Looking Good Dead

by Peter James

  At seven twenty Grace was standing outside the entrance to the Asda supermarket across the road and was the first customer when the doors opened, at seven thirty. He bought a packet of disposable razors, shaving cream, a white shirt, two croissants, six cans of Red Bull and two packs of ProPlus.

  At eight he rang Cleo, but his call went straight through to her voicemail. He left her a brief message: ‘Hi, it’s Roy. Sorry I had to do a moonlit flit. You are amazing! Call me when you can. Giant hug.’

  On the dot of eight fifteen, as Dennis Ponds entered the small bland office opposite the doorway to MIR One, Grace was feeling terrific. The wash, shave and change of shirt had freshened him, and two cans of Red Bull and four ProPlus were doing their stuff. The only thing not good was his back, which felt like it was burning. Cleo had scratched it to pieces. He couldn’t believe it, standing in the men’s room looking over his shoulder in the mirror at the long, raw red lines. But he grinned. It had been worth it. The fire on his back was nothing compared to the furnace burning in his belly for her. God, she was insane in bed.

  ‘Morning, Roy,’ Ponds said. He looked more like a city slicker than ever today, with his gelled-back hair, loud, chalk-striped suit, pink shirt with cutaway collar, and a blue tie that looked as if it was made of snakeskin.

  Grace shook his hand and they both sat down. ‘I apologize for calling you so early.’

  ‘No problem,’ Ponds said. ‘I’m always up at sparrows; two young kids, three dogs.’ He shrugged. ‘So?’

  ‘I want you to sit in on the eight thirty briefing with us – there’s some video footage I need you to see.’

  Looking at him a little uncertainly, Ponds said, ‘Well, OK . . . I have quite a tight schedule this morning; I have to organize the press conference for Janie Stretton––’

  ‘That’s what this is about, Dennis,’ Grace interrupted him. ‘But it’s also about something else. You may not have heard yet, but a vehicle my team was pursuing late last night was in collision with a taxi, in Kemp Town.’

  Pond’s face fell. ‘No, I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘As a consequence of trying to apprehend the vehicle before it drove off, one of my best young officers is on life support at Sussex County. I just came off the phone. She’s survived a five-hour operation but it still doesn’t look good. She put her life on the line to stop that fucking vehicle – a Ford Transit. Do you understand that? She put her fucking life on the line, Dennis. She’s twenty-four years old; she’s one of the brightest and bravest young cops I’ve ever seen. She clung to the side of that vehicle to try to stop it, and the scumbag driving it smashed her into a parked car. She was trying to do her job, to uphold the law. Are you still with me?’

  Hesitantly, Ponds nodded.

  ‘I’ve got an officer on life support. I’ve got a scumbag suspect unconscious. I’ve got an innocent taxi passenger with a broken leg.’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at,’ Ponds said.

  Grace realized all the caffeine might be making him seem a little aggressive. ‘What I’m getting at, Dennis, is I want the editor of the Argus, and the editors of any other papers, radio news or television news that might pick up this story, to cut me some slack. I don’t want to have to deal with a room full of braying vultures after another cheap let’s-have-a-pop-at-the-police story about how reckless we are, endangering public lives, when actually we are trying to save lives, and risking our own in the process.’

  ‘I hear what you are saying,’ Ponds said. ‘But it’s not easy.’

  ‘That’s why you are coming to the briefing, Dennis. I’m going to show you something that I saw earlier this morning. Then I’m going to give you a copy of it. I think you’ll find it’ll make things a whole lot easier.’ He gave Ponds an almost demonic grin.

  They walked a few yards along the corridor and into the Briefing Room, which was quickly filling up, both with members of Grace’s team and with the new team that had been assembled during the course of yesterday by Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor for the Reggie D’Eath murder enquiry – there were several clear areas of crossover between the two.

  Grace had decided to use the Briefing Room for this session rather than MIR One partly because of the extra space, but mainly because there was a large plasma screen on the wall, into which DS Jon Rye, whom Grace had also summoned to the briefing, was currently plugging the laptop DC Nicholl had recovered from the crashed Transit.

