by Peter James
Several workmen in hi-viz jackets were hanging around close to the construction company van, some drinking tea or coffee and one struggling with the flapping pages of the Sun newspaper. A Crime Scene Photographer, James Gartrell, whom Grace had worked with many times, was busy taking photographs of the whole scene, and making a digital recording of the events.
Grace glanced at his watch as he strode with Glenn Branson through the onlookers beyond the outer cordon, toward the uniformed PCSO scene guard who was rubbing her hands against the cold. Several gulls bobbed like marker buoys on the near lagoon, and on the far pond a windsurfer in a wetsuit, under tuition, wobbled on his board, bent over, struggling to bring the sail up out of the water. As they reached the PCSO and signed in, Grace heard a female voice call out behind him. “Detective Superintendent!”
The two detectives turned to see a young, attractive fair-haired woman, in a bright red mackintosh, hurrying toward them. Siobhan Sheldrake, a recent addition to the Argus newspaper reporting team, and a replacement for their previous Crime Reporter, Kevin Spinella, who had been the bane of Grace’s life.
The relationship with the press was a vital one for the police to manage well. The press needed sensational stories, which often entailed having a go at the police from many angles. But equally in major crime investigations, the press could be crucial in public appeals for witnesses to come forward. He was hoping for a better relationship with this new reporter.
“Good morning!” he said pleasantly, raising his voice against the loud thwock-thwock-thwock of the helicopter. “You’ve met my colleague, DI Branson?”
“Yes,” she shouted back, grinning at Glenn almost mischievously. “Nice to see you again, Detective Inspector.”
“And you too, Siobhan, how are you?” Glenn said.
“Well, a little bird told me you two gentlemen haven’t come to a children’s playground to have a go on the swings, nor the slide or roundabout—and you don’t look like you’re dressed for a windsurfing lesson!”
Glenn cocked his head sideways, and Grace noticed the chemistry between them. “Very astute,” Branson said. “You could be a detective.”
She laughed. “So do I have to wait for a press conference to find out what’s going on here, or can I get a scoop on the dead body unearthed by workmen last night?”
“Well, at this point,” Roy Grace said, “you appear to know as much as we do.”
“Is it male or female? Do you know the age? How long has he or she been here?” She pointed. “You have a fairly big CSI presence and a Home Office Pathologist, and I understand you have a forensic archaeologist in there, too. So, I would say, you are spending serious money at a time of major budget cuts for the police, which means you have a crime scene you consider worth investigating. We’re not talking historical relics, are we?”
She was smart, Grace had to concede, and he had to stop himself grinning back at her. Not only was she attractive, she had an infectious smile.
Glenn Branson jerked a thumb at his colleague and best friend. “I hope that comment isn’t referring to this old relic here?” He grinned at Grace. “Sorry, old-timer.”
“Very witty,” Grace retorted.
The reporter smiled. “I won’t print that,” she said.
There was something about the reporter that Roy Grace warmed to. She seemed a lot more sincere than many journalists he had encountered. And hell, she had made the effort to get here early and was well-informed. She deserved at least a titbit.
“DI Branson will be holding a press conference, Siobhan, as soon as we have sufficient information. What I can tell you so far is that workmen digging up this path yesterday exposed human remains, which have been tentatively identified as female. We don’t know the age and we don’t know how long they have been here—other than that they pre-date this path, which was laid approximately twenty years ago by the Council. I hope to have more information as the day progresses.”
“Any chance I could have a quick peek inside the tent?”
Glenn Branson gave Roy a quizzical look.
“I’m afraid not at this stage,” Grace replied.
“Is there a Coroner’s Officer attending?”
“You mean there’s something you don’t know?” Glenn teased her.
She grinned back. “Yes. I am just a rookie, sir.”
“Philip Keay is on his way. But I don’t think he’ll have anything for you. I think you’re going to have to wait for the press conference.”
She shrugged. “OK. I’ll just hang around for a while, if it’s OK with you guys?”
“It’s a public park,” Glenn said. “Feel free. But I tell you what, if I wanted a good story, I’d go and doorstep Norman Cook. Ask Fatboy Slim how our local rock star feels having a crime scene outside his café.”
Her face lit up. “You’re right! That’s exactly what I’ll do. Thank you!”
“Let me know if you need an agent,” Glenn replied. “My terms are very reasonable.”
She turned back to Roy Grace. “Separately, is there any news on the misper from last night, Logan Somerville? Operation Haywain?”
Grace stared at her, momentarily thrown by her knowledge. Her predecessor had been fired from the Argus for illegal phone tapping, after constantly coming up with information the police had not yet released. Was she doing the same now? Or did she have a source within the police? He had just come from the first briefing, and was due to head over to the car park where Logan Somerville had apparently disappeared, as soon as he had checked out the situation here. He was guarded in his reply.
“What information do you have?” he asked her.
“I heard she had broken off her engagement with her boyfriend recently. Does that make her disappearance suspicious? I understand there is a manhunt underway.”
Grace clocked that piece of information about the engagement to his memory bank. “We are in the process of gathering information at this point,” he said. “The Press Office will be able to update you later this morning. But so you know, we have every available officer and PCSO out looking for Ms. Somerville, and they’ve been looking through the night.”
