Dead at First Sight

7 Wednesday 26 September

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace was reflecting on the words in one of Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas.

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

Not entirely true, he thought, although just now, when he’d taken a rare two weeks’ break, he’d still had to come into the office on several of those days. This was his first official day back and he was getting up to speed with current investigations.

During his time off he’d arranged a barbecue for friends and some members of his team, as well as a number of his senior colleagues in the force, though with one notable omission. He was particularly pleased that his eldest son, Bruno, who had been showing some signs of behavioural difficulty, seemed to interact with the adults. He also noted, with some amusement, how well his young DS Jack Alexander seemed to be getting on with his and Cleo’s nanny, Kaitlynn. The barbecue had also been an opportunity to introduce his team to its newest member, Vivienne, the wife of the American detective Arnie Crown, who had been seconded to Roy from the FBI. She had recently taken up a post as an analyst.

Back in the early days, as a detective constable at Brighton’s busy John Street police station, where he had handled everything from burglaries to drug dealers, vehicle thefts, street crimes and violent assaults, Roy had loved the constant adrenaline rush of his job and the building itself. When he’d been transferred to Major Crime, housed on the Hollingbury industrial estate on the outskirts of the city, he’d loved that job even more — and still did, most days — but he’d loathed the building, like just about everyone else who worked there. Among its numerous faults, of which lack of parking was just one, the heating only seemed to work in summer and the air con only in winter and there was no canteen. But after nine months in his cramped, horrid little office in the former student accommodation buildings at the Police Headquarters in Lewes, he would have given anything to be back in his spacious one in Hollingbury.

And to have had his old boss, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Rigg, back in place of his current one, ACC Cassian Pewe.

And to not feel, as he and all other officers did these days, that they were all the time walking on eggshells. Scared of putting a single politically incorrect foot wrong. Somewhere along the line, during the past decade, something called common sense had gone AWOL. Along with the world’s sense of humour.

At least the past few months had been a rare quiet period for the Head of Major Crime, with just a handful of murders in Sussex. Two of them had been domestics — fights or killings within a relationship — and the other three drugs-related. Each had been cleared up within days by other detectives in the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.

This had given him badly needed time to spend evenings and weekends with his family. Until recently the family unit had been his wife Cleo, toddler Noah and their rescue dog, Humphrey. Earlier this year they had been joined by the ten-year-old son he never knew he had, Bruno, who had been born and brought up in Germany. Bruno’s mother was Roy’s missing, now deceased estranged first wife, Sandy. Over the last few evenings Roy had also had the opportunity to prepare for the forthcoming trials of murder suspects his team had arrested, and at most of which he would be required to give evidence.

Roy Grace knew a lot of officers did not enjoy being in court, but he genuinely did. At least, when the trial was going his way. What the public didn’t realize was that the process of an investigation, and the ultimate successful outcome of the arrest of the prime suspect, was only the beginning. The many months that followed, of laboriously piecing together the evidence to make it watertight for presentation in court, was so often an even harder task than solving the crime itself. The tiniest slip in the chain of evidence would be pounced on by a smart defence brief, enabling an offender the police knew was guilty as hell to walk free. Free to perpetrate all over again. Few things were more demoralizing to his team than that.

Together with his colleague and mate DI Glenn Branson he was currently poring over the vast amount of trial documents relating to a Brighton family doctor who had turned out to be a serial killer. The man deserved to spend the rest of his life behind bars, and Grace was determined that was going to happen.

In addition to this case, he was working closely with a civilian financial investigator, Emily Denyer, on preparations for another trial, the so-called ‘Black Widow’ who he was certain had murdered at least two husbands, and possibly more.

As his job phone rang, the display showing Caller ID Withheld, he had no idea that, when he picked up, his period of respite would be under threat.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered. Then immediately recognized the voice at the other end, of his friend and German equivalent Detective Marcel Kullen from the Munich Landeskriminalamt or LKA.

‘Hey, Marcel, how are you doing?’

They exchanged jibes and pleasantries, briefly catching up on each other’s lives since they’d last seen each other, earlier this year in Munich. Then Kullen became serious.

‘Roy, we have a situation I am thinking you might be able to help us with. You are still Head of Major Crime for Sussex Police?’

‘I am.’

‘Gut. We have a murder inquiry you may be able to help us with. Does the name Lena Welch mean anything to you — or to anyone in Sussex Police?’

‘Lena Welch?’

‘Ja.’

‘No. Not immediately, anyway.’ With Kullen spelling the name to him, Roy Grace wrote it down on his pad. Putting the phone momentarily on mute, he turned to Branson. ‘The name Lena Welch mean anything?’

The DI, wearing a sharp waistcoat with his suit, looked pensive for an instant. ‘Nope. She welched on someone?’

Grace shook his head. ‘Be serious.’

‘Lena Welch?’ Branson thought for a few seconds. ‘Nope.’

