Not Dead Enough

92

The joint morning briefing for Operations Chameleon and Mistral ended shortly after nine o’clock. There was a mood of optimism now that a suspect was in custody. And this was heightened by the fact that there was a witness, the elderly lady who lived opposite Sophie Harrington and had identified Brian Bishop outside her house around the time of the murder. With luck, Grace hoped, that DNA analysis on semen present in Sophie Harrington’s vagina would match Bishop’s. Huntington was fast-tracking the analysis and he should get the results later today.

There was now little doubt in anyone’s mind that the two murders were linked, but they were still keeping the exact details back from the press.

Names of people and times given by Bishop in his first interview were being checked out, and Grace was particularly interested to see whether the British Telecom phone records would confirm that Bishop had requested an early-morning alarm call after he had returned to his flat on Thursday night. Although, of course, that call could have been made by an accomplice. With three million pounds to be gained from the life insurance policy on his wife, the possibility that Bishop had an accomplice – or indeed more than one – had to be carefully explored.

He left the conference room, anxious to dictate a couple of letters to Eleanor, his MSA, one regarding preparations for the trial of the odious character Carl Venner, who had been arrested on the last murder case Grace had run. He walked hurriedly along the corridors and through into the large, green-carpeted, partially open-plan area that housed all the senior officers of the CID and their support staff.

To his surprise as he went through the security door that separated this area from the Major Incident Suite, he saw a large crowd of people gathered around a desk, including Gary Weston, who was the Chief Superintendent of Sussex CID and technically his immediate boss – although in reality it was Alison Vosper to whom he answered mostly.

He wondered for a moment if it was a raffle draw. Or someone’s birthday. Then, as he got closer, he saw that no one seemed to be in a celebratory mood. Everyone looked as if they were in shock, including Eleanor, who tended to look that way most of the time.

‘What’s up?’ he asked her.

‘You haven’t heard?’

‘Heard what?’

‘About Janet McWhirter?’

‘Our Janet, from the PNC?’

Eleanor nodded at him encouragingly, through her large glasses, as if she was helping him to a solution in a game of charades.

Janet McWhirter had, until four months ago, held a responsible position here in Sussex House as head of the Police National Computer department, a sizeable office of forty people. One of their main functions was information and intelligence gathering for the detectives here.

A plain, single girl in her mid-thirties, quiet and studious and slightly old-fashioned-looking, she had been popular because of her willingness to help, working whatever hours were needed while always remaining polite. She had reminded Grace, both in appearance and in her quietly earnest demeanour, of a dormouse.

Janet had surprised everyone back in April, when she resigned, saying that she’d decided to spend a year travelling. Then, very secretively and coyly, she had told her two closest friends in the department that she had met and fallen in love with a man. They were already engaged, and she was emigrating with him to Australia and would get married there.

It was Brian Cook, the Scientific Support Branch Manager and one of Grace’s friends here, who turned to him. ‘She’s been found dead, Roy,’ he said in his blunt voice. ‘Washed up on the beach on Saturday night – been in the sea some considerable time. She’s just been identified from her dental records. And it looks like she was dead before she went in the water.’

Grace was silent for a moment. Stunned. He’d had a lot of dealings with Janet over the years and really liked her. ‘Shit,’ he said. For a moment it was as if a dark cloud had covered the windows and he felt a sudden cold swirl, deep inside him. Deaths happened, but something instinctively felt very wrong about this.

‘Doesn’t look like she made it to Australia,’ Cook added sardonically.

‘Or the altar?’

Cook shrugged.

‘Has the fiancé been contacted?’

‘We only heard the news a few minutes ago. He could be dead too.’ Then he added, ‘You might want to pop along and say something to the team in her department – I imagine they’re all going to be extremely upset.’

‘I’ll do that when I get a gap. Who’s going to head the inquiry?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

Grace nodded, then led his shocked MSA away from the group and back to her office. He had barely ten minutes to give her his dictation, then get over to the custody centre for the second interview with Brian Bishop.

But he couldn’t clear the image of Janet McWhirter’s plain little face from his mind. She was the most pleasant and helpful person. Why would someone kill her? A mugger? A rapist? Something to do with her work?

Mulling on it, he thought to himself, She spends fifteen years working for Sussex Police, much of it in the PNC unit, falls in love with a man, then goes for a career change, a lifestyle change. Leaves. Then dies.

He was a firm believer in always looking at the most obvious things first. He knew where he would start, if he was the SIO on her investigation. But at this moment, Janet McWhirter’s death, although deeply shocking and sad, was not his problem.

Or so he thought.