Not Dead Enough by Peter James Read Free Book Online Page B

the Bishops had at least some taste, in his view.
    The other two of the Bishops’ cars in the driveway didn’t impress him so much. One was a dark blue cabriolet BMW 3-series and the other a black Smart. Behind them, crammed into the circular, gravelled area in front of the house, was the square hulk of the mobile Major Incident Room vehicle, a marked police car and several other cars of members of the SOCO team. And shortly they would be joined by the yellow Saab convertible belonging to one of the Home Office pathologists, Nadiuska De Sancha, who was on her way.
    On the far side of the room, to the left – and right – of the bed, the view from the windows was out over rooftops towards the sea, a mile or so away, and down on to a garden of terraced lawns, in the centre of which, and more prominent than the swimming pool beyond, was an ornamental fountain topped with a replica of the Mannequin Pis, the small, cherubic stone boy urinating away, and no doubt floodlit in some garish colours at night, Grace thought, as he made yet another call.
    This one was to an old sweat of a detective, Norman Potting – not a popular man among the team, but one Grace had learned, from a previous successful investigation, was a workhorse he could trust. Seconding Potting to the case, he instructed him to coordinate the task of obtaining all CCTV footage from surveillance cameras within a two-mile radius of the murder scene, and on all routes in and out of Brighton. Next, he organized a uniformed house-to-house inquiry team for the immediate neighbourhood.
    Then he turned his attention, once more, to the grim sight on the canopied, king-sized, two-poster bed. The motionless woman, arms splayed out, each strapped by a man’s necktie to one of the two posts, revealing freshly shaven armpits. Apart from a thin, gold necklace, with a tiny orange ladybird secured in a clasp, a gold wedding band and an engagement ring with a massive rock of a diamond, she was naked, her attractive face framed by a tangle of long, red hair, and a black rim around her eyes, probably caused by the Second World War gas mask that lay beside her, he surmised, thinking the words that had become a mantra to him at murder investigations over the years.
    What is the body at the scene telling you?
    Her toes were short and stubby, with chipped pink varnish. Her clothes were strewn on the floor, as if she had undressed in a hurry. An ancient teddy bear lay in their midst. Apart from an alabaster-white bikini line around her pubic area, she was tanned all over, from either the current hot English summer or an overseas holiday, or both. Just above the necklace, there was a crimson line around her neck, more than likely a ligature mark, indicating the probable cause of death, although Grace had learned, long ago, never to jump to conclusions.
    And staring at the dead woman, he was struggling not to keep thinking about his missing wife, Sandy.
    Could this be what happened to you, my darling?
    At least the hysterical cleaning lady had been removed from the house. God alone knew how much she had already contaminated the crime scene, by ripping off the gas mask and running around like a headless chicken.
    After he’d managed to calm her down, she’d provided him with some information. She knew that the dead woman’s husband, Brian Bishop, spent most of the week in London. And that this morning he was playing in a golf tournament at his club, the North Brighton – a club far too expensive for most police officers to afford, not that Grace was a golfer anyway.
    The SOCO team had arrived a while ago and were hard at work. One officer was on his hands and knees on the carpet, searching for fibres; one was dusting the walls and every surface for fingerprints; and their forensic scene manager, Joe Tindall, was carrying out a room-to-room survey.
    Tindall, who had recently been promoted from Scene of Crime Officer to Scientific Support Officer, which gave him responsibility for the