Dead Simple

been too close to this for the past couple of days – what’s yours?’
    Branson slapped his hands against his sides in frustration. ‘Man! Why are you always doing this to me? Can’t you just answer my questions?’
    ‘I dunno. Tell me?’
    ‘Shit, you really piss me off sometimes!’
    ‘Oh, so you had a nice weekend away with your family, leaving me to do your job, and that pisses you off?’
    Indignant, Branson exclaimed ‘A nice weekend with my family. You call driving three hours up the M1 and three hours back, with a bolshy wife and two screaming kids, a nice weekend? Next time you drive them to Solihull, and I’ll stay here and do whatever crap job you want me to do. Deal?’
    ‘Bargain.’
    Grace reached his car. Branson hovered. ‘So, what is your sense?’
    ‘It’s not all as it seems, Horatio, that’s my sense.’
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘I can’t put it any more clearly – yet. I have a bad feeling about Mark Warren and about Ashley Harper.’
    ‘What kind of bad feeling?’
    ‘A very bad feeling.’
    Grace gave his friend a warm pat on the back, then climbed into his car and drove to the security gate. As he pulled out on the main road, with its panoramic view across Brighton and Hove, right down to the sea, with the sun still high above the horizon in the cloudless cobalt sky, he punched the CD button for Bob Berg’s Riddles , and as he drove he began to chill. And for a few delicious moments his thoughts turned away from his investigations, to Cleo Morey.
    And he smiled.
    Then his thoughts turned back to work: to the long drive to south London and back he had ahead. If he was lucky, he might be home by midnight.

62
    Mark, in sweatshirt, jeans and socks, paced around his apartment, a glass of whisky in his hand, unable to settle or to think clearly. The television was on, the sound mute, the actor Michael Kitchen striding, steely-faced, through a war-torn southern England landscape that looked vaguely familiar – somewhere near Hastings, he thought he recognized.
    He had locked his door from the inside, bolted the safety chain. The balcony was safe, impenetrable, four floors up, and besides Michael had a fear of heights.
    It was almost fully dark outside now. Ten o’clock. In just over three weeks it would be the longest day of the year. Through the glass doors to the balcony he watched a single light bobbing out at sea. A small boat, or yacht.
    It had been weeks since he and Michael had taken out Double-MM , their racing sloop. He had planned to go to the Marina today and do some work on her. You could never leave a boat for long; there was always something leaking, corroding, tearing or peeling.
    In truth, the boat was a damned chore for him. He wasn’t even sure he needed the hassle, and rough seas petrified him. Sailing was a big part of Michael’s life, always had been ever since Mark had known him. If he wanted to be Michael’s business partner, then sharing the boat with him went with the territory.
    And sure, they had fun, lots of fun; plenty of good, wind-blown days out sailing under a brilliant sky, plenty of weekends down the coast to Devon and Cornwall, and sometimes across to the French coast or the Channel Islands. But if he never stepped on a yacht again, it wouldn’t bother him.
    Where the fuck are you, Michael?
    He drank some more whisky, sat on the sofa, leaned back, crossed his legs, feeling so damned confused. Michael and Ashley should have been jetting away on their romantic honeymoon today. He had not figured how he was going to cope with that, Ashley making love to Michael, loads of times probably. He would have expected that on a damned honeymoon, unless she feigned something – she had promised him she was going to feign something, but how could she keep that up for a fortnight?
    And besides, he knew she and Michael had already slept together, it was part of their plan. At least she had told him Michael was lousy in bed.
    Unless that was a lie.
    He shook the ice cubes around in the glass and drank some more. He’d rung Pete’s, Luke’s and Josh’s widows, and Robbo’s father, each time on the pretext of finding out about the funeral plans – but in reality to pick their brains, to see if any of them had let anything slip before they’d gone out on Tuesday night. Anything that could incriminate him, or that could give him a clue to what they had been planning.
    Michael had been there Thursday night, for sure. He had not imagined it. No way. So, he was