Not Dead Yet

18

At 8 a.m. Roy Grace sat in his office, with his Policy Book open in front of him. Every Senior Investigating Officer kept one, and if at any point they were required to account for their actions on a major crime investigation, by any subsequent review of their case, they could refer back to it.

An important part of the entries into Grace’s Policy Book was his hypothesis for the motives of any murder and how the victim came to meet his or her death.

His first note today was:

1. No arms, no legs/head. Organized crime? Killed by unknown person.

2. Drugs deal reprisal?

3. Person known to police – get rid of identity?

There was a whole raft of other motives, but in his view, none that led to this kind of mutilation of a corpse.

When he had finished, he just had time to make himself a coffee, then hurry through to the morning briefing.

‘The time is 8.30 a.m., Saturday, June the fourth,’ Roy Grace read out from his typed notes. ‘This is the second briefing of Operation Icon, the enquiry into the death of an unknown man whose headless, armless and legless torso was discovered at Stonery Farm, Berwick, East Sussex, yesterday.’

‘Legless, chief?’ interrupted Norman Potting. ‘Was he pissed?’

There was a titter of laughter, which Grace silenced with a glare. His good mood from last night remained with him this morning, and Potting wasn’t going to spoil that. He’d got up early, done a five-mile run along Brighton seafront in glorious early morning sunshine, with Humphrey loping happily alongside him, and had arrived in his office in the CID HQ, on the edge of the city, an hour ago.

From his early days as a Senior Investigating Officer, Roy Grace had learned the value of cultivating the friendship of the Senior Support Officer Tony Case, who allocated the Major Incident Suites – of which, since the budget cuts, there were now only two in this county and two in neighbouring Surrey – to the enquiry teams. Case knew that Grace favoured this one in Brighton, MIR-1, in the same building as his office, and had managed, yet again, to secure it for him.

The two Major Incident Rooms at Sussex House, MIR-1 and MIR-2 were the nerve centres for major crime enquiries. Despite opaque windows too high to see out of, MIR-1 had an airy feel, good light, good vibes. Grace always felt energized here.

Already some wit – Glenn Branson he suspected – had stuck a cartoon on the inside of the door. It was an image from the film Chicken Run.

Seated attentively at the curved desks around him were the twenty members of his team he had assembled since leaving the farm shortly after midday yesterday. The regulars he had present were Detective Sergeant Bella Moy, in her mid-thirties and still living with her mother; even at this early hour she was busily attacking the inevitable red box of Maltesers in front of her; Detective Constable Nick Nicholl, beanpole tall, yawning as usual after yet another sleepless night with his baby son; Glenn Branson, in a cream suit and a pistachio coloured tie; and Norman Potting, who had joined the police relatively late in life, a curmudgeonly but very effective Detective Sergeant, who had a string of failed marriages behind him.

Normally shabbily dressed, with a greasy comb-over and reeking of pipe tobacco, Potting looked different today, both younger and smarter. His grey hair had turned dark brown. He was wearing a smart blue suit with a cream shirt and a tie that, for once, had not been decorated with his breakfast. And he exuded a reek of not unpleasant cologne. Someone had given the man a very thorough and effective makeover. Yet another new woman?

The only one of his regulars absent today was attractive, young DC Emma-Jane Boutwood, who was away on honeymoon. Among the rest of the team were several more detectives, including two DCs he had worked with previously, Emma Reeves and Jon Exton, a detective Grace was keeping his eye on because he thought him exceptionally bright; David Green, the Crime Scene Manager; a crime analyst; an indexer and Sue Fleet, the press officer.

On the work surface in front of Grace lay his agenda and his Policy Book. ‘DS Branson has been appointed, temporarily, Acting Detective Inspector,’ he announced. ‘He will be my deputy SIO and will be doing much of the running of this case, as I’m still very involved with Operation Violin.’ He turned to his colleague, seated next to him, and could see he looked nervous. ‘What do you have to report?’

Glenn Branson studied his notes for a moment, then, choosing his words carefully, and being uncharacteristically pedantic, said, ‘Home Office pathologist Nadiuska De Sancha attended at 4.20 p.m. yesterday. I had no news from her to report at our evening briefing yesterday. She completed her in situ investigations at 7 p.m., after which the body was recovered to the mortuary. The pathologist is due to return at midday today to continue with the post-mortem. As yet we are unable to put an age on the victim, although the pathologist estimates him to have been between thirty and fifty years old. Forensic archaeologist Joan Major will also be continuing her work and I’m hoping she may be able to give us a more specific age range.’

