Looking Good Dead
them unhurriedly, throwing them a flirty glance and jauntily swinging a bag.
Potting, who had been quiet for some minutes, murmured, ‘Come on, doll. Bend over; show us your growler!’
There was a gap in the traffic, and Nick Nicholl turned left.
‘She’s all right, she is!’ Potting said, turning to watch her out of the rear window.
‘Except she is a he ,’ Nick Nicholl corrected him.
‘Bollocks!’ Potting said.
‘Yes, exactly!’ the DS retorted.
They drove along Marine Parade, past the debris of broken glass and food cartons outside a nightclub, the über-trendy Van Alen apartment building, then the black and white flinted Regency facades that fronted the imposing crescent of Sussex Square, where, Glenn Branson had told Grace a thousand times, Laurence Olivier had once had a home.
‘You’re talking through your arsehole,’ Potting replied. ‘She was gorgeous!’
‘Big Adam’s apple,’ the DS said. ‘That’s how you tell.’
‘Fuck me,’ Potting said.
‘I’m sure he would have done, if you’d asked nicely.’
‘Shouldn’t be allowed out on the streets looking like that, bloody fudge-packer.’
‘You are so gross, Norman,’ Grace said, turning round. ‘You are quite offensive, you know.’
‘Well I’m sorry, Roy, but I find poofs offensive,’ Potting said. ‘Never understood ’em, never will.’
‘Yes, well, Brighton happens to be the gay capital of the UK,’ Grace said, really irritated with the man. ‘If you have a problem with that you’re either in the wrong job or the wrong city.’ And you’re a complete fucking prat, and I wish you weren’t in my car or in my life, he would have liked to have added, digging in his pocket for some more paracetamol.
On their left they passed terrace after terrace of imposing white Regency houses. On their right were the sails of a dozen yachts, fresh out of the Marina on a Sunday race.
‘So this bloke we’re going to have a chat with,’ Potting said. ‘Reginald D’Eath, is he one of them , too?’
‘No,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘He isn’t – he just likes girls – as long as they’re not older than about four.’
‘That’s something I really can’t understand,’ Norman Potting said.
Popping a pill from the foil pack, Grace thought grimly, Great, at last we’ve found something in common .
They drove up a steep hill at the back of Rottingdean, alongside a prep school playing field with a cricket pitch marked out in the centre and two large white screens on rollers, with pleasant detached houses opposite. Then they turned into a street with bungalows on either side. It was the kind of quiet area where anything out of the ordinary would stand out – as the bright yellow Neighbourhood Watch stickers, prominently displayed in each front window, warned.
A good choice of location for a safe house, Grace thought, except for one minor detail that appeared to have been overlooked. Who in their right bloody mind would put a paedophile in a house a few hundred yards away from a school playing field? He shook his head. Didn’t anybody ever think?
‘Is Mr D’Eath expecting us?’ Nicholl asked.
‘With morning coffee and a box of Under Eights, I expect,’ Norman Potting said, following this with a throaty chuckle.
Ignoring the terrible joke, Grace replied, ‘The woman I spoke to from the Witness Protection Agency said they’d left a message for him.’
They pulled up outside Number 29. The 1950s bungalow looked a little more tired than the others in the street, its brown pebbledashrendering in need of repair, and repainting considerably overdue. The small front garden was in poor shape also, reminding Grace that he needed to mow his own lawn some time this weekend – and today was a perfect day for it. But when would he get the chance?
He told Norman Potting to wait in the street, in case Reginald D’Eath hadn’t got the message they were coming and tried to do a runner, then, accompanied by DC Nicholl, he walked up to the front door. It bothered him that the curtains of the front room were still drawn at a quarter to eleven on a Sunday morning. But maybe Mr D’Eath was a late riser? He pressed the plastic bell-push. Dinky chimes rang out inside the house. Then silence.
He waited some moments, then rang again.
Still no response.
Pushing open the letterbox he knelt and called out through it, ‘Hello, Mr D’Eath, it’s Detective Superintendent Grace of Brighton CID!’
Still no
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