“Thank you, Detective Superintendent.”
“I have your mobile number,” Glenn Branson said. “I’ll call you if there are any developments.”
She thanked him and headed off across the Lagoon.
As they ducked under the tape, they were greeted by Dave Green, also fully suited in protective clothing.
“How’s it going?” Grace asked.
“We’ve found a cigarette butt with the remains,” he said. “I’m sending it off for analysis. But that’s all I’m sending so far.”
As they sat down inside the changing-room tent, and pulled on their protective oversuits, Grace said to Branson, “Are you a bit sweet on that Argus reporter?”
“Just trying to cultivate the local press—like you always taught me.” He gave him a mischievous grin.
“There’s a big difference between cultivate and shag, mate, OK?”
“Yeah, there’s a lot more vowels in cultivate.”
“Just don’t go there,” Grace said. “I’m serious. If you’re ambitious, keep the press at arm’s length—not at dick’s length. Also think about your kids. It’s not that long since their mother died.”
“Yeah, but plenty long enough since she kicked me out and brought in a new bloke as their substitute dad,” Branson said grimly. The DI, struggling to pull his suit over his hips, gave his friend a sideways glance. “You’ve recently married one of the most beautiful women on the planet. I never put you down for someone with penis envy.”
“Sod you!”
“You’ve got to admit Siobhan’s well tasty.”
“So was the apple on the tree in Genesis.”
19
Friday 12 December
Dr. Edward Crisp was a short, toned man, with a bald dome and neat, graying hair at his temples. He wore fashionably modern glasses that were too big for his face, giving
him a quizzical expression, as if he were peering out at the world through goggles.
A fastidious dresser, he was attired today in a handmade charcoal suit from Brighton society tailor Gresham Blake, a pale blue shirt and a pink silk tie, both from Jermyn Street, and shiny black Chelsea boots from Crockett and Jones in London’s Burlington Arcade. His scruffy black and white dog, Smut, which most of his patients were fond of, slept beside his desk on a cushion inside a wire-framed basket.
Although the modern trend for family doctors was to work with a group in a medical center, he preferred to work alone, in the same office he had occupied for over twenty-five years. It was a spacious, imposing consulting room on the ground floor of a rather ugly Victorian terrace, close to Church Road in Hove, with a tiny adjoining room for his secretary, Jenni Acton. She was fifty-seven, unmarried, and had worked for him with slavish devotion for twenty years.
The room, as did his immaculate outfit, reflected his particular passion for neatness and order. His qualifications hung in a row, uniformly framed and uniformly impressive. In addition to being a general practitioner, he held qualifications in immunology from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, homeopathy, Chinese medicine and acupuncture, as well as being a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He had in fact qualified as a surgeon before deciding that working as a family doctor with an exclusive private practice suited him better. And his legion of private patients were glad about that, because he was widely liked and popular, to the extent that his list had been closed for many years, and he would only take on new patients by very special criteria.
One such new patient, Freya Northrop, perched nervously on the edge of one of the two oak and leather chairs in front of his tidy, leather-topped desk, while he talked very charmingly and calmly to someone called Maxine on the other end of the phone. She was clearly distressed about her mother, who sounded, from what Freya could glean, terminally ill and in her last weeks.
The only clue about the doctor’s private life was a silver frame on his desk, containing a posed studio photograph of an attractive brunette in her mid-forties with mirror-image beautiful teenage daughters on either side against a sky-blue background. All of them were laughing at some joke cracked, presumably, by the professional photographer.
While he continued talking, making a promise to try to get the woman’s mother admitted into the Martlets Hospice, Freya Northrop stared around the room. Most doctors’ offices she had been in before were pretty nondescript. But this one was really rather grand, and it had more the feel of museum than a workplace. The wall just to her left displayed photographs and portraits of great medical pioneers; one she recognized as Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, and another, the pioneer of X-rays, Marie Curie, with all their names and brief bios in small frames at their bases. Further along was a row of framed copies of Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings.
There was a display case full of model human skulls. Next to them, and standing tall and proud as if presiding over the room, was a human skeleton on a plinth. It partially blocked the view from the office’s one window, with Venetian blinds that were open, looking out onto a parking area at the rear of the building.
The doctor made a note on a pad on his desk with a black Montegrappa pen, then typed something on his computer, all the time continuing to try to reassure the woman called Maxine on the other end.
There were several busts on plinths around the room, adding to the museum-like feel. Freya gazed at one, a man with a curiously elliptical-shaped bald dome and a beard that looked like flames.
“First do no harm!” The doctor’s tone had changed.
Startled, Freya looked around and saw he had his hand cupped over the mouthpiece of the phone and was addressing her, with an almost childlike twinkle of humor.
“Do no harm?” she replied.
“Hippocrates! The fellow you’re looking at. Bit of a wise old owl. The Hippocratic Oath all medics around the world take, swearing to practice medicine honestly, and all sorts of related stuff. Actually, it wasn’t Hippocrates who said ‘Do No Harm,’ it was a nineteenth-century surgeon, Thomas Inman.”
