Dead Man's Grip (32 page)

‘We can’t go on meeting like this, Roy!’ she said chirpily.

He grinned. He liked Tracy a lot. She was brilliant at her work, a true professional, but – compared to some of her colleagues, or at least one in particular – she had managed to avoid becoming cynical. As an SIO you soon learned that an efficient Crime Scene Manager could make a big difference to the start of your investigation.

‘So what do we have?’

‘Not the prettiest picture I’ve ever seen.’

She turned and led the way. Grace nodded at a couple of detectives he knew. They would have been called here immediately by the response officers to assess the situation. He followed her across to the first of a row of grey, single-storey sheds, each of which had a thick asphalt roof and sliding white door. The door of the building was open.

He suddenly caught a whiff of vomit. Never a good sign. Then Tracy stepped aside, gesturing with her arm for him to enter. He felt a blast of icy air on his face and became aware of a very strong, almost overpowering, reek of smoked fish. Straight ahead he saw a solid wall of large, headless, dark pink fish, hanging in rows, suspended by sturdy hooks to a ceiling rack. There were four rows of them, with narrow aisles between them, hardly wide enough for a person to walk through.

Almost instantly his eyes were drawn to the front of the third row. He saw what at first looked like a huge, plump animal, its flesh all blackened, hanging among the fish. A pig, he thought, fleetingly.

Then, as his brain began to make sense of the image, he realized what it actually was.

She loved her view of the Isar, the pretty river that bisected Munich, running almost entirely through parkland. She liked to sit up here at the window, in her fourth-floor apartment above the busy main road of Widenmayerstrasse, and watch people walking their dogs, or jogging, or pushing infants in their strollers along the banks. But most of all she liked to look at the water.

It was for the same reason she liked to go to the Englischer Garten and sit near the lake. Being close to water was like a drug to her. She missed the sea so much. That was what she missed most of all about Brighton. She loved everything else about this city but some days she pined for the sea. And there were other days when she pined for something else, too – the solitude she used to have. Sure, she had resented it at times, that enforced solitude, when work would summon her husband and their plans would be cancelled at the drop of a hat, and she’d find herself alone for an entire weekend, and the following weekends too.

The Italian author Gian Vincenzo Gravina wrote that
a bore is a person who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

This was how it was starting to feel now in her new life. He was so damned demanding. Her new life totally revolved around him. She checked her watch. He would be back soon. This was what it was like now. Every hour of her new life accounted for.

On the screen of her computer on her desk was the online edition of the Sussex newspaper the
Argus
. Since seeing the announcement in the local Munich paper that Roy Grace had placed, about having her declared legally dead, she now scanned the pages of the
Argus
daily.

If he wanted to have her declared dead, after all this time, there had to be a reason. And there was only one reason that she could think of.

She took a deep breath, then she reminded herself of the mantra to control her anger.
Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass. It is about learning to dance in the rain.

She said it aloud. Then again. And again.

Finally she felt calm enough to turn to the Forthcoming Marriages section of the newspaper. She scanned the column. His name was not there.

She logged off with the same feeling of relief she had every day.

Over the years Roy Grace had seen a lot of horrific sights. Mostly, as he had grown more experienced, he was able to leave them behind, but every now and then, like most police officers, he would come across something that he took home with him. When that happened he would lie in bed, unable to sleep, unpacking it over and over again in his mind. Or wake up screaming from the nightmare it was giving him.

One of his worst experiences was as a young uniformed officer, when a five-year-old boy had been crushed under the wheels of a skip lorry. He’d been first on the scene. The boy’s head had been distorted and, with his spiky blonde hair, the poor little mite reminded Grace absurdly and horrifically of Bart Simpson. He’d had a nightmare about the boy two or three times a month for several years. Even today he had difficulty watching Bart Simpson on television because of the memory the character triggered.

He was going to take this one in front of him home too, he knew. It was horrific, but he couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t stop thinking about the suffering during this man’s last moments. He hoped they were quick, but he had a feeling they probably weren’t.

The man was short and stocky, with a buzz cut and a triple chin, and tattoos on the backs of his hands. He was naked, with his clothes on the ground, as if he had taken them off to have a bath or a swim. His blue overalls, socks and a green polo shirt that was printed with the words ABERDEEN OCEAN FISHERIES sat, neatly folded, next to his heavy-duty boots. Patches of his skin were smoke-blackened and there were some tiny crystals of frost on his head and around his face and hands. He was hung from one of the heavy-duty hooks, the sharp point of which had been pushed up through the roof of his wide-open jaw and was protruding just below his left eye, like a foul-hooked fish.

It was the expression of shock on the man’s face – his bulging, terrified eyes – that was the worst thing of all.

The icy air continued to pump out. It carried the strong smell of smoked fish, but also those of urine and excrement. The poor man had both wet and crapped himself. Hardly surprising, Grace thought, continuing to stare at him, thinking through the first pieces of information he had been given. One of the smokehouses had been broken into as well. Had the poor sod been put in there first, and then in here to be finished off by the cold?

The mix of smells was making him feel dangerously close to retching. He began, as a pathologist had once advised him, to breathe only through his mouth.

‘You’re not going to like what I have to tell you, Roy,’ Tracy Stocker said breezily, seemingly totally unaffected.

‘I’m not actually liking what I’m looking at that much either. Do we know who he is?’

‘Yes, the boss here knows him. He’s a lorry driver. Makes a regular weekly delivery here from Aberdeen. Has done for years.’

