Looking Good Dead

check if he’s posted any ads for his car on a website anywhere – someone like Autotrader. They could be in on this disappearance together.’
    The more he thought about it, the more excited Grace got. Money troubles , he thought. Might be a red herring, but it needed to be explored. Sometimes people got up to ingenious tricks to reduce their debts. He watched Bella Moy reach for a Malteser; there was a trail of icing sugar from her doughnut to the edge of her keyboard. Nick Nicholl was on the phone, concentrating intensely.
    Norman Potting was on the phone also, working his way through the client list of BCE-247, no doubt causing a few upsets, Grace thought a touch malevolently. Not that he took the moral high ground on prostitution – there had been a few occasions during the past nine years when he’d picked up the phone to call one of the numbers in the personal ads in the Argus himself. But on each occasion he had felt the shadow of Sandy over his shoulder.
    The same thing had happened to him during a brief holiday romance on the one, disastrous, occasion he had gone on a singles holiday – to the Greek island of Paxos.

    The door opened and the cheery face of Tony Case, the senior support officer for Sussex House, peered round. ‘Just thought I’d pop in to see if there was anything you needed, Roy,’ he said.
    ‘Thanks, Tony, I think we’re fine. I appreciate your coming in.’
    Case raised a finger in acknowledgement. ‘All part of the service.’
    ‘Enjoy the rest of your weekend,’ Grace said.
    Tony Case looked at his watch. ‘All four hours of it? That’s almost funny, Roy.’
    As the support officer headed off down the corridor, Grace stared at the bright orange lettering on the Vantage screen, scanning down it for the latest activity logged on the D’Eath murder. It did not take him long to find something. The house-to-house enquiries had turned up a vigilant neighbour who had clocked a white van parked outside Reggie D’Eath’s house at around seven the previous evening. The neighbour had dutifully written down the van’s number.
    He double-clicked on the log to read the details. The PC who had interviewed the neighbour had requested a vehicle registration check, and it had come back as clean. The SIO appointed for Reggie D’Eath’s murder was Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor, a considerably more experienced officer than himself. No doubt Gaylor’s team would be all over that van when they found it.
    Nicholl came over and stooped beside him. ‘Roy, I’ve just had a call from a bar manager I saw yesterday, at a place called the Karma Bar, down at the Marina. They’ve just been watching some CCTV tapes going back a couple of weeks – they’re trying to stop a problem they have with a couple of drug dealers operating in the place – and he reckons he’s got some footage of Janie Stretton.’
    Grace felt a sudden bolt of excitement. ‘How quickly can we get it here?’
    ‘He’d rather I went there – he needs the tapes. He said I could watch them right away.’
    ‘Now?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Grace thought for a moment. Nick Nicholl had not been in the CID long, and still had a lot to learn. The young DC was bright but he might miss something – and this promised to be the first lead they had in thecase. If this was so, then it was crucial to get every possible piece of information from it.
    ‘Bring her photographs,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll come with you.’ Turning to Branson, he said, ‘We’ll see Mr Bryce as soon as I’m back.’
    ‘That’s going to make it well late for him.’ Glenn Branson was thinking, unprofessionally, he knew, but he couldn’t help it, about the remnants of his own Sunday night. He longed to see his kids, even if it was just for five minutes before they went to sleep.
    ‘Glenn, if Mr Bryce hasn’t murdered his wife, or pulled off some scam with her, he’s going to be wide awake all night long, trust me.’
    Branson gave a reluctant nod, knowing Grace was right, and glanced at his watch. Grace would be an hour at the very least and probably much longer. By the time he was back and they’d gone to the Bryces’ house it would be eleven at the earliest. He wasn’t afraid of facing half a dozen knife-wielding thugs in a dark alley in Brighton, but at times he was bloody terrified of his wife, and at this moment he was terrified of picking up the phone to Ari and telling her he was unlikely to be home this side of midnight.
    Grace was so fired