Looking Good Dead

36

Grace drove while Emma-Jane Boutwood, smartly dressed in a navy two-piece with a pale blue blouse, sat in the passenger seat of the unmarked Mondeo, with the directions she had printed off the internet on her lap on top of a large brown envelope.

Normally Roy Grace would have used an hour-long car journey as an opportunity to bond with a junior member of his team, but he had too much on his mind this morning, of which his anger at Norman Potting was just a small part, and their conversation was sporadic. E-J told him a little about herself – that her father had an advertising agency in Eastbourne and that her kid brother had survived a brain tumour some years back. Enough for Grace to get some sense of the human being behind the front of the young ambitious policewoman that he saw in the office. But she got very little back from him, and after a few attempts at engaging him in conversation she took the hint that he wanted silence.

He kept the car to a steady 75 mph, travelling anti-clockwise along the M25. It was one of his least favourite roads, its frequent heavy congestion causing many people to nickname it the world’s biggest parking lot, but this Saturday morning the traffic was light and moving steadily. After a fine early start the weather was now deteriorating, the sky turning an increasingly ominous charcoal colour. A few spots of rain were striking the windscreen, but not enough yet to put the wipers on. He barely even noticed them; he was driving on autopilot, his conscious brain focusing on the case.

Janie Stretton had been murdered some time on Tuesday night and it was now Saturday morning, he was thinking. They still did not have her head, nor any motive, nor any suspect.

Not one damned clue.

And Alison Vosper had told him that on Monday the supremely arrogant Detective Inspector Cassian Pewe from the Met was joining Brighton CID at the same rank as himself. He had no doubt that the Assistant Chief Constable was waiting for him to put just one more foot wrong, and he would be off this case in a flash, replaced by Pewe, with his shiny blond hair, angelic blue eyes and voice as invasive as a dentist’s drill.

Alison Vosper would be keen for her new protégé – which was how Pewe seemed to Grace – to make his mark quickly, and there could be no better showcase than a high-profile murder like this, where the existing team was getting nowhere.

What puzzled Grace most was the savage nature of the killing – the assailant must have been in a total frenzy – yet the absence of any apparent sexual assault. Did they have someone totally deranged, perhaps another schizophrenic like Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, on their hands? A man who heard voices from God telling him to kill hookers?

Or had Janie Stretton made an enemy?

Obviously her last boyfriend Justin Remington was a potential suspect, but from what Janie’s father had said, he was a long shot. Bella Moy was a good judge of people – Grace would have a better feel about this man after she had interviewed him, which would be today, with luck, if she could get hold of him. If she felt any inkling of something not being right, he would then go and see the former boyfriend himself. But if, as he strongly suspected, it wasn’t Justin Remington, then who? Why? Where was the killer now? Out there somewhere, about to strike again?

Last night, after he had been to see Brent Mackenzie, he had grabbed some fish and chips – and a pickled onion – and taken them back to the then almost deserted MIR One. He had washed the meal down with a tannic cup of vending-machine tea while poring over the case notes to date that Hannah Loxley, the team’s typist, had prepared for him.

He had sat there a long time, staring at the photograph of Janie Stretton’s face, then at the two large whiteboards. On one was pinned a section of an Ordnance Survey map of Peacehaven, with the two locations where her hand and the rest of her headless torso had been found ringed in red. There were also photographs of the body in situ, and a couple taken during the post-mortem, one showing the beetle in her rectum. He could picture, vividly, every detail of them now, and shuddered suddenly in revulsion.

What happened to you, Janie, on Tuesday night? And who was Anton? Did Anton do this to you?

His thoughts turned to Derek Stretton. Over 95 per cent of all murder victims in the UK were killed either by a member of their own family or by someone they knew. Was there anything he and Glenn Branson had missed when they had gone to see Janie’s father yesterday? Something the man said that suggested he might have butchered his own daughter? Anything was possible; Grace had learned that much during his years in the force. But Stretton had seemed genuine, a sad father, down and lost. He did not have the aura of a man who had just killed someone.

