Not Dead Yet

12

The dead body was very definitely not dancing. Partly on account of the fact that it was embedded in several feet of chicken excrement, partly because its legs were missing, and partly because it had no hands or head, either. Which would have made co-ordination difficult. A cluster of blowflies buzzed around, and the stench of ammonia was almost overpowering.

Glenn, close to retching, turned away. Grace stared down. Whoever had done this had little forensic awareness, and even less finesse. The headless, limbless torso, with desiccated flesh missing in patches, covered in excrement and crawling with flies and maggots, was barely recognizable as human. The skin, which appeared acid-scorched in the patches where it was visible, was a dark, leathery brown, giving it the air of a shop-window dummy that had been salvaged from a bonfire. The rank stench of a decaying body, all too familiar to Grace, rose all around him, making the air feel heavy and cloying. It was a smell that always accompanied you home, in your hair, on your clothes, in every pore of your skin. You could scrub yourself raw, but you’d still smell it again the next morning.

The only person he never noticed it on was Cleo. But maybe Glenn was right, and in ten years’ time he would. He hoped not.

‘Coq au vin for dinner, Roy?’ the Crime Scene Manager greeted him, dressed in a white protective suit, with breathing apparatus, his mask temporarily raised.

‘Not if it does that to you, thanks!’

Both men stared down into the space, four foot below the grid, at the torso. The first thought in Roy Grace’s mind was whether this was some kind of gangland killing. ‘So, what do we have so far?’

In answer to his SIO, David Green picked up a sealed polythene evidence bag from the floor, with an air of pride, and held it up with a gloved hand.

Grace peered inside. It contained two jagged pieces of badly soiled fabric, with an ochre checked pattern just visible. What looked like parts of a man’s suit.

‘Where did you find these?’ Grace asked.

‘Close to the body. Looks like it might have been something he was wearing – for some reason the only parts that didn’t decompose or get taken by rats for a nest. Maybe we’ll find more when we start our fingertip search.’

‘He? ’

‘One of the few bits that weren’t cut off, chief, if you get my drift.’

Grace nodded, uncomfortably getting his drift.

‘Must have been a made-to-measure suit,’ Glenn Branson said.

Grace and Green looked at him. ‘Can you tell that from the cut of the cloth?’ Grace asked.

‘No, chief.’ Branson nodded down at the remains and said, drily, ‘I’m imagining they would have had a bit of a problem finding something off-the-peg to fit him.’