Free Make Them Pay by Graham Ison Page A

did with the Anthony Cook letters that were returned to them.’
    Later that night we had surprisingly good news from Brighton, although at the time we didn’t realize how surprising or that it wouldn’t be good. At near midnight, a Sussex traffic-division officer had seen Rivers’s Renault Twingo and followed it to a guest house. The driver – a man in his eighties, it was reported – had alighted and gone inside. It was that simple! I never cease to be amazed at how often uniformed constables will find someone for whom the CID had been searching for days if not months. Not that that was the case here. Less than twelve hours was pretty good going.
    The Sussex police message had come in straight after the discovery, but the night duty incident room staff had wisely decided not to bother me with it.

SEVEN
    T he next morning I entrusted myself to what Dave calls his purposeful driving, and we arrived at the guest house at about half past eleven. William Rivers’s car was parked outside. The guest house was one of those seedy establishments that had a signboard boasting a sea view, but a sight of the sea could probably be achieved only by standing on a chair in the attic.
    Dave and I walked into the entrance hall and I banged a table bell on a desk that bore the optimistic sign ‘Welcome’. That the owner was a harridan in her fifties and as dowdy as the guest house itself came as no surprise.
    ‘We haven’t got any vacancies,’ said this vision of loveliness, viewing Dave with obvious distaste.
    ‘That’s all right, this is the last place on earth I’d want to stay,’ said Dave, who was quick to recognize a racist when he met one.
    ‘We’re police officers,’ I said. ‘I want to speak to Mr Rivers, one of your guests.’
    ‘I don’t know as how he’s in,’ said the woman, obviously intent upon being as obstructive as possible. I got the impression that she didn’t like the police and idly wondered why, but it wasn’t my concern. ‘He never come down for breakfast this morning, but I’ve got more to do than run about after guests what can’t be bothered to get out of their bed of a morning.’
    ‘Perhaps you’d find out if he’s in,’ Dave suggested, ‘or we could go round knocking on doors until we find him.’
    The woman tossed her head as she realized it would be futile not to cooperate. She snatched at the telephone and dialled a two-digit number, but replaced the receiver after a few moments. ‘He’s not answering,’ she said, ‘but I’m sure he’s in. Perhaps he’s asleep. It’s Room Five, top floor,’ she added tersely and walked away muttering to herself.
    We trudged up two flights of worn nylon-carpeted stairs and Dave knocked on the door bearing the number of Rivers’s room. The number was a cheap stick-on affair, the sort that people buy at DIY shops to put on their dustbins.
    I pushed open the door. Sprawled across the bed was a fully dressed man. There was a pistol in his right hand, and blood had stained the bedclothes and was congealed on his neck from a head wound. His eyes were wide open.
    Dave crossed to the bed and felt for a pulse. He looked up. ‘He’s a goner, guv,’ he said. ‘Still, he could hardly miss at that range.’
    ‘Bloody hell!’ I said. This untoward event introduced an unnecessary complication into our investigation. Not because Rivers, and I’d no doubt it was him, had obviously committed suicide, but because it would now mean involving another police force.
    I took out my mobile phone and paused. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got the number of the local nick, Dave, have you?’
    ‘It so happens I have, sir,’ said Dave and reeled it off from memory. It was one of Dave’s little foibles that he always called me ‘sir’ whenever I made a fatuous remark or asked for something I should’ve known. And he always called me ‘sir’ in the presence of members of the public.
    I called Brighton police station and asked for the detective