Love You Dead

120 Monday 16 March

All eyes were on the Detective Sergeant. ‘Whilst I was operating this past weekend as a UC in Jodie’s house, I took the opportunity to look around late on Friday night while she was asleep. It was part of my brief.’

Far from looking shaken by his close brush with death, Grace thought, Potting seemed animated.

‘I also had the chance of a bit of a snoop around while she was making me dinner — actually, I’m quite glad I won’t have to endure another of her meals, she’s not that great a cook.’

Several of the team laughed.

‘I didn’t find anything in the rest of the house, except her cat was very insistent on scratching the wall we now know was a false door to her reptile room, but I did notice a strange appliance in her kitchen. She told me it was a domestic freeze dryer, and that she had it because it was the healthiest way to preserve vegetables — flash freezing them. Later that night when I’d gone to bed, I googled freeze dryers, and saw the one she had was considerably more elaborate than a domestic one — it was a very expensive industrial-grade one.’

‘What are they used for?’ Exton asked.

‘Flash freezing food of all kinds — and chemicals — in fact, almost anything. They remove moisture and are apparently a way of preserving not just food but the potency of drugs and chemicals,’ Potting replied. ‘In the morning when I heard her in the shower, I went down to the kitchen and had a snoop through the drawers of her freezers — she had two very large freezers, one in the kitchen and the other in a pantry. Most of the drawers were filled with frozen rodents — mice and rats.’

‘Sounds like a suitable diet for this witch,’ Batchelor said.

Potting grunted agreement. ‘One of them would have been a lot tastier and less tough than the steak she cooked — or rather cremated — for me. Anyhow, I had a good rummage through, and beneath several layers of the things I found a stash of unlabelled, rubber-stoppered vials.’

‘Containing what, Norman?’ Grace asked.

‘Amber crystals — I had no idea what they were, and I wasn’t about to taste one to find out — luckily. They all looked identical, so I took one, wrapped it in a freezer bag I also found in there and pocketed it, intending to bring it straight here and have it sent for analysis. But in view of the subsequent events, I contacted the Head of Forensic Services in Guildford, told her my suspicions and asked if the analysis of the vial could be fast-tracked. To avoid any possible breach of chain-of-evidence argument by a brief in court, I drove it there myself on Saturday morning.’

‘What were your suspicions, Norman?’ Tanja Cale asked.

He held up the sheet of paper he had brought in earlier, and gave a broad smile. ‘I was late for this briefing because I was waiting for the emailed result to come through. I have the full details from the lab here, if anyone would like to read them. But to cut through the technical jargon, the vial contained freeze-dried venom from a saw-scaled viper.’

Roy Grace’s mind was spinning. There had been no ecchymosis around the puncture mark in Rowley Carmichael’s leg. Which was strong evidence that however the venom had got into his system, it hadn’t been through a snake bite. That had been confirmed by Dr West. He’d also confirmed that the geographic location where Carmichael was purportedly bitten was not terrain where this snake would be found. Grace stood up, balling his fists. He was so excited he could have hugged Potting. ‘This is really good, Norman, well done. This is going to help us enormously.’