  Sitting down in front of the curved Crimestoppers display board, it felt at this moment as if his team couldn’t stop a bloody bus, Grace thought, and remembered gloomily that today was the day Cassian Pewe started. How great it would be to get transferred to Newcastle just as he and Cleo were getting together, he thought. Putting them at opposite ends of the country. Three hundred bloody miles apart. Well it was not going to sodding well happen!

  None of them would enjoy the four-minute show Grace was putting on. To start their week with the worst horror movie most of them would ever see in their lives was hardly a Monday morning treat. These were shock tactics, he knew, and they wouldn’t make him any friends. But making friends was right at the bottom of his list of priorities at this exact moment.

  He started the session in the way he always did. ‘The time is eight thirty, Monday, June sixth,’ he read out. ‘This is our sixth briefing of Operation Nightingale, the investigation into the murder of Jane – known as Janie – Susan Amanda Stretton, conducted on day five following the discovery of her remains. I will now summarize events following the incident.’

  For some minutes, mainly for the benefit of the newcomers from Detective Superintendent Gaylor’s team, he went over the circumstances surrounding Janie Stretton’s death, the investigations and actions that had been put in place subsequently and the key events. These he listed as: the theft of the computer disk which had enabled Tom Bryce, apparently, to witness Janie Stretton’s murder; the discovery that Janie Stretton had been supplementing her income as a trainee lawyer by working as a prostitute; the discovery of the link on Tom Bryce’s computer with Reggie D’Eath’s computer; Kellie Bryce’s disappearance; her husband’s disappearance; the recovery of a laptop computer from a crashed van last night, and what it contained, which they would all shortly see.

  He looked at his watch. ‘Whatever plans outside of work any of you have for the next thirty-six hours and forty-five minutes, you can forget. You’ll understand why at the end of this briefing. OK, can I have your individual updates?’ He looked first at Norman Potting.

  ‘Can I just ask, is there any more news on Emma-Jane?’ Potting asked.

  ‘No, she’s still on life support,’ Grace answered curtly. ‘I’ve organized flowers from our team to be sent to the hospital. What progress have you made on the two escort agencies Miss Stretton was registered with?’

  ‘I went to take a formal statement from Ms Claire Porter, joint proprietor of BCE-247 escort agency, at seven thirty last night. She’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I got nothing helpful from her.’

  ‘And her clients?’

  ‘I’m working my way through her clients, and also through her girls,’ Potting said.

  I’ll bet you are, you dirty bugger, Grace thought, and could see from the expressions on several other faces, including the two FLOs assigned to Derek Stretton, Maggie Campbell and Vanessa Ritchie, that he wasn’t alone in this view.

  ‘So far, I haven’t come up with anything.’

  ‘And the second agency?’

  ‘She had only just registered; they hadn’t introduced any clients to her.’

  Grace looked at his notes. ‘What about the man called Anton who took Janie Stretton out on four dates from the BCE-247 agency?’

  ‘I checked out the phone number. It was one of those pay-as-you-go jobs you can buy in just about any shop or petrol station. No record of the purchaser; won’t get us anywhere.’

  Grace circulated to the teams a dozen photographs of Janie Stretton with her date in the Karm
a Bar. They had been lifted off the CCTV tape and the quality was not great, but her face and the face of her muscular, spiky-haired date were clear enough. ‘These were taken on Friday, May twenty-seventh, the night of Miss Stretton’s third date with this Anton. I think we can presume this is him. I want these circulated to every police station in the country and we’ll try to get it on Crimewatch on Wednesday night. Someone’s going to recognize him.’ Grace knew that this might raise identification issues in the future, but he would deal with them with the Crown Prosecution Service when he had to.

  He turned to Maggie Campbell and Vanessa Ritchie. ‘You said that Miss Stretton’s father was talking about putting up a reward?’

  ‘He confirmed last night,’ Maggie Campbell said. ‘One hundred thousand pounds for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer.’