The car radio crackled into life. They were out of range of Sussex Police airwaves now and were picking up a Bromley area controller, calling for a car to attend an RTA. Emma-Jane turned the sound down. ‘Almost there,’ she said. ‘Go straight over the next roundabout, then it should be the second street on the left.’

Suddenly, as if the sky had been saving it all up, a torrent of rain exploded onto the windscreen, danced on the bonnet of the Ford, rattling like pebbles on the roof. Grace fumbled to find the wipers, then got them on, slow at first, then faster; they smeared the rain into an opaque film, and for some moments he had to really concentrate until the screen cleared a little.

‘Are you good with insects?’ Grace asked.

E-J grimaced. ‘Actually, no. How about you?’

‘Not crazy about them,’ he admitted.

He took the left turning she indicated, into a road of 1930s semi-detached houses – not unlike his own street, he thought. At the far end he saw a small industrial estate, beyond which the road went under a railway bridge. On the far side, on their left, were more semi-detached houses, then a busy parade of shops.

‘It’s here,’ the Detective Constable said.

Grace slowed, looking for a parking space outside the shops. He saw a bakery, a chemist’s, and a bric-a-brac shop with old chairs, a toy car, a pine table and some other artefacts spread out on the pavement; there was a medical centre next to it, and a sports trophy shop next to that, and then he saw what looked like a pet shop, its window full of small, empty cages. The sign above the window read: erridge and robinson – importers and suppliers.

They parked the car in a bay a short distance further along, then ran back through the rain, Emma-Jane holding the large brown envelope over her head, and in through the front door of the premises – which set off a bell with a loud ping.

The smell hit Grace instantly: a sharp, intensely sour reek, toned down just a fraction with sawdust. They were in a dimly lit area, completely surrounded, floor to ceiling, by cages with ultraviolet back-lighting, inside some of which he could see insects crawling around. He peered into one cage, only inches from where he was standing, and saw a pair of brown antlers twitching. A very large beetle, too large and too close for his comfort. He took a couple of steps back, wiped away some rainwater from his brow and gave the DC a What the hell is this place? frown.

Then he saw the spider, or rather its yellow and black hairy leg, followed by another leg, then another; it moved across its cage in three fast darts. It was enormous; with its legs outstretched and plainly visible now, the thing would not have fitted on a dinner plate.

Emma-Jane was watching it also; she looked very uncomfortable. Which was how he felt. The more he looked around, the more tiny eyes and twitching antennae he saw. And the stink was nearly making him retch.

Then an internal door opened, and a short, thin man in his late forties emerged, wearing brown overalls and a white shirt done up to the top button, but with no tie. He had small, wary eyes beneath massive, bushy brows that looked like two warring caterpillars. ‘Can I help you?’ he asked in a reedy voice with a tone that was distinctly aggressive.

‘Are you George Erridge?’

His response was very hesitant and drawn out. ‘Ye-es.’

‘I’m Detective Constable Boutwood,’ E-J said. ‘We spoke yesterday. This is Detective Superintendent Grace from Brighton CID.’

Grace held up his warrant card. The man peered at it, seeming to read every word, his face twitching, his eyebrows going hammer and tongs at each other. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Right.’ Then he looked at the two police officers in expectant silence.

E-J removed a colour photograph from the envelope and handed it to the man. ‘We’re looking for someone who might have supplied this creature to a customer in England.’

George Erridge gave the photograph just a brief glance and said almost instantly, ‘Copris lunaris.’

‘You import tropical insects?’ Grace asked.

The man looked quite offended. ‘Not just tropical; European, pan-Asian, Australian; from all over the world, really.’

‘You might have imported this one?’

‘I usually keep some stock. Would you like to see?’

Grace was tempted to say, No, I really would not, but instead said dutifully, ‘Yes, I would.’

