Dead Simple

loser.’
    ‘Oh really?’
    ‘That’s what M – Michael said. He sort of hung on to their crowd but wasn’t really part of it.’
    ‘But part of it enough to be included in the stag night?’ Branson persisted.
    ‘Michael hates to hurt anyone. I think he felt Robbo had to be included. I suppose because he’d made the other guys ushers, but not Robbo.’
    Grace drank some coffee. ‘You didn’t have any falling-out with Michael? Nothing to make you think he might have got cold feet about the wedding?’
    ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘No. Absolutely not. I – he—’
    ‘Where are you going on your honeymoon?’ Grace asked.
    ‘The Maldives. Michael’s booked a fantastic place – he loves water – boats, scuba diving. It looks like paradise.’
    ‘We have a helicopter out looking for him. We have drafted in one hundred special constables, and if he hasn’t turned up by tonight we are going to start a full search of the area where he was last seen. But I don’t want to tie up hundreds of valuable police man-hours only to find he’s sunning himself in the Cayman Islands, courtesy of the British taxpayer. Do you understand?’
    Ashley nodded. ‘Loud and clear,’ she said bitterly. ‘This is about money, not about finding Michael at all.’
    ‘No,’ Grace said, softening his tone. ‘This is not about money. I’m prepared to authorize whatever it costs to find Michael.’
    ‘Then please start now.’ Hunching her thin shoulders, she stared pitifully down at her glass of wine. ‘I recognize you, from the Argus piece on you. And the Daily Mail yesterday. They were trying to ridicule you for going to a medium, right?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I believe in all that. Don’t you know somebody? You know – with your contacts? Aren’t there mediums, psychics – who can locate missing people?’
    Grace shot a glance at Branson, then looked at Ashley. ‘There are, yes.’
    ‘Couldn’t you go to someone – or put me in touch with someone you can recommend?’
    Grace thought carefully for a moment. ‘Do you have anything belonging to Michael?’ He was aware of Glenn Branson’s eyes boring into him.
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Anything at all. Some object. An item of clothing? Jewellery? Something he would have been in contact with?’
    ‘I can find something. Just give me a couple of minutes.’
    ‘No problem.’

34
    ‘Are you out of your tree?’ Branson said as they drove away from Ashley’s house.
    Holding the copper bracelet Ashley had given him in his hand, Grace replied, ‘You suggested it.’ There was a deep bass boom, boom, boom from the radio. Grace turned the volume down.
    ‘Yeah, but I didn’t mean for you to ask her.’
    ‘You wanted us to nick something from his pad?’
    ‘ Borrow . Man, you live dangerously. ‘What if she talks to the press?’
    ‘You asked me to help you.’
    Branson gave him a sideways look. ‘So what do you make of her?’
    ‘She knows more than she’s telling us.’
    ‘So she’s trying to protect his arse?’
    Grace turned the bracelet over in his hands. Three thin bands of copper welded together, each ending in two small roundels. ‘What do you think?’
    ‘There you go again – your usual, answering a question with a question.’
    Grace said nothing for a while, thinking. In his mind he was recalling the scene inside Ashley Harper’s house. Her anxiety, her answers to the questions. Nineteen years in the Police Force had taught him many lessons. Probably the most important one was that the truth is not necessarily what was immediately apparent. Ashley Harper knew more than she was saying, of that he was certain. The reading of her eyes told him that. Probably, he assessed, in her grief-stricken state she was concerned about whatever tax scam Michael Harrison might be involved with in the Cayman Islands getting out in the open. And yet he felt this was not the whole story.
    *
    Twenty minutes later they parked on a yellow line on the Kemp Town promenade, elevated above the beach and the English Channel, and climbed out of the car.
    Rain was still pelting down, and, apart from the grey smudge of a tanker or freighter on the horizon, the sea was empty. A steady stream of cars and lorries sluiced past them. Over to the right, Grace could see the Palace Pier with its white domes, tacky lights and the helter-skelter rising like a pillar at the end.
    Marine Parade, the wide boulevard that ran along a mile of handsome Regency facades with sea views, teemed with