‘He should get out more. Come to think of it, so should you.’
‘I’m working on it.’
Grace’s tone became more serious. ‘Okay, we have a development.’
Shit
, Branson groaned inwardly. ‘We do?’ he said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
‘The Specialist Search Unit have located a human head. They think it might be Berwick Male’s head.’
This time Branson’s enthusiasm was genuine. ‘Where?’
‘It’s in a shallow grave in a ditch, about a quarter of a mile west of the lake where they recovered the limbs earlier today. Because there’s no Home Office pathologist free tonight, we have one coming tomorrow morning at seven, Ben Swift. Can you meet him at the site? I’ll cover the morning briefing.’
‘Of course, chief.’
Grace’s voice sounded a little strange, a lot more formal than usual, as if he were considering his words carefully. ‘Okay, I’m going to give you the compass co-ordinates. Got something to write them down on?’
Branson pulled his notepad out of his pocket. ‘Ready.’
Grace repeated the directions, which Glenn already knew, to the West Sussex Piscatorial trout lake, near Henfield. He was a little surprised at the elaborate directions the Detective Superintendent gave him, as if Grace did not realize he had already been there for much of today. But all the same, he dutifully wrote them down, and the precise co-ordinates.
‘We’ve been lucky so far that the press haven’t cottoned on. Hopefully we can recover the head before we have to worry about the next stage of our press strategy,’ Grace said.
‘Guess we’re lucky that Spinella’s away on honeymoon,’ Branson said.
‘Clearly there is a God!’
*
Worthing was the next coastal town west from Brighton and Hove. With its Victorian pier, faded Regency buildings and wide promenade, it had a generally calm air, compared to the edgy vibrancy of its racy neighbour to the east. Glenn Branson had always liked the place, despite its reputation as a major retirement centre and the sobriquet that went with that, of ‘God’s Waiting Room’.
The satnav took him on a route that bypassed the town itself, and down into a suburb, Durrington, and into a broad network of streets lined with postwar bungalows, two-storey houses and shopping parades. The kind of pleasant, utterly civilized open area, peppered with yellow Neighbourhood Watch signs in front windows where, you felt, nothing bad could ever happen to any of its residents.
He slowed to 28 m.p.h. as he approached a speed camera, then made a right, followed by a left, obeying the dictatorial commands of the woman’s voice from inside his TomTom, then made another right on to Terringes Avenue. It was a quiet street of neat red-brick houses; he drove along, peering through the twilight at the house numbers.
‘You have arrived!’ the satnav announced.
He saw 280 on his right, 282, then 284.
He felt a sudden flutter of nerves. God, this was how he had felt – how many years back? – when he was first dating Ari!
Number 284 was on a junction. He drove past the house and turned right, drove a hundred yards then made a U-turn and parked.
Calm down!
He could smell the scent of the flowers.
What the hell am I doing here?
His insides were jangling, as if he’d stuck his finger into an electrical socket.
Calm down!
He took some deep breaths.
What if she was out?
What if she told him to get lost and made a complaint about sexual harassment?
For a moment, he was tempted, very seriously tempted, to twist the ignition key, tramp the accelerator and get the hell out of there.
You’re not even divorced, man!
He ruminated on that for some moments.
Yeah, but.
He got out of the car, scooped up the bottle and flowers, and locked the doors. He walked the short distance up to Terringes Avenue, turned left towards Bella’s home, and then froze.
A man was standing outside her front door, clutching a huge bouquet of flowers in his arms. A man he recognized.
He could not believe his eyes. No way, it absolutely could not be him! But it was.
The door opened, and Bella stood there, wearing a short dress, her hair looking like it had just been done, as it had last night.
She looked like she had been expecting him. He said something and she laughed. They kissed, just a fleeting peck. Two people comfortable with each other.
Norman Potting went inside and the door closed behind him.
Glenn stood there, gobsmacked. Then, slowly he walked back to his car, stopping on the way to jam the bouquet into a dustbin.
He drove off at speed, shaking his head in anger, astonishment and self-pity, the wine bottle rolling on the passenger seat beside him. Norman Potting. Incredible! Like, it did not make any sense. What the hell did she see in an ugly old lech like him?
Clearly something.
Or had he totally misread it?
‘You bitch! You cut me dead!’ Anna screamed at Gaia.
Her idol stared icily back.
‘You humiliated me in front of so many people. You can’t do that, you can’t treat people like that, do you understand?’ She was gripping the knife in her hand. It was an antique dagger with a scabbard that she had kept in her handbag ever since a man tried to attack her outside a nightclub in Brighton, a few years ago.
She had learned from an episode of
CSI
that it was dumb to use an ordinary household knife to stab someone. Invariably the knife would strike bone and when that happened your hand would slip forward along the handle, and the blade would slice into your hand. As a result you would leave some of your own blood at the scene. A dumb way to get caught. But if you used a dagger with a guard, that would stop your hand sliding forward.
‘You think you can just treat people how your mood takes you? One moment sending them passionate signals and the next cutting them dead? How would you like to be cut dead?’ She raised the dagger, the blade glinting in the overhead light. ‘Do you think all of us who love you would still love you if your face was a mass of scars? How much value would you have then, do you think?’
She stared at her, hatred blurring her vision. ‘All this stuff of yours, this tat, this grot, this rubbish we pay a fortune for on eBay. Do think we’d still pay the same if you had knife cuts all over you? Well, do you? Can’t you speak? Cat got your tongue? How would you like to try singing with your tongue cut out? People did that to their enemies in some countries once. If they got screwed. They’d use red-hot pincers to pull their tongues right out of their throats. You wouldn’t look so damned great going on stage and trying to sing without your tongue, would you? You wouldn’t make much of a lover for King George in this film, would you? You’d be pretty useless at kissing, and you wouldn’t be that great at giving him oral sex. Have you thought about that?’
