by Peter James
He stood back for a moment, clasped his hands together, and smiled. The great thing about dying, he thought, was that you no longer had to be worried about anything. A quotation was spinning around in his head and he tried to remember who said it.
To dream of death is good for those in fear, for the dead have no more fears.
That was right, oh yes. Do you know that quotation, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Gaia Lafayette?
Know who you are dealing with?
A man who has no more fears!
A man who has the chemical components to make mercuric chloride. And who knows how to make it!
He was a successful industrial chemist long before he became a screwed screenwriter. He remembered all this stuff from a long time ago.
Mercuric chloride is not a salt but a linear triatomic molecule, hence its tendency to sublime.
Did you know that, Larry Brooker? Maxim Brody? Bitch queen Gaia Lafayette?
You will soon.
His phone rang. He answered it aggressively, not in any mood to be disturbed.
An irritatingly cheery young woman said, ‘Jerry Baxter?’
He remembered the voice. ‘Uh huh.’
‘You didn’t turn up for your costume fitting today. Just wanted to check if you were still interested in being an extra on The King’s Lover?’
He held his temper. ‘I’m sorry, I had an important meeting.’
‘No problem, Jerry. We’re shooting crowd scenes outside the Pavilion on Monday morning, weather permitting. If you’re still interested, could you come tomorrow?’
He said nothing for some moments, thinking hard. Then he said, ‘Perfect.’
69
Cleo found a parking space two streets away from her home, shortly after 5 p.m. on Friday evening. The rain had stopped and the sky was brightening. As she climbed out of her little Audi she felt leadenly tired, but happy. So incredibly happy, and with the weekend to look forward to ahead. As if responding to her mood, the baby kicked inside her.
‘You happy too, Bump?’
She lifted her handbag off the passenger seat, locked the car and started walking home, totally unaware of the two pairs of eyes watching her from behind the windscreen of the rented Volkswagen that had been following her from the mortuary.
‘Warum starrst du die dicke Frau an?’ the boy asked.
In German, she replied, ‘She’s not fat, my love. She’s carrying a baby.’
In German, he asked, ‘Whose baby?’
She did not reply. With hatred in her eyes she watched the woman.
‘Whose baby, Mama?’
For some moments she said nothing, feeling deep turmoil inside her. ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right back.’
She left the car and walked up the street for some yards past the Audi. Trying to appear nonchalant, and not to draw any attention to herself, she turned around until she could see the front of Cleo’s car.
There was a patina of dust on the bonnet, and several spatterings of seagull droppings, one lying on the duct-tape repair to the roof. But the wording she had carved was still there, clearly visible.
COPPERS TART. UR BABY IS NEXT.
70
Anna paced around her Gaia museum, her Gaia shrine. A Martini glass in her hand. She was drinking – deliberately drinking – a cocktail that was so not Gaia. It was a Manhattan. Two parts bourbon, one part red Martini, Angostura bitters and a maraschino cherry on its stalk, in a Martini glass.
She was drinking it to spite Gaia.
She was drinking it to get drunk.
It was her third Manhattan of the evening. Friday evening. She didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. So she could get totally smashed.
She had never been so humiliated in her life as she had been on Wednesday. Her face was still burning. She could hear the silent laughter of all the other fans on the sofas.
Standing in front of a life-size cardboard cut-out of her idol, she stared into those blue eyes. ‘What went wrong? Hey? Tell me? I’m your number one fan and you turned away from me? Tell me why? Hey? Tell me? You found someone else? Someone who’s more into you than me?’
Not possible.
No way.
‘You’ve made my life worth living, don’t you know that, don’t you care? You’re the only person who’s ever loved me.’
In her left hand she held a knife. A kukri. The knife one of her father’s ancestors had taken from a dead soldier way back during the Gurkha wars. Gurkhas were brave people. They did not care about dying.
If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha.
What do you think about that, Gaia? Are you lying or a Gurkha?
Or just a parvenue from Whitehawk in Brighton who thinks you are too big to bother to acknowledge your fans?
She strutted very slowly down the steep wooden stairs, went through into the kitchen and filled her glass with the remainder of the drink that was in the silver cocktail shaker. Then she went back upstairs to her shrine.
‘Cheers, Gaia!’ she said. ‘So tell me, did it feel good cutting me dead yesterday? Hey? Tell me about it? Who put you on your platform? Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think about me? You stared at me so often. I watched you watching me on Top Gear. And on so many other shows. So what do you think gave you the right to treat me like – like – scum – shit – like – like – trash? Tell me, I’m really interested. Your number one fan needs to know.
‘I do really.
‘Tell me.
‘Tell me.
‘Tell me?’
71
For the Friday evening briefing, Glenn Branson chose a seat that gave him a clear view of Bella. He noticed that, as usual, she and Norman Potting sat well apart so that eye contact between them was difficult. Experienced detectives, he thought, they’d clearly planned this between them. So just how long had their relationship being going on? It wasn’t that long ago that Potting had married for the fourth time, suckered by a Thai girl who’d been bleeding him dry of money.
