Not Dead Enough

  As with most lower-rent residential areas of this transient city, the street was a riot of letting-agency boards. Number 17 was no exception. A Rand & Co. sign, prominently displayed, advertised a two-bedroom flat to let. Just inches below it, a burly uniformed police constable, holding a clipboard, stood in front of a barrier of blue and white crime-scene tape that was cordoning off some of the pavement. Parked along the street were a number of familiar vehicles. Grace saw the square hulk of a Major Incident Vehicle, several other police vehicles double-parked, making the narrow street even narrower, and a cluster of media reporters, with good old Kevin Spinella, he noted, among them.

  Anonymous in his private Alfa, he drove past them all and found a space on double yellow lines around the corner, back in Church Road. Switching the engine off, he sat still for a moment.

  Sandy.

  Where did he go from here? Wait to see if Kullen came up with anything? Go back to Munich and spend more time there? He had over a fortnight’s leave owing – Cleo and he had discussed going away somewhere together, with her perhaps accompanying him to a police symposium in New Orleans at the end of this month. But at this moment a big part of him was torn.

  If Sandy was in Munich, given time he knew he could find her. Today had been stupid, really. He was never going to be able to achieve much in just a few hours. But at least he had started the ball rolling, done what he could. Marcel Kullen was reliable, would do his best for him. If he went back for a week, maybe that would be sufficient. He could have one week there and another in New Orleans with Cleo. That would work – if he could get her to buy it. A big if.

  Switching his mind to the task immediately in front of him, he hefted his go-bag out of the boot and walked back to number 17. Several reporters shouted at him, an eager-looking girl shoved a foam-padded microphone in his face and flash bulbs popped.

  ‘No comment at this stage,’ he said firmly.

  Suddenly, Spinella was blocking his path. ‘Is this another, Detective Superintendent?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Another what?’

  Spinella dropped his voice even more, giving him a knowing look. ‘You know what I mean. Right?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve seen myself.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Detective Superintendent. If you don’t, someone else will.’ Spinella tapped the side of his nose. ‘Sources!’

  Harbouring the pleasant thought of punching the reporter’s lights out, almost hearing the crunching sound of Spinella’s nasal bones already, Grace pushed past him and signed his name on the clipboard. The constable told him to go up to the top floor.

  He ducked under the tape, then removed a fresh white paper suit from his bag and began struggling clumsily into it. To his embarrassment, he almost fell over in front of the entire Sussex media as he jammed both feet into one leg. Red-faced, he sorted himself out, pulled on disposable overshoes and a pair of latex gloves and went inside.

  Closing the front door behind him, he stopped in the hallway and sniffed. Just the usual musty smell of old carpet and boiled vegetables that was typical of a thousand tired buildings like this he’d been into in his career. No stench of a decaying cadaver, which meant the victim hadn’t been dead long – it wouldn’t take many days of a summer heatwave for the stench of a putrefying corpse to start becoming noticeable. A small relief, he thought, noticing the strip of tape that had been laid all the way up the stairs, marking the entry and exit route – which he was pleased to see. At least the police team that had arrived here knew what they were doing, avoiding contamination at the scene.

  Which was what he needed to do himself. It would not be smart for him to go upstairs, because of the risk of giving the defence team a cross-contamination situation they could crawl all over. Instead, he pulled out his mobile phone and called Kim Murphy, telling her he was downstairs.

  Up on the first floor above him, he suddenly saw a white-suited and hooded SOCO officer called Eddie Gribble come into view. He was kneeling on the floor, taking a scraping. He nodded in acknowledgement. A second, identically clad SOCO, Tony Monnington, also came into view, dusting the wall for fingerprints.

  ‘Evening, Roy!’ he called down cheerily.

  Grace raised a hand.‘Having a nice Sunday?’

  ‘Gets me out of the house. And Belinda’s able to watch what she wants on the telly.’

  ‘There’s always a silver lining!’ Grace replied grimly.

