Not Dead Enough

Peter’s Church in the London Road, and one on Kings Parade, opposite Brighton Pier. The reason he gave for his absence was that he went out for some air.’
    ‘Seems a bit odd to me,’ Norman Potting said, ‘that both times Bishop does a disappearing act, he switches his phone off.’
    Grace nodded, thinking, then signalled for her to continue.
    ‘From two seventeen until six forty-seven on Friday 4 August, the phone signals remained static, indicating that Bishop stayed in his hotel room. This is consistent with family liaison officer WPC Linda Buckley’s report that Bishop returned to the hotel at around two twenty and was in his room each time she checked up on him, using the house phone, the last time being at six forty-five. Then the phone plot shows that Bishop moved one and a half miles west, which tallies with information obtained by DC Pamela Buckley from taxi driver Mark Tuckwell, who claims he drove Bishop to the Lansdowne Place Hotel at that time. I understand that Hove Streamline Taxis have confirmed this from their log.’ She looked at the female detective constable.
    ‘Yes, that is correct,’ Pamela Buckley said.
    Corbin turned to the next page. ‘Bishop checked into the Lansdowne Place Hotel at five past seven – just over three hours after a member of the hotel reception staff received a phone call from an unidentified male making a reservation for a room for several nights, in Bishop’s name,’ she read.
    Grace quickly turned back through his own notes. ‘Bishop claimed that he received a call from a CID officer informing him that he was being moved to a different hotel and that a taxi had been arranged to collect him, from a back entrance. This was so he could leave the hotel without being seen by the press, who were staking the hotel out. He gave the name of this officer as DS Canning – but we have checked and there is no officer called Canning in the Sussex police force.’
    ‘And is it correct, Adrienne, that there’s no record of any phone call to the Lansdowne Place Hotel being made on Bishop’s mobile phone?’ DCI Duigan asked.
    ‘That is correct, sir.’ Then she added, ‘The Hotel du Vin have also confirmed that there were no calls made by any of their internal phones to the Lansdowne Place during the time Bishop was there.’
    ‘When he was out!’ Norman Potting said suddenly, excitedly. ‘When he went on his lunchtime walkabout, he could have bought one of them pay-as-you-go phones and disposed of it later. He could have bought it specifically to make those calls – and others we might not know about.’
    ‘An interesting thought,’ Grace conceded. ‘A good point, Norman.’
    ‘The Lansdowne Place Hotel is closer to Sophie Harrington’s home than the Hotel du Vin,’ Duigan said. ‘That might be significant.’
    ‘I’d like to add one more thought here,’ Grace said. ‘It’s possible that Bishop had an accomplice helping him with his alibi for the night of Mrs Bishop’s murder. The same accomplice could have been responsible for this switch of hotels.’
    DCI Duigan said, ‘Roy, we can see the attraction for an accomplice with the murder of Mrs Bishop and the substantial life insurance policy. Do we have any grounds yet for believing there would have been an accomplice for Bishop in the murder of Sophie Harrington?’
    ‘No. But it’s early days.’
    Duigan nodded and noted something down.
    Adrienne Corbin continued with her time-line report. ‘Bishop was observed by staff leaving the hotel at approximately seven thirty. His phone mast plot shows that he then headed west. This was confirmed by a sighting of him on a CCTV camera at the junction of West Street and Kings Parade at five to eight.’
    Grace stared at her in shock, for a moment thinking he had misheard. ‘Bishop headed away from the Lansdowne Place Hotel, back in the direction of the Hotel du Vin? A completely different direction from the one he would have had to take to get to Sophie Harrington’s home?’ he grilled her.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.
    Duigan then stood up and switched on the video monitor. ‘I think everyone should see these,’ he said.
    The first showed a colour image of Brian Bishop in Kings Parade, with several people behind him and a bus passing. There was no mistaking his face. He was wearing the clothes Grace remembered from when he interviewed him later that same night – a black blouson jacket over a white shirt and blue trousers. And the sticking