Love You Dead, Page 4

  ‘I’m not sure I would totally agree.’ She gave him a mischievous look. ‘So you were going to have dinner with yourself?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I waited tables once,’ she said. ‘When I was a student.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Didn’t last very long. I poured someone’s very expensive wine into a water glass by mistake, and it still had water in it!’

  He laughed. ‘Hope they didn’t take it from your wages.’

  ‘Luckily not, but they fired me.’ She smiled. ‘So,’ she asked. ‘Your divorce – what happened?’

  Walt Klein looked sheepish. ‘Well, after my divorce I married my second wife, Karin, who was much younger than me. I thought we had a good relationship and that we’d be together forever. My kids and my five grandkids adored her. Then one day, I guess about two years back, she suddenly said to me, in a restaurant, “You make me feel old.”’ He shrugged. ‘That was kind of it. She told me she wanted a divorce. I asked her if there was anyone else and she denied it.’

  ‘And was there?’

  ‘She was into art and had been bored for some while. I’d bought her an art gallery down in the West Village. I heard through a friend she was screwing a sculptor whose work she was exhibiting.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jodie said.

  ‘Shit happens.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘So what’s your story?’

  ‘Do you want the trailer or the full three hours, with intermission?’

  He laughed. ‘Give me the trailer now – then the full three hours over dinner.’

  ‘OK.’ She gave him a wan smile. ‘I was married to a wife beater.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Poor you.’

  ‘It was, it’s been a nightmare. A total nightmare. I’m not sure I could ever trust a man again.’

  ‘You want to start from the beginning?’

  Jodie nodded. ‘Sure. If you don’t mind listening?’

  ‘I have all evening,’ he said. ‘Another drink?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, seeing the way he was looking at her. Knowing she already had him in the palm of her hand.

  She made an excuse that she had to visit the Ladies. Locked in a cubicle there, she googled ‘Walt Klein’.

  He was a stockbroker, investment adviser and financier, with a Wall Street securities company, bearing his name, and an estimated eight billion dollars under management.

  Smiling happily, she slipped her phone back into her handbag and went back out. Walt Klein would do very nicely.

  Very nicely indeed.

  7

  The past

  Jodie Danforth had a ton of homework to do. But she wasn’t able to concentrate. Instead she sat cross-legged on her bed, barefoot in jeans and a Blur T-shirt, holding her diary in her hand, sobbing, in her perfectly untidy bedroom upstairs in her parents’ perfect house. It was a square, white-painted mock-Georgian villa, with green shutters, set in an immaculate garden, still bathed in late-evening May sunlight, in a tree-lined street of almost identical houses on the outskirts of Burgess Hill, a town a few miles to the north of Brighton.

  Everything was always in its place. Her mother cleaned the house obsessively. Her father cleaned their cars obsessively, and proudly. Out at the front on the drive sat her father’s immaculate new black Jaguar and her mother’s Saab convertible. Perfect parents, with one perfect daughter – her elder sister, Cassie. And one big embarrassment. Their problem daughter. Herself.

  Posters of Jodie’s icons were on her bedroom walls. Madonna; Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise; Kylie Minogue; Take That; Blur and Oasis. All of them perfect, too. With perfect noses.

  Unlike her own.

  Through her tears, she wrote in her diary:

  Everywhere I go people are pointing at me and laughing, because I’m so ugly. Telling me I’m a freak. My nose is ridiculous. I watched my reflection in the window of the bus taking me to school this morning. It’s not a nose, it’s a great big hooked beak. A snozzle. A snout. Some bitch left a picture of the aeroplane Concorde on my desk this morning, with a Post-it note attached, on which she had written that my nose was like the front of the plane. Hooked and dipped.

  My eyes are too big, also. When I look in the mirror they are all swollen – and it’s not just from crying. They’re too big for my face. Fact. And my lips are too fat – like someone’s punched me in the mouth and made them swell up. And my ears are too big. It’s like someone put my face together using all the wrong parts. Like they took them from the wrong box.

