Looking Good Dead

by Peter James

  ‘What exactly is all this about, officer?’

  ‘You mean apart from the fact I don’t like people hanging up on me?’

  She blushed, not knowing what to say. A bus rumbled past, engine straining. Grace waited a moment. Then he said, ‘I’ll tell you exactly what it’s about. Janie Stretton is dead.’

  The woman’s hand flew to her mouth in shock. ‘Janie?’

  Grace sensed it was time to apply pressure. ‘On Tuesday night she was cut to ribbons by a maniac, stabbed to death and butchered. You’ve seen the news about the headless torso found in Peacehaven on Wednesday?’

  All the blood was draining from the woman’s face, leaving her make-up looking even more vivid. She nodded, her fingertips toying with her lips.

  ‘Well, we’ve found out today that it’s Janie Stretton. OK to have that chat now?’

  The office of BCE-247 Ltd was a second-floor room overlooking the street with a small kitchenette leading off. Apart from the outlay for a couple of gallons of a lurid shade of purple paint, which covered every wall and clashed with the pea-soup-coloured carpet, it did not look to Grace as if any effort had been made with the place for the purposes of appearances.

  There were three plain, old wooden desks, three clapped-out-looking executive-style swivel chairs, four tall grey metal filing cabinets. It all looked as if it had been bought as a job lot from a second-hand office supplies store. Additionally there was a cheap-looking CD player and an equally cheap-looking television set, switched off. In contrast, on each desk were up-to-date computers and modern phones. One was ringing now, but Claire ignored it. She seemed in shock.

  Branson and Grace sat in two fake black-leather armchairs in front of the woman’s desk, each nursing a mug of tea. Grace had his notebook out but he was watching her eyes really closely.

  ‘So your full name is?’

  He saw her eyes swivel to the left. To the memory side of her brain.

  ‘Claire Porter,’ she said.

  Grace wrote it down. ‘And this is your company?’

  ‘Mine and my partner’s.’

  ‘And his name?’

  Again her eyes swivelled to the left. It was unlikely she was lying about either her name or her business partner’s, so the movement of her eyes to the memory side of her brain told him this was where her eyes would go each time she told the truth. Which meant if they went to the opposite side, she would be lying.

  ‘Barry Mason.’

  Grace thought for a moment. ‘BCE-247 Ltd,’ he said. ‘Barry and Claire Enterprises?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, but close.’

  Balancing the notebook on his knees, he held out his arms expansively. ‘So, would you like to tell us?’

  He watched her eyes swivel furiously to the right. Construct mode. She was trying to think of a convincing lie.

  Then suddenly she buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh fuck, I can’t believe it. Janie. She was such a nice girl; I really liked her.’

  ‘You left a message on her home phone at half-past four in the afternoon on Wednesday. You said’ – he paused to read from his notebook – ‘“I have something for you. Give me a call please.”’ He paused. ‘What was that about?’

  She looked up, and again her eyes moved to the right and she appeared agitated.

  Branson cut in, gentle, playing the classic soft man to Grace’s hard. ‘Claire, you might as well tell us. If you’ve got anything to hide, it will look much better for you if you tell us the truth.’

  The words seemed to hit home. Her eyes raced around as if running for cover. ‘God, Barry’ll kill me. It stands for Barry and Claire Escorts Twenty-Four Seven. OK?’

  Grace sat for some moments in stunned silence. ‘Janie Stretton was an escort? A hooker?’

  Very defensive suddenly, Claire said, ‘We provide escorts for single men – and women. People in need of a date for a night out, that sort of thing. Not hookers.’

  Grace noticed her eyes were still moving strongly to the right; they seemed to be trying to burrow their way as far to the right as they could get.

  ‘All innocent?’ Grace said.

  She shrugged. ‘For us, yes.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Claire, I’ve heard it all before, OK? If the client wants to make a private arrangement with the young lady, that’s not your problem, right?’

