‘Very obliging of him, Paul,’ he said. ‘Too bad he didn’t drown in a sewer, which would have been more fitting.’

‘From what I know about him,’ the Met Inspector said, ‘he’d have polluted any sewer.’

Glenn Branson grinned. Grace smiled too, thinking fast. Suddenly, a whole chunk of his workload had gone. No Crisp trial.

Ending the call, he said, ‘I’d better tell our dear ACC.’

‘Please let me listen in!’ Branson said.

‘Be my guest!’ Grace dialled, and felt smugly pleased when he answered, almost immediately. It wasn’t often that Roy Grace actually looked forward to talking to Cassian Pewe. This was one of those rare occasions.

‘Yes, Roy?’

‘I thought you’d appreciate an update on Dr Crisp.’

‘What do you have?’

Grace informed him what he had been told by Inspector Davey. When he had finished, Pewe was uncharacteristically silent for some moments. Then he retorted, ‘At least this resolves the budget issues, Roy.’

‘Actually, sir, I have good news for you on your budget front.’ He winked at Glenn Branson.

‘You do?’ Pewe said, suspiciously.

‘Very good news indeed.’

‘Are you going to keep me in permanent suspense or tell me?’

‘As he died in London, all costs of his postmortem and disposal of his body are down to the Met. I thought you’d be pleased to hear that, sir.’

‘I’d be a lot more pleased if he’d never escaped in the first place.’

‘He wouldn’t have, sir, if you’d allocated the funds for the guard on him I’d recommended.’

Pewe’s response was to slam down the phone on him.

Grace turned to Branson. ‘Good to know Sussex Police have another happy customer!’

‘You need to watch it, matey, one day that bastard’s going to have your arse.’

‘He loves me. He just doesn’t know it.’

‘Or show it,’ Branson cautioned.

‘I feel the love!’

‘In your dreams.’

Grace smiled. Then his thoughts became serious. He shouldn’t be glad about Crisp, but he was. Perhaps because the man had once tried to kill him and had failed. All he really felt was a twofold relief, firstly that there was one monster less in the world, and secondly, that Crisp’s early departure had left him free to concentrate on catching up on everything he had missed during these past six months.

But his hopes of that were dashed by the next call that came in.

It was from Sussex Police Inspector Mark Evans, the duty Oscar-1.

‘Hi, guv,’ he said, very polite as always. ‘Welcome back to Sussex!’

‘Thanks, good to be back.’

‘We all missed you. Am I right you’re the on-call SIO this week?’

‘Yes, I am, Mark, what’s up?’

Evans told him.

77

Monday 20 May

Ending the call from Mark Evans, Roy Grace immediately asked Norman Potting and John Alldridge to come to his office.