Not Dead Yet

the tip of his ferret-like nose which was pink, from having peeled. ‘Seems like I came back just at the right time.’ He was clutching his notepad.
    Glenn heard a car, and a moment later Roy Grace came into view, driving his unmarked silver Ford Focus estate.
    Spinella’s phone rang, and he turned away from Branson to answer it. It sounded like he was being given instructions for another job after he had finished here. Just as he ended the call Roy Grace strode up to them, in gum boots but not in a protective suit.
    ‘Nice honeymoon?’ he asked the reporter.
    ‘Beautiful – ever been to the Maldives?’ Spinella asked.
    ‘No, I’m on a copper’s salary not a bent reporter’s.’
    ‘Haha,’ Spinella said. But his laughter was uneasy. There was a tenseness in Grace’s demeanour that Glenn could sense, as, clearly, could the reporter.
    ‘So, what exactly brings you here, Kevin?’ Grace asked him.
    Spinella grinned. ‘You know me and my contacts.’
    ‘So you got tipped off that we’ve found a head – possibly belonging to the missing torso?’
    ‘Yes – so – I thought I’d better get straight down here and see what – er – what you’d like me to put in the paper.’
    ‘You did, did you?’
    Branson frowned. He knew Grace did not care for this reporter, but his attitude was considerably more hostile than normal. The reporter shuffled from foot to foot.
    ‘Yeah, you know,’ Spinella said. ‘To help you with your enquiry – that’s how we like to work with each other, isn’t it, Detective Superintendent?’ His eyes went shiftily from Grace to Branson and back to Grace.
    ‘Who told you about the head?’ Grace asked.
    ‘I’m sorry, Detective Superintendent, I can’t reveal my sources.’
    ‘Perhaps that’s because you don’t have any,’ Grace retorted.
    ‘How – how do – I mean – I can’t reveal them.’ Spinella looked distinctly uneasy.
    Suddenly, surprising Glenn Branson and Spinella, Grace lunged forward and snatched the reporter’s phone from his hand. ‘Kevin Spinella, I believe a criminal offence may have been committed. I’m arresting you on suspicion of illegal telephone hacking. You do not have to say anything; but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
    Spinella’s eyes widened in shock. ‘You – you can’t – you can’t do this to me – you – you…’He stared at the handcuffs Grace had suddenly produced.
    ‘Can’t I?’
    Roy Grace rarely handcuffed people himself these days. But one technique he had never forgotten was how to speed cuff a villain. He snapped one, in one sharp, continuous movement, on Spinella’s right wrist, jerked his left arm behind his back and snapped the handcuff on that, too.
    ‘What’s this all about?’ Spinella demanded sullenly, but already the tone of his voice had changed and he was sounding anxious rather than insolent.
    ‘There is no head that’s been found,’ Grace said. ‘I made that up. You swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.’
    Glenn Branson grinned. ‘That’s quite appropriate, chief, for this location.’
    Grace smiled back grimly.

61
    ‘Who’s your fat friend?’
    They all looked at the guide in astonishment. She was standing in the hall of the Royal Pavilion beneath a portrait of the corpulent figure of King George IV.
    A knot of nineteen of the twenty visitors to the Royal Pavilion were gathered tightly around her, hanging on every word. Just one person, standing right at the back, had his attention somewhere else altogether.
    ‘Oh my God!’ an elderly American woman wearing a plastic rain hood exclaimed. ‘He said that ? To the king ?’
    The guide, a woman in her early fifties, had the authority of a school headmistress about her. ‘He did indeed,’ she said firmly. ‘You see, Beau Brummell was a very well-known figure – a real Regency dandy. Tall, quite statuesque, always immaculately dressed and coiffed, whereas poor George just got fatter and fatter as he got older and looked less and less distinguished. Well, they had a bit of a falling out. Beau Brummell, Lord Alvanley, Henry Mildmay and Henry Pierrepoint were considered the prime movers of what Lord Byron styled the Dandy Club. The four of them hosted a ball in July 1813 at which George, still then the Prince Regent, greeted Alvanley and Pierrepoint but cut Beau Brummell dead. Getting his own back, Brummell