Not Dead Yet

Yeah. He liked a bit of girl-on-girl action. He liked this big room in this fuck-off mansion set back behind electric gates in Brighton’s swanky Dyke Road Avenue.
    He’d lived in a place even bigger than this once upon a time, just a few streets away. Before a certain Brighton copper took it all away from him.
    The pad’s owner, his old mate Benny Julius, with his pot belly and dodgy toupee, was down in the basement Jacuzzi with the other three girls. This was a welcome home party. Benny always did things in style, always liked living it large.
    He winced as the girl slipped her hand inside his zip. Then she whispered into his ear, ‘Oooh, it’s quite small – but it’s ferocious, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yeah, ferocious,’ he whispered back, before his mouth was smothered by hers.
    That was how he was feeling. Ferocious. His focus was slippingfrom his pleasures. Ferocious . He barely felt the girl’s hand on his shaft any more. Ferocious. Twelve years and three months. Thanks to one man.
    Detective Sergeant Roy Grace.
    Been promoted a few times now, he’d read.
    He was stiff as a rock.
    ‘Like a pencil,’ she breathed, huskily, into his ear. ‘Like a tiny little pencil stub!’
    He smashed her across the face with the flat of his hand so hard she fell to the floor. ‘Fuck you, bitch,’ he said.
    ‘You couldn’t if you tried,’ she retorted, rubbing her cheek, looking dazed. ‘It’s not big enough to get it in.’
    He staggered to his feet, but the drink had got there first. His natty grey suede loafers embedded themselves in the deep pile of the carpet and he fell flat on his face, snapping the cigar in half, showering dark grey ash across the white tufts. As he lay there he stabbed a finger at her. ‘Remember who you fucking work for, bitch.’
    ‘Yeah, I do. I remember what he told me and all. About why you’re called Small bone.’ She held up her forefinger and thumb and curled them, with a sneer.
    ‘You fucking—’ he climbed to his knees and lunged at her. But all Amis Smallbone saw, for a fleeting instant, was her left foot coming out of nowhere towards his face. An elementary kickboxing manoeuvre. Striking him beneath his chin, jerking his head upwards and back. It felt, as his consciousness dissolved into sparking white light, as if her foot had gone clean through his head and out the back of his skull.

31
    As he drove his silver police Ford Focus from the Sunday morning briefing meeting on Operation Icon , down the London Road, heading towards the monolithic superstructure of Brighton’s John Street Police Station, Roy Grace was deep in thought, with a lot weighing on his mind, and trying to organize his priorities.
    His biggest worry was Cleo, who’d had a restless night with the baby kicking, and was not feeling well this morning. She was still very shaken from the vandalism of her car, and he wanted to get back to her as soon as possible.
    There had been no developments on ‘Berwick Male’, as the headless, armless and legless torso had been named. Their best hope was pinned at the moment on a DNA hit, and they should hear from the lab in the morning.
    Tomorrow he had to go to London, to Inner Temple, for a meeting with the prosecuting barrister on the Carl Venner snuff movie case. He needed to find time today to meet with the Case Officer DC Mike Gorringe and financial investigator Emily Curtis, to review their evidence files and go through his Policy Book. They would be grilled tomorrow as if they were in the dock, and needed to have all their answers ready. And right now he had to attend a meeting with Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington.
    His phone rang, and he answered it on hands-free.
    ‘Mr Grace?’ said an unfamiliar, chirpy voice.
    He answered with a hesitant ‘Yes?’
    ‘It’s Terry Robinson, from Frosts Garage. You popped in a few weeks ago looking at an Alfa Brera?’
    ‘Right, yes,’ he said, remembering vaguely. There was a strange and irritating clicking sound on the line for some seconds, similar to the noise he heard before. Either a bad connection or something wrong with his phone, he thought.
    ‘You asked me to let you know if any four-door Alfas came in. Are you still in the market for one?’
    ‘Um, yes, I am.’
    ‘We’ve got a year-old Giulietta. High spec, it’s a beautiful car. Got a bit of mileage on the clock, but you said you didn’t mind that, didn’t you?’
    ‘How many miles?’
    ‘Forty-eight thousand. One owner. In Etna black.