Grace continued to stare back at the body, fixated. ‘Has he been certified?’

‘Not yet. A paramedic’s on the way.’

However dead a victim might appear, there was a legal requirement that a paramedic attend and actually make the formal certification. In the old days it would have been a police surgeon. Not that Grace had any doubt about the man’s condition at this moment. The only people who looked more dead than this, he thought cynically, were piles of ash in crematorium urns.

‘Have we got a pathologist coming?’

She nodded. ‘I’m not sure who.’

‘Nadiuska, with any luck.’ He looked back at the corpse. ‘Hope you’ll excuse me if I step out of the room when they remove the hook.’

‘I think I’ll be stepping out with you,’ she said.

He smiled grimly.

‘There’s something that could be very significant, Roy,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

‘According to Mr Harris, the guv’nor here, this is the driver involved in our fatal in Portland Road. Stuart Ferguson.’

Grace looked at her. Before the ramifications of this had fully sunk in, the Crime Scene Manager was speaking again.

‘I think we ought to get a bit closer, Roy. There’s something you need to see.’

She took a few steps forward and Grace followed. Then she turned and pointed to the interior wall, a foot above the top of the door.

‘Does that look familiar?’

Grace stared at the cylindrical object with the shiny glass lens.

And now he knew for sure that his worst fears were confirmed.

It was another camera.

Carly greeted the woman who entered her office with a smile as she ushered her into a seat. The appointment was late, at 4.45, because her whole day was out of kilter. At least it was her last client, she thought with relief.

The woman’s name was Angelina Goldsmith. A mother of three teenagers, she had recently discovered that her architect husband had been leading a double life for twenty years and had a second family in Chichester, thirty miles away. He hadn’t actually married this woman, so he wasn’t legally a bigamist, but he sure as hell was morally. The poor woman was understandably devastated.

And she deserved a solicitor who was able to focus a damned sight better than Carly was capable of doing at the moment, Carly thought.

Angelina Goldsmith was one of those trusting, decent people who was shocked to the core when her husband dumped her and went off with another woman. The woman had a gentle nature, she was a nice-looking brunette with a good figure, and had given up her career as a geologist for her family. Her confidence was shattered and she needed advice urgently.

Carly gave her sympathy and discussed her options. She gave her advice that she hoped would enable her to see a future for herself and her children.

After the client had left, Carly dictated some notes to her secretary, Suzanne. Then she checked her voicemail, listening to a string of messages from clients, the final one from her friend, Clair May, who had driven Tyler to school and back home again. Clair said that Tyler had been crying all the way home, but would not tell her why.

At least her mother was there to look after him, until she got home. He liked his gran, so hopefully he’d cheer up. But his behaviour was really troubling her. She’d try and have a long chat with him as soon as she got home. She rang for a taxi, then left the office.

In the taxi on the way home, Carly sat immersed in her thoughts. The driver, a neatly dressed man in a suit, seemed a chatty fellow and he kept trying to make conversation, but she did not respond. She wasn’t in the mood for conversation.

Ken Acott had been right about the magistrate. She’d got a one-year ban and a £1,000 fine, which Ken Acott said afterwards was about as lenient as it could get. She’d also accepted the court’s offer for her to go on a driver-education course which would reduce her ban to nine months.

She’d felt an idiot, hobbling up to the dock on her uneven shoes and out again. Then, just when she was looking forward to lunch with Sarah Ellis, to cheer her up, Sarah had phoned with the news that her elderly father, who lived alone, had had a fall, and a suspected broken wrist, and she was on her way to hospital with him.

So Carly had thought, sod it, and instead of going to find a shoe repair place, she stumbled along to a store in Duke’s Lane for a spot of retail therapy. She was wearing the result now, a pair of reassuringly expensive and absurdly high-heeled Christian Louboutins in black patent leather with twin ankle straps and red soles. They were the only thing today that had made her feel good.

She looked out of the window. They were moving steadily in the heavy rush-hour traffic along the Old Shoreham Road. She texted Tyler to say she’d be home in ten minutes and signed it with a smile and a row of kisses.

‘You’re towards the Goldstone Crescent end, aren’t you, with your number?’

‘Yes. Well done.’

‘Uh-huh.’

The driver’s radio briefly burst into life, then was silent. After a few moments he said, ‘Do you have a low-flush or high-flush toilet in your house?’

‘A high-flush or low-flush toilet, did you say?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied.

She got a text back from Tyler:
U haven’t got Mapper on

She replied:
Sorry. Horrible day. Love you XXXX

‘High flush, you’d have a chain. Low flush, a handle.’

‘We have handles. So low flush, I guess.’

‘Why?’

The man’s voice was chirpy and intrusive. If he didn’t shut up about toilets he wasn’t going to get a damned tip.

Mercifully he remained silent until they had halted outside her house. The meter showed £9. She gave him £10 and told him to keep the change. Then, as she stepped out on to the pavement, he called out, ‘Nice shoes! Christian Louboutin? Size six? Uh-huh?’

‘Good guess,’ she said, smiling despite herself.

He didn’t smile back. He just nodded and unscrewed the cap of a Thermos flask.

Creepy guy. She was minded to tell the taxi company that she didn’t want that driver again. But maybe she was being mean; he was just trying to be friendly.

As she climbed up the steps to her front door, she did not look back. She entered the porch and fumbled in her bag for her key.