Looking Good Dead

the information that her protégé was in a bad way after a car crash.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said. ‘What happened?’
    ‘He was a passenger in a taxi in the centre of Brighton, late last night. It was in collision with a van being pursued by a police car.’
    And the next moment Grace was smiling too; he couldn’t help it. Gallows humour. It got to everyone in this job, eventually.
    As he drove away from Alison Vosper’s office, Grace phoned the Royal Sussex County Hospital to find out if the van driver from last night had come round yet. Right now that man was their best hope of getting to the Bryces’ captors.
    Just about their only damned hope.
    Except for one long shot.
    He drove to the Bryces’ house, where DC Linda Buckley had just taken over from DC Willingham. She asked Grace if there was much point in her staying on in the house. After all, there was nothing to do except feed the dog. He suggested she wait a few more hours in case Tom Bryce turned up – which, he thought grimly, was unlikely.
    He went upstairs and into the Bryces’ bedroom, then hurried back downstairs. The Alsatian was standing in the hallway giving him a strange look, as if she knew he was the man who could bring her master and mistress home.
    Despite his rush, Grace paused for a moment, knelt beside the dog and stroked her forehead. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Don’t you worry; I’ll bring them back. Somehow. OK?’ He stared into the dog’s large, brown eyes and felt for an instant, just a fleeting instant, that the fine-looking creature had actually understood what he’d said.
    Maybe it was his tiredness, or the stress, or whatever, addling his brain, but as he left the house and drove quickly away, heading for the eastern extremity of the city, the expression on that dog’s face stayed with him, haunting him. She had looked so sad, so full of trust. And for a moment he wasn’t doing any of this just for Mr and Mrs Bryce, and for their children. He was also doing it for their dog.

74
    Tom woke with a start, with a blinding headache, badly in need of a pee, thinking there must have been a power cut. It was never this dark, normally; there was always the neon glow of the street lights, tinging the bedroom orange.
    And what the hell was he lying on? Rock hard . . .
    And then, as if a sluice had released cold water into his belly, he remembered something indistinct but bad.
    Oh shit, bad.
    His right arm hurt. He tried to raise it but it would not move. Must have been lying on it , he thought, made it go to sleep . He tried again. Then he realized he couldn’t move his left arm either.
    Nor his legs.
    Something was digging into his right thigh. His jaw ached and his mouth was parched. He tried to speak and found to his shock he couldn’t. All he could hear was a muffled hum, as he felt the roof of his mouth vibrate. Something was clamped over his mouth, bound tight around his face, pulling his cheeks in. Then a shiver ripped through him as he remembered the words last night. On his computer screen: . . . get out of the house, take Kellie’s car, head north on the A23 London Road and wait for her to call you . . .
    That’s exactly what he had done. It was coming back now. Driving up the A23. The phone call telling him to pull over into the lay-by.
    Now here.
    Oh Christ, oh God, oh sweet Jesus Christ, where was he? Where was Kellie? What the hell had he done? Who the hell had—
    Light suddenly appeared, an upright rectangle of yellow some distance away. A doorway. A figure coming through it, holding a powerful torch, the beam glinting like a mirror.
    Tom held his breath, watching as the figure moved nearer. In the swinging beam of the torch he could see he was in some kind ofstoreroom stacked with massive plastic and metal drums that looked as if they contained fuel or chemicals.
    As the figure came closer, Tom made out a very fat man in a loose-fitting open-necked shirt, his hair gelled back and squeezed into a short pigtail. A large medallion swung on a chain from his neck. There wasn’t enough light to see his face clearly but Tom put him in his late fifties to early sixties.
    Then the savage beam shone straight in his face; it felt like it was burning the backs of his retinas and he squeezed his eyes shut.
    In a Louisiana drawl, and sounding sincere, as if it were a genuine question to which he was expecting an answer, the man said, ‘So you think you’re a bit of a hero, do you, Mr Bryce?’
    Unsure how to respond