Not Dead Yet

showing up for work all day without contacting the office, or having an outside appointment in his diary, is out of character?’
    ‘It would seem so, but we do know that he occasionally works away from the office at the premises of clients.’
    Grace was liking this less and less. Hopefully the man was sick, in bed. But in his bones he didn’t think so. He called Guy Batchelor. ‘How are you doing?’
    A blast of expletives came back down the phone, followed by, ‘That sodding bus lane! Sorry Roy, but we’re sitting in gridlock from Roedean all the way through to Peacehaven.’
    ‘Okay, let me know when you are on site.’ Grace immediately radioed the Ops 1 Controller again. ‘Andy, do you have a unit in the Peacehaven area?’
    ‘I’ll check.’
    ‘Send the nearest one straight to Eric Whiteley’s house. I need to establish if he’s at home – top priority.’
    ‘Leave it with me.’
    Grace was suddenly craving a cigarette. But he didn’t carry any on him these days, and he didn’t have time to find someone to bum one from – and even less time to go outside and smoke it. Please God, let Whiteley be at home.
    And if he wasn’t?
    He was thinking of Gaia, she seemed to be a sweet and fragile person behind her tough public persona. He liked her, he was utterly determined to do all he possibly could to protect her and her son. After the incident with the chandelier, the consequences of any similar occurrences were not worth thinking about. Neither morally, nor career-wise.
    He glanced at the serials – the log of all incidents in Sussex that was updated constantly. So far it was a quiet afternoon, which was good because that meant most of the officers on duty would be available if needed. He was thinking ahead. Clearly Andrew Gulli had not managed to convince Gaia to leave town, as the production’s call sheet, which he had requested and was lying in front of him, required her in make-up at 4 p.m. and on set at 6 p.m.
    Andy Kille called him back. ‘Roy, I’ve got a NeighbourhoodPolicing Team car at Whiteley’s house now. They’re not getting any response from the doorbell or knocking and they can’t see or hear any signs of movement inside the house.’
    Grace was tempted to instruct them to break in. If Whiteley was unconscious or dead, it would change the whole dynamics. But the fact the man had not turned up for work wasn’t sufficient grounds. They needed the warrant.
    Twenty anxious minutes later, Nick Nicholl called him to say he had the warrant signed by a magistrate who lived close to Whiteley’s house in Peacehaven, and he was standing by, two streets away, with DS Guy Batchelor, DC Emma Reeves and six members of the Local Support Team. The POLSA and four Specialist Search Unit officers were minutes away.
    ‘Send the LST in,’ Grace instructed, urgently. ‘Now!’

111
    Eric Whiteley’s house, 117 Tate Avenue, was near the top of a hill, in a network of streets filled with post-war houses and bungalows, all fairly tightly packed together. It was a quiet area, with the cliff-top walk above the sea a quarter of a mile to the south, and the vast expanse of farmland and open grassland of the South Downs just two streets away to the north.
    Number 117 had a rather sad look about it, Guy Batchelor thought. It was a modest, drab 1950s two-storey brick and wood structure, with an integral garage, and fronted by a tidy but unloved garden. A sign on the garage doors, in large red letters on a white background, proclaimed, DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE .
    He waited on the pavement with DCs Nicholl and Reeves as the six officers from the Local Support Team went down the drive, two peeling off and hurrying down the side alley, past the dustbins, to cover the rear of the property. All six were in blue jump suits, with body armour, and military-style helmets with the visors down. One carried the cylindrical battering ram. Another two carried the hydraulic jamb spreader, and its power supply, which was used for forcing apart the steel reinforced door frames that drug dealers were increasingly fitting to slow down entry of any police raid. A fourth officer, the Sergeant in charge of this section, carried the search warrant.
    Shouting, ‘POLICE! OPEN UP, POLICE!’ the first officer banged on the door, rang the doorbell and banged hard on the door again. He waited some moments, then turned, looking for a signal from his Sergeant, who nodded. Immediately, he swung the battering ram at the