The timing was not absolutely impossible, she told Roy. But she had never experienced a situation where things had happened so quickly, and the young man had definitely not been in her hospital.
He picked up his blue, A4 notebook from the passenger seat, rested it against the steering wheel and wrote
AUSTRIA? SPAIN? OPT-OUT COUNTRIES?
Was it really a possibility that Unknown Male was an Austrian or Spanish organ donor buried at sea? Austria was a landlocked country. And if he was from Spain could he have drifted over 100 miles in just a few days?
Improbable enough to be discounted at this stage.
He felt hungry suddenly and glanced at the car clock. It was quarter past two. He never normally had much of an appetite after a post-mortem, but it had been a long time since his early-morning bowl of porridge.
Turning up the collar of his raincoat, he sprinted across the road, climbed over a low but awkward brick wall, ran up the short, muddy track and through the gap in the hedge, the standard shortcut to the ASDA superstore which served as Sussex House’s unofficial canteen.
*
Ten minutes later he was seated at his desk and unwrapping a dismally healthy-looking salmon and cucumber sandwich. Some while back Cleo had started quizzing him on what he ate when he wasn’t with her, knowing his tendency for junk food while at work and that for the past nine years he had survived on microwaved instant meals at home.
So at least he could look her in the face tonight and tell her he had eaten a Healthy Option sandwich. He would just conveniently omit the Coke, the KitKat and the caramel doughnut.
He quickly glanced through the post his MSA, Eleanor, had piled on his desk. On the top was a typed note in response to the Police National Computer registration plate check he had requested on the Mercedes he had seen earlier this morning, GX57 CKL. It was registered to a Joseph Richard Baker at an address he recognized as a high-rise block close to the seafront, behind the Metropole Hotel. The name was vaguely familiar but nothing that ran up any flags. There was no marker on the vehicle. There was a Joe Baker who had long been around the seedier side of Brighton, running saunas and massage parlours. It figured he would be out late and in a flash set of wheels.
He turned his attention to his emails, noting a few that needed urgent replies, then logged on to the serials. As he glanced through them, noting the usual domestics, muggings, break-ins, moped thefts and RTCs, but not major incidents, he took a bite of the sandwich, wishing he had gone for the All Day Breakfast option of a triple-decker egg, bacon and sausage wedge instead. Then, unscrewing the cap of the Coke, he remembered his promise yesterday to the Argus reporter. Reaching for his Rolodex, he spun it to find the man’s card and dialled his mobile number.
It sounded as if Kevin Spinella, who answered instantly, was also eating his lunch.
‘I don’t have much for you,’ Grace told him. ‘I’m not holding a press conference. Instead I’m just going to send out a press release, so I’ll give you the exclusive I promised. OK?’
‘Very good of you, Detective Superintendent. I appreciate it.’
‘Well, I think most of it you already know. The dredger,
Arco Dee
, pulled up the body of an unidentified male, believed to be in his mid-teens, yesterday afternoon, ten miles south of Shoreham Harbour, in its designated dredge area. A Home Office post-mortem was carried out this morning and the cause of death is as yet undetermined.’
‘Would that be on account of all the vital organs being missing, Detective Superintendent?’
How the hell do you know that? This was a real, ongoing problem, Grace realized. Where did Spinella get his information from? Some day soon he was going to find the leak. Was it someone here, within HQ CID, or at the Coroner’s Office, or in one of the uniform divisions or even at the mortuary? He thought carefully before answering, listening to the somewhat unpleasant sound of the reporter chewing.
‘I can confirm that the body has been subject to recent surgery.’
‘An organ donor, right?’
‘I’d rather you didn’t print that for the moment.’
There was a long silence. ‘But I’m correct?’
‘You would be correct to print that the body has been subject to recent surgery.’
Another silence. Then a reluctant, ‘OK.’ More chewing, followed by, ‘What can you tell me about the body?’
‘We estimate it has only been in the water for a few days at most.’
‘Nationality?’
‘Unknown. Our priority is to track down his identity. It would be helpful to me if you printed something along the lines that Sussex Police would like to hear from anyone with a missing teenage boy who has been subject to recent surgery.’