She waited.
‘Have you?’
She waited again.
Then, screaming at the top of her voice, and shaking with rage, ‘HAVE YOU?’
She slashed the knife forward, ripping across Gaia’s face, right from the side of her forehead, across her right eye, down her cheek. The cardboard cut-out fell off the display stand and tumbled to the floor.
Anna stared down, dagger held high, gripping it even harder. Gaia stared up at her from the beige carpet, the rip clear and even across her face. ‘Listen to me, bitch.’ She knelt, staring down into Gaia’s eyes. ‘No one stays on a pedestal who doesn’t deserve it – no one, not for ever. You’d better understand that. You’d better understand what you did tonight. Look at you now,’ she sneered.
Mimicking 1950s sex idol Betty Page, Gaia had her hair died black, with a fringe, and was wearing a see-through black negligee. Bondage tape was wound across her mouth. There was Japanese writing on the front, below her face, and it was signed by Gaia. The poster came from her second Japanese tour and was one of only four in existence. Anna had paid £2,600 for it five years ago.
‘We build you up, and we can smash you down just as easily. See? See what a worthless bit of cardboard you’ve now become, bitch?’
She put the knife down, raised her hand making their special sign. ‘Secret fox!’
Glenn was still thinking about Norman Potting and Bella Moy at 6.45 the next morning, as he made the now familiar left turn at the West Sussex Piscatorial Society sign and crossed the cattle grid. Ominous clouds were thickening overhead and he didn’t need the weather forecast on the radio to tell him a deluge was on its way. Rain was not good news for an outdoor crime scene.
In the city, the uniform division called it ‘Policeman Rain’. The streets were always much quieter when it was raining, there were fewer street fights, fewer muggings and bag snatches, fewer break-ins, and fewer drug dealers lurking on corners. Villains did not like getting wet any more than anyone else. But for crime scenes, heavy rain was the worst news, because crucial evidence, such as tyre marks, footprints, clothing fibres and hairs could get washed away very rapidly.
He was excited by Roy’s news last night that a head had been found. There was no guarantee it would turn out to be ‘Unknown Berwick Male’s’, but if his clothes were here, and it matched the limbs, then it was highly likely. And if they had the head, they might be able to get a visual identification of the victim, and failing that, identification through dental records. Quite apart from anything else, the swifter this investigation moved forward under his stewardship, the better it would reflect on him.
It was strange, he thought. On all previous murder investigations he had been on, he – and every member of the enquiry team – developed empathy with the victims, and it became personal, a determination to bring the perpetrator to justice. But at the moment, although a man was dead, without knowing his identity he felt distanced from him.
As he drove through the abandoned farmyard development, he was a little surprised not to see the big yellow SSU truck in situ – if they had found the head last night, he would have thought they would have been out in force here from first light today, doing a fingertip search of the area around it. But it was possible they had been called out to an emergency operation somewhere else. The only vehicles here were a marked police car, its windows drenched in dew, belonging to the hapless officer on the last shift of overnight crime scene guard duty, standing forlornly in front of the tape, and a small blue Vauxhall Nova. It might be the Home Office patholo-gist’s, he speculated, but he would have thought that covering the mileage he did, and carting around his equipment, he would have had a more substantial vehicle.
He pulled alongside it and, before switching off the ignition, checked the overnight serials on the car’s computer, to see if there had been any incidents logged that might have required the SSU’s attendance. But it had been a quiet night, just run-of-the-mill stuff. A car theft, two RTCs, a robbery at the Clock Tower, a smashed window at Waitrose, a boat set on fire at the Marina, two domestic fights. He climbed out and peered through the Vauxhall’s window, but the interior of the car looked as pristine and impersonal as a newly collected rental.
He opened the boot of his car and struggled into a protective suit, then pulled on the gum boots he had brought, not making the same mistake as yesterday of ruining his shoes in the mire. Then he clumped his way carefully through the slippery mud of the track and up to the very young woman police officer, and held up his warrant card. Her name badge read PC Sophie Gorringe.
‘I’m the deputy SIO – everything all right?’
She nodded and gave him a stoic smile. She looked in her late teens, and could have barely left college, he thought.
‘Long vigil?’
‘Two hours to go, still,’ she said. ‘Nicer since it got light – it was quite spooky when it was dark – kept hearing an owl.’
‘Whose is that car?’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
Sophie Gorringe was about to speak, when he heard a familiar chirpy voice behind him.
‘Mine, Detective Sergeant Branson!’
Glenn recognized the voice instantly. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be on honeymoon?’ he said in dismay, as he turned.
The twenty-five-year-old reporter from the
Argus
smiled smugly. He was thin faced, with short, gelled-back hair, wearing a dark grey suit with a white shirt and a narrow tie, and chewing gum, as ever. His face was nut brown, except the tip of his ferret-like nose which was pink, from having peeled. ‘Seems like I came back just at the right time.’ He was clutching his notepad.
Glenn heard a car, and a moment later Roy Grace came into view, driving his unmarked silver Ford Focus estate.
Spinella’s phone rang, and he turned away from Branson to answer it. It sounded like he was being given instructions for another job after he had finished here. Just as he ended the call Roy Grace strode up to them, in gum boots but not in a protective suit.
‘Nice honeymoon?’ he asked the reporter.
‘Beautiful – ever been to the Maldives?’ Spinella asked.