Peter James - Not Dead Yet

And right now he was doing what he loved best of all, the thing that really got his adrenalin pumping: the early days of a murder enquiry.

‘The time is 6.30 p.m., Saturday, June the fourth,’ he read out from the notes in front of him, prepared by his trusted Management Secretary, Eleanor Hodgson. ‘This is our third briefing of Operation Icon . I’ll summarize where we are to date.’ He glanced down at his notes, then around at his team. Apart from the honeymooning Emma-Jane Boutwood, the only one who was absent was Bella Moy, still at the hospital with her mother. Then he gestured to Glenn Branson.

‘Could you bring us up to speed with the findings from the postmortem?’

‘The information I have so far, chief, from the pathologist Dr Nadiuska De Sancha, and from the forensic archaeologist Joan Major, is that the victim is male, Caucasian, aged mid- to late forties. The broken hyoid and the cut mark further around the top vertebra indicate the likelihood of strangulation by a thin wire. There has been considerable degradation of the stomach contents, as would be expected. But chemical analysis reveals a fragment of oyster shell as well as the presence of ethanol, which indicates he had been drinking wine.’

‘Er – do we know if it’s red or white?’ asked Norman Potting.

‘Does that matter?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

‘It would tell us if he had a bit of class or not,’ Potting commented, with a grin. ‘We’d know we’re dealing with rubbish if we found he’d been drinking red wine with oysters.’

Ignoring him, Branson continued. ‘We took fragments of cloth found in the torso’s immediate proximity for analysis and showed them to the Brighton tailor Gresham Blake. They believe it is a heavy tweed man’s suit material, and are now helping us to identify the manufacturer. It’s an unusual colourway, so we are hoping once we get the manufacturer we can get a list of retailers who might have sold suits made from it – or a bespoke tailor who may have made one to measure.’

‘Such as Gresham Blake?’ DC Emma Reeves asked.

‘Exactly,’ Branson said.

DC Nicholl raised a hand. Branson nodded at him.

‘Just an observation, Glenn, but it seems strange that if the killer went to the trouble of dismembering his victim, presumably to hinder identification, that he would have left him in his clothes.’

‘I agree,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve been thinking the same. It could be a deliberate attempt at laying a false trail. Or, as I think more likely, the perp thought that the clothes, along with the body, would be completely destroyed by the corrosive environment – and miscalculated. I’ve had previous cases where there has been dismemberment of the victim still in their clothes,’ Grace went on. ‘It’s not uncommon, if you have a panicking perpetrator.’

DC Jon Exton raised a hand, looking first at Glenn Branson then at Roy Grace. ‘Sir, if we’re dealing with a chaotic offender he might, as you say, have killed in panic. Perhaps he went too far in a fight, and didn’t give it any thought that the victim was still wearing clothes when he cut him up to remove the head and the limbs, thinking that would stop identification?’

DS Guy Batchelor, a burly, avuncular detective with a cheery smile, shook his rugby ball-shaped head. ‘Surely if he was going to dismember his victim, the perp would have removed his clothes first. It would have made his job much easier.’

‘I’m inclined towards the chief’s opinion,’ Glenn Branson said, then turned towards the Crime Scene Manager, David Green. ‘What do you think?’

Green was a solidly built man in his late forties, with short grey hair, dressed in a sports jacket and grey trousers. He always had a cheery no-nonsense air about him. ‘Those clothing remnants seem unlikely items to be found in a chicken shed,’ he said. ‘The farmer, Keith Winter, has no explanation for how they came to be there. Not something he feeds his hens on,’ he said with a grin.

‘Unless they were dressing up for a hen party,’ Norman Potting said.

There was a titter of laughter, silenced by an icy glare from Roy Grace. ‘That’s enough, thank you, Norman,’ he said.

‘Sorry, chief,’ Potting grunted.

Branson looked down at his notes, then continued. ‘The best estimates of time of death are six months to one year. The condition of the body indicates that it was covered with quicklime – better known these days as calcium oxide. An amateurish attempt at accelerating its decomposition and an unsuccessful attempt at destroying its DNA. Joan Major has recovered DNA from the bones, which has been sent for fast-track analysis. We hope to have results back by Monday. In the meantime an enquiry team headed by Norman Potting will look into mispers.’

He paused and took a sip from a bottle of water. ‘The Chief and I have set a parameter of missing persons within Sussex and the Surrey-Kent borders. In order to allow for errors in the pathology estimates, we are looking at all misper reports – as well as serials from concerned persons reporting someone possibly missing. Do you have anything to report?’ He nodded respectfully at DS Annalise Vineer, the manager for the analysts, indexers and typists on the enquiry, who handled the computerized HOLMES System data.

A studious but good-humoured woman in her mid-thirties, with long black hair and a fringe covering her forehead, and dressed all in black, she had a dramatic appearance, counterbalanced by a quietly efficient air. ‘We decided to extend our search time frame parameter – after discussions with DS Potting – to a range of three to eighteen months, to allow for time of death errors. ‘We have three hundred and forty-two mispers who have been missing permanently within this period. Of these, one hundred and forty-five are male. So far we have eliminated eighty-seven, from their age and build.’

Grace made a quick calculation. ‘This leaves us fifty-eight?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.

He turned to Potting. ‘What progress are you making on these, Norman?’

Potting gave the kind of smug grin he always gave, puffing his chest out self-importantly, like an understudy who has suddenly had the starring role thrust upon him. ‘If we could find his skull – that would give us a head start.’

There was another round of laughter. This time Grace smiled, too. As he and everyone else present knew, Potting’s comment was less frivolous than it sounded. Dead bodies could be identified in a number of ways. Visual identification from a family member was the most certain of all. DNA was as effective, also. As were fingerprints or dental records. Sometimes footprints, too, in the absence of anything else to go on.

With this torso, they had only DNA analysis to rely on at present. If the victim’s DNA was not on the national database, they would be faced with a big problem. Expensive analysis of the isotopes in enzymes in the DNA might give clues as to the corpse’s home country, or even county. Forensic scientists had learned recently that food – in particular its constituent minerals – is sufficiently localized to get a region of origin, if not an actual country. The information was of only limited value. For a murder enquiry to be able to make any progress, identification of the victim was paramount.

David Green raised a hand. ‘The search team has completed work in the chicken sheds and no further remains have been found. Following a scoping exercise, I’ve now widened the search parameter to likely deposition sites in the entire area of the farmland, and a one mile radius of the countryside in all areas around it, using Ground Penetrating Radar.’ He pointed to an aerial photograph that was pinned up on the large whiteboard at one end of the room. It showed the farm, outlined in red marker pen, and the surrounding fields, road and ponds. ‘Divers are scanning or searching all the ponds and ditches this evening and tomorrow.’