He watched her pop a Malteser into her mouth. She wasn’t in any sense beautiful, but there was something about her that he found very attractive. Warmth and a vulnerability that made him want to scoop her up into his arms. Just a short while ago he’d thought he might be able to offer her something better than the life of drudgery she had looking after her ailing mother. Now it was a different challenge altogether. Potting was so not right for her. He looked at him. At the smug grin on his face.
Come on, Bella, how on earth could you fancy him?
‘Glenn? Hello? Glenn?’
With a start, he realized Roy Grace was speaking to him, and he had no idea what about.
‘Sorry, chief, I was somewhere else.’
‘Welcome back from Planet Zog!’
There was some sniggering in the room.
‘Long day?’ Potting queried. His words were like a knife twisting inside him.
‘I asked you about the DNA results on the four limbs,’ Grace said, glancing briefly down at his notes. ‘You said you were expecting them back from the lab today?’
Branson nodded. ‘Yep. I have the results.’ He opened a plastic folder. ‘I can read you out the full lab report if you want, chief?’
Grace shook his head. To most police officers, himself included, DNA reports were a mysterious, arcane art. He had always been rubbish at science at school. In fact he had been rubbish at most things at school except for rugby and running. ‘Just summarize for now, Glenn.’
‘Okay. So all four limbs are from the same body and it’s a millions-to-one certainty that they belong to the torso of “Unknown Berwick Male”,’ he said.
‘Good work,’ Grace said. ‘Right, so we have another piece of our jigsaw in place. All we are missing now is his head.’
‘Could be we are looking for a man who lost his head to a woman,’ Potting said, and guffawed.
‘You should know!’ Bella rounded on Potting. Potting blushed and looked down. To ev
eryone else present her remark was a barb about his marital failures. Only Glenn knew the truth behind it.
‘Not very helpful, actually, Norman,’ Grace said.
‘Sorry, boss.’ He looked around with a sheepish grin, but no one responded.
Roy Grace stared at Potting. He was a fine detective, but sometimes he could be so damned irritating with his bad jokes, and on this enquiry he seemed to be worse than ever.
‘The issue we have is the timing difference between the torso and the limbs,’ Glenn said, pushing his mess of thoughts to the back of his mind, and fully focused again now. ‘We know that the torso was deposited many months ago and is in a highly advanced state of decomposition. The limbs are relatively fresh.’
‘Which would indicate that Darren Wallace’s opinion that they had been frozen is probably correct,’ said the Crime Scene Manager, David Green.
‘Is that not something the pathologist can determine?’ Bella Moy asked.
Green shook his head. ‘Not easily. Freezing will cause cell damage, but it is going to take a while to establish that.’
‘So what does this tell us?’ Grace said, addressing the entire team. ‘Why was the torso dumped months ago and the limbs only in the past couple of days?’
‘Someone playing games with us, chief?’ suggested Nick Nicholl.
‘Yes,’ Roy Grace said. ‘That’s a possibility. But let’s apply our old friend Brother Ockham’s razor.’
William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century friar and logician. He believed that the simplest answer was usually the right one.
‘You’re suggesting a link between Crimewatch and the limbs, boss?’ said Guy Batchelor.
‘I think we’re dealing with someone either very cunning or very nervous,’ Grace replied. ‘It’s possible that he left the torso and the suit fabric in the chicken farm as one clue for us. Then the limbs and the piece of suit fabric at the trout lake as another clue. In which case at some point we’ll find another piece of fabric and the head. Or, as I think more likely, Crimewatch spooked the perpetrator into getting rid of some – and possibly all – of the rest of the evidence. Lorna’s team are continuing to search for the head.’
‘Or maybe that’s the one trophy he can’t bear to part with?’ Potting said.
Grace nodded. ‘Yes, that’s possible.’ He looked at his notes. ‘For the moment we have no option but to work with what we have. Right, the suit fabric.’ He looked up at Glenn Branson. ‘What is the situation with that?’
‘DS Batchelor’s been on to this, boss.’
Batchelor nodded. ‘I’ve got the outside enquiry team going through the list that Dormeuil supplied us. All men’s clothing stores and tailors within our three counties’ parameter who bought sufficient quantities of this cloth to make suits from, including Savile Style. I gave a list of eighty-two people who bought one of the suits – or had one made – to Annalise Vineer at midday today.’ He turned to the indexer. ‘What do you have for us, Annalise?’
‘There is something interesting,’ she said, flushing a little, as if not used to being in the limelight. ‘There’s a men’s clothing store in Gardner Street, Brighton, called Luigi, which sold a suit in this material to a man called Myles Royce two years ago. It wasn’t bespoke, but the proprietor, Luigi, remembers making a number of tailoring alterations to make a better fit. Myles Royce is on our mispers list. DS Potting is following up.’
Grace turned to Potting. ‘Have you progressed this?’
‘Yes, chief. Luigi had an address for his customer in Ash Grove, Haywards Heath, which I went to this afternoon – a pleasant detached house in a decent neighbourhood. There was no answer and the place looked in a state of neglect. I come from a farming background and I know a little about grass. In my view the lawn hasn’t been cut this year. The garden’s overgrown with weeds. I found one helpful neighbour at home, an elderly lady opposite, who told me he lived alone. She’s been looking after his cat for several months. Apparently he had some investments – some kind of family trust that he lived on – and he’d told her he was going off to do a bit of travelling for a few weeks, and never returned.’ Potting paused and shuffled through the mess of papers in front of him.
