Looking Good Dead

discovery of the link on Tom Bryce’s computer with Reggie D’Eath’s computer; Kellie Bryce’s disappearance; her husband’s disappearance; the recovery of a laptop computer from a crashed van last night, and what it contained, which they would all shortly see.
    He looked at his watch. ‘Whatever plans outside of work any of you have for the next thirty-six hours and forty-five minutes, you can forget. You’ll understand why at the end of this briefing. OK, can I have your individual updates?’ He looked first at Norman Potting.
    ‘Can I just ask, is there any more news on Emma-Jane?’ Potting asked.
    ‘No, she’s still on life support,’ Grace answered curtly. ‘I’ve organized flowers from our team to be sent to the hospital. What progress have you made on the two escort agencies Miss Stretton was registered with?’
    ‘I went to take a formal statement from Ms Claire Porter, joint proprietor of BCE-247 escort agency, at seven thirty last night. She’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I got nothing helpful from her.’
    ‘And her clients?’
    ‘I’m working my way through her clients, and also through her girls,’ Potting said.
    I’ll bet you are, you dirty bugger, G race thought, and could see from the expressions on several other faces, including the two FLOs assigned to Derek Stretton, Maggie Campbell and Vanessa Ritchie, that he wasn’t alone in this view.
    ‘So far, I haven’t come up with anything.’
    ‘And the second agency?’
    ‘She had only just registered; they hadn’t introduced any clients to her.’

    Grace looked at his notes. ‘What about the man called Anton who took Janie Stretton out on four dates from the BCE-247 agency?’
    ‘I checked out the phone number. It was one of those pay-as-you-go jobs you can buy in just about any shop or petrol station. No record of the purchaser; won’t get us anywhere.’
    Grace circulated to the teams a dozen photographs of Janie Stretton with her date in the Karma Bar. They had been lifted off the CCTV tape and the quality was not great, but her face and the face of her muscular, spiky-haired date were clear enough. ‘These were taken on Friday, May twenty-seventh, the night of Miss Stretton’s third date with this Anton. I think we can presume this is him. I want these circulated to every police station in the country and we’ll try to get it on Crimewatch on Wednesday night. Someone’s going to recognize him.’ Grace knew that this might raise identification issues in the future, but he would deal with them with the Crown Prosecution Service when he had to.
    He turned to Maggie Campbell and Vanessa Ritchie. ‘You said that Miss Stretton’s father was talking about putting up a reward?’
    ‘He confirmed last night,’ Maggie Campbell said. ‘One hundred thousand pounds for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer.’
    ‘Good,’ Grace said. ‘That’s helpful; that should test a few loyalties.’ He looked at two of the new officers he had recruited from Dave Gaylor’s team: Don Barker, whom Grace liked, a stocky, bull-necked detective sergeant in his mid-thirties, with a fuzz of fair hair and a pale blue shirt straining at the buttons, and a very confident, much younger detective constable Grace had never seen before. His name was Alfonso Zafferone; he had Latino good looks, wet-look hair, and was dressed in an elegant houndstooth sports jacket and a sharp shirt and tie. Addressing both of them he asked, ‘Any progress on the ownership of this white van?’
    Alfonso Zafferone replied. He had a cocky attitude, making Grace take an instant dislike to him. He exuded a demeanour that said he was cut out for higher things, and menial tasks such as vehicle checks were way beneath him. ‘As we already know, it’s a company with a PO box address in London. I checked out the company – it isn’t registered at Companies House.’

    ‘Meaning?’ Grace asked.
    Zafferone shrugged.
    His tiredness making him less tolerant than normal, Grace snapped at him, deliberately getting his name wrong – one of the best ways, he had learned over the years, to put someone in their place. ‘This is a murder enquiry, DC Zabaglione. We don’t do shrugs here; we do answers verbally. Would you like to try again?’
    The young DC glared at him, looking for a moment as if he was about to answer back, then clearly thought better of it. A little more meekly he replied, ‘It means, sir, either the company is