He checked his notes carefully then added. ‘One fact of possible significance from the pathologist’s findings pertains to the dismemberment of the body. It would appear to be an amateur job, clumsily done – not by someone with surgical skills.’

Grace made a note, then looked at his protégé proudly. So far, Glenn was doing fine. He had a presence and natural air of calm authority that inspired confidence and made people take him seriously – despite, at times, his garish clothes.

‘A search of the void beneath the gridding was carried out until midnight, and has started again this morning, under the supervision of a POLSA, Sergeant Lorna Dennison-Wilkins from the Specialist Search Unit. As yet no more body parts have been found, nor any further items of clothing. The fabric will be sent for DNA testing, but I’m first going to try to find out about its provenance.’ He pointed at four colour blow-up photographs of the fabric segments that had been tacked to a board, two showing the entirety of the samples, two showing details of the loud yellow ochre colour and check pattern.

‘Like it, do you, Glenn?’ Norman Potting asked. ‘Want to get yourself a new whistle?’

Glaring at Potting, with whom she had long sparred, Bella Moy asked, ‘What’s a whistle?’

‘You’ve led a sheltered life, haven’t you, doll?’ Potting said patronizingly. ‘It’s Cockney rhyming slang. Whistle and flute – suit. Get it?’

As a response, she huffily scooped another Malteser out of the box and crunched it noisily in her mouth.

‘I like that noise you make,’ Potting said. ‘Nothing sexier than a bolshie young lady.’

‘Thank you, Norman,’ Grace cautioned, then raised a hand to stop Bella from commenting.

Looking back at his notes, Glenn soldiered on. ‘Local East Division officers are conducting a house-to-house on all roads in the vicinity, within an initial parameter of two miles, that I have set. All farm workers, regular and itinerant, are being interviewed.’ He paused, then added, ‘This is an unusual location, situated one mile up a private driveway, because the property is not visible from any public road, so no ordinary passing member of the public would be aware of it. In my opinion, whoever used this as their dump site had prior knowledge of the location. We’re working on a list of everyone who has visited or had access to the property in the past twelve months.’

‘Have you considered someone over-flying in a light aircraft or helicopter, boss?’ asked DC Jon Exton. ‘And seeing it as a possible deposition site because of its remoteness?’

‘That is another possibility,’ conceded Branson. ‘According to what I’ve been able to ascertain so far, in a very limited time frame, the farmer is a popular man, no one local has a bad word to say about him. One hypothesis I’m working on is that this could be an enemy of Keith Winter – a business rival trying to set him up – but I don’t at this point know enough about the world of chicken farming to make that fly – no pun intended. My other hypothesis is that someone familiar with the farm felt this would be a good place to dispose of a body.’

‘What about mispers?’ Bella Moy asked. ‘Shouldn’t that be an immediate line of enquiry for us?’

Branson shook his head. ‘That will be an important one. We have carried out an immediate local check, but it didn’t produce anything. First I need an estimate on how long this person has been dead, before we can proceed too far down that route. I’m hoping to get this either from the pathologist or from the forensic archaeologist tomorrow. Until I get that information, I don’t know what parameters to set for looking at missing person reports.’

Roy Grace smiled, watching the indexer making notes. It was the answer he would have given. He made a note himself, for either Glenn or himself to write in the Policy Book.

‘In terms of media strategy, I have some welcome news to give out!’ Branson went on. ‘Our friend Kevin Spinella from the Argus is on holiday.’

There was a muted cheer. Glenn grinned. ‘I’m calling a second press conference for five-thirty this afternoon, by which time I hope to be able to give out information that may generate some response from the public. I will of course keep enough back to enable us to weed out crank calls.’

It was normal in any major crime enquiry to withhold key information that would be known only to the perpetrator. That way time wasters could be quickly eliminated.

At that moment, Grace’s new phone, which he had switched to silent, vibrated. He glanced at the display, fully expecting it to be Spinella. But the display said BLOCKED NUMBER. He answered it, as quietly as he could, and heard the voice of the Chief Constable’s Staff Officer, DCI Trevor Bowles.

‘Roy,’ he said. ‘The Chief needs to see you as soon as possible. Are you free this morning?’

Grace frowned. The Chief Constable, and the other brass, tended to keep to office hours and their weekends free. For Tom Martinson to want to see him on a Saturday, there had to be an important reason.

‘I could be with him in half an hour.’

‘Perfect.’

Grace ended the call, worried. As soon as the briefing finished, he agreed to meet Glenn Branson at the tailor at 11 a.m., then hurried out to his car, in his precious reserved space at the front of the CID HQ building.