Looking Good Dead

enthusiast who now owned it got stopped for drunken driving.

The advances in forensics from twenty-seven years back were beyond quantum. With modern DNA testing police forensic scientists boasted, not without substance, that if a human being had ever been in a room, no matter how long ago, that given time they could find evidence to prove it. Just one skin cell that had escaped the vacuum cleaner, or a hair, or a clothing fibre. Maybe something one hundred times smaller than a pinhead. There would be a trace.

And now they had the van.

And the original suspect was still alive.

Forensics had been through that van with microscopes, but so far, as a disappointing lab report Grace had read last night at home informed him, they had found nothing to link the van to the suspect. The forensic Scenes of Crime team had found a human hair, but the DNA was not a match.

But they would find something in that damned van, Grace was determined, if he had to pull the vehicle apart millimetre by millimetre himself with a pair of tweezers.

He took a swig from his bottle of mineral water, grimacing at the taste – or lack of taste – the sheer, faintly metallic nothingness of the stuff he was drinking in an effort to wean himself off his usual gallon of coffee a day. Then, replacing the cap, he stared at the gathering rain clouds, heavy as suet, suspended low above the grey slab of the Asda roof across the road that was most of his view, thinking about tomorrow.

It was Thursday tomorrow and he had a date – not like the last, disastrous bunny boiler of a blind date from an internet agency – but a real one with a beautiful woman. He was both looking forward to it and nervous at the same time. He was fretting about what to wear, about where to take her, whether he’d have enough to say to her.

And he was concerned about Sandy. About what she would think about him dating another woman. Absurd, he knew, to be thinking these thoughts after almost nine years, but he couldn’t help it. Just as he could not help wondering, almost every moment of his waking life, where she was, what had happened to her. Whether she was alive or dead.

Clutching the plastic Evian bottle he took another long swig, then stared over the top of the piles of out-of- control paperwork on his desk at his computer screen, then down at a stack of this morning’s papers. The headlines of the top one, the local paper the Argus, screamed out at him: Two Dead in Sussex Police Chase.

He dumped the newspapers on the floor and scanned the latest deluge of emails. He was still just getting the hang of the new Vantage software for the force’s system, which was a lot easier to use than the GreenScreen it replaced. Grace checked the incident reports log to see what had happened during the night, which normally he would have done first thing, but today he’d had to prepare for the press conference.

There was nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual detritus of a Brighton midweek night and morning. A handful of muggings, break-ins, car thefts, a hold-up at an all-night grocery store, a pub fight, a domestic, a bunch of RTAs – no fatalities – a call-out to farmland near Peacehaven to investigate a suspicious object. No major incidents, no serious crimes, nothing to grab his interest.

Good. He’d been out of the office most of the past week, apart from some hours he had had to spend in preparation and in court on the ongoing trial of a local villain, and needed a few days to catch up on his paperwork.

He synced his Blackberry with the computer and checked his diary. It was still clear. His secretary, Eleanor Hodgson – or Management Support Assistant as the political correctness Politburo now dictated she be called – had wiped all his appointments to let him concentrate on his case and the trial. But his diary would fill up soon enough, he rued.

Almost immediately there was a rap, then his door opened and Eleanor came in. Prim and nervy, fifty- something, she looked the kind of backbone-of-England woman Grace imagined one would meet at a vicar’s tea party – not that he had ever actually been to one. And after three years of working for him, Eleanor was still unfailingly polite and a tad formal, as if she was nervous of upsetting him, although he could not imagine why.

She stood holding a wodge of newspapers at arm’s length as if concerned they might pollute her. ‘Oh, Roy,’ she said. ‘I, er… these are later editions of some of the morning papers; I thought you might want to see them.’

‘Anything new?’

‘More of the same. The Guardian has a quote from Julia Drake at the Independent Police Complaints Commission.’

‘I didn’t think it would be long before they started. Self-righteous fucking cow.’

Eleanor flinched at his swear word, then smiled nervously. ‘Everyone’s being a bit harsh on you, I think.’

He glanced at his water, suddenly craving a cup of coffee. And a cigarette. And a drink. It was nearly lunchtime and he usually tried to avoid drinking until the evening, but he had a feeling he was going to break that rule today. The Independent Police Complaints Commission. Terrific. How many hours of his life was that going to consume over the coming months? He had known it was inevitable they would get involved, but having it confirmed seemed, suddenly, to make everything worse.

His phone rang. He answered it as Eleanor stood there, and heard the Chief Superintendent’s crisp Mancunian accent.

‘Well done, Roy,’ Gary Weston said, sounding even more like his superior than ever. ‘You handled yourself well.’

‘Thanks. We’ve now got the IPCC to deal with.’

‘We’ll sort them. Are you free at three?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come to my office – we’ll work on a report for them.’

Grace thanked him. The moment he hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was the Force Control Room. A civilian dispatcher called Betty Mallet, who had been there as long as he could remember, said, ‘Hello, Roy, how you doing?’

‘Been better,’ he said.

‘I’ve a request from Peacehaven CID for a senior officer to attend an investigation scene right away; are you free?’

Grace groaned silently. Why couldn’t she have called someone else? ‘What can you tell me about it?’

‘A local resident was walking her dog this morning up on farmland between Peacehaven and Piddinghoe village. The dog ran off and came back with a human hand in its mouth. The CID have gone up there with tracker dogs and they’ve located more human body parts – apparently very recent.’

Like all detectives, Grace kept a leather holdall at the ready containing a protective suit, overshoes, gloves, torch and other essential items of crime-scene kit. ‘OK,’ he said, resignedly staring at his bag on the floor, not needing this, not needing it at all. ‘Give me the exact location – I’ll be there in twenty minutes.’

7

They were laughing at him as he walked up the street. The Weatherman could feel it in his bones, the way some people could feel the cold or the damp in their bones. Which was why he avoided eye contact with all and everyone.

He could sense them all stopping, staring, turning, pointing, whispering, but he did not care. He was used to it; they’d been laughing at him all his life, or certainly for as far back into his twenty-eight years on this particular planet that he could remember. He was pretty sure it had been different on his previous planet, but they had blocked his memory of that.

‘Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, south-west four or five, veering north-west five to seven for a time, occasionally,’ he said to himself as he walked, indignant at being summoned out of the office and having to give up his lunch hour. ‘Gale eight in Viking, showers, dying out. Moderate or good. Forties, cyclonic five to seven, becoming north-west seven to severe gale nine, backing south-west four or five later. Showers then rain later.