You Are Dead

4

Thursday 11 December

In summer, Hove Lagoon, a children’s park and playground with two large boating ponds, a skate park and a children’s paddling pool, behind the seafront promenade lined with gaily painted beach huts, would be teeming with people. Children, under the watchful eyes of mothers, grandparents, au pairs or nannies, would be playing on the roundabouts, slides and swings, or in the little pool, or sailing their toy boats on one of the two rectangular ponds that gave the place its name, and which they shared with learner dinghy sailors, windsurfers and wakeboarders.

Many would be stuffing their faces with ice creams or sweets purchased from the Big Beach Café, its utilitarian whitewashed walls, blue windows and steeply pitched roof belying its uber-cool cocktail bar and diner interior — the inspiration of its latest owner, Big Beat musician Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim.

But in the gloom of this foul December Thursday afternoon, with cold rain pelting down, and a strong, gusting wind, the whole place was forlorn and cheerless. A solitary elderly lady, in a see-through sou’wester, walked a reluctant dog, the size of a large rat, on a lead attached to a harness.

A group of workmen in fluorescent jackets, hard hats and ear defenders, working overtime beneath floodlights, were drilling open the path in front of the café. One, the foreman, stood away from the group, head bowed against the weather, holding up a tablet in a waterproof case, taking measurements and tapping them in. A cluster of cars and a van were parked nearby, as well as a noisy, yellow mobile generator.

As his drill bit broke through a fresh strip, and he levered it out of the way, one workman suddenly shouted out, in a foreign accent, ‘Oh God! Look!’ He turned anxiously towards the foreman. ‘Wesley! Look!’

Hearing his cry above the din of their machines, all the other workmen stopped, too. The foreman stepped forward and peered down, and saw what looked to his untrained eye like a skeletal hand.

‘Is it an animal?’ asked the workman.

‘Dunno,’ the foreman said dubiously. Nor could he tell how old it was. It could have been there decades. But he couldn’t think of any animal that had a paw or claw like this. Except a monkey, possibly. It looked human, he thought. He instructed all three men with the drills to concentrate on the immediate area around the hand, and to be careful not to drill deeper than necessary.

More chunks of the black asphalt were levered away and a skeletal arm appeared, attached to the hand by black tendrils of sinew. Then part of a rib cage and what was, unmistakably, a human skull.

‘OK!’ the foreman said nervously. ‘Everyone stop now. Go home and we start again in the morning, if we are permitted. See you all at 8 a.m.’

Wondering whether he should have stopped the men sooner, he went over to the van, opened the rear doors, then climbed in, rummaged around, and pulled out a tarpaulin. He laid it over the exposed parts of the skeleton, weighing it down with chunks of rubble. When he had finished, he unholstered his phone and dialled his boss, to ask for instructions. They came back loud and clear.

He ended the call, then, as he’d been told, immediately dialled 999. When the operator answered, he asked for the police.