Peter James - Not Dead Yet

They walked towards a long, single-storey shed with clapboard walls and a row of roof vents that stretched away into the distance, two tall steel silos standing beside it. Grace pushed the door open. They went inside to the glare of artificial lighting, to the sour stench of confined animals, and the din of thousands of protesting hens.

‘Had eggs for breakfast, old timer?’ Branson asked.

‘Actually, I had porridge.’

‘Guess at your age, cholesterol matters. Low fat milk?’

‘Cleo’s put me on soya.’

‘You’re under her thumb.’

‘She has pretty thumbs.’

‘That’s how every relationship starts. Pretty face, pretty thumbs, pretty damned everything. You love every inch of her body and she loves every inch of yours. Ten years on, you’re struggling to remember one damned thing about each other that you once liked.’ Branson patted him on the shoulder. ‘But hey, enjoy the ride.’

Roy Grace stopped and Branson stopped beside him. ‘Matey, don’t become a cynic. You’re too good for that.’

‘I’m just a realist.’

Grace shook his head.

‘Your wife vanished on your thirtieth birthday – after you’d been together several years, right?’ said Branson.

‘Uh huh. Getting on for ten years.’

‘You still loved her?’

‘As much as the day I met her. More.’

‘Maybe you’re an exception.’

Grace looked at him. ‘I hope not.’

Branson stared at him, his face full of pain. ‘Yeah, I hope not too. But it hurts. I think of Ari and the kids constantly, and it hurts so much.’

Grace stared down the length of the shed, with its gridded steel floor, a section of which, towards the far end, had been lifted. He could see, suited up, the stocky Crime Scene Manager David Green; three SOCOs including the burly, intensely serious Crime Scene Photographer James Gartrell; DS Simon Bates; the Duty Inspector Roy Apps, and the Coroner’s Officer Philip Keay.

‘Let’s rock and roll.’ Grace stepped on to the grid.

‘Not sure I feel much like dancing,’ Glenn Branson said.

‘So, you and the dead body have something in common.’

The dead body was very definitely not dancing. Partly on account of the fact that it was embedded in several feet of chicken excrement, partly because its legs were missing, and partly because it had no hands or head, either. Which would have made co-ordination difficult. A cluster of blowflies buzzed around, and the stench of ammonia was almost overpowering.

Glenn, close to retching, turned away. Grace stared down. Whoever had done this had little forensic awareness, and even less finesse. The headless, limbless torso, with desiccated flesh missing in patches, covered in excrement and crawling with flies and maggots, was barely recognizable as human. The skin, which appeared acid-scorched in the patches where it was visible, was a dark, leathery brown, giving it the air of a shop-window dummy that had been salvaged from a bonfire. The rank stench of a decaying body, all too familiar to Grace, rose all around him, making the air feel heavy and cloying. It was a smell that always accompanied you home, in your hair, on your clothes, in every pore of your skin. You could scrub yourself raw, but you’d still smell it again the next morning.

The only person he never noticed it on was Cleo. But maybe Glenn was right, and in ten years’ time he would. He hoped not.

‘Coq au vin for dinner, Roy?’ the Crime Scene Manager greeted him, dressed in a white protective suit, with breathing apparatus, his mask temporarily raised.

‘Not if it does that to you, thanks!’

Both men stared down into the space, four foot below the grid, at the torso. The first thought in Roy Grace’s mind was whether this was some kind of gangland killing. ‘So, what do we have so far?’

In answer to his SIO, David Green picked up a sealed polythene evidence bag from the floor, with an air of pride, and held it up with a gloved hand.

Grace peered inside. It contained two jagged pieces of badly soiled fabric, with an ochre checked pattern just visible. What looked like parts of a man’s suit.

‘Where did you find these?’ Grace asked.

‘Close to the body. Looks like it might have been something he was wearing – for some reason the only parts that didn’t decompose or get taken by rats for a nest. Maybe we’ll find more when we start our fingertip search.’

‘ He? ’

‘One of the few bits that weren’t cut off, chief, if you get my drift.’

Grace nodded, uncomfortably getting his drift.

‘Must have been a made-to-measure suit,’ Glenn Branson said.

Grace and Green looked at him. ‘Can you tell that from the cut of the cloth?’ Grace asked.

‘No, chief.’ Branson nodded down at the remains and said, drily, ‘I’m imagining they would have had a bit of a problem finding something off-the-peg to fit him.’

Inside the house, just like all Gaia’s homes, the floors looked like Italian marble. Just like the stone that had been imported slab by slab from the Fantiscritti quarry in Carrara that, historically, had supplied the Medicis with the marble for their palaces, and in more recent years, one of the Los Angeles landmarks, Hernando Courtright’s Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

The walls were hung with Aztec artefacts and stage shots of Gaia. In pride of place, on the wall facing the sofa, was the signed monochrome photo of her with wild, just-out-of-bed hair, wearing a black negligee to promote her world tour. To the left, above one of the armchairs of the white leather three-piece suite, which was a clone of her one in LA, was another tour poster, also signed. In it she wore a green tank top and leather jeans. Gaia would have felt totally at home here! Okay, so maybe the rear aspect wasn’t as fine as in some of her residences. Gaia probably had a better view from her kitchen window than this one, an old woman’s smalls hanging on a washing line, and a disused breeze-block garage.

Above the fireplace, with fake electric coals burning, was a blowup of her idol’s lips, nose and eyes in green monochrome, captioned GAIA UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. Again, personally signed.

One of her favourite items!

She had fought a fierce bidding war on eBay for it. Securing it with just five seconds to spare for £1,750. Money she could not afford. But she had to have it.

Had to.

Like everything else in this small semi, with the irritating street light outside that shone an amber glow every damned night into her bedroom.

Anna had bought the house in daytime, six years ago. It had never occurred to her that street lights might be a problem. Gaia would not have to put up with street lights keeping her awake, that was for sure.

Anna had written to the council, written to the Argus , the West Sussex Gazette , the Sussex Express , the Mid Sussex Times , but no one had replied, no one had done a single damned thing about that street light. So she bought an air rifle, and shot the bulb out in the middle of the night. Two bloody workmen from the bloody council replaced it two bloody days later.

But none of that mattered right now. All forgotten for the moment, because Gaia was coming to Brighton! And Anna had now found out where she was going to be staying. In the Presidential Suite of The Grand Hotel. Where else? They should have had an Empress Suite for her. She was the greatest, the queen of rock, the queen of the silver screen, the greatest star of all time. She was an empress! A truly Grand Empress! Returning to the city where she was born. Coming home to her roots. Coming to meet her number one fan!

And Anna really was her number one fan. Everyone conceded that. Gaia herself had! One of her assistants had replied to one of her emails saying, Dear No 1 fan! And of course, all of the other Gaia fans like herself, who shared snippets of information on chatlines, by email, by Facebook and sometimes Twitter, yet who became deadly enemies in bidding wars on eBay, all of them conceded that, as of this moment in time, Anna had them beat. She had the biggest collection, by far.