Dead at First Sight

59 Tuesday 9 October

Something Cleo had insisted on from the earliest days of their marriage was that, no matter how busy either of them might be, they would make time to sit down at the table, with no television on, and have their evening meal together. She had also been steadily trying to wean Roy onto a healthier diet than he’d traditionally eaten as a police officer. A lot more fish than meat, vegetarian and sometimes even vegan meals.

He’d once had a pathological aversion to the very notion of vegan, but after she’d created some seriously tasty recipes he had now started to enjoy it. Tonight they’d had nut burgers, with baked beans and sliced avocado. Afterwards they both returned to the living area, Cleo to continue with her studies and Roy to start work on his best-man’s speech for Glenn Branson’s wedding to Argus reporter Siobhan Sheldrake.

He googled the subject on his laptop and found a number of websites. He needed a good joke to start with, something perhaps a little risqué but inoffensive. He found a whole stack of them, most of them terrible. Then he came across one he quite liked. ‘Darling, sorry to interrupt you, what do you think of this?’ he asked.

She looked up.

‘I would strongly advise the newlyweds to be cautious about buying their marital bed from Harrods. Apparently, they always stand by their products!’

She rocked her head from side to side as if weighing the balance. ‘Yuk, that is so cheesy. No, no, no!’

‘I quite like it,’ he said defensively. ‘I mean, hey, Glenn is cheesy, right?’

‘You can do a lot better.’ She peered at him. ‘Roy, you look exhausted. I’m knackered, too, and I’ve a full-on day tomorrow, nine postmortems.’

‘Be nice if people stopped dying for a couple of days to give you a break!’

‘Maybe you should ask the Argus to put out a request.’

His job phone rang.

Cleo raised her eyebrows.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

It was Arnie — Notmuch — Crown. ‘Sir,’ the American said, ‘thought you’d appreciate an update. We’ve arrested one of the suspects, but Red Shoes got away and has disappeared.’

Instantly, Roy sat upright. ‘Tell me?’ Crown filled him in on events. ‘Jesus, his right hand? How is he?’

‘Lost a lot of blood. He’s in ITU at the Sussex County, but they think he’ll pull through. The Response Team had the presence of mind to get instructions from the hospital on how to pack the hand and keep it cold. Surgeons are going to attempt to reattach it.’

‘What do we know about the suspect?’

‘Very little, sir. Apparently he’s keeping resolutely schtum. All they have at present is a burner phone and two credit cards and a driving licence in his wallet, both cards in the name D. Duck — from two different private banks in Lithuania. No address in the UK that he’s giving out. He wouldn’t say a word to the custody sergeant.’

‘So we need to make him quack.’

Notmuch gave a nervous, ‘Ha ha.’

‘Anything on the phone?’

‘It’s been biked over to Digital Forensics as an urgent priority.’

‘Good. What about the missing one — any progress on finding him?’

‘We’ve alerted Oscar-1 and CCTV are reviewing all footage of the area where he was last seen.’

‘Did we get anything from that boutique they went into? OnTrend? How did they pay?’

‘Cash, I’m afraid. There’s some CCTV from inside the shop but it doesn’t give us much more. The officers attending seized the banknotes Red Shoes paid with for fingerprint and DNA analysis. There’s no print match. We’ll have DNA sometime tomorrow.’

‘Nothing back from Europe or Interpol?’ Grace asked him.

‘No, sir.’

‘Was the victim able to speak? Did he say anything?’

‘Only one thing, sir. In the car on the way to the hospital he told the officers that the guys who did this said they were upset by his radio appearance this morning.’

‘Radio appearance?’

‘He was on the Danny Pike show, talking about Suzy Driver.’

‘Shit,’ Grace said. His brain spun, rapidly connecting the dots. At least this latest development, horrific though it was, gave him whatever further ammunition he might need — if indeed he did still need it — to convince Cassian Pewe of just what they were dealing with. The woman dead in Munich after threatening to expose her online ‘lover’. Suzy Driver dead after threatening to do the same. Now Toby Seward, the man Suzy Driver had gone to, whose identity had been taken, viciously attacked in his home hours after talking on the radio.

One of the assailants still at large.

Who was the next victim going to be?

Where did they start looking?

‘Arnie, who’s with you in the Incident Room tonight?’

‘DS Snape, Norman, EJ, Alec and Velvet.’

Grace debated whether to go in, but decided there was little he could accomplish that he couldn’t do over the phone. And, as Cleo rightly observed, he was knackered, and would be a lot more use to the investigation after a night’s sleep. They had thirty-six hours to keep the man in custody before they needed to formally charge him. He didn’t know how secretive Lithuanian banks might be, but they had enough time, hopefully, to establish his real identity. What he now needed was two trained advanced suspect interviewers. ‘Nice work, Arnie. I want you to make sure that the suspect has a lawyer — if he doesn’t have one of his own, arrange a legal aid solicitor. We’re going to interview him at 9 a.m.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘Put Norman on, will you?’

Grace briefed Potting, then called Glenn Branson. ‘Sorry to disturb your love nest.’

‘Very funny.’

In the background he could hear the television. ‘What are you watching? A replay of Love Island?’

‘The news, actually.’

‘Getting your rocks off to the latest on Brexit?’

‘Sometimes, Roy, you are really sad.’

Grace told him the recent development. ‘I want you and Norman to interview the suspect at 9 a.m. I’ll watch from the observation room.’

‘I always perform better in front of a voyeur.’