Looking Good Dead

dimensions.’
    ‘Tea?’
    ‘I’m fine,’ Grace said, although he could have murdered a cup. ‘I’m in a mega-rush.’
    ‘Life’s not a race, Detective Superintendent Grace, it’s a dance,’ Harry Frame said in a gently chiding voice.
    Grace grinned. ‘I’ll bear that in mind. I’ll put you on my card for a slow waltz at the summer ball.’ He sat down at the table.
    ‘So?’ Harry said, seating himself opposite. ‘Would you be here by any chance in connection with that poor young woman who was found dead here in Peacehaven last week?’
    Harry Frame was a medium and clairvoyant, as well as a pendulum dowser. Grace had been to see the man many times. He could be uncannily accurate – and on other occasions totally useless.
    Grace dug his hand in his pocket, pulled out three small plastic evidence bags and laid them on the table in front of Frame. He pointed, first, to the signet ring he had taken from Janie Stretton’s bedroom. ‘What can you tell me about the owner of this?’
    Frame removed the ring, clasped it in his hand and closed his eyes. He sat still for a good minute, his wizened face screwed up in concentration.
    The room had a musty smell – of old furniture, old carpet, old people.
    Finally, Harry Frame shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Roy. Nothing. Not a good day for me today. No connection with the spirits.’
    ‘Nothing at all from the ring?’
    ‘I’m sorry. Could you come back tomorrow? We could try again.’
    Grace took the ring back, put it in the plastic bag and pocketed it. Next he pointed in turn to the silver cufflinks he had taken from a drawer in the Bryces’ bedroom and a silver bracelet he had taken from Kellie Bryce’s jewellery box. ‘I need to find the owners of these. I need to find them today . I don’t know where they are but I suspect they are somewhere in the vicinity of Brighton and Hove.’
    The medium left the room, and returned quickly holding an Ordnance Survey map of the Brighton and Hove area. Moving a candle in a glass holder out of the way, he spread it out on the table and pulleda length of string, with a small lead weight attached, from his trouser pocket.
    ‘Let’s see what we can find,’ he said. ‘Yes, indeed, let’s see.’ He held the bracelet and the cufflinks in his left hand, then, resting his elbows on the table, he inclined his face towards the map and began to chant.
    ‘Yarummm,’ Frame said to himself. ‘Yarummmm. Brnnnn. Yarummm.’
    Then he sat bolt upright, held the string over the map between his forefinger and thumb, and let the lead weight swing backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. After that, pursing his lips in concentration, he swung it vigorously in a tight circle, steadily covering the map inch by inch.
    ‘Telscombe?’ he said. ‘Piddinghoe? Ovingdean? Kemp Town? Brighton? Hove? Portslade? Southwick? Shoreham?’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not being shown anything in this area, sorry.’
    ‘Can we try a larger scale?’ Grace asked.
    Frame went out again and returned with a map covering the whole of East and West Sussex. But again, after several minutes of swinging the weight with fierce concentration, he produced no result.
    Grace wanted to pick the man up and shake him. He felt so damned frustrated. ‘Nothing at all , Harry?’
    The medium shook his head.
    ‘They’re going to die if I don’t find them.’
    Harry Frame handed him back the links and the bracelet. ‘I could try again later. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
    ‘This afternoon some time?’
    Frame nodded. ‘If you want to leave them with me? I’ll spend all day; I’ll keep working on it.’
    ‘Thank you, I’d appreciate it,’ Grace replied. He was clutching at straws, he knew, as he left with a heavy heart.

76
    After the eight thirty briefing, Jon Rye had spent two and three-quarter hours working on the laptop that had been taken from the wrecked Ford Transit. But it was defeating him.
    At twenty past eleven, feeling drained and frustrated, he went out of the department to get himself a coffee from the vending machine, then returned, deep in thought. With any computer he could normally find a way around any password protection by using forensic software to go in via a back door and then through the computer’s entire internet history. But on this machine he was drawing a blank.
    He held his security card to the door panel of the High Tech Crime Unit, then entered and crossed what he had jokingly christened the hamster’s cage,