a quietly efficient manner. Grace had worked with her several times in the past, and he was always impressed by her skills. Even to his experienced eye, all skeletons looked much the same. But to Joan Major, each was as individual as a fingerprint.
She dictated into her machine, quietly but clearly enough so that anyone who wanted to listen, could. She began with the skull.
‘Prominent brow ridges. Sloping forehead. Rounded superior orbit. Large mastoid process. Extended posterior zygomatic arch. Prominent nuchal crest.’
Then she moved on to the pelvis. ‘Narrow sciatic notch. Oval obturator foramen. Pubic bone shorter. Narrow subpubic angle. Subpubic concavity absent. Sacrum curved.’
Roy Grace listened intently, although much of what she said was too technical for him to grasp. He was tired and stifled a yawn, glancing at his watch. It was 11.45 a.m., and he could do with another coffee. He’d been up late last night, playing in his weekly boys’ poker game – where he’d ended forty pounds up. It had been an exhausting few weeks, and he was looking forward to having a curry with Cleo tonight, and kicking back, watching some Friday night junk television, ending, as they usually did, falling asleep watching their favourite talk show host, Graham Norton. And, glorious thought, they had no plans for the weekend. He was particularly looking forward to some time alone with Cleo, enjoying those precious last few weeks before, as he had been warned by his colleague Nick Nicholl who had recently become a father, their lives changed for ever. Originally, they had hoped to have their wedding before the baby was born, but the process for having Sandy declared legally dead, and work, had got in the way of that. Now they had to make new plans.
He also needed the breathing space, after the past hectic weeks, to focus on the vast bundle of trial documents of a snuff movie murder case involving a particularly nasty specimen of humanity he’d arrested, Carl Venner, whose trial was listed to come up at the Old Bailey in the next couple of weeks.
He turned his focus back to the forensic archaeologist. But within a few minutes, although he tried not to be, inevitably he was distracted by Cleo. A few weeks ago she’d been in hospital with internal bleeding. She had been warned not to do any heavy lifting, and it worried him to see her now, removing the body and rolling it on the trolley. Working in a mortuary, it was inevitable you would have to lift things. He was scared for her, because he loved her so much. Scared, because as the consultant had warned, with a second bleed her life could be in jeopardy as much as their baby’s.
He watched her stop the trolley alongside the naked cadaver of an elderly woman she had just finished preparing. The skull cap had been removed, and her brain lay on a Formica tray above her chest. On the white wall chart above there were blank spaces for the dimensions and weight of the dead woman’s internal organs. At the top, the name Claire Elford was handwritten in black marker pen.
It was a grim place to work and the job was tough. He could never fully understand its appeal to Cleo. She was a statuesque beauty, her long blonde hair clipped up, hygienically; she would have looked more at home in a smart London advertising agency or art gallery or magazine publisher – but she truly loved her job. He still could not believe his luck, that after almost ten years of hell, following Sandy’s disappearance, he had found love again. And with someone so gorgeous and such fun to be with.
He used to consider that Sandy was his soulmate, despite their constant arguments. But since beginning his relationship with Cleo, the word
Then turning his focus back to the forensic archaeologist, he asked, ‘Joan, can you give us any indication of his age?’
‘I can’t be too precise yet, Roy,’ she said, moving back to the skull and pointing. ‘The presence of a third molar suggests adult. The medial clavicle fused suggests he is older than thirty.’ Then she pointed at the pelvis. ‘The auricual surface is phase six, which would put him between forty-five and forty-nine. The pubic symphysis is phase five – less precise, I’m afraid – which could put him anywhere from twenty-seven to sixty-six. The wear in his teeth indicates towards the upper end of this age spectrum.’
She pointed at parts of the spine. ‘There are some osteophytic growths which again are suggestive of an older individual. In terms of race, the skull measurements suggest Caucasian, European – or European region – origin, but it’s difficult to be more precise. As a general observation, pronounced muscle attachments, particularly noticeable in the humerus, suggest a strong, active individual.’
Grace nodded. The skeletal remains, along with a pair of partially gnawed sea boots, UK size nine, had been discovered by chance in a disused tunnel deep beneath the city’s principal harbour, Shoreham. He already had a pretty good idea who this man was, and all that Joan Major had said was helping confirm this.
Six years earlier, an Estonian Merchant Navy sea captain called Andrus Kangur had disappeared after berthing his container ship loaded with timber. Kangur had been under observation by Europol for some years on suspicion of drugs trafficking. The man wasn’t necessarily a great loss to the world, but that wasn’t for Roy Grace to judge. He did know there was a probable motive. According to information from the Divisional Intelligence Unit, which, following a tip-off, had had the ship under surveillance from the time it entered the port, Kangur had tried to double-cross whoever was behind this cargo, and had not been too smart in his choice of whom he had screwed: a high-profile New York crime family.
From the evidence so far gathered, and from what Grace knew about the likely assailant, the unfortunate captain had been chained up in what amounted to an underground dungeon, and left to starve to death or be eaten by rats. When they had found him, all of his flesh and almost all of the sinews and his hair had gone. Most of his bones had fallen in on each other, or on to the floor, except for one set of arm bones and an intact skeletal hand, which hung from a metal pipe above him, held in place by a padlocked chain.
Suddenly, Roy’s phone rang.
It was a cheery and very efficient Detective Sergeant from Eastbourne CID, Simon Bates. ‘Roy, you’re the Duty SIO?’
Immediately Grace’s heart sank. Calls like this were never good news.
There were four Senior Investigating Officers in the Sussex CID Major Crime Branch, taking it in turns to be the Duty SIO, one week on, three weeks off. His shift was due to end at 6 a.m. on Monday.
‘Yes I am, Simon,’ he said, about as enthusiastically as a dental patient agreeing to root canal work. He suddenly heard a strange clicking sound, which lasted for a few seconds; interference from somewhere.
‘We have a suspicious death at a farm in East Sussex.’
‘What information can you give me?’
The clicking stopped. He listened to Bates, his heart sinking, his weekend down the khazi hours before it even begun. He exchanged a glance with Cleo, and could see, instantly, that she understood what was going on. She gave him a wan smile.
‘I’m on my way,’ he said.
He hung up and immediately dialled the Chief Constable’s Staff Officer, Trevor Bowles, informing him that it sounded like there was another murder in the county, and that he would report back with more details later. It was important to keep the CC informed of a potential major incident, as well as the Deputy Chief Constable and the Assistant Chief Constables, to avoid the risk of their being in the embarrassing position of hearing the news third hand from the media.
Next he dialled his colleague and friend, Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson.
‘Yo, old timer, what’s popping?’ Branson answered.
Grace grinned at his use of rap language, a recent affectation that he had picked up from a movie. ‘I’ll tell you what’s about to be popping – your ears. We’re going up a hill.’
8
I made a mistake, bitch. You were lucky. But that changes nothing. Next time I’ll be the lucky one. I will get you anywhere in the world that you go.