“Ah!”
“Won’t keep you a second.” He pointed at the phone. “I have a very worried and upset lady, just need to wait for her to speak to her mother. Yes, Hippocrates!”
The doctor, while he continued with his phone call, was studying this new young patient in front of him. Conservatively dressed, in her twenties, she had a classically beautiful face, with deep brown eyes framed by long hair parted down the center. She reminded him of the actress Julie Christie, whom he’d had the hots for when he had been a teenager. She reminded him of someone else, too, but that was painful and he pushed the memory aside.
Finally ending the call, he gave her a broad smile. “So, I haven’t seen you before, have I?” He glanced at her name on the computer screen, having to make a real effort to focus. “Freya?”
“No, I’ve not come to you before,” Freya Northrop said.
“Interesting name, Northrop. Hmmn. Northrop Frye. Ever read him?”
She shook her head blankly.
“Wonderful literary critic! Wrote some brilliant essays on T. S. Eliot. Really helped raise his profile. Milton’s too—especially Paradise Lost.”
“Ah,” she said, equally blankly.
“His first name was Herman.”
“Ah,” she said again, a little disconcerted by the curious conversation.
Her best friend, Olivia Harper, had said that Crisp was a wonderful doctor, and so jolly. But he seemed more odd than jolly, to her. She felt as if she was irritating him with her ignorance. “T. S. Eliot, I’ve heard of him.”
“The Waste Land?”
“OK, right.”
“You know the poem?”
“I don’t, no.”
Edward Crisp’s mind went back to last night. Walking Smut across Hove Lagoon. You could walk dogs along Brighton and Hove seafront in winter without them having to be on a lead. And sometimes in the evening, when it was dark enough, he could let Smut, his white mongrel with a black spot either side of her tummy, who he’d acquired as a rescue dog ten years ago, shit anywhere she liked without having to stoop and pick up the mess with a plastic bag or, like some cretinous dog people, with a pooper scooper.
He was thinking about that terrible image of the skeleton, lying exposed in the ragged hole in the path. He could not get her out of his mind.
“The Waste Land?”
The young patient’s words jolted him back to reality. “I grow old,” he said. “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
Freya Northrop frowned.
“‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,’” he said, and beamed. “But enough of that. I’m sorry if I’m not totally with it today, I saw a terrible thing last night, and I’m a bit upset. I’m a doctor, I try to make people better. I couldn’t help that poor woman. But that’s enough about me, let’s talk about you. Tell me why you are here?”
“Olivia Harper recommended you. I’ve just moved to Brighton from London.”
“Ah yes, indeed, what a lovely lady Olivia is. Quite a delight. Yes, of course. Forgive me, I’m very discombobulated this morning. But of course you don’t want to hear that. Tell me what brings you here?” He smiled, his eyes suddenly alive and twinkling with humor. He held his elegant, black pen up in front of him and stared at her, as if through it.
“Well,” she said. “I don’t feel ill or anything.”
“Of course not—why would you want to see a doctor if you were feeling ill, eh?” He grinned and it was infectious. She grinned back, relaxing a tad.
“Totally,” she replied. “Why would anyone?”
“Exactly! I only like to see patients who are feeling well! Who needs sick patients? They take up far too much time—and they reflect badly on me.” He tapped his chest. “Always come and see me anytime you are feeling well, yes?”
She laughed. “It’s a deal!”
“Right, well, nice to meet you, Freya!” He feigned standing up to say good-bye, then sat down again, chuckling. “So, tell me?”
Now she got him! “Well,” she said, “I’ve met this guy—that’s why I’ve moved down here—I’ve been off the pill for a while—but I’d like to go back on it again.”
There was a long silence. He peered at her and his demeanor seemed to have stiffened, and suddenly she felt a chill of unease. Had she touched some kind of nerve in him?
Then he smiled, a big, warm, friendly beam that lit up his entire countenance. “The pill? That’s all?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You’re planning to have sex with this—guy?”
“Well, we are already having sex. But—”
He raised his hands in the air. “Beware! Too much information! You want the pill, I’m your dealer! No problem. You are a very delightful young lady. Anything you want, just come and see me. So, OK, let me take some details about you, then I’ll give you a checkup. Tell me first some of your medical history?”
She recounted, as best she could recall, her appendectomy at the age of thirteen, her broken shoulder from snowboarding at sixteen, her chlamydia at eighteen, and, blushing, her recurring thrush more recently.
He tapped it all into his computer, seeming to take a particular delight, unless she was mistaken, in her venereal disease history. He then directed her behind the screen to remove her clothes.
While Freya Northrop was undressing, he tapped notes into his computer. Then he stared across the room at the green screen. He twisted the barrel of his pen so that the rollerball tip appeared, then retracted again.
That body in the Lagoon was really playing on his mind.
“I’m ready,” Freya said.
He continued to stare at the tip of his pen.
“Freya Northrop,” he said, almost silently, to himself. He liked her name. Nice lady! He liked her. “Bye for now!” he said a little while later, as she left. He liked everyone to leave him with a smile.