  She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, ‘I think I should call my solicitor.’

  ‘I’m not interested in busting your squalid little business,’ Grace said. ‘Call your solicitor and then I will bust you, just for the hell of it, I’ll bloody take you apart. I want to find Janie’s killer; that’s all I’m interested in. Help me with that and I won’t touch you. Do we understand each other?’

  She grimaced. Then finally she nodded.

  ‘How much do you charge your punters?’

  ‘Sixty quid an hour.’

  ‘And how much do you get of that?’

  ‘Forty per cent.’

  ‘The girls keep the rest and any extras?’

  ‘They keep their tips,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Right. Who was she with on Tuesday night?’

  She turned to her computer and tapped the keyboard. After some moments she said, ‘Anton.’

  ‘Anton? Anton who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know the names of your punters?’

  ‘Only if they want to tell me.’

  ‘And how many of them tell you?’

  ‘Quite a few. But I don’t know if their names are real or not.’

  Grace found himself getting increasingly angry. ‘These girls sign up with you and you send them out on dates with single men – on which you get a fat commission – and you don’t even bother to find out their bloody names?’

  There was another silence. ‘We always check on the girls, on a first date. We phone them after ten minutes. We have some code words; if they’re not happy, then we have security we can send over to help them. This was her fourth date with Anton. I wasn’t worried – I mean I didn’t feel I had any reason to be worried.’

  ‘It didn’t bother you that she was a young, innocent law student?’

  ‘We’ve lots of students on our books. They find it a good way to supplement their grants. Thanks to Tony Blair, most students leave uni with debts it will take them years to pay off. Doing escort work gives them an alternative. I like to feel we are doing our bit to help them.’

  ‘Well of course,’ Grace said, his voice corrosive with sarcasm. ‘I mean, all that cash coming in . . . all your altruism, and her private arrangements with Anton the butcher none of your concern.’ He was silent for a moment, thinking, then he asked, ‘How many girls do you have on your books?’

  ‘About thirty. And ten guys.’

  ‘You have pictures?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me see Janie’s.’

  She went to a filing cabinet, retrieved a folder, opened it, took out a photograph in cellophane, then handed it to Grace.

  It wasn’t like any of the photographs he had seen in her father’s house or in her flat. This was a wholly different Janie Stretton, a Janie of the night.

  She was lying seductively on a leopard-skin rug, dressed in the briefest of leather hot pants, a black lace blouse unbuttoned to the navel, with her breasts all but completely exposed.

  Grace handed it to Branson. ‘Just escorts,’ he said to the woman sarcastically. ‘Women companions for social functions, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Yeah, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Claire, I didn’t just ride into town on the tailgate of a bloody truck, OK? She was on the game, wasn’t she?’

  ‘If she was, it was without our knowledge.’

  ‘Where do you advertise?’

  ‘Magazines, newsagents, on the internet.’

  Grace nodded. ‘And where do you get most of your clients from?’

  ‘It varies. We get a lot from word of mouth.’

  ‘And
which magazines?’

  Claire hesitated. ‘Contact magazines, tourist ones, the local paper, one or two speciality mags.’

  ‘Speciality?’

  After some more moments of hesitation she said, ‘Fetishes, mainly. People who are into rubber. Bondage. Stuff.’

  ‘Stuff?’ Grace questioned.

  She shrugged.

  ‘So do we have any way of finding out how this Anton first got hold of your number?’

  She peered in the folder and pulled out an index card. ‘May sixth. Anton. I wrote down, “Strong European accent”. He said he’d seen the advert in’ – she squinted as if trying to read her own writing – ‘the Argus.’

  The local newspaper.

  The phone rang again. She ignored it and continued squinting as if trying to decipher more notes. ‘He wanted to see some picture of the girls, so I directed him to the website. Then he rang back about half an hour later, saying he’d like a date with Janie. I have his number!’

  Grace sat up and saw Branson’s instant reaction also. ‘You do?’

