Peter James - Looking Good Dead

Sitting down in front of the curved Crimestoppers display board, it felt at this moment as if his team couldn’t stop a bloody bus, Grace thought, and remembered gloomily that today was the day Cassian Pewe started. How great it would be to get transferred to Newcastle just as he and Cleo were getting together, he thought. Putting them at opposite ends of the country. Three hundred bloody miles apart. Well it was not going to sodding well happen!

None of them would enjoy the four-minute show Grace was putting on. To start their week with the worst horror movie most of them would ever see in their lives was hardly a Monday morning treat. These were shock tactics, he knew, and they wouldn’t make him any friends. But making friends was right at the bottom of his list of priorities at this exact moment.

He started the session in the way he always did. ‘The time is eight thirty, Monday, June sixth,’ he read out. ‘This is our sixth briefing of Operation Nightingale, the investigation into the murder of Jane – known as Janie – Susan Amanda Stretton, conducted on day five following the discovery of her remains. I will now summarize events following the incident.’

For some minutes, mainly for the benefit of the newcomers from Detective Superintendent Gaylor’s team, he went over the circumstances surrounding Janie Stretton’s death, the investigations and actions that had been put in place subsequently and the key events. These he listed as: the theft of the computer disk which had enabled Tom Bryce, apparently, to witness Janie Stretton’s murder; the discovery that Janie Stretton had been supplementing her income as a trainee lawyer by working as a prostitute; the discovery of the link on Tom Bryce’s computer with Reggie D’Eath’s computer; Kellie Bryce’s disappearance; her husband’s disappearance; the recovery of a laptop computer from a crashed van last night, and what it contained, which they would all shortly see.

He looked at his watch. ‘Whatever plans outside of work any of you have for the next thirty-six hours and forty-five minutes, you can forget. You’ll understand why at the end of this briefing. OK, can I have your individual updates?’ He looked first at Norman Potting.

‘Can I just ask, is there any more news on Emma-Jane?’ Potting asked.

‘No, she’s still on life support,’ Grace answered curtly. ‘I’ve organized flowers from our team to be sent to the hospital. What progress have you made on the two escort agencies Miss Stretton was registered with?’

‘I went to take a formal statement from Ms Claire Porter, joint proprietor of BCE-247 escort agency, at seven thirty last night. She’s about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I got nothing helpful from her.’

‘And her clients?’

‘I’m working my way through her clients, and also through her girls,’ Potting said.

I’ll bet you are, you dirty bugger, Grace thought, and could see from the expressions on several other faces, including the two FLOs assigned to Derek Stretton, Maggie Campbell and Vanessa Ritchie, that he wasn’t alone in this view.

‘So far, I haven’t come up with anything.’

‘And the second agency?’

‘She had only just registered; they hadn’t introduced any clients to her.’

Grace looked at his notes. ‘What about the man called Anton who took Janie Stretton out on four dates from the BCE-247 agency?’

‘I checked out the phone number. It was one of those pay-as-you-go jobs you can buy in just about any shop or petrol station. No record of the purchaser; won’t get us anywhere.’

Grace circulated to the teams a dozen photographs of Janie Stretton with her date in the Karma Bar. They had been lifted off the CCTV tape and the quality was not great, but her face and the face of her muscular, spiky-haired date were clear enough. ‘These were taken on Friday, May twenty-seventh, the night of Miss Stretton’s third date with this Anton. I think we can presume this is him. I want these circulated to every police station in the country and we’ll try to get it on Crimewatch on Wednesday night. Someone’s going to recognize him.’ Grace knew that this might raise identification issues in the future, but he would deal with them with the Crown Prosecution Service when he had to.

He turned to Maggie Campbell and Vanessa Ritchie. ‘You said that Miss Stretton’s father was talking about putting up a reward?’

‘He confirmed last night,’ Maggie Campbell said. ‘One hundred thousand pounds for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer.’

‘Good,’ Grace said. ‘That’s helpful; that should test a few loyalties.’ He looked at two of the new officers he had recruited from Dave Gaylor’s team: Don Barker, whom Grace liked, a stocky, bull-necked detective sergeant in his mid-thirties, with a fuzz of fair hair and a pale blue shirt straining at the buttons, and a very confident, much younger detective constable Grace had never seen before. His name was Alfonso Zafferone; he had Latino good looks, wet-look hair, and was dressed in an elegant houndstooth sports jacket and a sharp shirt and tie. Addressing both of them he asked, ‘Any progress on the ownership of this white van?’

Alfonso Zafferone replied. He had a cocky attitude, making Grace take an instant dislike to him. He exuded a demeanour that said he was cut out for higher things, and menial tasks such as vehicle checks were way beneath him. ‘As we already know, it’s a company with a PO box address in London. I checked out the company – it isn’t registered at Companies House.’

‘Meaning?’ Grace asked.

Zafferone shrugged.

His tiredness making him less tolerant than normal, Grace snapped at him, deliberately getting his name wrong – one of the best ways, he had learned over the years, to put someone in their place. ‘This is a murder enquiry, DC Zabaglione. We don’t do shrugs here; we do answers verbally. Would you like to try again?’

The young DC glared at him, looking for a moment as if he was about to answer back, then clearly thought better of it. A little more meekly he replied, ‘It means, sir, either the company is registered overseas or the name is false.’

‘Thank you. I want to know which is the case by our next briefing, at six thirty. And where the mail to that PO box is collected from. OK?’

Zafferone nodded sullenly.

You’re not going to go far, my son, Grace thought. Not unless someone pulls the chain and flushes you down the sodding toilet. ‘How about the identity of the van’s driver?’

‘He was starting to come round about ten minutes ago, Roy,’ Don Barker said. ‘There was nothing on his clothes or in the van. He doesn’t look English – may be central European. I’m going down to see him straight after this briefing.’

‘Good,’ Grace said. Then he turned back to Potting. ‘OK, another task for you today, Norman, is to finish visiting all the wholesale suppliers of sulphuric acid in the area.’

‘I’m on it,’ Potting said.

Grace addressed Nick Nicholl. ‘Remind me, Nick, what time are we seeing the DI from Wimbledon?’

‘At half past eleven, sir.’

‘And you’re chasing up on any other force in the country that might have had a scarab beetle connected to a murder scene?’

‘Yes, I’m working on that, sir.’

‘Don’t keep fucking sirring me, OK?’

The DC blushed.

Grace felt bad for having a go at him. He didn’t need to snap at anyone. He needed to keep a lid on himself, he realized. He looked at the team and gave a smile. ‘OK, we’re now going to have a short movie. I apologize there is no popcorn.’

He got a ragged laugh.

After what you are about to see, you won’t be feeling like eating popcorn, you’ll be doing well just to keep down your breakfast, he thought to himself, nodding at DS Rye to close the blinds then start the video.