  ‘Good,’ Grace said. ‘That’s helpful; that should test a few loyalties.’ He looked at two of the new officers he had recruited from Dave Gaylor’s team: Don Barker, whom Grace liked, a stocky, bull-necked detective sergeant in his mid-thirties, with a fuzz of fair hair and a pale blue shirt straining at the buttons, and a very confident, much younger detective constable Grace had never seen before. His name was Alfonso Zafferone; he had Latino good looks, wet-look hair, and was dressed in an elegant houndstooth sports jacket and a sharp shirt and tie. Addressing both of them he asked, ‘Any progress on the ownership of this white van?’

  Alfonso Zafferone replied. He had a cocky attitude, making Grace take an instant dislike to him. He exuded a demeanour that said he was cut out for higher things, and menial tasks such as vehicle checks were way beneath him. ‘As we already know, it’s a company with a PO box address in London. I checked out the company – it isn’t registered at Companies House.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Grace asked.

  Zafferone shrugged.

  His tiredness making him less tolerant than normal, Grace snapped at him, deliberately getting his name wrong – one of the best ways, he had learned over the years, to put someone in their place. ‘This is a murder enquiry, DC Zabaglione. We don’t do shrugs here; we do answers verbally. Would you like to try again?’

  The young DC glared at him, looking for a moment as if he was about to answer back, then clearly thought better of it. A little more meekly he replied, ‘It means, sir, either the company is registered overseas or the name is false.’

  ‘Thank you. I want to know which is the case by our next briefing, at six thirty. And where the mail to that PO box is collected from. OK?’

  Zafferone nodded sullenly.

  You’re not going to go far, my son, Grace thought. Not unless someone pulls the chain and flushes you down the sodding toilet. ‘How about the identity of the van’s driver?’

  ‘He was starting to come round about ten minutes ago, Roy,’ Don Barker said. ‘There was nothing on his clothes or in the van. He doesn’t look English – may be central European. I’m going down to see him straight after this briefing.’

  ‘Good,’ Grace said. Then he turned back to Potting. ‘OK, another task for you today, Norman, is to finish visiting all the wholesale suppliers of sulphuric acid in the area.’

  ‘I’m on it,’ Potting said.

  Grace addressed Nick Nicholl. ‘Remind me, Nick, what time are we seeing the DI from Wimbledon?’

  ‘At half past eleven, sir.’

  ‘And you’re chasing up on any other force in the country that might have had a scarab beetle connected to a murder scene?’

  ‘Yes, I’m working on that, sir.’

  ‘Don’t keep fucking sirring me, OK?’

  The DC blushed.

  Grace felt bad for having a go at him. He didn’t need to snap at anyone. He needed to keep a lid on himself, he realized. He looked at the team and gave a smile. ‘OK, we’re now going to have a short movie. I apologize there is no popcorn.’

  He got a ragged laugh.

  After what you are about to see, you won’t be feeling like eating popcorn, you’ll be doing well just to keep down your breakfast, he thought to himself, nodding at DS Rye to close the blinds then start the video.

  While Rye closed the blinds, Grace said, ‘This video clip was found on this laptop computer, which was removed from the Ford Transit van last night. The hard drive we removed and is now in safekeeping, as a crime scene, in the High Tech Crime Unit. What you are viewing is a cloned copy.’

  Jon Rye clicked the keyboard to start the projection. Grace dimmed the lights.

  On the screen appeared:

  A SCARAB PRODUCTION

  Here is a special bonus movie for all our customers,

  ‘BATHTIME FOR REGGIE!’

  The man is a convicted paedophile. Enjoy!

  Moments later a slightly unsteady, hand-held camera showed, in wide angle, a small, rather old-fashioned avocado-coloured bathroom. The camera favoured the bathtub. Then a figure, wearing what appeared to be a full chemical-protection suit, with gloves, boots, a breathing tank and mask, struggled backwards in through the door, carrying something.

  In a moment, it became clear it was the legs of a naked man, bound tightly together with cord.

  A second man, in identical protective clothing, his face invisible behind his darkened-glass mask, held the shoulders of the naked man, Reggie D’Eath.

  They deposited him in the empty tub.

  A large, baby-faced man, with thinning hair and a flaccid body, he thrashed around in the bath like a fish out of water. His face was a mask of terror, but he was unable to speak because something, held in place with gaffer tape had been jammed in his mouth. His arms were tied tightly to his sides. All he could do was wriggle his body, heave himself up and down with his thighs and twist his head wildly from side to side, his eyes bulging, imploring, his small, thin penis flopping around between his hairless balls amid an untidy thicket of pubic hairs.

