You Are Dead

58

Tuesday 16 December

Shortly after 7 a.m. Roy Grace carried a mug of steaming coffee into his office and sat at his desk, reflecting on the events of yesterday, and in particular the first Gold group meeting that had followed the grim funeral and the equally grim wake, before the press conference and the evening briefing. It was dark beyond his rain-spattered window, the Asda superstore complex and the skyline of Brighton barely visible apart from the hazy, misty glow of street lighting.

In between two of the piles of paperwork he needed to tackle sat a foil package containing the egg and tomato sandwich Cleo had made him last night for his breakfast, and six red grapes — she had read in some health column that six red grapes a day were the new big anti-ageing elixir. And the tomato was apparently good for warding off many cancers in later years. Since Noah had been born, he had noticed that she had become more preoccupied than ever with both of them eating healthily. And never ordinarily a nervous person, she had become a tad anxious. No doubt something do with a mother’s protective instincts, he thought.

Feeling very flat, he stared up at the photographic print of the words branded on unknown female, U R DEAD, pinned to his noticeboard. At least part of the gloom he felt was over the imminent arrival of the Met officer, Detective Chief Inspector Paul Sweetman. Maybe Pewe was acting in his best interests, but from past experience, anything Pewe did needed to be viewed with suspicion.

A lot of people had congratulated him on his eulogy, but he’d barely heard their words. Although he’d had no involvement at all in Bella’s decision to enter that burning building, he still felt a strong degree of blame. The fire had been started by the arsonist monster at the centre of the investigation he had been running. If they had caught him sooner, Bryce Laurent would never have started the fire, and Bella would still be alive.

He replayed over and over in his mind the whole scenario of that investigation, Operation Aardvark, from the very first report that a woman, Red Westwood, was in danger from a stalker, to the moment when Detective Sergeant Moy had so bravely — if recklessly — entered that burning building, wondering what he might have done differently to have arrested the man sooner.

It gave him little satisfaction that Bryce Laurent had burned to death in a cell at Lewes Prison, in an apparent suicide. He would like to have seen the man brought to trial, and through that process understood something of what had created such a twisted mind. On the other hand, Laurent’s death did mean closure, of a kind, for Red Westwood, the woman whose life he had made such hell. At least she would not have to live with the fear that one day he might be released from prison and come after her again.

As was his morning ritual, he logged on to the serials and checked the tagged summary log. An attempted gay rape of a man in Kemp Town; an escaped prisoner from Ford open prison arrested at an address in Hollingbury; a street robbery; a reported break-in at a house in Hove, nothing apparently stolen, according to the owners, a chef and his partner; and another break-in, at a student house off Elm Grove, where two laptops had been taken.

Next he turned his attention to this morning’s briefing on the joint investigation, Operation Haywain. He reached for his sandwich and began to remove the foil wrapper Cleo had put around it, and as he did so, he noticed, among the different piles on his desk, a folder with a yellow Post-it stuck to the top, with Glenn Branson’s slanted handwriting on it.

Take a look at this!

He put his breakfast down and opened the folder. And felt a jolt as if a bolt of electricity had shot through him.

He was looking at a copy of one of several CAD — Computer Aided Design — impressions of unknown female, the body found at Hove Lagoon, the computer-generated image created from the bone structure of her skull. Each version showed a different hairstyle. She looked an attractive young woman in her early twenties, and in this one, the artist had shown her with long brown hair.

‘Shit,’ he said to himself, aloud.

‘Yeah, that’s what I said, too.’

He looked up to see Glenn Branson, sharply dressed and looking a lot fresher than he himself felt, and smelling more strongly than usual of a musky fragrance. He hadn’t heard him enter. ‘Obviously,’ Branson went on, ‘the artist has speculated on the hairstyle; a few strands aren’t much to go on.’

‘Putting the hair aside, their looks are so similar too.’ Grace stared down at the blank, expressionless image that was devoid of whatever personality the deceased woman once had. ‘Emma Johnson, Logan Somerville, Ashleigh Stanford, Katy Westerham. And now, unknown female. Two of them died thirty years ago, three of them have vanished within the past month.’

Time would tell whether these images would be useful or not. But for now it was helpful to have a possible visual focus on the victim.

Branson turned around one of the chairs in front of the desk and sat astride it, his arms folded over the back, staring thoughtfully at his colleague and mentor. ‘How did your Gold group meeting go?’

‘Good. We formalized the structure, and agreed three main objectives: the safety of the citizens of Brighton and Hove, the direction and progress of the investigation and our press and media communications strategy.’

‘Do you want me at the press conference?’

‘I did, mate, but Mr Preening Peacock wants to be there himself along with me — so he can take the glory when we get a result, and blame me if we don’t.’

Grace looked down at the pictures again, his brain spinning, thinking about the different experienced people he had spoken to for advice. Was he covering all the bases? he wondered repeatedly.

‘I have some news which might help us that’s come in overnight. We’ve got the names from the Council records of three of the men who were on the team that laid the path at the Lagoon, who are still alive. Two of them have been located and are being interviewed this morning,’ Branson said. ‘The total workforce there at the time was seven. Three of the men have since died, and one emigrated to Australia.’

‘We’ll need to find him and get him interviewed, if he’s still alive. It could be that one of them is the killer, and took the opportunity to rebury the remains before the surface went down, thinking the path would be there forever.’

‘Norman Potting has a contact in Melbourne Police who he’s spoken to and is on it. But the guy emigrated nearly twenty years ago. It might take a few days.’

‘We don’t have a few days, Glenn.’

‘I’ll volunteer for the trip!’

‘I need you here. If we need to send anyone, and it’s a big if, it might be good to send Norman, give him time away for a few days. By the way, what news on that Argus reporter you fancy — any developments?’

Glenn Branson raised his hands in the air and swivelled them from side to side.

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘I’m being careful with Siobhan.’

‘In what sense?’

Branson drew his forefinger across his lip, like a zip.

‘Keep it that way.’

‘She gets it.’

‘She’s a journalist. Journalists eat their young. OK?’

‘Journalists and Traffic officers.’

‘Yep, well the big difference is that I’d trust a Traffic officer. Even if he — or she — booked me.’

‘She’s cool, I’m telling you. I know her pretty well by now.’

Grace gave his close friend a sideways look. A thought was going through his mind: that it might actually be no bad thing to have a tame journalist at this moment.

Then he stared back at the photograph of the branded words. ‘You have someone contacting all blacksmiths in the area, to see who might have forged the branding iron that did this? Someone would remember making this — if he or she’s still around — for sure. There can’t be many blacksmiths get commissioned to make a branding iron with those words.’

‘There aren’t that many blacksmiths or forgemasters at all. Yes, there’s an outside enquiry team on it, but no luck yet. It could of course be a DIY job.’

Grace nodded, silently, thinking. What would give someone the idea to brand victims? What did branding signify? Power? Ownership? Sheep and cattle were often branded, to show their ownership. Slaves, too. Jews in concentration camps were branded for identification — although they were done with tattoos rather than heated metal. But ultimately the branding was done as a symbol of power. I own you now, I can do what I want with you. You are nothing more than cattle.

The idea he had about the Argus crime reporter was forming more clearly now in his mind. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘I need you to ask Siobhan to do something. It’s a you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours kind of a favour. OK?’

Branson nodded, looking puzzled. ‘Yeah, no problem.’

‘Keep it work related, OK?’

The DI grinned, and said nothing.