Two divers were entering the water, one on the right and one on the left, each holding a black and red underwater recovery bag. They were in scuba outfits, with bright yellow harnesses from which a green and yellow cord trailed up to a spool held by an attendant, also in a dry suit, for each of them. A dive supervisor stood observing. Glenn, standing near him, watched as they sank below the surface in a maelstrom of bubbles.
This was a beautiful, peaceful place, he thought. There were worse places to spend a day. A fly-fishing club – William Pitcher had explained the difference between fly fishing and coarse fishing. As Branson now understood, anglers would only cast their feather trout flies on the surface; there were no weights to drag them down to the bottom. Whatever lay beneath could remain undiscovered for years, perhaps for ever. Making this a smart choice for a deposition site?
Behind him, he heard rubber-soled footsteps clumping along the wooden boards, then Bella’s voice. ‘This is so beautiful!’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ he replied, with a grimace, still very churned up from the phone call. He could understand at this moment how people could murder their spouses.
Bella stood beside him and nodded, with a strangely sad smile. ‘Ever fished?’ she asked him.
‘No, not my thing. Not sure I’d have the patience. You?’
‘I prefer to catch mine already battered, with plenty of chips.’
He laughed, and then they began to chat more easily, although she still seemed more distant and less responsive today than last night. Perhaps it was him who was distracted, by his troubles with Ari and his constant longing for his kids – or perhaps she was fretting about her mother?
After some minutes, Jon Lelliott began wading out of the water towards them, holding a recovery bag with strands of weed hanging from it. He carried it across to the small SOCO tent which had been erected close by the SSU lorry.
Watched by Glenn and several others, he unzipped the bag very carefully. It contained what looked at first like a thin, dark-coloured log. It was only when Glenn looked closer that he could see clearly exactly what it was. A black bin bag, tied with fuse wire, wrapped around a long, narrow object, with something white protruding from the end.
A hairless human hand.
Glenn flinched in revulsion, but Bella stared at it with professional detachment. ‘Left hand. It doesn’t look at all decomposed, I would say it’s not been in the water very long,’ she stated with certainty in her voice.
Although he’d attended a number of grim crime scenes, Glenn had not, to his relief, had to deal with many dismembered corpses before. Even so, it didn’t require any expertise to tell that this was not the work of someone with surgical skills. The partial limb looked like it had been hacked off with a blunt blade – the bone was splintered and there were tendrils of muscle and skin hanging around the end like a ragged fringe. It could almost have been a theatre prop, he thought. Or something from a joke shop. There was no smell of decay coming from it, another indicator that Bella was probably right that it had not been long in the water.
In which case, he thought, disappointed, it was unlikely to be connected to the torso from the chicken farm which had been there many months.
‘Twenty-four hours, tops,’ David Green said, joining them around the table. ‘I would say much less. Otherwise crayfish, rats, voles or pike – if there are any – would have started taking nibbles from the exposed flesh. I’m actually surprised nothing’s had a go at it already – crayfish are normally present within a couple of hours.’
‘Unless there are more body parts down there which are keeping them happy,’ Bella said.
‘Quite,’ Green agreed.
There were indeed more down there.
During the next hour and a half, the police divers recovered the rest of the left arm up to the shoulder, the lower right arm and hand, also severed at the elbow, and the rest of that, too. As well as both legs, each chopped into three parts. But no head.
Each body part had been wrapped in a bin-liner, weighted with a rock and tied with fuse wire.
Also, around the muddy and partly boggy shore of the lake, there were some footprints identical to the one close by the strip of cloth that had been spotted by William Pitcher, each in a position corresponding with throwing distance of where one of the body parts had been located. A numbered yellow marker lay beside each of them.
At the same time as the last of the body parts was being recovered, the SOCO team, in their line search, followed a trail of footprints leading away from the lake. At the end of this trail, in a shallow and evidently hastily dug hole, covered in branches, lay suit trousers and a jacket, matching exactly their sample strip of fabric.
A few minutes later, back at the rear of the Specialist Search Unit truck, each of the body parts lay wrapped in white plastic sheeting, tagged and dated. Glenn, sipping a mug of coffee, examined the suit through the plastic bags. But to his disappointment, whatever labels had once been sewn in had been removed.
Turning to Bella he said, ‘So, what do you think?’
She shrugged. ‘That there’s a sodding Great White in there that ate the head and torso. The dive team must have missed it.’
He grinned. ‘Yeah, my thoughts exactly.’
‘Failing that, we might have some of the missing bits of our human jigsaw puzzle. Except the body is months old and these aren’t.’
‘With powers of observation like that, you could make a fine detective!’
‘Flattery will get you anywhere,’ she replied, and gave him a warm smile.
She seemed so vulnerable, he thought. She was a tough detective but a lost human soul. He wanted to put his arms around her and hug her, but this was not the time or place.
But, he decided, at some point in the very near future he would find the right time – and place.
51
Amis Smallbone decided he would find the right time and place, too. He stood alone on the terrace steps of Brighton’s Grand Hotel, a Chivas Regal on the rocks in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He dragged hard on it, staring with small, hateful eyes out across the busy traffic of King’s Road at people strolling along the promenade on the far side, and at the flat blue sea beyond.
He was dressed nattily but in dated style: blue blazer with shiny brass buttons, open-neck white shirt with a paisley cravat, blue chinos and blue and white Sebago deck shoes. He looked like he might have just stepped off a yacht. Like the sodding great one he was staring at right now, a showy motor cruiser, powering through the sea at a fast lick, a tall, mare’s tail wake arcing behind it.
That could have been him on that yacht, he thought, taking another drag. If it had not been for Detective Roy Grace.
Henry Tilney was right, he knew. Leave it, put it behind him. But that had never been his way. People needed to be taught lessons. Grace had wiped him out. He’d lost everything. Twelve fucking years of his life locked up in shithole prisons, surrounded by losers.
Gaia was here in this hotel. Up in the Presidential Suite, having a cosy chat with Roy Grace at this moment, together with Chief Superintendent Graham Barrington and a bunch of other cops. He smiled as he crushed out the cigarette, drained the whisky and contemplated going back inside to order another. At least he still had some of his old sources. And one of them could give him access to any room in this hotel, twenty-four seven.
He could listen to the conversation in the Presidential Suite, too, at this moment, if he wanted, thanks to his old contact. But there was no need. He pulled another cigarette pack out of his left-hand jacket pocket. A tiny light winked on it – so faint it was almost impossible to see in this bright daylight. He returned it to his pocket with a smug smile. He would listen to the recording later, at his leisure.
One floor above Smallbone, in the imposing, eau-de-nil, deep-carpeted sitting room of the Presidential Suite, Roy Grace, who was never normally star-struck, had to pinch himself. He was sitting on a sofa next to Gaia! And she was nice – she was warm, friendly and funny, not at all the diva he had been anticipating; but her presence was