  ‘I always take a call-back number for our clients. It puts them on guard.’

  ‘Let me have it, please.’

  He wrote it down as she read it out, then immediately dialled it on his mobile phone. Instantly he got the unobtainable signal. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Is there anything else at all you could tell us about this Anton?’

  ‘I wish I could. Do you . . . think – that – that he might have been the one who . . . ?’

  ‘If he wasn’t her killer, he must have been one of the last people to see her. Do your girls ring in after their date’s finished?’

  ‘Sometimes, depends how late it is.’

  ‘She didn’t ring you on Tuesday night after her date with Anton?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you were ringing her about another date on Wednesday?’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked at her notes. ‘Another gentleman. Do you need his name and number?’

  Grace nodded. ‘We’ll check it out.’

  ‘You’ll be discreet?’

  ‘I’ll put my most discreet man on to it.’ Grace grinned to himself. He’d delegate his new recruit Norman Potting to the task. The DS was about as discreet as a bull on roller blades in a china store.

  29

  By four o’clock Tom’s office was starting to empty. Typical for a Friday, he thought. It was a fine, sunny afternoon in London, and the weather forecast was good. One by one his staff were clearing their desks, saying their cheery goodbyes and heading for the door.

  He envied them their carefree weekends, and tried to remember when he’d last had a weekend in which he had really relaxed and not thought about work, not sat at his computer, poring over a spreadsheet of his outgoings and income, not peeked anxiously over Kellie’s shoulder as she’d sat at her keyboard on the sitting room floor.

  His window was open a little despite the roar of the traffic and he felt the air, balmy and warm. Maybe this weekend he would switch off a little, as much as the dark cloud of that damned CD would allow. It was good news that Kellie had a job. The money wasn’t great, but at least it would cover some of her spending extravaganzas – just as long as it did not encourage her to spend even more.

  At four fifteen he decided, To hell with it. If he left now he might just make the next fast train, the 16.36, which would get him home comfortably in time for the barbecue he’d planned with Kellie, using the monster new piece of kit she had bought.

  He shook his head at the thought of the barbecue. Insane. Yet he was curious to know what it looked like; curious to know how any barbecue could cost north of five hundred pounds.

  In a fit of extravagance, minor compared to Kellie’s, he took a cab instead of the bus to Victoria station, arriving with just minutes to spare. He grabbed an Evening Standard from a vendor, and without bothering to wait for his change sprinted for the platform, clambering aboard the train just seconds before the wheels began to turn.

  Out of sheer determination, he struggled down the aisle of every single one of the train’s crowded carriages, looking for the dickhead. But there was no sign of him. By the time he had finished, he had broken into a heavy sweat from the heat and from his exertion. He found one of the few empty seats, removed his laptop and his high-speed internet card from his bag, put the bag and his jacket up on the luggage rack, then sat down with his laptop on his knees and glanced at the front page of the newspaper.

  Thirty Dead in Iraq Bomb Carnage.

  He glanced through the article, about yet another suicide car bombing of police recruits, guiltily aware he had become almost numb to reports like these. There seemed to be so many, all the time. And he’d never really worked out where he stood on Iraq. He didn’t care for Bush or Blair and every successive outrage had made him increasingly doubtful the world was a safer place since the invasion. Sometimes when he popped his head around the bedroom doors of his sleeping children he stared at them with a guilty helplessness, knowing just how responsible he was for their safety, but in terms of the politics of the world into which he had brought them, he felt woefully inadequate.

  Then he turned the page, and it felt like an unseen fist had reached out from some other dimension altogether and was gripping his innards like a vice.

  He was staring at a photograph of a young woman, beneath a grisly headline running across the top of the third page: Headless Torso Victim Named.

  Her face.

  Reminding him again, just a little, of Gwyneth Paltrow, just as when he had first seen her, in his den, on Tuesday night.

  It was her. For sure, for absolute certain.

