Dead Simple

started the car. ‘Bit of a tasty old slapper,’ he said to Grace. ‘Think you could be in there.’
    ‘Thanks,’ Grace said. ‘After you.’
    ‘I’m a happily married man. You ought to go with the flow a bit.’
    Roy Grace looked down at his mobile. At the text messages from Claudine, the cop-hating vegan from Guildford. ‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘Seems to me that half the women who aren’t married are insane.’
    He fell silent for some moments, then he said, ‘The accident happened just after nine. This might have been the last pub they went to before they put him in the coffin.’
    ‘They could have fitted in one more.’
    They went to the next three pubs, but no one remembered the boys. Nick and Bella had found one more publican who recognized them. They left at around 8.30. All apparently very drunk. That pub was about five miles away. Grace was despondent at the news. From the information they had received, they were no nearer to pinpointing where Michael Harrison might be than when they had started.
    ‘We should go and talk to his business partner,’ Grace said. ‘If he’s the best man he has to know something. Don’t you think?’
    ‘I think we should organize a search of the area.’
    ‘Yes, but we need to narrow it down.’
    Branson started the car. ‘You said to me some while back that you know a geezer who does some kind of thing with a pendulum?’
    Grace looked at him in surprise. ‘Yes?’
    ‘Don’t remember his name. You said he can find things that are lost, just by swinging a pendulum over a map.’
    ‘I thought you didn’t believe in that? You’re the one who always tells me I’m an idiot for dabbling in that terrain. Now you are suggesting I go and see someone?’
    ‘I’m getting desperate, Roy. I don’t know what else to do.’
    ‘We press on, that’s what we do.’
    ‘Maybe he’s worth a try.’
    Grace smiled. ‘I thought you were the big sceptic.’
    ‘I am. But we have a guy meant to be walking down the aisle in church tomorrow at two – and we have – ’ he checked his watch ‘ – just twenty-two hours to get him there. And about fifty square miles of forest to search, with about four hours of daylight left. What say you?’
    Privately, Grace believed that Harry Frame was worth a try. But after the fiasco in court on Wednesday, he wasn’t sure it was worth risking his career over it if Alison Vosper were to find out. ‘Let’s exhaust all our other avenues, first, then we’ll see, OK?’
    ‘Worried what the boss might say?’ Branson taunted.
    ‘You get to my age, you start thinking about your pension.’
    ‘I’ll bear that in mind, in about thirty years’ time.’

33
    Ashley Harper’s address was a tiny Victorian terraced house close to a railway line in an area that had once been a working-class area of Hove, but now was an increasingly trendy – and expensive – enclave for singles and first-time buyers. The quality of the cars parked in the street and the smart front doors were the giveaway.
    Grace and Branson climbed out of the car, walked past a Golf GTI and a convertible Renault, and rang the doorbell of number 119, which had a silver Audi TT parked outside.
    After a few moments the door was opened by a very beautiful woman in her mid-twenties. She gave Branson a sad smile of recognition.
    ‘Hello, Ashley,’ Branson said. ‘This is my colleague, Detective Superintendent Grace. Can we have a chat?’
    ‘Of course, come in. Do you have any news?’ She looked at Grace.
    Grace was struck by the contrast of the interior of the house with the outside. They had entered an oasis of cool minimalism. White carpet, white furniture, grey metal Venetian blinds, a large framed Jack Vettriano print of four dudes in sharp suits on the wall, which Grace recognized, pin-pricks of coloured lights jigging on a wall-mounted sound system. The hands of a faceless clock on a wall read 6.20 p.m.
    She offered them drinks. Branson was given a mineral water in a smart glass tumbler and Grace, seated beside him on a long sofa, a black coffee in an elegant white mug.
    ‘There were three confirmed sightings of your fiancé on Tuesday night at pubs in the Ashdown Forest area,’ Glenn Branson told her. ‘Each of them also confirmed he was with four companions – the ones you know. But we have no information on what they were up to, other than getting drunk.’
    ‘Michael isn’t a drinker,’ she said bleakly, holding a large glass of red wine in