  Moments later two further suited and hooded figures appeared and came down the stairs towards him. One was Kim Murphy, holding a video camera, the other was Detective Chief Inspector Brendan Duigan, a tall, large-framed, genial officer with a gentle, ruddy face and prematurely white hair that was cropped into a buzz-cut. Duigan was the duty SIO called to this scene earlier, Grace had learned on his way here. Duigan had subsequently called Kim Murphy over, because of similarities with the Katie Bishop murder.

  After exchanging brief pleasantries, Murphy played Grace the video that had been taken of the scene. He watched it on the small screen on the back of the camera.

  After you had done this job for a number of years, you started thinking that you were immune to horrors, that you had seen it all, that nothing could surprise or shock you any more. But the footage that confronted him now sent a black chill worming deep through him.

  Staring at the slightly jerky footage of the white-suited and hooded figures of two more SOCO officers on their hands and knees and another standing, and Nadiuska De Sancha on her knees at the end of the bed, he saw the alabaster-coloured naked body of a young woman with long brown hair lying on the bed, with a gas mask over her face.

  It was as near as possible a carbon copy of the way Katie Bishop had been found.

  Except that Katie did not appear to have put up a fight. The camera now started to show that this young woman certainly had. There was a smashed plate on the floor, with a mark gouged out of the wall above it. A shattered dressing-table mirror, bottles of perfume and jars of make-up lying all over the place, along with a smear of blood on the wall, just above the white headboard. Then a lingering shot of a framed, abstract print of a row of deckchairs, lying on the floor, the glass shattered.

  Brighton had had its share of murders over the years, but one thing, mercifully, it had never been clouded by before was the spectre of a serial killer. It wasn’t even an area Grace had needed to know much about – before now.

  Nearby, a car alarm beep-beep-beeped loudly. He blanked it out as he stared at the freeze-frame of the dead young woman. He had regularly attended lectures given by SIOs on serial-killer cases at the International Homicide Investigators Association annual symposium, which was mostly held in the USA. He was trying to recall the common features. So far, Spinella had kept his word and there had been no mention in the press about the gas mask, so a copycat killing was unlikely.

  One thing he did remember clearly from a lecture was a discussion of the fear that could be created in a community when it was announced that a serial killer was out there. But equally, the community had a right to know, a need to know.

  Grace then turned to DCI Duigan. ‘What do we have so far?’ he asked.

  ‘Nadiuska’s best guess is the young woman has been dead for about two days, give or take.

  ‘Any idea of how she died?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kim Murphy started the camera running and zoomed in, pointing to the young woman’s throat. A dark red ligature mark was visible, then even more clearly for an instant as the burst of flash from a police photographer’s camera strobed across it.

  And Grace’s own leaden innards sank before Kim confirmed it.

  ‘Identical to Katie Bishop,’ she said.

  ‘We’re looking at a serial killer – whatever that description actually means?’ Grace queried.

  ‘On what I’ve seen so far, Roy, it’s too early to be able to say anything,’ Duigan replied. ‘And I’m not exactly an expert on serial killers. Luckily, I’ve never experienced one.’

  ‘That makes two
of us.’

  Grace was thinking hard. Two attractive women killed, apparently, in the same manner, twenty-four hours apart. ‘What do we know about her?’

  ‘We believe her name is Sophie Harrington,’ Murphy said. ‘She’s twenty-seven and employed by a film production company in London. I answered a phone call a little earlier, from a young woman called Holly Richardson, who claims to be her best friend. She had been trying to contact her all yesterday – they were meant to be going to a party together last night. Holly last spoke to her about five on Friday afternoon.’

  ‘That helps us,’ Grace said. ‘At least we know she was alive then. Has anyone interviewed Holly Richardson?’

  ‘Nick’s gone to find her now.’

  ‘And Ms Harrington clearly put up one hell of a fight,’ Duigan added.

  ‘The place looks smashed up,’ Grace said.