  And my breasts are ridiculous. I’m flat. I’ve got a chest like a boy’s. Cassie’s, of course, are perfectly formed.

  Earlier in the day in the English class everyone had to stand up and read aloud to the class a Shakespeare sonnet they had chosen. Trudy Byrne read out one, staring pointedly at me all the time.

  ‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

  Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

  If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

  If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

  I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

  But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

  And in some perfumes is there more delight

  Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.’

  And so on. So bloody on.

  It’s true. My hair is like a bunch of black wires. They sprout all over my head like pubes or a scouring pad. Why don’t I have the same blonde straight hair that my bloody sister, Cassie, has?

  I’ve just been dealt a really shitty hand.

  Dad dotes on Cassie. She is always playing around and joking with him. But when he looks at me I can see the disappointment in his face. Like, I’m not really his daughter at all. Not the second daughter he always promised himself. Not much of a substitute for the son he was really hankering for. And if he couldn’t have a son, at least he could have had a second stunner of a daughter.

  Instead he got me.

  Mum and Dad are arguing again downstairs. I can hear their voices above the sound of the television. Dad’s angry because he’s worried about losing his job. They’re making a lot of redundancies in his company, although Mum assures him he’s too important, they could never let him go. Sounds like he’s been drinking again. That’s not unusual. He gets drunk most nights. He’s worried about money. About the mortgage payments on this house. The finance on the fancy cars. That at fifty he’s over the hill and might never get another job.

  Jodie heard a slam. The front door? Often when her parents argued her father went out and down to the pub. She listened for the sound of his car starting, but heard nothing. Maybe he was being sensible for once and walking.

  She opened her bedroom door to listen, and could hear music coming from her sister’s room. She could talk to her mother. She wanted right now to curl up on the sofa in her mother’s arms and maybe watch some television with her. Her mother was the only person who ever told her she was beautiful. Even though Jodie knew that was a lie. The television was on, loudly. An American couple shouting at each other.

  She made her way downstairs, then stopped shortly before the bottom as she heard another slam. Her father coming back in?

  ‘That bloody cat!’ he shouted. ‘Why can’t it shit in its own garden?’ He looked up at Jodie coming down the stairs as if it was her fault.

  She stared back at him as he stormed into the living room.

  Her mother said something Jodie could not hear above the din of the television. It sounded like she was trying to pacify him.

  ‘How great is that? All I’ve got in the world is a neighbour’s sodding cat that uses our garden as a toilet, a wife who drives me to drink and one daughter who’s a total nightmare!’

  The television was suddenly muted and she could hear both their voices clearly.

  ‘You’ve got to realize she’s going through a difficult time of life,’ her mother said. ‘Mid-teens is hard for girls.’
/>   ‘Bollocks – Cassie was never like this.’

  ‘Ssshhh! Keep your voice down! You dote on Cassie because she’s pretty. Jodie can’t help her looks. She’ll blossom in a couple of years.’

  ‘It’s not just her looks, it’s her attitude – she’s a miserable little cow.’

  ‘Maybe she’d be less miserable if you tried a little harder with her.’

  ‘I have tried. If I give her a hug she shrinks away like some slippery reptile. Which she is.’

  ‘Alastair! That’s no way to speak about your daughter.’

  ‘If she is my daughter.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘She doesn’t look like you, and she sure as hell doesn’t look like me. So who were you shagging to get pregnant with her? Someone from a travelling circus freak show?’

  Jodie heard a thud, like a slap, followed by a howl of pain from her father.

  ‘You bitch!’ he shouted.

  ‘Don’t ever speak about our daughter like that. Do you hear me?’

  ‘She’s a freak and you know it. Hit me again and I’ll tear your bloody head off.’

  ‘Take it back or I will hit you again, you bastard. Jesus, what did I ever see in you to marry you?’

