Dead Man’s Footsteps

33

It hadn’t been the best weekend of his life, Roy Grace thought to himself at 8 o’clock on Monday morning, as he sat in the tiny, cramped dentist’s waiting room, flicking through the pages of Sussex Life. In fact, it didn’t really feel as if the previous week had actually ended.

Dr Frazer Theobald’s post-mortem had gone on interminably, finally finishing around 9 p.m. on Saturday. And Cleo, who had been fine during the post-mortem, had been uncharacteristically ratty with him yesterday.

Both of them knew it was no one’s fault that their weekend plans had been ruined, yet somehow he felt she was blaming him, just the way Sandy used to blame him when he’d arrive home hours late, or have to cancel some long-term plan at the last minute because an emergency had come up. As if it was his fault a jogger had discovered a dead body in a ditch late on a Friday afternoon, instead of at a more convenient time.

Cleo knew the score. She knew the world of the police and their erratic hours better than most – her own weren’t much different. She could be called out at any time of the day or night, and frequently was. So what was eating her?

She had even got annoyed with him when he’d gone back to his own house for a couple of hours to mow the badly overgrown lawn.

‘You wouldn’t have been able to mow it if we’d been up in London,’ she’d said. ‘So why now?’

It was his house that was the real problem, he knew. His house – his and Sandy’s house – still seemed a red rag to a bull with Cleo. Although he had recently removed a lot of Sandy’s possessions, Cleo still very rarely came round and always seemed uncomfortable when she did. They’d only made love there once, and it hadn’t been a good experience for either of them.

Since then they always slept at Cleo’s house. The nights they spent together were becoming increasingly frequent, and he now kept a set of shaving kit and washing stuff there, as well as a dark suit, fresh white shirt, plain tie and a pair of black shoes – his weekday work uniform.

It had been a good question and he didn’t tell her the truth, because that would have made things worse. The truth was that the skeleton had shaken him. He wanted to be on his own for a few hours, to reflect.

To think about how he would feel if it was Sandy.

His relationship with Cleo had gone way, way further than any other he had had since Sandy, but he was conscious that, despite all his efforts to move forward, Sandy remained a constant wedge between them. A few weeks ago at dinner, when they’d both had too much to drink, Cleo had let slip her concern about her biological clock ticking away. He knew she was starting to want commitment – and sensed she felt that, with Sandy in the way, she was never going to get it from him.

That wasn’t true. Roy adored her. Loved her. And had begun seriously to contemplate a life together with her.

Which was why he had been terribly hurt early yesterday evening when, having gone back to her house clutching a couple of bottles of their current favourite red Rioja wine, he had opened her front door with his key to be greeted by a tiny black puppy which sprinted towards him, put its paws around his leg and peed on his trainers.

‘Humphrey, meet Roy!’ she said. ‘Roy, meet Humphrey!’

‘Who – whose is this?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘Mine. I got him this afternoon. He’s a five-month-old rescue puppy – a Lab and Border Collie cross.’

Roy’s right foot felt uncomfortably warm as the urine seeped in. And a strange hot flush of confusion swirled through him as he knelt and felt the dog’s sandpapery tongue lick his hand. He was totally astonished.

‘You – you never told me you were getting a puppy!’

‘Yep, well, there’s lots you don’t tell me either, Roy,’ she said breezily.

An elderly woman came into the waiting room, gave him a suspicious look, as if to say, I’ve got the first appointment, sonny boy, then sat down.

Roy had a packed schedule. At 9 a.m. he was going to see Alison Vosper and have it out with her about Cassian Pewe. At 9.45, later than normal, he was holding the first briefing meeting of Operation Dingo – the random name thrown up by the Sussex House computer for the investigation into the death of the Unknown Female, as the skeleton in the storm drain was currently called. Then at 10.30 he was due at morning prayers – the jokey name given to the newly reinstated weekly management team meetings.

At midday he was scheduled to hold a press conference on the finding of the skeleton. Not a huge amount to tell at this point, but hopefully by revealing the age of the dead woman, the physical characteristics and the approximate period when she died, it might jog someone’s memory about a mis-per from around that time. Supposing, of course, that it was not Sandy.

‘Roy! Good to see you!’

Steve Cowling stood in the doorway in his white gown, beaming with his perfect white teeth. A tall man in his mid-fifties, with a ramrod-straight military bearing, immaculate hair becoming increasingly grey every time Roy saw him, he exuded charm and confidence in equal measure, combined always with a certain boyish enthusiasm, as if teeth really were the most exciting thing in the world.

‘Come in, old chap!’

Grace gave an apologetic nod to the elderly lady, who looked distinctly miffed, and followed the dentist in to his bright, airy torture chamber.

While, like himself, Steve Cowling grew a little older with each visit, the dentist had an endless succession of assistants who grew younger and more attractive. The latest, a leggy brunette in her early twenties, holding a buff envelope, smiled at him, then removed a clutch of negatives and handed them to Cowling with a flirty glance.

He picked up the alginate cast Roy had given him twenty minutes earlier. ‘Right, Roy. This is really quite interesting. The first thing I have to say is that it is definitely not Sandy.’

‘It’s not?’ he echoed, a little flatly.

‘Absolutely not.’ Cowling pointed at the negatives. ‘Those are Sandy’s – there’s no comparison at all. But the cast provides quite a lot of information that may be helpful.’ He gave Grace a bright smile.

‘Good.’

‘This woman has had implants, which would have been quite expensive when they were done. Screw-type titanium – made by a Swiss company, Straumann. They’re basically a hollow cylinder put over a root, which then grows into them and makes a permanent fixing.’

Grace felt a conflicting surge of emotions as he listened, trying to concentrate but finding it hard suddenly.

‘What is interesting, old boy, is that we can put a rough date on these – which corresponds to an estimate of how long ago this woman died. They started going out of fashion about fifteen years ago. She’s had some other quite costly work done, some restorations and bridge work. If she’s from this area, then I would say there are only about five or six dentists who could have done this work. A good place to start would be Chris Gebbie, who practises in Lewes. I’ll write down the others for you as well. And it means that she’d have been reasonably well off.’

Grace listened, but his thoughts were elsewhere. If this skeleton had been Sandy, however grim, it would have brought some kind of closure. But now the agony of uncertainty continued.

He didn’t know whether he felt disappointed or relieved.