Dead Tomorrow

31

Sometimes, Roy Grace wondered whether computers had souls. Or at least a sense of humour. He had not yet elevated Unknown Male to Major Incident status, but because the investigation was now a formal operation the protocols required that it be allocated a name. The Sussex Police Computer had a program for this purpose, and the name it allocated the Detective Superintendent was bizarrely apt. Operation Neptune.

Shoulder to shoulder around the small, round table in his office were five detectives whom he had come to regard as his most trusted team.

Detective Constable Nick Nicholl was in his late twenties, short-haired and tall as a beanpole, a zealous detective and a handy centre forward, whom Grace had encouraged to take up rugby, thinking he would be perfect to play in the police team, of which he was now president. But the poor man was permanently bleary-eyed and zapped of energy, thanks to the joys of recent fatherhood.

Rookie Detective Constable Emma-Jane Boutwood, a slim girl with an alert face and long fair hair scooped up in a bun, had nearly been killed in a recent operation, when she had been crushed against a wall by a stolen van. She was still officially convalescing and entitled to more leave, but she had begged to come back, determined to get on with her career, and had already proved her worth to him in an earlier operation.

Shabbily dressed, with a bad comb-over and reeking of tobacco, Detective Sergeant Norman Potting was an old-school policeman, politically incorrect, blunt and with no interest in promotion – he had never wanted the responsibility, but nor had he wanted to retire when he reached fifty-five, the normal police pension age for a sergeant, and would probably extend his service. He liked to do what he was best at doing, which he called plodding and drilling. Plodding, methodical police work, drilling down deep beneath the surface of any crime, drilling for as long and as deep as he needed until he hit a seam that would lead him somewhere. A veteran of three failed marriages, he was currently on his fourth, with a young Thai woman who, he boasted proudly at every opportunity, he had found via the Internet.

Detective Sergeant Bella Moy, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with a tangle of hennaed hair, was something of a lost soul. Unmarried – although, like many, married to the police force – she was stuck living with, and looking after, her elderly mother.

The fifth was Glenn Branson.

Also attending were the Crime Scene Manager, David Browne, and the HOLMES analyst, Juliet Jones.

A phone rang, to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’. Everyone looked around. Embarrassed, Nick Nicholl plucked the offending machine out of his pocket and silenced it.

Moments later, another phone rang. The Indiana Jones theme. Potting yanked his phone out, checked the display and silenced it.

In front of Grace lay his A4 notebook, his red case-file folder, his policy book and the notes Eleanor Hodgson had typed up for him. He opened the proceedings.

‘The time is 4.30 p.m., Thursday 27 November. This is the first briefing of Operation Neptune, the investigation into the death of Unknown Male, retrieved yesterday, 26 November, from the English Channel, approximately ten nautical miles south of Shoreham Harbour, by the dredger Arco Dee. Our next briefing will be at 8.30 a.m. tomorrow, and we will then hold briefings here in my office at 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. until further notice.’

He then read out a summary of the post-mortem report from Nadiuska De Sancha. Another phone began ringing. This time David Browne dived into his pocket to retrieve it, checked the display, then silenced it.

When Grace had finished the report, he continued, ‘Our first priority is to establish the young man’s identity. All we know at this stage is that he was in his mid-teens, and his internal organs appear to have been professionally removed. A fingerprint check on the UK database has proved negative. DNA has been sent to the lab on a three-day turnaround, but as that takes us into the weekend, we won’t get their report until Monday, but I doubt whether we’ll get a hit.’

He paused for a moment. Then he addressed DS Moy.

‘Bella, I need you to get the dental photographs out. It’s a massive task, but we’ll start local and see what we get.’

‘There is a designated charted area for burials at sea, right, chief?’ Norman Potting said.

‘Yes, fifteen nautical miles east of Brighton and Hove – it’s a burial ground for everyone from Sussex,’ Roy Grace replied.

‘Don’t the prevailing winds and currents run west to east?’ the DS continued. ‘I remember that from geography lessons when I was at school.’

‘Around the time they built the ark?’ quizzed Bella, who was not a Norman Potting fan.

Grace gave her a stern, cautioning look.

‘Norman’s right,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘I used to do a bit of sailing.’

‘It would take some storm to move a body that far in a few days,’ Potting said, ‘if it was weighted down. I just spoke to the coastguard. He’d need to see the weights, then he could try to plot a movement path.’

‘Tania Whitlock’s on that already,’ Grace said. ‘But we need to speak to all the organ transplant coordinators in the UK and see if we can find a connection with our teenager. Norman, I’d like to task you with that. We already have one negative, from the Royal Sussex County Hospital.’

Potting nodded and made a note on his pad. ‘Leave it with me, chief.’

‘We can’t rule out the possibility that the body came from another county, can we?’ Bella Moy asked.

‘No,’ Grace said. ‘Or from another country. I would like you to speak to our counterparts in the ports of France bordering the English Channel. Also, Spain should be checked out as a priority.’ He explained his reasons.

‘I’ll get on to it straight away.’

‘We don’t yet know the cause of death, right?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

‘No. I want you to do a trawl with Crime Intelligence Bureaux around the country and see if you can find any other cases of a similar nature. And I want you to check the Mispers list for Sussex, Kent and Hampshire for any possible match to our Unknown Male.’

That was a big task, he knew. Five thousand people were reported missing in Sussex alone each year – although the majority were missing for only a short time.

Then he handed Emma-Jane Boutwood a folder. ‘These are the briefing notes we were given in September in Las Vegas, at the International Homicide Investigators’ Association Symposium, on the headless and limbless torso of a boy, believed to be Nigerian, pulled from the Thames in 2001 missing his vital organs. The case is unsolved, but it’s almost certainly a ritual killing of some kind. Take a look through and see if there are any comparisons with our young man.’

‘Has anyone checked the dredge area to see if there is any evidence down there?’ Potting asked.

‘The SSU are going out at first light. Glenn will be with them.’ He looked at his colleague.

Branson grimaced back at him. ‘Shit, chief, I did tell you this morning, I don’t really do boats very well. They’re, like, way out of my comfort zone. I threw up the last time I went on a Channel ferry. And that was dead calm. The forecast’s crap for tomorrow.’

‘I’m sure our budget will stretch to seasickness pills,’ Grace said breezily.