Peter James: Dead at First Sight

‘Roy, we have a situation I am thinking you might be able to help us with. You are still Head of Major Crime for Sussex Police?’

‘I am.’

‘ Gut . We have a murder inquiry you may be able to help us with. Does the name Lena Welch mean anything to you — or to anyone in Sussex Police?’

‘Lena Welch?’

‘ Ja .’

‘No. Not immediately, anyway.’ With Kullen spelling the name to him, Roy Grace wrote it down on his pad. Putting the phone momentarily on mute, he turned to Branson. ‘The name Lena Welch mean anything?’

The DI, wearing a sharp waistcoat with his suit, looked pensive for an instant. ‘Nope. She welched on someone?’

Grace shook his head. ‘Be serious.’

‘Lena Welch?’ Branson thought for a few seconds. ‘Nope.’

Un-muting the phone, Grace said, ‘Why do you ask, Marcel?’

‘She died on Monday night, and is originally from England — from your city. Her birth name is Williamson. ’

‘Lena Williamson?’ Grace added a note and looked at Branson. Again his colleague shook his head. ‘Doesn’t ring any bells, Marcel. Tell me?’

‘Although Lena’s laptop and phone seem to have been taken, we have found a back-up hard drive. From initial examination, it seems she discovered that her photograph was being used by internet romance fraudsters. One of the identities is an Ingrid Ostermann. It is looking as if this fictitious character was purporting to be in love with a man in Sussex, England, called John — or Johnny — Fordwater. A former army officer, a major. We understand he has transferred considerable amounts of money to a München bank account in the fake name and identity of Ingrid Ostermann — a total in excess of 400,000 euros. And now we have Lena Welch found dead and the money long cleared out of the fictitious Ingrid Ostermann’s account.’

‘How did she die?’

‘Not very pleasantly.’

‘Dying isn’t generally a very pleasant experience, Marcel.’

Kullen laughed. ‘Glad to know you still have your dark humour, my friend. This was definitely not a pleasant death.’

‘Tell me?’

‘She fell from her sixth-floor apartment and was impaled on railings beneath.’

‘Was it suicide?’

‘No. She lived on her own after a divorce. But we have very good reason for doubting suicide.’

‘Which is?’

‘She had most of her tongue cut off.’

‘Her tongue?’

‘ Ja . A witness reported that moments after she landed on the railings, a man ran from a car over towards her holding what looked like a machete. He hacked at her face and ran back to the car. A few seconds after, another man ran from the apartment building into the same car, an Audi A4, and they drove off at high speed.’

‘Did your witness give you any descriptions?’

‘She was pretty shaken up. She said both men were black. She gave us a couple of digits from the Audi’s licence plate, but as you can imagine there are many thousands of these cars here in Germany. And probably the plates are false. She said something else that might be of interest. The man who ran from the apartment was wearing shiny red shoes.’

‘Red shoes? What man wears shiny red shoes?’ He looked at Branson, imagining him in a pair.

But even the DI, with his sometimes questionable taste in clothes, looked askance. ‘Not sure I’d trust any bloke wearing red shoes, boss.’

Grace glanced down at Branson’s feet. ‘Wouldn’t go with those socks anyway.’ They were lime green.

‘It’s how you wear ’em.’ Branson grinned. ‘Could be a case for our foot man, Haydn Kelly.’

‘Can I see the forensic report, Marcel?’ Grace asked.

‘Sure, I will send the autopsy report when it is finished. The photographs are not so nice, probably not ones for her family album.’

He smiled, grimly. ‘What is your hypothesis, Marcel?’

‘What we know so far from our investigations is that this lady had discovered her identity is used by a “romance fraud” gang. She confided in a friend of hers, recently, that she was suspicious of a man she had met online after joining a dating agency herself. She told her friend that she was going to meet the man and confront him. Then she is found dead, missing half of her tongue.’

Grace shuddered. ‘Which dating agency was it?’

‘As I said, her computer and phone are missing — presumably taken by her attacker — and we are examining CCTV coverage from a hidden camera we found. But there seems to be a lot of information on the back-up drive relating to names, photographs and emails, which we are trying to piece together, to see whether this is connected with her death.’

‘We have a dedicated “romance fraud” team operating here in Sussex, Marcel,’ Grace said. ‘It’s a growing menace. There are very big sums involved in this country. We estimate about £30 million in the past twelve months in the county of Sussex alone, based on those we know about and an estimate of those we don’t from people who’ve been too embarrassed to come forward.’

‘Here also a similar amount. We are aware there’s an organization operating internationally, with one of their bases somewhere in Germany. They are taking people’s identities from online dating agencies and using them to defraud people. This unfortunate lady, Lena Welch, had discovered the truth and was perhaps threatening to expose them. Our hypothesis is they might have killed her in order to discourage other victims from trying to do the same. Perhaps there is some symbolism with the tongue. We are trying to establish who else has been targeted with Lena Welch’s identity around the globe. But, so far, the only person we have is Major Fordwater, in your country.’

‘What details can you give me about him?’

‘At this stage very little, I’m afraid. We have his name. And his date of birth — which makes him fifty-eight. And we believe he is from your city, Brighton and Hove. If you could find out anything about him, that would be extremely helpful to us.’

‘Leave it with me, Marcel. By the way, that hangover I got when I stayed with you in April?’

‘ Ja? ’

‘I’m still suffering.’

The German detective laughed. ‘You poor antique. You are over forty. Maybe you should retire and go live in an old people’s home. With some nice bright-red slippers, perhaps?’

‘Ha, ha! I’ll book the room next to yours, Marcel!’

Ending the call, Grace entered the name, ‘John, Johnny, Fordwater’ into the NICHE — the Sussex Police Combined Crime and Intelligence System search engine.

Within seconds he had a result. He picked up his phone.

Johnny Fordwater, unshaven, in his dressing gown, hair unkempt, sat at the dining table, on which lay his uneaten breakfast and his unopened copy of today’s Times newspaper. Normally he would have done the crossword first thing, but today he had not even glanced at it.

Instead he stared glumly out of the living-room window of his home, a spacious fourth-floor apartment on Hove seafront — or rather the bank’s apartment, since they effectively now owned it. He was in hock to them up to the hilt. And, if the police were right about Ingrid, he wasn’t going to be able to meet many more of the monthly payments. He’d been too embarrassed to tell the police that it was, actually, substantially more than 200,000 euros that he’d loaned Ingrid. It was closer to 400,000. He’d raised that by cashing in most of his pension and shares, releasing equity from his property, selling his classic car and going cap-in-hand to his bank.

Drops of rain slid down the glass and a cold wind blew in, despite the double-glazing, a reminder that summer was over and winter was not far off. Below, on the promenade, a woman in an anorak was being tugged one way by her umbrella and the other way by her grey Spinone dog. It was high tide and the turbulent sea threw spray and pebbles over the pastel-green railings.