Peter James - Looking Good Dead

And suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Grace could see the man’s diminutive frame, all in white and clutching his large bag, striding across the field towards them, his hooded head not that far above the top of the rape.

‘Good morning, all,’ the pathologist said, and exchanged latex-gloved handshakes with the trio.

Dr Frazer Theobald was in his mid-fifties. A stockily built man a tad under five foot two inches tall with beady, nut-brown eyes, he sported a thick Adolf Hitler moustache beneath a Concorde-shaped hooter of a nose and an untidy, threadbare thatch of wiry hair. It would have not needed much more than a large cigar for him to have gone to a fancy dress party as a passable Groucho Marx. But Grace doubted Theobald was the kind of man ever to have contemplated attending something as frivolous as a fancy dress party. All he knew about the man’s private life was that he was married to a lecturer in microbiology, and that his main relaxation was solo dinghy sailing.

‘So, right, Detective Superintendent Grace,’ he said, his eyes fixing first on the remains inside the flapping sheets of the bin liner, then on the ground around. ‘Can you bring me up to speed?’

‘Yes, Dr Theobald.’ It was always formal with the pathologist for the first half-hour or so. ‘So far we have this dismembered torso of what looks like a young woman with multiple stab wounds.’ Grace looked at Barley as if for confirmation and the DI took over.

‘East Downs police were alerted by an emergency call made earlier this morning by a woman walking her dog. The dog found a human hand, which we have left in situ.’ The DI pointed. ‘I cordoned off the area, and a search by police dogs discovered these remains here, which I have left untouched, other than to further open up the bin liner.’

‘No head?’

‘Not yet,’ the DI said.

The pathologist knelt, set down his bag and, carefully folding back the bin liner, studied the remains in silence for some moments.

‘We need a fingerprint and DNA test right away to see if we can get an ident,’ Grace said. He stared downhill across the field to the streets of houses. And beyond them, a mile or so distant, he could see the grey water of the English Channel, barely distinguishable from the grey of the sky.

Addressing the DI, Grace continued, ‘We should also start a house-to-house enquiry in the area, ask for reports of anything suspicious in the past couple of days. See if there are any missing persons in the area – if not broaden that out to the whole of Brighton and then Sussex. Are there any CCTV cameras, Bill?’

‘Only in some of the local shops and some other businesses.’

‘Make sure they’re told to keep all tapes for the past seven days.’

‘Right away.’

Nodding down, Grace said, ‘Any idea how these remains might have got here? Any tyre marks?’

‘We have a trail of footprints. Heavy-duty boots of some kind, from the patterns. They look sunk in deep; I think she must have been carried,’ Bill Barley said, pointing along a narrow band of soil and rape between two strips of police tape stretching into the distance.

Theobald had his bag open now, and was carefully examining the bloody hand lying there.

Who is she? Grace wanted to know. Why was she killed? How did she get here? Anger boiled in him.

Anger and something else.

It was the awful knowledge, the one he refused ever to face, that this young woman’s fate could have been his own wife’s fate also. Nine years ago Sandy had disappeared off the face of the earth, and not a trace of her had appeared since. She could have been murdered and dumped somewhere. Killed and savagely butchered. If you wanted to get rid of a body and make sure it would never, ever be found it was easy – there were dozens of ways to do it.

And that was what bothered him now. Someone had gone to the trouble of butchering this girl and removing her head. But if they had really wanted to make it hard to identify her, they would have taken her hands as well. So why hadn’t they?

Why had they dumped her remains here in the middle of this field, where she was bound to be discovered quickly? Instead of putting her even in a shallow grave?

Could it be, he wondered, because whoever had done this had wanted her to be discovered?

Kellie, dressed in a purple jogging suit, squatted on the floor of the living room, keyboard on her lap, leaning against the sofa, munching her way through a tube of salt-and-vinegar flavoured Pringles. Not exactly the healthiest lunch, but they were low fat – wouldn’t do her figure any harm, she thought.

Logged on to the Web, she stared at the purple crystal Swarovski bracelet on the television screen, then double-clicked on the image to make it larger. Guiltily, she thought how well it would go with the outfit she had on. A bit bling, perhaps, a bit chav. But Swarovski costume jewellery was definitely classy; she loved their stuff. The RRP, it showed, was £152.00 and the highest bid showing so far was just £10.75. With only three hours, forty-two minutes of auction time remaining!

That was nothing! She entered a bid of twelve pounds. That wouldn’t make an appreciable dent in their finances – and if she could get it for close to that price then in a few weeks she could put it back on at a higher price and make a profit!

She watched the screen for several minutes more, and no further bids appeared. So far, so good. She reached out her arm, picked up the bottle of Smirnoff – the one from her secret stash that she kept hidden from Tom at the back of her underwear drawer in the bedroom – unscrewed the cap and took just a little nip. It was only her third drink of the morning, she rationalized, ignoring the fact it had been a new bottle and was now a third empty.

Outside, rain was pelting down. Lady trotted into the room, lead in her mouth, cocked her head and whined.

‘You want your walk, my darling, don’t you? Have to wait for the rain to ease off, OK?’

The dog whined again, louder.

She put the bottle down and raised her arm. Lady nuzzled up to her then rolled over, clumsily, onto her back.

‘Typical woman, aren’t you?’ Kellie slurred affectionately, the buzz from the vodka lifting her midday blues. ‘Just want your tits caressed.’

She stroked the dog’s belly for some moments, then crooked her arm around her neck and kissed her on the head, breathing in the animal’s strong, warm, furry smell. ‘Love you, Lady.’

Hearing some noise outside, Lady suddenly jumped back to her feet, growled, and prowled out into the hall. She barked, and moments later Kellie heard the thump of the dog flap in the kitchen as Lady ran off into the garden, no doubt to chase off some bird that had dared to land on the lawn.

Her bid on eBay still stood unchallenged.

One day she would get this online auction thing right. There had been an article in the Daily Mail a couple of weeks ago, which she had cut out and kept, about all the people who had made fortunes selling things on eBay. She had tried telling Tom – but he just didn’t seem to understand – that all she was doing was trying, in her own way, to make them some money. But she just wasn’t any good at it. She would be, though; she would get the hang of it.

Then she looked at the bottle. Maybe just one more small mouthful?

She closed her eyes, thinking. What the hell is wrong with me? With my life? Is it crap genes?

Kellie thought about her parents. Her father with all his dreams, whom she adored, was now housebound with advanced Parkinson’s at just fifty-eight years old. She remembered as a child all the different business ventures he had tried and failed at. He had driven a cab in Brighton and had started his own limousine hire service. That had gone under. He’d bought a franchise selling a health drink which was going to make his fortune. That had cost them their house.