Dead Man’s Footsteps

43

Grace kept the press briefing short. It was party political conference season and a lot of reporters, even if not directly interested in politics, were up in Blackpool with the Tories – who at this moment seemed likely to provide richer pickings than a skeleton in a sewer, for the nationals at any rate.

But the Unknown Female was a good local story, particularly as the remains had been discovered beneath one of the biggest property developments ever in the city, and it had a whiff of both history in the past and history in the making. Analogies were being made to the Brighton Trunk Murders, two separate incidents in 1934 where dismembered bodies were found in trunks, earning Brighton the unwelcome sobriquet ‘Crime Capital of England’.

One local television crew from the BBC had turned up, as did Southern Counties Radio, a young man with a video camera from a new Brighton internet television channel, Absolute Television, a couple of stringers from London papers whom Grace knew, a reporter from the Sussex Express and, of course, Kevin Spinella from the Argus.

Although Spinella irritated him, Grace was beginning to develop a grudging respect for the young journalist. He could see that Spinella was a hard worker, like himself, and after an encounter on a previous case, when Spinella had honoured a promise to withhold some important information, he had shown himself to be a reporter the police could do business with. Some police officers viewed all press as vermin, but Grace felt differently. Almost every major crime relied on witnesses, on members of the public coming forward, on memories being jogged. If you handled the press correctly you could get them to do quite a bit of your work for you.

With little information to give out this morning, Grace concentrated on getting a few key messages across. The age and as much description of the woman as they could give out, and an estimate of how many years she might have been down that storm drain, in the hope that a family member or friend might come forward with details of a person who had gone missing within that time frame.

Grace had added that although the cause of death was unknown, strangulation was a possibility, and that whoever had murdered her would probably have had good local knowledge of Brighton and Hove.

As he left the conference room, shortly before 12.30, he heard his name being called.

Irritatingly, Kevin Spinella had taken to waylaying Grace after press conferences, cornering him in the corridor, out of earshot of the other journalists.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace, could I have a quick word?’

Roy wondered for a moment if perhaps Spinella had heard about his promotion. It should have been impossible for him to find out this quickly, but for some time now he had suspected that Spinella had an informer somewhere inside Sussex Police. He always seemed to know of any incident ahead of everyone else. At some point Roy was determined to get to the bottom of it, but that was no easy thing to do. When you started digging below the surface, you risked alienating a lot of your colleagues.

The young reporter, as ever in a suit, shirt and tie, was looking sharper and more spruce than at his rain-soaked appearance at the site on Saturday morning.

‘Nothing to do with this,’ Spinella said, his teeth working on a piece of gum. ‘Just something I thought I ought to mention to you. On Saturday evening I got a call from a contact in the fire brigade – they were going into a flat in Kemp Town to rescue someone stuck in a lift.’

‘Boy, do you have an exciting life!’ Grace ribbed him.

‘Yeah, all go,’ Spinella replied earnestly, missing the barb, or deliberately ignoring it. ‘The thing is, this woman…’ He hesitated and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You got a copper’s nose, right?’

Grace shrugged. He was always careful what he said to Spi-nella. ‘That’s what people say about police officers.’

Spinella tapped his own nose. ‘Yeah, well, I got it too. A nose for a good story – know what I mean?’

‘Yes.’ Grace looked at his watch. ‘I’m in a rush-’

‘Yeah, OK, I won’t keep you. Just wanted to alert you, that’s all. This woman they freed – late twenties, very pretty – I felt something wasn’t right.’

‘In what way?’

‘She was very agitated.’

‘Not surprising if she’d been stuck in a lift.’

Spinella shook his head. ‘Not that kind of agitated.’

Grace looked at him for a moment. One thing he knew about local newspaper reporters was the range of stories they got sent to cover. Sudden deaths, road crashes, mugging victims, burglary victims, families of missing persons. Reporters like Spinella met agitated people all day long. Even at his relatively young age and experience, Spinella probably had learned to recognize different types of agitation. ‘OK, what kind?’

‘She was frightened about something. Refused to answer the door the next day when the paper sent a photographer round. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was in hiding.’

Grace nodded. A few thoughts went through his mind. ‘What nationality?’

‘English. White – if I’m allowed to say that.’ He smirked.

Ignoring the comment, Grace decided that ruled out her being an imprisoned sex slave – they were mostly from Eastern Europe and Africa. There were all kinds of possibilities. A million things could make you agitated. But being agitated wasn’t enough reason for the police to pay a call on someone.

‘What’s her name and address?’ he asked, then dutifully wrote down Katherine Jennings and the flat number and address on his pad. He would get someone to run it through PNC and see if the name got flagged. Other than that, all he could do was wait to see if the name appeared again.

Then, as Roy pressed his card against the security panel to step through into the Major Incident Suite, Spinella called after him again. ‘Oh – and Detective Superintendent?’

He turned, irritably now. ‘Yes?’

‘Congratulations on your promotion!’