‘Foul play is suspected presumably?’
‘It is possible that the victim died lawfully and was buried at sea – and then drifted.’
‘But you are not ruling out foul play?’
Again Grace hesitated before replying. Every conversation he had with this reporter was like a game of chess. If he was able to get Spinella to word the story the way he wanted, it could be very helpful in generating public response. But if it was printed sensationally, all it would do was frighten the citizens of Brighton and Hove.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘If I tell you, you’ll promise not mention anything about organs at this stage?’
More chewing down the earpiece. Followed by the sound of a paper or cellophane wrapping being torn off. Then, ‘OK, deal.’
‘Sussex Police are treating this as a suspicious death.’
‘Top man! Thank you.’
‘Here’s something else for you, but not to be printed. I’m having the area scanned and police divers are going down tomorrow.’
‘You’ll let me know what they find?’
Grace assured him he would and ended the call. Then he finished his lunch and, almost instantly, his stomach feeling uncomfortably bloated, began to regret the doughnut.
Checking his electronic diary, he saw a reminder that he needed to send a request to Cellmark Forensic Services, the private laboratory at Abingdon which now handled Sussex CID’s DNA testing, for the six-monthly check on the DNA profiles of his cold cases.
While the perpetrators had so far eluded justice, there was always the chance that a relative would have their DNA taken by the police after committing an offence – even for something as comparatively minor as a drunk-driving charge. Parents, children and siblings could provide enough of a match, so although this was a considerable expense out of the force’s annual forensic budget, it did occasionally produce results to justify the outlay. He emailed his MSA, instructing her to put in a request.
As he had reflected many times, being a detective was a bit like fishing. Endless casting, endless patience. He glanced at the seven-pound six-ounce brown trout, stuffed and mounted in a glass case fixed to a wall in his office, and alongside it, a huge stuffed carp which Cleo had recently given him, with the terrible pun,
Carpe diem
, embossed on the brass plaque at its base. He referred to the trout, occasionally, when briefing young, fresh-faced detectives, making an increasingly tired joke about patience and big fish.
Then he focused his mind back on Unknown Male and made a series of phone calls to assemble his initial inquiry team. All the while, he kept staring at the damn fish, his eyes moving back and forth between them. Water. Fish lived in water. In the sea and in rivers. Then he realized why he kept staring at them.
A few years back, the headless and limbless torso of an unidentified African boy had been found in the Thames. Grace was sure he remembered, from all the publicity at the time, that this boy had had his internal organs removed too. It had turned out to be an occult ritual killing.
Feeling a sudden surge of adrenalin, Grace tapped out a search command for details of the file he knew he had saved somewhere on his computer.
31
Sometimes, Roy Grace wondered whether computers had souls. Or at least a sense of humour. He had not yet elevated Unknown Male to Major Incident status, but because the investigation was now a formal operation the protocols required that it be allocated a name. The Sussex Police Computer had a program for this purpose, and the name it allocated the Detective Superintendent was bizarrely apt. Operation Neptune.
Shoulder to shoulder around the small, round table in his office were five detectives whom he had come to regard as his most trusted team.
Detective Constable Nick Nicholl was in his late twenties, short-haired and tall as a beanpole, a zealous detective and a handy centre forward, whom Grace had encouraged to take up rugby, thinking he would be perfect to play in the police team, of which he was now president. But the poor man was permanently bleary-eyed and zapped of energy, thanks to the joys of recent fatherhood.
Rookie Detective Constable Emma-Jane Boutwood, a slim girl with an alert face and long fair hair scooped up in a bun, had nearly been killed in a recent operation, when she had been crushed against a wall by a stolen van. She was still officially convalescing and entitled to more leave, but she had begged to come back, determined to get on with her career, and had already proved her worth to him in an earlier operation.
