Dead Simple

will find him.’

38
    ‘Fucking weirdo,’ Branson said to Grace as they drove away from Harry Frame’s house.
    Grace, deep in thought, did not say anything for a long while. In the past hour the rain had finally stopped, and streaks of late-evening sunlight pierced the net of grey cloud that sagged low over the sea. ‘Let’s assume he’s right for a moment.’
    ‘Let’s get a drink and something to eat,’ Branson said. ‘I’m starving; I’m about to keel over.’
    The clock read 8.31 p.m.
    ‘Good idea.’
    Glenn called his wife on his mobile. Grace listened to Branson’s end of the conversation. It sounded pretty heated and finished with him hanging up in mid-call. ‘She’s well pissed off.’
    Grace gave him a sympathetic smile. He knew better than to make an uninformed comment on someone else’s domestic situation.
    A few minutes later, in the bar of a cliff-top pub called the Badger’s Rest, Grace cradled a large Glenfiddich on the rocks, noticing that his companion was making short work of a pint of beer, despite the fact he was driving.
    ‘I went into the Force,’ Branson said, ‘so I’d have a career that would make my kids proud of me. Shit. At least when I was a bouncer, I had a life. I’d get to bath my Sammy and put him to bed and had time to read him a story before I went off to work. Do you know what Ari just said to me?’
    ‘What?’ Grace stared at the specials on the blackboard.
    ‘She said Sammy and Remi are crying ’cause I’d promised to be home and read them stories tonight.’
    ‘So go home,’ Grace said gently, meaning it.
    Branson drained his pint and ordered another. ‘I can’t do that, you know I can’t. This isn’t a fucking nine-to-five job. I can’t just walk out of the office like some dickhead civil servant, and do a Piss Off Early Tomorrow’s Saturday stunt. I owe it to Ashley Harper and to Michael Harrison. Don’t I?’
    ‘You have to learn when to let go,’ Grace said.
    ‘Oh really? So when exactly do I let go?’
    Grace drained his whisky. It felt good. The burning sensation first in his gullet, then in his stomach. He held his glass out to the barman, ordered another double, then put a twenty-pound note down and asked for change for the cigarette machine. He hadn’t had a cigarette for several days, but tonight his craving for one was too strong.
    The pack of Silk Cut dropped into the tray of the machine. He tore off the cellophane and asked the barman for some matches. Then he lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deeply, gratefully, down into his lungs. It tasted beyond exquisite.
    ‘I thought you’d quit,’ Branson said.
    ‘I have.’
    He received his new drink and clinked glasses with Glenn. ‘You don’t have a life and I’m destroying mine. Welcome to a career in the police.’
    Branson shook his head. ‘Your friend Harry Frame is one weird dude. What a flake!’
    ‘Remember Abigail Matthews?’
    ‘That kid a couple of years ago? Eight years old, right?’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘Kidnapped outside her folks’ home. You found her in a crate in a hangar at Gatwick Airport.’
    ‘Nigerian. She’d been sold into a child sex ring in Holland.’
    ‘That was great detective work. Wasn’t that part of the reason you got promoted so fast?’
    ‘It was. Except I never told anyone the truth about how I found her.’ The whisky was talking now, rather than Roy Grace. ‘I never told anyone, because—’
    ‘Because?’
    ‘It wasn’t great detective work, Glenn, that’s why. It was Harry Frame who found her, with his pendulum. OK?’
    Branson was silent for some moments. ‘So that’s why you believe in him.’
    ‘He’s been right in other cases, too. But I don’t shout about him. Alison Vosper and her brass cronies don’t like anything that doesn’t fit into their boxes. You want a career in the police, you have to be seen to play by the rules. You have to be seen , OK? You don’t actually have to play by them, just so long as they think you are playing by them.’ He drained the second whisky far faster than he had intended. ‘Let’s get some grub.’
    Branson ordered scampi. Grace chose a distinctly unhealthy gammon steak with two fried eggs and French fries, lit another cigarette and ordered another round of drinks.
    ‘So what do we do next, old wise man?’
    Grace squinted at Branson. ‘We could get smashed,’ he said.
    ‘That’s not exactly going to help us find Michael Harrison, is it? Or have I missed