  ‘Nadiuska’s found something under the nail of one of her big toes. A tiny bit of flesh.’

  Grace felt a sudden surge of adrenaline. ‘Human flesh?’

  ‘That’s what she thinks.’

  ‘Could it have been gouged out of her assailant in the struggle?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  And suddenly, his memory pin-sharp now, Roy Grace remembered the injury on Brian Bishop’s hand. And that he had gone AWOL for several hours on Friday evening. ‘I want a DNA test on that,’ he said. ‘Fast-tracked.’

  As he spoke, he was already using his mobile phone.

  Linda Buckley, the family liaison officer, answered on the second ring.

  ‘Where’s Bishop?’ he asked.

  ‘Having supper with his in-laws. They are back from Alicante,’ she replied.

  He asked for the address, then he called Branson’s mobile.

  ‘Yo, old-timer – wassup?’

  ‘What are you doing right now?’

  ‘I’m eating some unpleasantly healthy vegetarian cannelloni from your freezer, listening to your rubbish music and watching your antique television. Man, how come you don’t have widescreen, like the rest of the planet?’

  ‘Put all your problems behind you. You’re going out to work.’ Grace gave him the address.

  �

  66

  The silence was fleetingly broken by the tinkle of the teaspoon, as Moira Denton stirred the tea in her delicate, bone china teacup. Brian Bishop had never found his in-laws easy to get along with. Part of the reason, he knew, was that the couple didn’t really get along with each other. He remembered a quote he had once come across, which talked about people leading lives of quiet desperation. Nothing, it seemed to him, sadly, could be a truer description of the relationship between Frank and Moira Denton.

  Frank was a serial entrepreneur – and a serial failure. Brian had made a small investment in his last venture, a factory in Poland converting wheat into bio-diesel fuel, more as a token of family solidarity than from any real expectation of returns, which was just as well, as it had gone bust, like everything else Frank had touched before it. A tall man just shy of seventy, who had only just recently starting looking his age, Frank Denton was also a serial shagger. He wore his hair stylishly long, although it was now tinged a rather dirty-looking orange, from the use of some dyeing product, and his left eye had a lazy lid, making it look permanently half-closed. In the past he had reminded Brian of an amiable, raffish pirate, although at this moment, sitting silent, hunched forward in his armchair in the tiny, boiling-hot flat, unshaven, his hair unbrushed, dressed in a creased white shirt, he just looked like a sad, shabby, broken old man. His brandy snifter stood untouched with a stubby bottle of Torres 10 Gran Reserva beside it.

  Moira sat opposite him on the other side of a carved-wood coffee table, on the top of which was yesterday’s Argus with its grim headline. In contrast to her husband, she had made an effort with her appearance. In her mid-sixties, she was a handsome-looking woman, and would have looked even better if she had not allowed bitterness to so line her face. Her dyed black hair, coiled abundantly above her head, was neatly coiffed, she was wearing a plain, loose grey top, a pleated navy blue skirt and flat, black shoes, and she had put make-up on.

  On the television, with the sound turned down low, a moose was running across open grassland. Because the Dentons now lived most of the time in their flat in Spain, they found England, even at the height of summer, unbearably cold. So they kept the central heating in their flat, close to Hove seafront, several degrees north of eighty. And the windows shut.

  Seated in a green-velour armchair, Brian was perspiring. He sipped his third San Miguel beer, his stomach rumbling, even though Moira had just served them a meal. He’d barely touched his cold chicken and salad, nor the tinned peach slices afterwards. He just had no appetite at all. And was not up to much conversation either. The three of them had been sitting in silence for much of the time since he’d come round a couple of hours earlier. They had discussed whether Katie should be buried or cremated. It was not a conversation Brian had ever had with his wife, but Moira was adamant that Katie would have wanted to be cremated.

  Then they had discussed the funeral arrangements – all on hold until the coroner released the body, which both Frank and Moira had viewed yesterday at the mortuary. The talk had reduced both of them to tears.