Un-muting the phone, Grace said, ‘Why do you ask, Marcel?’

‘She died on Monday night, and is originally from England — from your city. Her birth name is Williamson.’

‘Lena Williamson?’ Grace added a note and looked at Branson. Again his colleague shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, Marcel. Tell me?’

‘Although Lena’s laptop and phone seem to have been taken, we have found a back-up hard drive. From initial examination, it seems she discovered that her photograph was being used by internet romance fraudsters. One of the identities is an Ingrid Ostermann. It is looking as if this fictitious character was purporting to be in love with a man in Sussex, England, called John — or Johnny — Fordwater. A former army officer, a major. We understand he has transferred considerable amounts of money to a München bank account in the fake name and identity of Ingrid Ostermann — a total in excess of 400,000 euros. And now we have Lena Welch found dead and the money long cleared out of the fictitious Ingrid Ostermann’s account.’

‘How did she die?’

‘Not very pleasantly.’

‘Dying isn’t generally a very pleasant experience, Marcel.’

Kullen laughed. ‘Glad to know you still have your dark humour, my friend. This was definitely not a pleasant death.’

‘Tell me?’

‘She fell from her sixth-floor apartment and was impaled on railings beneath.’

‘Was it suicide?’

‘No. She lived on her own after a divorce. But we have very good reason for doubting suicide.’

‘Which is?’

‘She had most of her tongue cut off.’

‘Her tongue?’

‘Ja. A witness reported that moments after she landed on the railings, a man ran from a car over towards her holding what looked like a machete. He hacked at her face and ran back to the car. A few seconds after, another man ran from the apartment building into the same car, an Audi A4, and they drove off at high speed.’

‘Did your witness give you any descriptions?’

‘She was pretty shaken up. She said both men were black. She gave us a couple of digits from the Audi’s licence plate, but as you can imagine there are many thousands of these cars here in Germany. And probably the plates are false. She said something else that might be of interest. The man who ran from the apartment was wearing shiny red shoes.’

‘Red shoes? What man wears shiny red shoes?’ He looked at Branson, imagining him in a pair.

But even the DI, with his sometimes questionable taste in clothes, looked askance. ‘Not sure I’d trust any bloke wearing red shoes, boss.’

Grace glanced down at Branson’s feet. ‘Wouldn’t go with those socks anyway.’ They were lime green.

‘It’s how you wear ’em.’ Branson grinned. ‘Could be a case for our foot man, Haydn Kelly.’

‘Can I see the forensic report, Marcel?’ Grace asked.

‘Sure, I will send the autopsy report when it is finished. The photographs are not so nice, probably not ones for her family album.’

He smiled, grimly. ‘What is your hypothesis, Marcel?’

‘What we know so far from our investigations is that this lady had discovered her identity is used by a “romance fraud” gang. She confided in a friend of hers, recently, that she was suspicious of a man she had met online after joining a dating agency herself. She told her friend that she was going to meet the man and confront him. Then she is found dead, missing half of her tongue.’

Grace shuddered. ‘Which dating agency was it?’

‘As I said, her computer and phone are missing — presumably taken by her attacker — and we are examining CCTV coverage from a hidden camera we found. But there seems to be a lot of information on the back-up drive relating to names, photographs and emails, which we are trying to piece together, to see whether this is connected with her death.’

‘We have a dedicated “romance fraud” team operating here in Sussex, Marcel,’ Grace said. ‘It’s a growing menace. There are very big sums involved in this country. We estimate about £30 million in the past twelve months in the county of Sussex alone, based on those we know about and an estimate of those we don’t from people who’ve been too embarrassed to come forward.’

‘Here also a similar amount. We are aware there’s an organization operating internationally, with one of their bases somewhere in Germany. They are taking people’s identities from online dating agencies and using them to defraud people. This unfortunate lady, Lena Welch, had discovered the truth and was perhaps threatening to expose them. Our hypothesis is they might have killed her in order to discourage other victims from trying to do the same. Perhaps there is some symbolism with the tongue. We are trying to establish who else has been targeted with Lena Welch’s identity around the globe. But, so far, the only person we have is Major Fordwater, in your country.’

‘What details can you give me about him?’

‘At this stage very little, I’m afraid. We have his name. And his date of birth — which makes him fifty-eight. And we believe he is from your city, Brighton and Hove. If you could find out anything about him, that would be extremely helpful to us.’

‘Leave it with me, Marcel. By the way, that hangover I got when I stayed with you in April?’

‘Ja?’

‘I’m still suffering.’

The German detective laughed. ‘You poor antique. You are over forty. Maybe you should retire and go live in an old people’s home. With some nice bright-red slippers, perhaps?’

‘Ha, ha! I’ll book the room next to yours, Marcel!’

Ending the call, Grace entered the name, ‘John, Johnny, Fordwater’ into the NICHE — the Sussex Police Combined Crime and Intelligence System search engine.

Within seconds he had a result. He picked up his phone.