Love You Dead

54 Monday 2 March

Thirty minutes later and Shelby Stonor might have been someone else’s case in the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. But after a long period, first of convalescence, then of quiet, Roy Grace was suddenly fired up. The first possible murder of the year on his watch might just have fallen into his lap. Albeit this was the kind of murder enquiry he and all his colleagues liked least — that of a known low-life scumbag. There was no specific evidence at this stage that it was murder, but the death was definitely suspicious.

Given the choice, like all other detectives, he would have preferred a more classy homicide investigation. But he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by and, with an offender like Stonor, there was every likelihood of a quick resolution. It appeared that Stonor had been killed by a snake, but how and where did that happen? One possibility was his links to crime in Brighton — burglary, drug dealing and, more recently, car theft. But, equally, Grace knew from his long experience never to prejudge any situation.

ABC.

ASSUME NOTHING, BELIEVE NO ONE, CHECK EVERYTHING was the mantra drummed into every detective in the country when they started. The first place to look, in a suspicious death, was the victim’s home. Eighty per cent of victims were killed by a loved one or by someone they knew. His first task was to establish where Stonor lived and who, if anyone, he lived with. Perhaps they had killed him. Or, alternatively, he could easily have been killed by a competitor or through some other crime connection.

Cutting short his early-morning walk with Humphrey, he started to notify the on-call enquiry team, and already information was starting to come in.

Kaitlynn arrived to take care of Noah, and Cleo left shortly after. The working day at the mortuary began early, with Cleo and her team starting at 7 a.m. to prepare the bodies that required post-mortems.

An average of three bodies a day were processed through the city’s mortuary. The good thing about the early start, from Cleo’s perspective as the mother of a young baby, was that on most days she would be home by 4 p.m. After the brutal intrusion of a post-mortem, her next duty, with the help of her assistants, was to make the body look presentable for viewing and formal identification if it was required. That meant replacing all the internal organs, stitching the body up, washing it, doing the hair and applying make-up. Then receiving and treating the loved ones with sympathy and respect in the non-denominational chapel.

The moment any human being died, their body became, in law, the property of the Coroner. If someone, already ill, had died of natural causes and their doctor was happy to sign off the death, the body could go straight to the funeral director.

In most circumstances where the cause of death was not suspicious, such as when someone in poor health had died more than twenty-eight days since they last saw a doctor or as the result of an accident, one of the team of three local pathologists would perform the post-mortem. But on deaths where the Coroner had reason to believe there were suspicious circumstances, then a highly trained Home Office pathologist — of which there were just thirty-two covering the whole of the UK — would be called in. A standard post-mortem took less than an hour. A Home Office one could sometimes take all day — or even longer.

Roy always found it hard to see Cleo when she was at work, with the constantly grim duties she carried out every day, in contrast to her home life. And he admired her all the more for it. She’d often told him her greatest satisfaction came from helping bereaved loved ones through one of the most difficult tasks they ever had to face in their lives.

He knew all too well from some of the narrow escapes he’d had in his own career — and the dangers which all police officers faced — that there was the constant possibility that one day he could end up on one of those post-mortem tables himself.

It was something Cleo knew only too well, also. The elephant in the room that they rarely talked about. Regardless of the size of its shadow. He respected her enormously for her work, and her attitude.

He hurriedly showered and shaved, and went down to the kitchen. He put some porridge into the microwave, then went over to Marlon’s tank and dropped in some food flakes. ‘Morning, old chap, had a good night? What you been up to?’

The goldfish’s response was the same as ever. It opened and shut its mouth a few times, then swam to the surface and gulped down some of the food. Strange to think, Grace considered, but this was probably the highlight of Marlon’s day.

He carried his porridge over to the breakfast table, sat down and began to eat, flipping through the pages of Sussex Life magazine. But after only a few moments, his mobile phone rang.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

‘Good morning, Roy.’

He recognized instantly the voice of the Coroner of Brighton and Hove. ‘Good morning,’ he replied. ‘Inspector Anakin said you would be calling.’ All their conversations were straight down to business; she was not one, normally, for pleasantries or small talk.

‘Roy, I’ve been informed about a Brighton resident, Mr Shelby Stonor, who died following a road traffic accident in Marine Parade in Brighton. There are serious concerns about the nature of his death.’

‘Yes, I have questions about his death, too.’

‘As you know, those who treated him don’t believe the injuries he sustained in the accident were sufficient to be fatal. They think he might have been poisoned — possibly bitten by a venomous snake — or he had a tropical disease. One of the paramedics worked in Africa some years back — she says that Stonor had puncture marks on his right ankle that could have been a snake bite. We need to bring in a Home Office pathologist who has experience in this field. There’s one, Dr Nick Best. I’ve contacted him and he could be available later today or tomorrow. They’re going to carry out toxicology tests — I will have more information later, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up.’

‘Thank you,’ Grace said. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

‘I’m off on holiday later today,’ she said. ‘I’m short-staffed at the moment, so West Sussex Coroner, Penny Schofield, has seconded one of her officers to me, Michelle Websdale. She’ll liaise with you.’

‘I’ll wait to hear from her. In the meantime, I’m contacting London Zoo, as soon as they’re open, to see if they could send down an expert in snakes to accompany a search team to Stonor’s home, as a precaution. I’ve just established he lived with his girlfriend, a woman called Angi Bunsen, who has no criminal record.’

Roy ended the call and returned to his now lukewarm porridge. Too often with murder enquiries he felt deep empathy for the victims. But it would be harder to feel much for such a vile shitbag as Shelby Stonor, as many of his past victims had been old and vulnerable.

So often, people like Stonor, who blighted the lives of decent folk, got away with it for decades, thanks to the injustices of the legal system. Equally, he recognized that he was a human being who, regardless of his criminal past, deserved the same in-depth enquiry he would give anyone. Undoubtedly, as was the case with most villains, Stonor’s past would turn out to be a tragic one: a broken home, or alcoholic or abusive parents, who had never given him much of a chance in life, never set any kind of example or moral boundary for him. A sad victim of life and robbed of any future by an early death. Grace knew now that Stonor had had a girlfriend and probably a family, and they, too, deserved his best efforts.