  Understandably, his in-laws were taking Katie’s death hard. She had been more than just their only child – she had been the only thing of real value in their lives, and the glue that had kept them together. One particularly uncomfortable Christmas, when Moira had drunk too much sherry, champagne and then Baileys, she had confided sourly to Brian that she’d only taken Frank back after his affairs, for Katie’s sake.

  ‘Like that beer, do you, Brian?’ Frank asked. His voice was posh English, something he had cultivated to mask his working-class roots. Moira had an affected voice also, except when she drank too much and then lapsed back into her native Lancastrian.

  ‘Yes, good flavour. Thank you.’

  ‘That’s Spain for you, you see? Quality!’ Suddenly becoming animated for a moment, Frank Denton raised a hand. ‘A very underrated country – their food, wines, beers. And the prices, of course. Some of it is developed out, but there are still great opportunities if you know what you’re doing.’

  Despite the man’s grief, Brian could sense that Katie’s father was about to launch into a sales pitch. He was right.

  ‘Property prices are doubling every five years there, Brian. The smart thing is to pick the next hot spots. Building costs are cheap, and they’re jolly efficient workers, those Spaniards. I’ve identified an absolutely fantastic opportunity just the other side of Alicante. I tell you, Brian, it’s a real no-brainer.’

  The last thing Brian wanted or needed at this moment was to hear the details of yet another of Frank’s plausible-sounding but ultimately fatally flawed schemes. The miserable silence had been preferable – at least that had left him to his thoughts.

  He took another sip of his beer and realized he had almost drained the glass. He needed to be careful, he knew, as he was driving, and he didn’t know how the family liaison officer, waiting in her car downstairs like a sentinel, would react to the smell of alcohol on his breath.

  ‘What have you done to your hand?’ Moira asked suddenly, looking at the fresh plaster on it.’

  ‘I – just bashed it – getting out of a car,’ he said dismissively.

  The doorbell rang.

  The Dentons exchanged glances, then Frank hauled himself up and shuffled out into the hallway.

  ‘We’re not expecting anyone,’ Moira said to Brian.

  Moments later Frank came back into the room. ‘The police,’ he said, giving his son-in-law a strange look. ‘They’re on their way up.’ He continued staring at Brian, as if some dark thought had entered his head during those moments he had been out of the room.

  Brian wondered if there was something else the police had said that the old man was not relaying.

  �

  67

  In the W
itness Interview Suite, Glenn Branson switched on the audio and video recorders announcing clearly as he sat down, ‘It is twenty-one twelve, Sunday 6 August. Detective Superintendent Grace and Detective Sergeant Branson interviewing Mr Brian Bishop.’

  The CID headquarters were becoming depressingly familiar to Bishop. The walk up the entrance stairs, past the displays of police truncheons on blue felt boards, then through the open-plan offices and the cream-walled corridors lined with diagrams, and into this tiny room with its three red chairs.

  ‘This is starting to feel like Groundhog Day,’ he said.

  ‘Great movie,’ Branson commented. ‘Best thing Bill Murray did. I preferred it to Lost in Translation.’

  Bishop had seen Lost in Translation and was starting to empathize with the character Murray played in that movie, wandering sleep-deprived through an unfamiliar world. But he wasn’t in any mood to start discussing films. ‘Are your people finished in my house yet? When can I move back in?’

  ‘I’m afraid it will be a few days yet,’ Grace said. ‘Thank you for coming up here tonight. I apologize for disrupting your Sunday evening.’

  ‘That’s almost funny,’ Bishop said acidly. He nearly added, but didn’t, that it hadn’t been any great hardship to escape from the grim misery of his in-laws and Frank’s sales pitch for his new business venture. ‘What news do you have for me?’

  ‘I’m afraid we have nothing further to report at this stage, but we are expecting results from DNA analysis back during tomorrow and that may give us something. But we have some questions that our investigations have thrown up, if that’s all right with you?’

  ‘Go ahead.’