70
Anna paced around her Gaia museum, her Gaia shrine. A Martini glass in her hand. She was drinking – deliberately drinking – a cocktail that was so not Gaia. It was a Manhattan. Two parts bourbon, one part red Martini, Angostura bitters and a maraschino cherry on its stalk, in a Martini glass.
She was drinking it to spite Gaia.
She was drinking it to get drunk.
It was her third Manhattan of the evening. Friday evening. She didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. So she could get totally smashed.
She had never been so humiliated in her life as she had been on Wednesday. Her face was still burning. She could hear the silent laughter of all the other fans on the sofas.
Standing in front of a life-size cardboard cut-out of her idol, she stared into those blue eyes. ‘What went wrong? Hey? Tell me? I’m your number one fan and you turned away from me? Tell me why? Hey? Tell me? You found someone else? Someone who’s more into you than me?’
Not possible.
No way.
‘You’ve made my life worth living, don’t you know that, don’t you care? You’re the only person who’s ever loved me.’
In her left hand she held a knife. A kukri. The knife one of her father’s ancestors had taken from a dead soldier way back during the Gurkha wars. Gurkhas were brave people. They did not care about dying.
What do you think about that, Gaia? Are you lying or a Gurkha?
Or just a parvenue from Whitehawk in Brighton who thinks you are too big to bother to acknowledge your fans?
She strutted very slowly down the steep wooden stairs, went through into the kitchen and filled her glass with the remainder of the drink that was in the silver cocktail shaker. Then she went back upstairs to her shrine.
‘Cheers, Gaia!’ she said. ‘So tell me, did it feel good cutting me dead yesterday? Hey? Tell me about it? Who put you on your platform? Did you ever think about that? Did you ever think about me? You stared at me so often. I watched you watching me on
‘I do really.
‘Tell me.
‘Tell me.
‘Tell me?’
71
For the Friday evening briefing, Glenn Branson chose a seat that gave him a clear view of Bella. He noticed that, as usual, she and Norman Potting sat well apart so that eye contact between them was difficult. Experienced detectives, he thought, they’d clearly planned this between them. So just how long had their relationship being going on? It wasn’t that long ago that Potting had married for the fourth time, suckered by a Thai girl who’d been bleeding him dry of money.
He watched her pop a Malteser into her mouth. She wasn’t in any sense beautiful, but there was something about her that he found very attractive. Warmth and a vulnerability that made him want to scoop her up into his arms. Just a short while ago he’d thought he might be able to offer her something better than the life of drudgery she had looking after her ailing mother. Now it was a different challenge altogether. Potting was so not right for her. He looked at him. At the smug grin on his face.
‘Glenn? Hello? Glenn?’
With a start, he realized Roy Grace was speaking to him, and he had no idea what about.
‘Sorry, chief, I was somewhere else.’
‘Welcome back from Planet Zog!’
There was some sniggering in the room.
‘Long day?’ Potting queried. His words were like a knife twisting inside him.
‘I asked you about the DNA results on the four limbs,’ Grace said, glancing briefly down at his notes. ‘You said you were expecting them back from the lab today?’
Branson nodded. ‘Yep. I have the results.’ He opened a plastic folder. ‘I can read you out the full lab report if you want, chief?’
Grace shook his head. To most police officers, himself included, DNA reports were a mysterious, arcane art. He had always been rubbish at science at school. In fact he had been rubbish at most things at school except for rugby and running. ‘Just summarize for now, Glenn.’
‘Okay. So all four limbs are from the same body and it’s a millions-to-one certainty that they belong to the torso of “Unknown Berwick Male”,’ he said.
‘Good work,’ Grace said. ‘Right, so we have another piece of our jigsaw in place. All we are missing now is his head.’
‘Could be we are looking for a man who lost his head to a woman,’ Potting said, and guffawed.
‘You should know!’ Bella rounded on Potting. Potting blushed and looked down. To everyone else present her remark was a barb about his marital failures. Only Glenn knew the truth behind it.
‘Not very helpful, actually, Norman,’ Grace said.
‘Sorry, boss.’ He looked around with a sheepish grin, but no one responded.
Roy Grace stared at Potting. He was a fine detective, but sometimes he could be so damned irritating with his bad jokes, and on this enquiry he seemed to be worse than ever.
‘The issue we have is the timing difference between the torso and the limbs,’ Glenn said, pushing his mess of thoughts to the back of his mind, and fully focused again now. ‘We know that the torso was deposited many months ago and is in a highly advanced state of decomposition. The limbs are relatively fresh.’
‘Which would indicate that Darren Wallace’s opinion that they had been frozen is probably correct,’ said the Crime Scene Manager, David Green.
‘Is that not something the pathologist can determine?’ Bella Moy asked.
Green shook his head. ‘Not easily. Freezing will cause cell damage, but it is going to take a while to establish that.’
‘So what does this tell us?’ Grace said, addressing the entire team. ‘Why was the torso dumped months ago and the limbs only in the past couple of days?’
‘Someone playing games with us, chief?’ suggested Nick Nicholl.
‘Yes,’ Roy Grace said. ‘That’s a possibility. But let’s apply our old friend Brother Ockham’s razor.’
William of Ockham was a fourteenth-century friar and logician. He believed that the simplest answer was usually the right one.
‘You’re suggesting a link between
‘I think we’re dealing with someone either very cunning or very nervous,’ Grace replied. ‘It’s possible that he left the torso and the suit fabric in the chicken farm as one clue for us. Then the limbs and the piece of suit fabric at the trout lake as another clue. In which case at some point we’ll find another piece of fabric and the head. Or, as I
