.
    For the next couple of minutes he ran through what was happening. Fortunately, the new Assistant Chief Constable continued in a friendly vein.
    When Grace had finished, Rigg said, ‘You’re going up there yourself, I take it?’
    Roy hesitated. With the highly specialized and skilled team at Crawley, there was no actual need for him to be there at this stage, and his time would be far better employed here in the office, dealing with paperwork and keeping up to speed on the incident via the phone. But he decided that was not what the new ACC wanted to hear.
    ‘Yes, sir. I’m on my way shortly,’ he replied.
    ‘Good. Keep me informed.’
    Grace assured him he would.
    As he hung up, thinking hard, his door opened and the morose face and shaven dome of Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson appeared. His eyes, against his black skin, looked tired and dulled. They reminded Grace of the eyes of fish that had been dead too long, the kind Cleo had told him he should avoid on a fishmonger’s slab.
    ‘Yo, old-timer,’ Branson said. ‘Reckon this year’s going to be any less shitty than last?’
    ‘Nope!’ Grace said. ‘The years never get less shitty. All we can do is try to learn to cope with that fact.’
    ‘Well, you’re a sack-load of goodwill this morning,’ Branson said, slumping his huge frame down into the chair E-J had just vacated.
    Even his brown suit, garish tie and cream shirt looked tired and rumpled, as if they’d also been on a slab too long, which worried Grace about his friend. Glenn Branson was normally always sharply dressed, but in recent months his marriage breakup had sent him on a downward spiral.
    ‘Wasn’t the best year for me last year, was it? Halfway through I got shot and three-quarters of the way through my wife threw me out.’
    ‘Look on the bright side. You didn’t die and you got to trash my collection of vinyls.’
    ‘Thanks a bunch.’
    ‘Want to take a drive with me?’ Grace asked.
    Branson shrugged. ‘A drive? Yeah, sure. Where?’
    Grace was interrupted by his radio phone ringing. It was David Alcorn calling again to give him an update.
    ‘Something that might be significant, Roy. Apparently some of the victim’s clothes are missing. Sounds like the offender might have taken them. In particular her shoes.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘I seem to remember there was someone doing that a few years back, wasn’t there?’
    ‘Yes, but he took just