Dead Simple

stared at him in silence. Then dimples appeared in her cheeks as if she might be softening; but her voice remained cold and stern. ‘You could write the number of successes we’ve had with clairvoyants on a postage stamp.’
    ‘That isn’t true, and you know it.’
    ‘Roy, what I know is that you are an intelligent man. I know that you’ve studied the paranormal and that you believe. I’ve seen the books in your office, and I respect any police officer who can think out of the box . But we have a duty to the community. Whatever goes on behind our closed doors is one thing. The image we present to the public is another.’
    ‘The public believe, Alison. There was a survey taken in 1925 of the number of scientists who believed in God. It was forty-three per cent. They did that same survey again in 1998, and guess what? It was still forty-three per cent. The only shift was that there were fewer biologists who believed, but more mathematicians and physicists. There was another survey, only last year, of people who had had some kind of paranormal experience. It was ninety per cent!’ He leaned forwards. ‘Ninety per cent!’
    ‘Roy, the Great Unwashed want to believe the police spend ratepayers’ money on solving crimes and catching villains through established police procedures. They want to believe we are out scouring the country for fingerprints and DNA, that we have labs full of scientists to examine them, and that we are trawling fields, woods, dredging lakes, knocking on doors and interviewing witnesses. They don’t want to think we are talking to Madame Arcata on the end of Brighton Pier, are staring into crystal balls or are shifting upturned tumblers around rows of letters on a bloody Ouija board! They don’t want to think we are spending our time trying to summon up the dead. They don’t want to believe their police officers are standing on the ramparts of castles like Hamlet talking to his father’s ghost. Understand what I’m saying?’
    ‘I understand, yes. But I don’t agree with you. Our job is to solve crimes. We have to use whatever means are at our disposal.’
    She shook her head. ‘We’re never going to solve every crime, and we have to accept that. What we have to do is inspire public confidence. Make people feel safe in their homes, and on the streets.’
    ‘That’s such bullshit,’ Grace said, ‘and you know that! You know fine well you can massage the crime statistics any way you want.’ No sooner had he said it than he regretted his words.
    She gave him a thin, wintry smile. ‘Get the Government to give us another hundred million pounds a year and we will eradicate crime in Sussex. In the absence of that all we can do is spread our resources as thinly and as far as they will go.’
    ‘Mediums are cheap,’ Grace said.
    ‘Not when they damage our credibility.’ She looked down at the papers. ‘When they jeopardize a court case they become more than we can afford. Do you hear me?’
    ‘Loudly, if not clearly.’ He couldn’t help it, the insolence just came out. She was irritating him. Something chauvinistic inside him that he couldn’t help, made it harder for him to accept a dressing-down from a woman than from a man.
    ‘Let me spell it out. You’re lucky to still have a job this morning. The Chief is not a happy bunny. He’s so angry he’s threatening to take you out of the public arena for ever, and have you chained to a desk for the rest of your career. Is that what you want?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then go back to being a police officer, not a flake.’

13
    For the first time since he had joined the Force, Roy Grace had recently begun wondering whether he should ever have become a policeman. From earliest childhood it was all he had wanted to be, and in his teens he had scarcely even considered any other career.
    His father, Jack, had been a desk Sergeant till his retirement, and some of the older officers around still talked about him, with great affection. Grace had been in thrall to him as a child, loved to hear his stories, to go out with him – sometimes in a police car, or down to the station. When he was a child, his father’s life had seemed so much more adventurous and glamorous than the dull lives most of his friends’ dads lived.
    Grace had been addicted to cop shows on television, to books about detectives and cops of every kind – from Sherlock Holmes to Ed McBain. He had a memory that bordered on photographic, he loved puzzles, and he was