‘Now here’s the interesting thing – well – maybe not that interesting.’
Grace stared at him, waiting patiently, wishing he could get to the point. But that wasn’t Norman Potting’s style and never would be.
‘I got the name and phone number of his mother from this lady,’ Potting said. ‘So I went round to see her, in a care home in Burgess Hill. She told me her son used to call her at seven every Sunday evening without fail. She hasn’t heard from him since January. She’s very distressed – apparently they were extremely close.’
‘Did she report him as a misper?’ Bella Moy said.
‘In April.’
‘Why did she wait so long?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
‘She told me he was often travelling,’ Norman Potting replied. ‘She said he was a very big fan of Gaia, obsessed by her. He’d a small trust fund, and made a bit of money, apparently, dabbling in the property market, and that enabled him to travel the world following her.’
Grace frowned. ‘A wealthy, grown man, travelling the world for Gaia? What was all that about?’
‘I’m told she’s a huge gay icon,’ Potting replied.
‘Is – was – Myles Royce gay?’ Branson interjected.
‘The neighbour said she saw a few young men turn up at his house, but never any ladies,’ Potting said.
Grace thought hard. Something didn’t quite add up. A Gaia fan butchered. Gaia in town. A recent murder attempt on her in Los Angeles. Coincidences?
He didn’t like coincidences much. They were too convenient. Easy to explain something away as coincidence.
Much harder to drill down beneath the surface to see what was really there.
‘Has his mother got anything we might get his DNA from, Norman?’ he asked.
Potting shook his head. ‘No, but I got the neighbour to let me into his house. I removed one of his suits. He fits our size profile exactly. And I brought back a hairbrush and toothbrush – I’ve already had them sent to the lab.’
‘Well done,’ Grace said. Then he lapsed into thought.
Gaia.
Was there a connection?
Why should there be?
He’d been a detective for too long to dismiss anything. A Gaia fan had possibly been murdered. Gaia was in town. But if he had been murdered, that had been long before anyone knew she was coming to town.
He continued thinking for some moments. Deposition sites tended to be ditches beside quiet roads, or woodlands alongside them. He turned to Glenn Branson. ‘We need to get a list of all the members of the trout-fishing club and have them interviewed – see if any of them saw anything – or react suspiciously to being interviewed. It’s a pretty remote place – I’m not sure any member of the general public would find it by accident. Whoever used this as a deposition site must have had prior knowledge of it. We should also work on a list of anyone who might have had reason to visit it – like maintenance workers clearing the weeds, or working on repairs—’
‘I’m there, boss!’ Glenn Branson interjected, and looked at the indexer. ‘Annalise is already liaising with the trout club secretary.’
‘He’s being very helpful,’ Annalise Vineer said. ‘He’s given me the full membership list, and he’s working on a wider list of names of all people the club has dealings with who might have reason to have visited, or at least know its location. Such as people from the Environment Agency who handle fishing licences, their fencing contractor, the company they use for weed control, their driveway maintenance people, their printers and their solicitors. I hope to have the full list by tomorrow.’
Grace thanked her. Then he turned to another of the detectives on his team, Jon Exton. ‘Anything to report from the National Footwear Reference Collection, Jon?’
‘Yes, boss!’ Exton said. Glenn
liked the young man because he was always brimming with enthusiasm.
‘I’ve found an exact match,’ Exton continued. ‘It’s good news and – er – not such good news.’
Grace frowned. This wasn’t the time or place to start talking in riddles. ‘What do you mean?’ he said, a tad snappily.
‘Well the good news, boss, is that the print is from a wellington boot, rather than a trainer.’
Many prisons issued prisoners with trainers when they left, if they had no other shoes. Partly as a result of that, there were more trainer footprints at crime scenes than any other kind of footwear; the vast numbers of stockists and quantity of trainer manufacturers made it hard to trace the source.
‘The footprint is from a Hunter wellington boot,’ Exton went on. ‘The style is one of “The Original” range. I’m afraid the bad news is that this brand is one of the most popular manufactured in this country. There are sixty-four stockists in Sussex, Kent and Surrey. And of course you can get them online.’
Roy Grace absorbed the information, thinking hard. How many of these were self-service stores like garden centres? What was the possibility of the staff remembering who bought these boots? In every murder enquiry he had to balance the costs of deployment of officers against the probabilities of achieving any result. Sixty-four stockists would consume a lot of the outside enquiry team manpower, if he wanted to get a result quickly. How many a day could any individual cover? In his experience, having to wait for staff they needed to interview to come back from breaks, and the like, was time consuming. Six retail outlets a day would be good going. It would take two officers a good week to cover every shop and store.
DC Reeves put her hand in the air. ‘Sir, Hunter is a very expensive brand – I know because I recently went shopping for some wellies. Do you think there is some significance in this? That it tallies with the expensive suit material from the victim? What I mean by this is it tells us the perpetrator might be financially well off.’
