Not Dead Enough

possible, your movements during the twenty-four hours leading up to the time when DS Nicholl and myself came to see you at the North Brighton Golf Club on Friday morning?’
    Grace watched intently as Brian Bishop gave his account. He prefaced it by stating that it was normal for him to take the train to London early on Monday mornings, spend the week alone at his flat in Notting Hill, working late, often with evening meetings, and return to Brighton on Friday evenings for the weekend. Last week, he said, because he had a golf tournament that began early on Friday morning, as part of his club’s centenary celebrations, he had driven to London late on Sunday evening, in order to have his car up there, so that he could drive straight down to the golf club on Friday morning.
    Grace noted this exception to Bishop’s normal routine down on his pad.
    Bishop related his day at work, at the Hanover Square offices of his company, International Rostering Solutions PLC, until the evening, when he had walked down to Piccadilly to meet his financial adviser, Phil Taylor, for dinner at a restaurant called the Wolseley.
    Phil Taylor, he explained, organized his personal annual tax planning. After dinner, he had left the restaurant and gone home to his flat, a little later than he had planned and having drunk rather more than he had intended. He had slept badly, he explained, partly as a result of two large espressos and a brandy, and partly because he was worried about oversleeping and arriving late at the golf club the next morning.
    Keeping rigidly to his script, Branson went back over the account, asking for specific details here and there, in particular regarding the people he had spoken to during the day. He asked him if he could recall speaking to his wife, and Bishop replied that he had, at around two p.m., when Katie had rung him to discuss the purchase of some plants for the garden, as Bishop was planning a Sunday lunch garden party early in September for his executives.
    Bishop added that he had phoned British Telecom for a wake-up call at five thirty a.m. when he had arrived home after his dinner with Phil Taylor.
    As Grace was in the middle of writing that down, his mobile phone rang. It was a young-sounding officer, who introduced himself as PC David Curtis, telling him they were outside the Brighton and Hove Mortuary, that the lights of the premises were off, and everything looked quiet and in order.
    Grace stepped outside the room and asked him if he could see a blue MG sports car outside. PC Curtis told him that the parking area was empty.
    Grace thanked him and hung up. Immediately he dialled Cleo’s home number. She answered on the second ring.
    ‘Hi!’ she said breezily. ‘How’s it going?’
    ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, relieved beyond belief at hearing her voice.
    ‘Me? Fine! I’ve got a glass of wine in my hand and I’m about to dive into my bath!’ she said sleepily. ‘How are you?’
    ‘I’ve been worried out of my wits.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Why? Jesus! You said there was someone outside the mortuary! You were going to call me straight back! I was – I thought—’
    ‘Just a couple of drunks,’ she said. ‘They were looking for Woodvale Cemetery – mumbling about going to pay their respects to their mother.’
    ‘Don’t do this to me!’ he said.
    ‘Do what?’ she asked, all innocence.
    He shook his head, smiling in relief. ‘I have to get back.’
    ‘Of course you do. You’re an important detective, on a big case.’
    ‘Now you’re taking the piss.’
    ‘Already had one of those, when I got home. Now I’m going to have my bath. Night-night!’
    He walked back into the observation room, smiling, exasperated and relieved. ‘Have I missed anything?’ he asked Jane Paxton.
    She shook her head. ‘DS Branson’s good,’ she said.
    ‘Tell him that later. He needs a boost. His ego’s on the floor.’
    ‘What is it with you men and ego?’ she asked him.
    Grace looked at her head, poking out of her tent of a blouse, her double chin and her flat-ironed hair, and then at the wedding band and solitaire ring on her podgy finger. ‘Doesn’t your husband have an ego?’
    ‘He wouldn’t bloody dare.’

91
    The Time Billionaire knew all about happy pills . But he had never taken one. No need. Hey, who needed happy pills when you could come home on a Monday night to find the postman had delivered to your doormat the workshop manual for a 2005 MG TF sports car that you had ordered on