  The men went out of the room, and returned with a large black plastic chemical drum which Grace estimated would hold about ten gallons. No markings were visible on it.

  Reggie D’Eath was now thrashing so wildly that for an instant it seemed he would actually manage to leap out of the tub.

  The men set the drum down. One then held D’Eath while the other produced a length of wire, wound it twice around his neck, then attached it to a towel rail high on the wall above his head. And pulled it tight.

  D’Eath’s eyes bulged even more. His movements became different after some seconds – convulsions rather than thrashing.

  With some difficulty the two men moved him up a little, so he was reclining rather than lying flat. They adjusted the ligature so that it was now supporting him, clearly deeply uncomfortable and cutting into his neck but no longer strangling him.

  An unseen hand tossed a wriggling scarab beetle onto his chest. The little creature tumbled over backwards almost comically, coming to rest on D’Eath’s genitals. It started to right itself, but too late.

  Without wasting any time the two men lifted the chemical drum, moving carefully out of the view of the camera, so as not to obstruct it, and tipped a good gallon of the liquid, which Grace knew to be sulphuric acid, straight onto D’Eath’s genitals.

  Steam rose.

  Grace had never in his life seen a body shake and contort the way the unfortunate D’Eath’s was doing now. The man’s head was snapping from left to right, as if he was trying to saw the wire through his carotid artery; his eyes were strobing. As surreptitiously as he could, Grace glanced at the reactions of his colleagues. Ponds was holding his hand over his mouth. Every single one of them looked numb.

  He turned back to the screen. The men continued pouring, emptying the entire contents of the drum into the bath. Within moments D’Eath’s body ceased to move. The room slowly filled with a haze of chemical steam.

  The video faded to black. Then appeared:

  DEARLY VALUED CUSTOMER, we hope you enjoyed our little bonus show. Remember to log in at 21.15 on Tuesday for our next Big Attraction – A man and his wif
e together. Our first ever DOUBLE KILLING!

  Grace turned the lights back on.

  72

  From the parchment colour of Alfonso Zafferone’s face, Grace guessed he wasn’t going to have any more arrogance from this young DC for a while. He could not recall, in his entire career, when he had been in a room full of people so quiet.

  Dennis Ponds was staring, bug-eyed and unfocused, as if he had just been told he was going to be put in the bathtub next.

  It was Norman Potting who finally broke the silence. He coughed, clearing his throat, then said, ‘Do we presume this is a snuff movie, Roy?’

  ‘Well it’s not his fucking family album,’ Glenn Branson rounded on him.

  There was no titter of laughter. Nothing. One of the female indexers was staring down at the table as if afraid to lift her eyes, in case there was more.

  ‘Dennis,’ Grace said, ‘I’m going to give you a copy on your laptop to take to the editor of the Argus. Don’t show him everything, but make him aware of just what we’re dealing with here. I want him to run photographs of Mr and Mrs Bryce on the front page of the midday edition of his paper. We have a day and a half to find these people. Does everyone understand that? That they are going to be killed and video’d?’

  Branson took a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. ‘Man, who watches that kind of shit?’

  ‘A lot of very ordinary people with sick minds,’ Grace said. ‘It could be any one of us in this room – or your neighbour, your doctor, your plumber, your vicar, your mortgage broker. The same kind of people who slow down to rubberneck road accidents. Voyeurs. There’s a little bit of it in all of us.’

  ‘Not me,’ Branson said. ‘I couldn’t watch stuff like that.’

  ‘Are you saying that we are all potential killers?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

  Grace remembered something a psychological profiler who had lectured on snuff movies at a homicide convention in the States had told him late one night in a bar. ‘We all have the capacity to kill, but only a small percentage of us have the ability to live with having killed. But there are plenty of us who are curious; we’d like to experience it vicariously. Snuff movies enable you to do that – to experience the killing of a human being. Think about it,’ he said. ‘There’s no opportunity for normal people to actually kill someone.’