The second book in the Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series, 2006

I owe a massive debt to the recently retired Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor of Sussex Police, who has given me so much help in the writing of this novel, quite apart from generously acting as role model for the character of Roy Grace, and never tiring of reading and re-reading the manuscript, and opening more doors for me in the police forces in the UK – and abroad – than I could have ever dared to hope for.

And a heartfelt thank you to very many other members of the Sussex Police who have been immensely tolerant of my intrusions and so welcoming and helpful. In particular to Chief Constable Ken Jones for his very kind sanction. And to Detective Sergeant Paul Hastings, Ray Packham of the High Tech Crime Unit, High Tech Crime Investigator John Shaw, and all the team at the High Tech Crime Unit who have been so very enthusiastically supportive and have helped to shape a key part of this story. Thanks also to Detective Superintendent Kevin Moore, Inspector Andy Parr, Chief Superintendent Peter Coll, Detective Sergeant Keith Hallet of the Sussex Police Holmes Unit, Brian Cook, Scientific Support Branch Manager, Detective Inspector William Warner, and Senior Scenes of Crime Investigator Stuart Leonard. Family Liaison Officer DC Amanda Stroud, Family Liaison Officer DS Louise Pye, Senior Support Officer Tony Case of the HQ Criminal Investigation Department, and IT Support Officer Daniel Salter.

I’ve had great help from Essex Coroner Dr Peter Dean, pathologist Dr Nigel Kirkham and Home Office Pathologist Dr Vesna Djurovic; and a special thanks for the invaluable support from the wonderfully cheery team at Brighton and Hove Mortuary, Elsie Sweetman, Sean Didcott and Victor Findon.

I am grateful also for help with farming and chemical queries from Tony Monnington and Eddie Gribble, my helicopter mentor, Phil Homan, law information from Sue Ansell, and my human back-up service, Chris Webb, without whom I would have been sunk when my laptop was stolen at Geneva airport. And thank you to Imogen Lloyd-Webber, Anna-Lisa Lindeblad and Carina Coleman, who read the manuscript in varying stages and provided me with quite brilliant insights.

Thanks are owed to my fabulous agent, Carole Blake, for her tireless hard work and sound advice (and her great shoes!), and to Tony Mulliken, Margaret Veale and all at Midas, and the quite fantastic team at my publishers, Macmillan. Everyone there has been amazingly supportive, and I am deeply touched. To single out a few names, thank you to Richard Charkin, David North, Geoff Duffield, Anna Stockbridge, Ben Wright, Ed Ripley, Vivienne Nelson, Liz Johnson, Caitriona Row, Claire Round, Claire Byrne, Adam Humphrey, Marie Gray, Michelle Taylor, Richard Evans, and my totally wonderful editor Stef Bierwerth, who is just the all-time greatest! And across the Channel I have to say a huge ‘Danke!’ to the team at my German publishers, Scherz, for their incredible support. Especially Peter Lohmann, Julia Schade, Andrea Engen, Cordelia Borchardt, Bruno Back, Indra Heinz, and the quite awesome Andrea Diederichs, editor, tour guide, shopping adviser!

Thank you as ever to my faithful hounds Bertie and Phoebe, who always seem to sense when I need a walk – but haven’t yet learned to mix me a martini…

And penultimate but biggest thank you to my darling Helen – whose unflagging support helped boost me so many times along the way.

The last thanks is to all you readers of my books. Thank you for all your mail, and all your encouragement. It is everything.

Peter James

Sussex, England

scary@pavilion.co.uk

www.peterjames.com

The front door of the once-proud terraced house opened, and a long-legged young woman, in a short silk dress that seemed to both cling and float at the same time, stepped out into the fine June sunshine on the last morning of her life.

A century back, these tall, white villas, just a pebble’s throw from Brighton’s seafront promenade, would have served as weekend residences for London toffs. Now, behind their grimy, salt-burned facades, they were chopped up into bedsits and low-rent flats; the brass front-door knockers had long been replaced with entryphone panels, and litter spewed from garbage bags onto the pavements beneath a gaudy riot of letting-agency boards. Several of the cars that lined the street, shoehorned into not enough parking spaces, were dented and rusting, and all of them were saturation-bombed with pigeon and seagull shit.

In contrast, everything about the young woman oozed class. From the careless toss of her long fair hair, the sunglasses she adjusted on her face, the bling Cartier bracelet, the Anya Hindmarsh bag slung from her shoulder, the toned contours of her body, the Mediterranean tan, her wake of Issey Miyake tanging the rush-hour monoxide with a frisson of sexuality, she was the kind of girl who would have looked at home in the aisles of Bergdorf Goodman, or at the bar of a Schrager hotel, or on the stern of a fuck-off yacht in St-Tropez.

Not bad for a law student scraping by on a meagre grant.

But Janie Stretton had been too spoiled by her guilty father, after her mother’s death, to ever contemplate the idea of merely scraping by. Making money came easily to her. Making it from her intended career might be a different matter altogether. The legal profession was tough. Four years of law studies were behind her, and she was now in the first two years as a trainee with a firm of solicitors in Brighton, working under a divorce lawyer, and she was enjoying that, although some of the cases were, even to her, weird.

Like the mild little seventy-year-old man yesterday, Bernie Milsin, in his neat grey suit and carefully knotted tie. Janie had sat unobtrusively on a corner chair in the office as the thirty-five-year-old partner she was articled to, Martin Broom, took notes. Mr Milsin was complaining that Mrs Milsin, three years older than himself, would not give him food until he had performed oral sex on her. ‘Three times a day,’ he told Martin Broom. ‘Can’t keep doing it, not at my age, the arthritis in me knees hurts too much.’

It was all she could do not to laugh out loud, and she could see Broom was struggling also. So, it wasn’t just men who had kinky needs. Seemed that both sexes had them. Something new learned every day, and sometimes she didn’t know where she gained the most knowledge from – Southampton University Law School or the University of Life.

The beep of an incoming text broke her chain of thought just as she reached her red and white Mini Cooper. She checked the screen.

2night. 8.30?

Janie smiled and replied with a brief xx. Then she waited for a bus followed by a line of traffic to pass, opened the door of her car, and sat for a moment, collecting her thoughts, thinking about stuff she needed to do.

Bins, her moggie, had a lump on his back that was steadily getting bigger. She did not like the look of it and wanted to take him to the vet to get it checked. She had found Bins two years ago, a nameless stray, scrawny to the point of starving, trying to lift the lid of one of her dustbins. She had taken him in, and he had never shown any inclination to leave. So much for cats being independent, she thought, or maybe it was because she spoiled him. But hell, Bins was an affectionate creature and she didn’t have much else in her life to spoil. She would try to get a late appointment today. If she got to the vet by 6.30 that should still leave plenty of time, she calculated.