Thursday 1 January

Several of the houses in the residential street outside the hospital had Christmas lights in the windows and wreaths on the front door. They’d be coming down soon for another year, Grace thought a little sadly, slowing as they approached the entrance to the squat slab of stained concrete and garishly curtained windows of Crawley Hospital. He liked the magical spell that the Christmas break cast on the world, even when he had to work through it.

The building had no doubt looked a lot more impressive under the sunny blue sky of the architect’s original impression than it did on a wet January morning. Grace thought that the architect had probably failed to take into account the blinds blocking half of its windows, the dozens of cars parked higgledy-piggledy outside, the plethora of signs and the weather stains on the walls.

Glenn Branson normally liked to terrify him by showing off his driving skills, but today he had allowed his colleague to drive here, freeing him to concentrate on giving Roy the full download on his lousy Christmas week. Glenn’s marriage, which had hit new lows in the weeks building up to Christmas, had deteriorated even further on Christmas Day itself.

Already livid that his wife, Ari, had changed the locks on their house, his temper had boiled over on Christmas morning when he’d arrived laden with gifts for his two young children and she’d refused to let him in. A massively powerful former nightclub bouncer, Glenn kicked open the front door, to find, as he suspected, her new lover ensconced in his house, playing with his children, in front of his Christmas tree, for God’s sake!

She had dialled the nines and he had narrowly escaped being arrested by the Response Team patrol car that had turned up from East Brighton Division – which would have put paid to his career.

‘So what would you have done?’ Glenn said.

‘Probably the same. But that doesn’t make it OK.’

‘Yeah.’ He was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘You’re right. But when I saw that dickhead personal trainer playing the X-Box with my kids, I could have fucking ripped his head off and played basketball with it.’

‘You’re going to have to keep a lid on it somehow, matey. I don’t want you screwing your career up over this.’

Branson just stared through the windscreen at the rain outside. Then he said bleakly, ‘What does it matter? Nothing matters any more.’

Roy Grace loved this guy, this big, well-meaning, kind-hearted man-mountain. He’d first encountered him some years back, when Glenn was a freshly promoted detective constable. He had recognized in him so many aspects of himself – drive, ambition. And Glenn had that key element it took to make a good policeman – high emotional intelligence. Since then, Grace had mentored him. But now, with his disintegrating marriage and his failing control of his temper, Glenn was dangerously close to losing the plot.

He was also dangerously close to damaging their deep friendship. For the past few months Branson had been his lodger, at his home just off the Hove seafront. Grace did not mind about that, as he was now effectively living with Cleo in her town house in the North Laine district of central Brighton. But he did mind Branson’s meddling with his precious record collection and the constant criticism of his taste in music.

Such as now.

In the absence of having his own car – his beloved Alfa Romeo, which had been destroyed in a chase some months earlier and was still the subject of an insurance wrangle – Grace was reduced to using pool cars, which were all small Fords or Hyundai Getzs. He had just mastered an iPod gadget that Cleo had given him for Christmas which played his music through any car’s radio system and had been showing off to Branson on the way here.

‘Who’s this?’ Branson asked, in a sudden change of focus as the music changed.

‘Laura Marling.’

He listened for a moment. ‘She’s so derivative.’

‘Of whom?’

Branson shrugged.

‘I like her,’ Grace said defiantly.

They listened in silence for a few moments, until he spotted an empty slot and steered into it. ‘You’re soft in the head for women vocalists,’ Branson said. ‘That’s your problem.’

‘I do actually like her. OK?’

‘You’re sad.’

‘Cleo likes her too,’ he retorted. ‘She gave me this for Christmas. Want me to tell her you think she’s sad?’

Branson raised his huge, smooth hands. ‘Whoahhhh!’

Yeah. Whoahhhh!’

‘Respect!’ Branson said. But his voice was almost quiet and humourless.

All three spaces reserved for the police were taken, but as today was a public holiday there were plenty of empty spots all around. Grace pulled into one, switched off the ignition and they climbed out of the car. Then they hurried through the rain around the side of the hospital.

‘Did you and Ari ever argue over music?’

‘Why?’ Branson asked.

‘Just wondering.’

Most visitors to this complex of buildings would not even have noticed the small white sign with blue lettering saying SATURN CENTRE, pointing along a nondescript pathway bordered by the hospital wall on one side and bushes on the other. It looked as if it might be the route to the dustbins.

In fact it housed Sussex’s first Sexual Assault Referral Centre. A dedicated unit, recently opened by the Chief Constable, like others around England it showed a marked change in the way rape victims were treated. Grace could remember a time, not so long ago, when traumatized rape victims had to walk through a police station and frequently be interviewed by cynical male officers. All that had now changed and this centre was the latest development.

Here the victims, who were in a deeply vulnerable state, would be seen by trained same-sex officers and psychologists – professionals who would do their very best to comfort them and put them at their ease, while at the same time having to go through the brutal task of establishing the truth.

One of the hardest things facing Sexual Offences Liaison Officers was the fact that the victims actually had to be treated as crime scenes themselves, their clothes and their bodies potentially containing vital trace evidence. Time, as in all investigations, was crucial. Many rape victims took days, weeks or even years before they went to the police, and many never reported their attacks ever, not wanting to relive their most tormented experience.

Branson and Grace hurried past a black wheelie bin, then a row of traffic cones incongruously stacked there, and reached the door. Grace pressed the bell and moments later the door was opened. They were ushered in, and out of the elements, by a woman staff member he knew, but whose name he had momentarily forgotten.

‘Happy New Year, Roy!’ she said.

‘You too!’

He saw her looking at Glenn and desperately racked his brains for her name. Then it came to him!

‘Glenn, this is Brenda Keys – Brenda, this is DS Glenn Branson, one of my colleagues in the Major Crime Branch.’

‘Nice to meet you, Detective Sergeant,’ she said.

Brenda Keys was a trained interviewer who had processed victims in Brighton and other parts of the county before this facility was established. A kind, intelligent-looking woman with short brown hair and large glasses, she was always dressed quietly and conservatively, as she was today, in her black slacks and a grey V-neck over a blouse.

You could tell you were inside one of the modern generation of interview suites with your eyes shut, Grace thought. They all smelt of new carpets and fresh paint and had a deadened, soundproofed atmosphere.

This one was a labyrinth of rooms behind closed pine doors, with a central reception area carpeted in beige. The cream-painted walls were hung with framed, brightly coloured and artily photographed prints of familiar Sussex scenes – beach huts on the Hove promenade, the Jack and Jill windmills at Clayton, Brighton Pier. It all felt well intentioned, but as if someone had tried just a bit too hard to distance the victims who came here from the horrors they had experienced.