Dead Tomorrow

16

‘Well, well, guess who’s here! And you’ve even beaten the blowflies to this one!’ Roy Grace said, as, followed by DI Mantle, he walked past the scene guard at the bottom of the gangway and reluctantly acknowledged the reporter from the local Brighton newspaper, the Argus.

It did not seem to matter what time of the day or night, Kevin Spinella always turned up ahead of all other reporters, particularly when there was a whiff of a suspicious death.

Or perhaps it was the whiff of death itself. Perhaps the young reporter’s razor-sharp nose could smell death from the same four-mile distance as blowflies.

Either that or he had found some way of cracking the latest secure police radio network. Grace always suspected he had an insider in the police and was determined, one day, to find out, but at this moment his thoughts were on something else entirely. He needed to get to the party for Chief Superintendent Jim Wilkinson as quickly as possible and find out just what Cleo had meant when she’d said coldly, I want to tell you face to face, not over the phone.

Just what did this woman he loved so much want to tell him? And why had she sounded so off? Was she going to dump him? Tell him she had found someone else? Or that she was going back to her previous boyfriend, her born-again Christian barrister jerk?

OK, her ex was an Old Etonian, and Grace knew he could never compete with that. Cleo came from a different background from his own, a wholly different class league. Her family were rich, she had been educated at a private boarding school and she was ferociously intelligent.

By comparison, he was just a dumb, middle-class copper, the son of a middle-class copper. And he had no aspirations beyond that; that was all he wanted to be and all he would ever be. He loved his work and he loved his colleagues. He would happily admit that if he could just freeze time, he would like to remain in his job forever.

Had Cleo now realized that?

Despite all his attempts to keep pace with her Open University degree studies in philosophy, he was falling way behind. Had she decided he was simply not bright enough for her?

‘Nice to see you, Detective Superintendent Grace, Detective Inspector Mantle.’

The reporter flashed a big smile and stepped right into their path. For a moment, their faces were so close he could smell Spinella’s spearmint chewing gum.

‘So what brings two senior detectives to the harbour on a chilly night like this?’

The reporter had a thin, keen-eyed face and a short, modern haircut. He was wearing a beige, gumshoe mackintosh with the collar turned up, over a thin, summer-weight suit and a carefully knotted tie. His tasselled black shoes looked cheap and loud.

‘You don’t look like you’re dressed for fishing,’ Lizzie Mantle quipped.

‘Fishing for facts,’ he retorted, with a quizzical raise of his eyebrows. ‘Or perhaps dredging them up?’

Behind him, the mortuary van began driving off. Spinella turned to glance at it for a second, then he looked back at the two detectives.

‘Could either of you give me a comment?’

‘Not at this stage,’ Grace said. ‘I may hold a press conference after the post-mortem tomorrow.’

Spinella pulled out his notepad, flipping it open. ‘Might be just another floater, then. Can I quote you on that, Detective Superintendent?’

‘I’m sorry, I’ve no comment,’ Grace said.

‘A burial at sea, perhaps?’

Grace walked on past him towards his car. Spinella padded along beside him, keeping pace.

‘Bit odd, isn’t it, that it was weighted down with concrete breeze blocks?’

‘You’ve got my mobile number. Call me tomorrow around midday,’ Grace said. ‘I might know something by then.’

‘Such as what that incision on the body is?’

Grace stopped in his tracks. Then, restraining himself with great difficulty, he remained silent. Where the hell had he got that from? It had to be one of the crew members. Spinella was a past master at wheedling information from strangers.

Spinella grinned, knowing he had wrong-footed the detective. ‘Some kind of ritual killing, perhaps? A black magic rite?’

Grace thought quickly, not wanting some sensational headline appearing in the morning edition that would frighten people. But the truth was Spinella might be right. That incision was very strange. It was, as Graham Lewis said, very much like the kind of incision made during a post-mortem. During a ritual too?

‘OK, here’s the deal. If you hold back writing anything other than just the basic facts, that a dredger pulled up an unidentified body, I’ll give you clear water on the story tomorrow as soon as the PM is done. Fair enough?’

‘Clear water!’ Spinella nodded approvingly. ‘Very appropriate, considering where we are. I like it! Nice one, Detective Superintendent! Nice one indeed!’