  ‘She’s an embarrassment. She’s fat, she’s ugly and she’s got an ugly mind. If she was something I’d bought in Poundland I’d take her back and demand a replacement. Too bad we can’t.’

  ‘Alastair, I’m warning you. She’s already got a complex, poor kid, always living in her sister’s shadow – and whose fault is that? Yes, we both know she’s got unfortunate looks. Give it a couple of years, I really do think she’ll blossom,’ she snapped.

  ‘See that, out of the window?’ her father said.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘That pig out there – flying across the horizon. That pig’s prettier than our daughter.’

  8

  Tuesday 17 February

  The little squirrel monkey, astride the slender branch of a tree, stared at them through the window of the enclosure at Drusillas zoo. Its coat was a patchwork of grey, ginger and white, and it had sad, inquisitive eyes. Suddenly it began gnawing a chunk of carrot it was holding in its front paws.

  Noah, who had been staring back at it, wide-eyed, as if unsure what to make of the creature, suddenly giggled.

  It was a fine day, unseasonably warm. ‘Like the monkey, do you?’ Roy Grace said to his son, who was cradled in front of his chest in a baby sling. ‘Want monkeys on your wallpaper – or a monkey mobile?’

  Noah beamed and dribbled. Then as the monkey continued eating, he chuckled, dribbling some more.

  God, it was the most beautiful thing, to hear his son laughing, Grace thought, wiping Noah’s chin with a tissue. Then, peering down, he made monkey faces and noises at his son.

  Noah giggled again.

  Roy Grace grinned and put his arm round Cleo, who leaned in to him. He was taking a precious day off work to be with his loved ones, and wished he did this more often. He was able to, he knew; he had so many days of accrued leave owing to him. Yet he couldn’t help feeling a slight cloud of guilt, having already had all of January off. He remembered a quote from somewhere: ‘What man on his deathbed ever said, “Gosh, I wish I had spent more time in the office.”’

  Yes, it was true, but at the same time, much as he was loving being with Cleo and his son, his thoughts kept returning to work. He was lucky, he knew. He had the best wife in the world, and the best son, who had brought him a change of perspective and priorities. And on good days, the best job in the world. After years of darkness, in the shadow of his long-missing first wife Sandy, life was really great again. He was happy. Happier than he had ever known.

  And that worried him. Could any human sustain being this happy?

  There was so much darkness in the world. The ever-present threat of terrorism. The scrotes out there intent on committing harm. He just wanted these two people he loved so much to be safe forever.

  His phone rang.

  As he answered it he saw Cleo’s knowing but understanding expression.

  ‘Roy Grace,’ he said.

  He heard the French accent of the Interpol officer Bernard Viguet.

  The body of the prostitute who had been missing for several days had been found in a ditch on the outskirts of Lyon. Further, the Hertz rental car that she had been seen entering had been found and forensically searched. Crisp’s DNA had been present in it.

  A sharp-eyed Lyon customs officer had detained a man boarding an international flight at Lyon Airport, from the description Sussex Police had circulated, with his left arm in plaster from an apparent skiing accident. A DNA swab taken from him confirmed him as Dr Edward Crisp.

  Suggesting Cleo take Noah on to see the fruit bats, he phoned DS Potting and updated him. ‘Norman, I’m going to be sending you to Lyon with Glenn. The French police will need an intelligence package on Crisp. Can you liaise with the team so I can send it to them?’

  ‘Right away, chief. Good news!’

  Next he phoned Glenn Branson.

  ‘Gourmet capital of France, Lyon,’ Branson said, sounding hopeful. ‘Happy to go down there and liaise with the French police.’

  ‘You want to go to Lyon, be my guest. I was there once with Sandy and I ate the most disgusting thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Andouillette. The local sausage. It’s basically a pig’s colon stuffed with bits of its intestine. It smells like bad breath.’

  ‘Yeccchhhh!’

