12

Withdean Road was one of the city’s most exclusive addresses. Secluded houses were set well back behind high walls or screens of trees and shrubbery in a quiet, meandering, tree-lined street. Susi Holiday drove slowly as Dave Roberts called out the numbers. The even ones were on the right-hand side.

‘Here!’ he said.

She turned in through old wooden gates that looked in bad repair and drove down a steep, winding, potholed tarmac drive. There were rhododendron bushes to the right, and to the left down below them, beyond a rockery and a steep lawn, the pebbledashed façade of a grand Edwardian house, with mock-Tudor features, leaded-light windows and high gables. Fixed high up on the wall was a red LanGuard alarm box.

At the end of the drive, to the rear of the mansion, was a courtyard in front of two dilapidated garages. Susi stopped the car and they climbed out. A fence to their right, with tall trees behind, screening off the neighbouring house, was in a state of neglect, but the terraced lawns had recently been mown and there were sweet scents of cut grass and roses in the air. The property had a fine view across the valley where the London–Brighton railway line ran at the bottom of a steep chalk escarpment, to the houses on the far side of Withdean and Patcham and the playing fields of Varndean School.

Close up, they could see the house was in poor repair, with the rendering badly in need of a lick of paint and some chunks missing; the paintwork around the window frames was peeling, the condition that often signalled an elderly occupant. A thrush was washing itself in a stone birdbath in a small rectangle of lawn bounded by rose trees.

‘Shame not to look after such a beautiful place,’ Dave Roberts said.

Susi Holiday nodded, looking around, thinking how much her dog would love it here, and wondering how many millions it would cost to buy, even in its current state.

They took the pathway around to the front, peering through each of the windows they passed for any signs of the occupant. They walked by a rose garden that needed some TLC, then reached a large, tiled porch. Rolled copies of the Daily Telegraph and the Argus were rammed into the letter box. More newspapers and some mail lay by the foot of the door. Not a good sign.

Susi Holiday knelt and looked at the dates. ‘Yesterday – Wednesday – and today,’ she announced.

Dave Roberts rang the doorbell. They waited. But there was no answer. Then he knocked on the door. It was a knock he had perfected, and one, he proudly boasted, that would wake the dead.

It was greeted with silence.

He rammed his hand through the letter box, and it plunged into a whole mass of correspondence. He pulled some out. A mixture of letters and advertising pamphlets. Among them a buff envelope with HMRC printed on it, addressed to Mrs Aileen McWhirter, appeared to confirm they were at the right address.

He pressed his nose up against the letter box, and sniffed for that unmistakable leaden, clingy, rancid smell of death. Unlike at Ralph Meeks’ home earlier, he did not detect it, but that gave him no assurance that Mrs McWhirter was still alive. Even in these summer months it could take a week, at least, before a body started to smell.

He gave one more knock, then dialled the phone number that the Controller had given them. They could hear it ringing, somewhere inside the house, but there was no answer. After some moments, it went to answerphone.

They made a complete circuit around the exterior, peering intently through each window for signs of life. The television was on in the kitchen. They saw a copy of the magazine Sussex Life on the table. Alongside it was a plate, with a knife and fork. A saucepan sat beside the Aga.

‘What do you think?’ PC Holiday asked.

In reply, her colleague pulled on a pair of protective gloves, took out his weighted baton, and smashed a pane of the leaded-light window beside the front door. Then he pushed his hand through, careful to avoid the jagged glass, found the door latch and opened it.

They walked through into a large, oak-panelled hallway, on which lay several fine, but worn, Persian rugs. Almost instantly they noticed dark rectangles on the bare walls, as if pictures had once hung there. And the entire hallway, for such a grand house, seemed strangely bare.

As did most of the downstairs rooms they searched.

Leaving his colleague to continue downstairs, Dave Roberts walked up the ornate circular staircase. Only a few moments later he shouted, ‘Susi, quick! Up here!’

13

Roy Grace was not due in court until sometime next week at the earliest. And it was a bank holiday weekend ahead of him. Hopefully time to spend with Cleo and Noah. He’d taken a bunch of paperwork home so he could relieve Cleo from baby duties for a while. And, so far so good! Although tomorrow, Friday, was normally a jinxed day for him. So often, just as he thought he was getting away with a quiet week as the duty Senior Investigating Officer, whenever he got to Friday, something seemed to happen. He was really hoping that, for once, he’d be left in peace. He had some great plans for this weekend, if he was.

On Saturday afternoon he’d been invited by a colleague who had a pair of tickets to one of the first football games of the season at Brighton’s fabulous new Amex Stadium, which he had only been to once. He really hoped he’d be able to make it. Then in the evening he and Cleo planned to go out for a meal for the first time since Noah had been born.

It was mid-afternoon. He’d changed Noah’s nappy and Noah was now sleeping in his cot, with a white dummy in his mouth. Cleo was having a snooze in bed. Humphrey lay in his basket, a rubber bone in front of his nose, still sulking away with jealousy about Noah, despite his master having taken him for a five-mile run along Brighton seafront early this morning.

Roy Grace removed a lengthy form from a large envelope. After several months of having his house in Hove on the market, the estate agents had finally found a buyer for it. A woman with a small boy, currently living in Germany. He had not met them, but she seemed serious and a date had been set for the exchange of contracts. The form was a detailed questionnaire about all aspects of the property, from the woman’s conveyancing solicitor.

Cleo’s house, where he was now living, was also on the market. Their plan was to pool the proceeds of the two houses and buy a property in the country, a short distance from Brighton, where Humphrey could have a decent-size garden, and maybe even a field, to roam in.

The only person not happy about the whole situation was his colleague and closest friend, Glenn Branson, who had been lodging at Roy’s house since splitting up with his wife. Poor Glenn would have to find somewhere new to live; but it was time he moved on, got a place of his own and got his life back together.

Just as Roy focused on the first item on the form, the house phone rang.

He snatched the receiver, not wanting the ringing to wake Noah. ‘Hello?’ he answered quietly, hoping desperately this was not to do with work.

The male voice at the other end spoke with a silky purr, and almost instantly, Grace felt relieved – and irritated.

‘Good afternoon. I’m calling because a good friend of yours told me to call you.’

‘Oh really, who was that?’

‘Gerard Scott.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone of that name.’

‘He says to pass on his very best wishes.’

‘I think you must have the wrong number.’

‘We’re saving him two thousand five hundred pounds a year off his heating bill.’