Peter James - Looking Good Dead

PETER JAMES

LOOKING GOOD DEAD

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 pebbles throw from Brightons 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 mothers 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. Cant 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 wasnt just men who had kinky needs. Seemed that both sexes had them. Something new learned every day, and sometimes she didnt 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 didnt 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.

In her lunch break she needed to buy a birthday card and present for her father he would be fifty-five on Friday. She hadnt seen him for a month; hed been away in the USA on business. He seemed to be away a lot these days, travelling more and more. Searching for that one woman who might be out there and could replace the wife, and mother of his daughter, he had lost. He never spoke about it, but she knew he was lonely and worried about his business, which seemed to be going through a rough patch. And living fifty miles away from him did not help.

Pulling on her seat belt and clicking it, she was totally unaware of the long lens trained on her, and the quiet whirring of the digital Pentax camera, over two hundred yards away, not remotely audible against the background hubbub of traffic.

Watching her through the steady cross hairs, he said into his mobile phone, Shes coming now.

Are you sure thats her? The voice that replied was precise, and sharp as serrated steel.

She was real eye candy, he thought. Even after days and nights of watching her, 24/7, inside her flat and outside, it was still a treat. The question barely merited an answer.

I am, he said. Yes.

Im on the train, the big, overweight, baby-faced dickhead next to him shouted into his mobile phone. The train. T-R-A-I-N! he repeated. Yeah, yeah, bad line.

Then they went into a tunnel.

Oh fuck, the dickhead said.

Hunched on his seat between the dickhead on his right and a girl wearing a sickly sweet perfume on his left, who was texting furiously, Tom Bryce suppressed a grin. An amiable, good-looking man of thirty-six, in a smart suit, with a serious, boyish face lined with stress and a mop of dark brown hair that flopped incessantly over his forehead, he was steadily wilting in the stifling heat, like the small bunch of flowers, rolling around on the luggage rack above him, which he had bought for his wife. The temperature inside the carriage was about ninety degrees and felt even hotter. Last year he had travelled first class and those carriages were marginally better ventilated or at least less jam-packed but this year he had to economize. Although he still liked to surprise Kellie with flowers once a week or so.

Half a minute later, emerging from the tunnel, the dickhead stabbed a button, and the nightmare continued. JUST WENT THROUGH A TUNNEL! he bellowed, as if they were still in it. Yeah, fucking INCREDIBLE! How come they dont have a wire or thing, you know, to keep the connection? Inside the tunnel, yeah? They got them on some motorway tunnels now, right?

Tom tried to tune him out and concentrate on the emails on his wobbling Mac laptop. Just another shitty end to another shitty day at the office. Over one hundred emails yet to respond to, and more downloading every minute. He cleared them every night before he went to bed that was his rule, the only way to keep on top of his workload. Some were jokes, which he would look at later, and some were raunchy attachments sent by mates, which he had learned not to risk looking at in crowded train carriages, ever since the time he had been sitting next to a prim-looking woman and had double-clicked on a PowerPoint file to reveal a donkey being fellated by a naked blonde.

The train clicked and clacked, rocking, shaking, then vibrating in short bursts as they entered another tunnel, nearing home now. Wind roared around the edges of the open window above his head, and the echo of the black walls howled with it. Suddenly, the carriage smelled of old socks and soot. A briefcase skittered around on the rack above his head and he glanced up nervously, checking it wasnt about to fall on him or crush the flowers. On a blank advertising panel on the wall opposite him, above the head of a plump, surly-looking girl in a tight skirt who was reading Heat magazine, someone had spraypainted seagulls wannkers in clumsy black letters.

So much for football supporters, Tom thought. They couldnt even spell wankers.