Looking Good Dead

50

‘So, an appropriate name for him then,’ Norman Potting said. ‘D’Eath.’ Pronouncing it death.

Grace, Potting and Nicholl were seated in the oak-timbered saloon of the Black Lion in Rottingdean, each with a pint tumbler in front of him. Grace took a mouthful, holding the wide rim of the glass to his nose, breathing in the aroma of the hops, trying to get the reek of the sulphuric acid out of his nostrils.

His hand was shaking, he realized. From his hangover? From what he had seen this morning?

He remembered early on in his career when he had been a beat copper, out in a patrol car on nights, being called to attend a suicide on the London-Brighton railway line. A man had lain down on the track by the entrance to a tunnel, and the wheels had gone over his neck. He’d had to walk along the track and recover the head.

He would never forget the surreal sight of it lying there in the beam of his torch, barely any blood at all leaking and the almost surgically precise cut. The dead man had been about fifty, with a ruddy, outdoor complexion. Grace had picked the head up by the shaggy thatch of ginger hair, and had been surprised by just how heavy it was. D’Eath’s head had been just as heavy.

He watched the kaleidoscope of lights on a fruit machine, which no one was using, go through their routine. He could hear the faint chimes that went with them. It was still early; there was just a handful of people in the place. A trendy-looking man, a media type, was seated by the fireplace, drinking what looked like a Bloody Mary and reading the Observer. An elderly, shapeless couple sat a couple of tables away, slouched over their drinks in silence, like two sacks of vegetables.

Thinking through the day’s agenda – which had been thrown badly by D’Eath’s murder – he was worrying about Nick Nicholl meeting the SIO of the murder investigation in Wimbledon, where a headless young woman wearing a bracelet with a scarab motif had been discovered two months earlier. It might be better to go himself, one SIO to another, rather than send a junior member of his team.

Turning to Nicholl, Grace asked, ‘What time are you meeting the SIO of the murder in Wimbledon?’

‘He’s going to call me this afternoon. He has a brother in Brighton; he’s coming down to have lunch with him.’

‘Let me know and I’ll come with you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Despite being in his late twenties, Nick still had something of a socially clumsy youth about him. And he still could not get his head around calling him Roy, as Grace liked all his team to do.

Grace checked the growing list of notes on his Blackberry. The smell of roasting meat coming from the kitchen was churning his already very queasy stomach. It would be a while, he thought, before he could swallow a morsel of food again. He wasn’t even sure if drinking with all the paracetamol he had taken was very smart. But this was one of those moments when he needed a drink. On duty or not.

He took his phone out of his pocket and checked it was still on – just in case it had somehow got switched off and he had missed a call back from Cleo.

He wondered briefly how Glenn Branson was getting on, worrying a little about his friend. Underneath the hulking frame that must have made him a formidable nightclub bouncer was a gentle guy. Too damned gentle and kind-hearted for his own good, at times.

‘Sulphuric acid,’ Potting said pensively, raising his glass and taking a long draught.

Grace stared at him. The poor sod had not been blessed with good looks – in fact he verged on being plug ugly. Despite the ageing detective’s failings, he suddenly felt a little sorry for his colleague, sensing a sad and lonely man behind the bravado.

Potting put his glass down on a Guinness mat, dug his hand in his pocket and got out his pipe. He stuck it in his mouth, then pulled a box of matches from the opposite pocket. Nick Nicholl watched in fascination.

‘Ever smoked, lad?’ Potting asked.

The young DC shook his head.

‘Didn’t think so; you don’t look the type. Fit bugger, I suppose?’

‘I try.’ Nicholl sipped his beer. ‘My dad smoked. He died at forty-eight from lung cancer.’

Potting was silenced for a second. Then he said, ‘Cigarettes?’

‘Twenty a day.’

He held up his pipe, smugly. ‘There’s a difference, you see.’

‘Nick’s a good runner,’ Grace cut in. ‘I want to poach him for my rugby team this autumn.’

‘Sussex need some good runners at the moment,’ Potting retorted. ‘They’ve got a lot of bloody runs to get today. What a Horlicks yesterday! Three bowled out for ten! Against bloody Surrey!’ He struck a match and lit his pipe, blowing out a cloud of sickly sweet smoke which billowed around Grace.

Potting puffed away until the bowl of his pipe glowed an even, bright red.

Normally Grace liked the smell of pipe smoke, but not this morning. He waved the smoke away, watching it curl heavily and lazily up towards the nicotine-decorated ceiling. Reggie D’Eath’s murder could have been coincidental, he thought. The man was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial of members of a major international paedophile ring. There were several people who would have good reasons for wanting him silenced.

Yet what had been found on the two computers seemed to him to indicate another possibility. Bryce had been warned not to contact the police. He had – rightly – ignored the warning, and a police examination of his computer had connected it to Reggie D’Eath’s PC. Less than twenty-four hours later D’Eath was dead.

There was an irritating chime from the fruit machine, then a series of further chimes like a xylophone. Potting and Nicholl were now deep into a conversation about cricket, and Grace drifted more deeply into his own thoughts. He remained so deep in thought that, even when they were back in the car, he barely registered the one piece of information that Norman Potting, changing the subject from cricket back to Reggie D’Eath, suddenly revealed.