  His eyes jumped down to the words printed below.

  Sussex Police confirmed today that the badly mutilated body of a young woman, found on farmland in Peacehaven, East Sussex, on Wednesday, is that of missing law student Janie Stretton, 23.

  The Senior Investigating Officer leading the enquiry for Sussex CID, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, said, ‘This is one of the most brutal murders I have encountered in twenty years on the police force. Janie Stretton was a decent, hard-working and popular young woman. We are doing everything we can to apprehend her killer.’

  Derek Stretton, Janie’s distraught father, issued this brief prepared statement from his £3m riverside mansion near Southampton. ‘Janie was the most wonderful daughter a father could wish for, and was a great strength to me when my wife – her mother – sadly died. I beg the police to find her killer swiftly, before he destroys another innocent life.’

  Then Tom’s eyes jumped back up to Janie’s face. And as he did so, the words of the threatening email burned back into his brain.

  If you inform the police about what you saw, or if you ever try to access this site again, what is about to happen to your computer will happen to your wife, Kellie, to your son, Max, and to your daughter, Jessica . . .

  For a moment he glanced nervously around at his fellow passengers but no one was taking any notice of him. A youth opposite was sitting plugged into an iPod; he could hear the beat, an irritating raspy sound, too low to recognize the music but louder than the clackety-clack of the train. A couple of others were also reading newspapers, while a woman was reading a well-thumbed copy of The Da Vinci Code, and a man in a pin-striped suit was working on his laptop.

  Tom stared back at the photograph. Was there any possibility he was mistaken? Any at all?

  But there wasn’t. It was her.

  So what the hell, he wondered, was he going to do?

  30

  At half past six, Roy Grace, Glenn Branson and all the other members of the investigation team, including Grace’s newest recruit, Detective Sergeant Norman Potting, were sitting at the large, rectangular table in the briefing room, directly opposite MIR One, the Major Incident Room where Operation Nightingale had been allocated its workstation.

  Grace could smell the reek of pipe tobacco coming off Norman Potting’s clothes. The long-serving policeman was dressed in a brown
suit that was a good twenty years old, a white shirt that looked like he had ironed it himself when he was drunk, a green golf-club tie covered in food stains and stout black shoes. He was a self-assured, rather cocky veteran of three marriages, with a narrow, rubbery face criss-crossed with broken veins, protruding lips, tobacco-stained teeth and a thinning comb-over.

  Grace formally welcomed Norman Potting, avoiding eye contact with everyone else.

  ‘Good to be on the team,’ Potting returned in his deep rumble of a voice, heavily tinged with his native Devon burr. ‘Especially pleasant to be working with some pretty young ladies.’ He winked broadly at Bella and then at Emma-Jane.

  Grace winced, then pressed on. He needed to be away by seven if at all possible, just for a couple of hours. He looked down at the briefing notes prepared by Bella and Eleanor for him. ‘The time is six thirty, Friday, June third,’ he read out. ‘This is our second briefing of Operation Nightingale, the investigation into the murder of a previously unknown person, now identified as Jane – known as Janie – Susan Amanda Stretton, conducted on day two following the discovery of her remains. I will now summarize the incident.’

  For some minutes Grace reviewed the events leading up to the discovery of Janie’s headless remains, then the discovery of the beetle at the post-mortem. At which point Norman Potting interrupted him.

  ‘Wasn’t there something in the papers some years back about Hollywood stars putting gerbils up their bottoms, Roy?’

  ‘Thanks, Norman; I don’t think that has any currency here.’

  ‘Mind you, there’s a lot of them actors are queer and you don’t know it.’

  ‘Thank you, Norman,’ Grace said firmly, trying to put him back in his box. He was about to continue, to tell the team about the discovery of Janie Stretton’s secret life, when Glenn Branson put up his hand, interrupting him.

  ‘You were telling me in the car earlier about the symbolism of the scarab beetle, Roy. I think that’s useful to share with the team.’