Not Dead Enough

himself in a small, gloomy basement room, almost every inch of the shabbily carpeted floor covered in partially dismembered computer equipment, piles of motoring magazines and car manuals. It smelled damp.
    At the far end of the room was a workstation, with a computer and keyboard. The entire wall in front of it was covered in newspaper cuttings and what looked like flow charts of family trees. To the right was an open door, with a dark passageway beyond.
    He crossed the room, threading a careful path through the stuff on the floor, until he reached the ancient swivel chair at the workstation. Then he saw what was pinned up on the wall.
    And he froze in his tracks.
    ‘Shit!’ Glenn Branson, now standing right beside him, said.
    It was a gallery of news cuttings. Most of the pages, cut or torn from the Argus and from national newspapers, appeared to track Brian Bishop’s career. There were several photographs of him, including a wedding photograph of his marriage to Katie. Alongside was an article, on a pink page from the Financial Times , on the meteoric rise of his company, International Rostering Solutions PLC, talking about its entry, last year, into the Sunday Times list of the UK’s hundred fastest-growing companies.
    Grace was vaguely aware of Branson, and other people, moving past him, pulling on rubber gloves, doors and drawers opening and closing, but his attention was riveted by another article Sellotaped to the wall. It was the front page of a late edition of Monday’s Argus newspaper, carrying a large photograph of Brian Bishop and his wife, and a smaller, inset photograph of himself. In one of the columns beneath was a red ink ring around his words: Evil creature .
    He read the whole passage:
    ‘ This is a particularly nasty crime, ’ Detective Superintendent Grace, the SIO, said. ‘… we will work around the clock to bring the evil creature who did this to justice.’
    Nick Nicholl suddenly waved a flimsy, legal-looking document in front of him. ‘Just found this lease. He’s got a lock-up! Two in fact – in Westbourne Villas.’
    ‘Phone the incident room,’ Grace said. ‘Get someone to type up a new warrant and get it down to the same magistrate, then bring it here. And tell them to shift!’
    Then, as he was staring, again, at the red ring around the words Evil creature he heard Glenn Branson call out, in a very worried voice, ‘Boss man, I think you’d better take a look in here.’
    Grace walked down a short passageway into a dank, windowless bedroom, with a narrow borrowed light high up. The room was lit by a solitary, naked, low-wattage bulb hanging from a cord above a bed, neatly made, with a cream candlewick counterpane.
    Lying on the counterpane was a long, brown-haired wig, a moustache, a beard, a black baseball cap, and a pair of dark sunglasses.
    ‘Jesus!’ he said.
    Glenn Branson’s response was simply to point with his finger past him. Grace turned. And what he saw chilled every cell in his body.
    Taped to the wall were three blown-up photographs, each taken, he reckoned, from his limited knowledge of the craft, through a long lens.
    The first was of Katie Bishop. She was wearing a bikini swimsuit, leaning back against what looked like the cockpit rail of a yacht. A large red-ink cross was scrawled over her. The second was of Sophie Harrington. It was of her face, in close-up, with what looked like a blurred London street behind her. There was also a red-ink cross scrawled over her.
    The third was a picture of Cleo Morey, turning away from the front entrance door of the Brighton and Hove Mortuary.
    There was no cross.
    Grace pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled her home number. She answered on the third ring.
    ‘Cleo, are you OK?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Never better.’
    ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I’m being serious.’
    ‘I’m listening to you, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace,’ she slurred. ‘I’m hanging on to every word.’
    ‘I want you to lock your front door and put the safety chain on.’
    ‘Lock the front door,’ she echoed. ‘And put the safety chain on.’
    ‘I want you to do it now, OK? While I’m on the phone.’
    ‘You’re so bossy shometimes, Detective Shuperintendent! OK, I’m getting up from the sofa and now I’m walking over to the front door.’
    ‘Please put the safety chain on.’
    ‘S’ham doing it now!’
    Grace heard the clank of a chain. ‘Do not open the door to anybody, OK?