Shabbily dressed, with a bad comb-over and reeking of tobacco, Detective Sergeant Norman Potting was an old-school policeman, politically incorrect, blunt and with no interest in promotion – he had never wanted the responsibility, but nor had he wanted to retire when he reached fifty-five, the normal police pension age for a sergeant, and would probably extend his service. He liked to do what he was best at doing, which he called
plodding and drilling
. Plodding, methodical police work, drilling down deep beneath the surface of any crime, drilling for as long and as deep as he needed until he hit a seam that would lead him somewhere. A veteran of three failed marriages, he was currently on his fourth, with a young Thai woman who, he boasted proudly at every opportunity, he had found via the Internet.
Detective Sergeant Bella Moy, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, with a tangle of hennaed hair, was something of a lost soul. Unmarried – although, like many, married to the police force – she was stuck living with, and looking after, her elderly mother.
The fifth was Glenn Branson.
Also attending were the Crime Scene Manager, David Browne, and the HOLMES analyst, Juliet Jones.
A phone rang, to the tune of ‘Greensleeves’. Everyone looked around. Embarrassed, Nick Nicholl plucked the offending machine out of his pocket and silenced it.
Moments later, another phone rang. The
Indiana Jones
theme. Potting yanked his phone out, checked the display and silenced it.
In front of Grace lay his A4 notebook, his red case-file folder, his policy book and the notes Eleanor Hodgson had typed up for him. He opened the proceedings.
‘The time is 4.30 p.m., Thursday 27 November. This is the first briefing of Operation Neptune, the investigation into the death of Unknown Male, retrieved yesterday, 26 November, from the English Channel, approximately ten nautical miles south of Shoreham Harbour, by the dredger
Arco Dee
. Our next briefing will be at 8.30 a.m. tomorrow, and we will then hold briefings here in my office at 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. until further notice.’
He then read out a summary of the post-mortem report from Nadiuska De Sancha. Another phone began ringing. This time David Browne dived into his pocket to retrieve it, checked the display, then silenced it.
When Grace had finished the report, he continued, ‘Our first priority is to establish the young man’s identity. All we know at this stage is that he was in his mid-teens, and his internal organs appear to have been professionally removed. A fingerprint check on the UK database has proved negative. DNA has been sent to the lab on a three-day turnaround, but as that takes us into the weekend, we won’t get their report until Monday, but I doubt whether we’ll get a hit.’
He paused for a moment. Then he addressed DS Moy.
‘Bella, I need you to get the dental photographs out. It’s a massive task, but we’ll start local and see what we get.’
‘There is a designated charted area for burials at sea, right, chief?’ Norman Potting said.
‘Yes, fifteen nautical miles east of Brighton and Hove – it’s a burial ground for everyone from Sussex,’ Roy Grace replied.
‘Don’t the prevailing winds and currents run west to east?’ the DS continued. ‘I remember that from geography lessons when I was at school.’
‘Around the time they built the ark?’ quizzed Bella, who was not a Norman Potting fan.
Grace gave her a stern, cautioning look.
‘Norman’s right,’ Nick Nicholl said. ‘I used to do a bit of sailing.’
‘It would take some storm to move a body that far in a few days,’ Potting said, ‘if it was weighted down. I just spoke to the coastguard. He’d need to see the weights, then he could try to plot a movement path.’
‘Tania Whitlock’s on that already,’ Grace said. ‘But we need to speak to all the organ transplant coordinators in the UK and see if we can find a connection with our teenager. Norman, I’d like to task you with that. We already have one negative, from the Royal Sussex County Hospital.’
Potting nodded and made a note on his pad. ‘Leave it with me, chief.’
‘We can’t rule out the possibility that the body came from another county, can we?’ Bella Moy asked.
‘No,’ Grace said. ‘Or from another country. I would like you to speak to our counterparts in the ports of France bordering the English Channel. Also, Spain should be checked out as a priority.’ He explained his reasons.
‘I’ll get on to it straight away.’
‘We don’t yet know the cause of death, right?’ Nick Nicholl asked.
‘No. I want you to do a trawl with Crime Intelligence Bureaux around the country and see if you can find any other cases of a similar nature. And I want you to check the Mispers list for Sussex, Kent and Hampshire for any possible match to our Unknown Male.’