The man led them through the internal door he had emerged from, into a shed a good hundred feet long. Like the shopfront, it was lined floor to ceiling with cages; the smell was even worse in here, much more sour and pungent, and the lighting just as dim.

‘This is the roach room,’ Erridge explained with a tinge of pride. ‘We supply a lot of these to the pharmaceutical industry for tests.’

Grace, who had always had a loathing for cockroaches, stopped and peered into one cage in which there were about twenty of the brown creatures. He shuddered.

‘One of the most resilient animals on the planet,’ the man said. ‘Did you know that if you cut off a cockroach’s head, it can live for up to fifteen days? It will still keep going back to its original source of food. Won’t be able to eat it, of course.’

‘Yech!’ Emma-Jane gulped.

‘I didn’t know that,’ Grace said. Thanks for sharing it with me, he nearly added.

‘They would survive a nuclear holocaust. They finished evolving hundreds of thousands of years ago. Doesn’t say much about the human race, does it?’

Grace looked at him, uncertain how to reply. Then he and E-J followed him through another internal door into an even longer shed. Halfway down, George Erridge stopped and pointed at one small cage. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Copris lunaris.’

Roy Grace looked for some moments before he saw one of the beetles with its distinctive markings, motionless.

‘So, if I might ask, what exactly is your interest in these beetles?’ Erridge said.

It was so tempting to tell him, and watch his expression, that Grace had to fight hard to restrain himself. ‘I can’t tell you the circumstances, but one of these beetles was found at a crime scene. What we would like from you is a list of any of your customers who have bought one of these from you recently.’

George Erridge went quiet, but his eyebrows jigged furiously at each other. ‘I’ve only had one customer in recent months. Not much call for them, really; just the occasional collector and new museums – don’t get many of those.’

‘Who was the customer?’ Grace asked.

Erridge dug his hands into his overall pockets, then pushed his tongue hard against his lower lip. ‘Hmmn. Funny bloke, sort of eastern European accent. He rang me ’bout two weeks ago, asking very specifically if I had any Copris lunaris in stock. Said he wanted six of them.’

‘Six?’ Grace said, horrified. His immediate thought was Six murders like this one? ‘Yes.’

‘Alive or dead?’

Erridge looked at him strangely. ‘Alive, of course.’

‘Who do you normally supply to?’

‘Like I said, the pharmaceutical industry, natural history museums, private collectors, film companies sometimes; supplied a tarantula recently for a BBC production. I’ll tell you a trade secret: insects are a lot easier to control than other animals. You want a docile cockroach, just put him in the fridge for four hours. You want an aggressive cockroach, put him in a frying pan on low heat for a few minutes.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ Grace said.

‘Yes,’ Erridge replied intensely seriously. ‘That’s what you need to do. They don’t suffer, you see. They don’t feel pain the same way we do.’

‘Lucky them.’

‘Indeed.’

‘What details do you have of this man who bought six of these?’ Emma-Jane asked.

Looking a little defensive, Erridge said, ‘I don’t have any details. I only keep records on my regulars.’

‘So you hadn’t dealt with this man before?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘But you met him?’ Grace asked.

‘No. He phoned up, asked if I had them, and told me he would send someone to collect them. He sent a minicab and the driver paid cash.’

‘A local firm?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t use minicabs; can’t afford ’em.’

Grace’s mobile phone suddenly beeped then vibrated. Excusing himself, he turned away from the insect expert and answered it.

‘DS Grace,’ he said.

It was Branson. ‘Yo, old man,’ he said. ‘How you doing?’

‘I’m shopping,’ Grace said. ‘Buying your birthday present. What’s up?’

‘The bloke who rang me during the briefing – the paranoid one I had to speak to in the phone booth who said he thinks he witnessed information about Janie Stretton’s murder?’

‘Uh huh,’ Grace said.

‘He said he saw it on his computer after inserting a CD he found on a train.’

‘Is he letting us have a look at it?’

‘I’m working on that now.’