  ‘A lot of French people love it,’ Grace went on. ‘It’s an acquired taste. I’ll insist you try one.’

  ‘You’re a closet sadist, aren’t you?’

  ‘Nope, I just believe in the maxim, I look and I see, I listen and I hear, I do and I understand.’

  ‘What’s to understand about eating a pig’s colon?’

  ‘All part of your education. And the entente cordiale. Never diss other people’s cultures. I think a trip to France to liaise with the French police and see Crisp would be good. And you might enjoy the break, you’ve not really given yourself any time out since Ari died.’

  Glenn Branson’s estranged wife, Ari, had died after an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic in surgery, following a bicycle accident. Subsequently the detective inspector had begun dating a bright young reporter on the local paper, the Argus, and was now going to marry her. Glenn had given him the news while Roy had been in hospital. At first he’d been cautious for his mate, marrying a newspaper reporter, but he liked her, and having seen the chemistry between them he felt they seemed right together.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘And come home to Siobhan with that on my breath?’

  ‘So you’ve gone off Lyon now, have you?’ Grace chided.

  ‘No, I’ll go.’

  ‘We’ll apply for an extradition order, but almost certainly they’re going to want to keep him in France at least until that trial is over. And there’ll be a ton of bureaucracy to work through for the extradition procedure. There are various protocols involved with a European Arrest Warrant. First we need to get the Crown Prosecution Service to agree that he will face charges, prior to starting the whole process. He’ll have to appear in front of a French magistrate before being released to the British police. The National Extradition Unit will be responsible for bringing him back to the UK, but the French police want you to travel to Lyon to share the intelligence we have on Crisp. They’ve informed me there’s been a development in Crisp’s involvement. I’ve got a pile of paperwork that’s arrived from France, in French, which we’ll need to get translated, so we’ll need to find out who the preferred external translation company is.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Glenn Branson said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘It’ll give me time to go to a chemist and buy some breath freshener – for the sausage thing.’

  ‘Yeah, from past experience d
ealing with French police bureaucracy, you’ll have plenty of time.’

  9

  Wednesday 18 February

  Jodie sat, tearfully, in the huge, old-fashioned office of Paul Muscutt, the senior partner of the Manhattan law firm of Muscutt, Williams and Wooding, and executor of the estate of the late Walter Irwin Klein. Twenty-seven storeys above Fifth Avenue, and with a glorious view through the window to her left directly down onto St Patrick’s Cathedral, she was trying to mask her excitement. Warm sunshine streamed in. Jet lag was helping to take the edge off her skiing tan, making her look something of the pale, grieving widow she was trying to be.

  Holding her lace-edged handkerchief, she sipped her strong coffee.

  Muscutt, who had momentarily been called out of his office, strode back in through the door and headed towards her. In his forties, conservatively dressed, with neat brown hair, he had a no-nonsense businesslike air.

  He shook her hand firmly. ‘My deepest sympathy, Mrs Bentley.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, sounding as if she was stifling a sob.

  ‘I’m afraid the media are really going for the suicide angle,’ he said, slipping down into the black leather chair behind his uncluttered desk.

  ‘Suicide? What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s only a theory, of course, from the French police in the Alps, but with all the financial trouble poor Walt had gotten himself into, it would fit.’

  ‘I’ve read a bit on the internet, after the barrage of press at the airport when I arrived here, and caught some of the news stories, but I was hoping you’d tell me more – is any of it true?’

  The lawyer frowned. ‘Walt never told you? He didn’t level with you?’

  ‘Told me? No?’

  ‘About his finances?’

  ‘No, we never talked about money.’ It was true, they didn’t. ‘Are you saying the French police think he might have committed suicide?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. Walt was in true Walter Mitty land, he believed right up until – I guess about a week before his death, when we last spoke – that somehow everything was going to come good for him. Maybe in that week he realized there was no way out. Walt was an experienced skier. He was following you in a white-out – why would he suddenly go off in a completely different direction?’