Peter James - Looking Good Dead

While Rye closed the blinds, Grace said, ‘This video clip was found on this laptop computer, which was removed from the Ford Transit van last night. The hard drive we removed and is now in safekeeping, as a crime scene, in the High Tech Crime Unit. What you are viewing is a cloned copy.’

Jon Rye clicked the keyboard to start the projection. Grace dimmed the lights.

On the screen appeared:

A SCARAB PRODUCTION

Here is a special bonus movie for all our customers,

‘BATHTIME FOR REGGIE!’

The man is a convicted paedophile. Enjoy!

Moments later a slightly unsteady, hand-held camera showed, in wide angle, a small, rather old-fashioned avocado-coloured bathroom. The camera favoured the bathtub. Then a figure, wearing what appeared to be a full chemical-protection suit, with gloves, boots, a breathing tank and mask, struggled backwards in through the door, carrying something.

In a moment, it became clear it was the legs of a naked man, bound tightly together with cord.

A second man, in identical protective clothing, his face invisible behind his darkened-glass mask, held the shoulders of the naked man, Reggie D’Eath.

They deposited him in the empty tub.

A large, baby-faced man, with thinning hair and a flaccid body, he thrashed around in the bath like a fish out of water. His face was a mask of terror, but he was unable to speak because something, held in place with gaffer tape had been jammed in his mouth. His arms were tied tightly to his sides. All he could do was wriggle his body, heave himself up and down with his thighs and twist his head wildly from side to side, his eyes bulging, imploring, his small, thin penis flopping around between his hairless balls amid an untidy thicket of pubic hairs.

The men went out of the room, and returned with a large black plastic chemical drum which Grace estimated would hold about ten gallons. No markings were visible on it.

Reggie D’Eath was now thrashing so wildly that for an instant it seemed he would actually manage to leap out of the tub.

The men set the drum down. One then held D’Eath while the other produced a length of wire, wound it twice around his neck, then attached it to a towel rail high on the wall above his head. And pulled it tight.

D’Eath’s eyes bulged even more. His movements became different after some seconds – convulsions rather than thrashing.

With some difficulty the two men moved him up a little, so he was reclining rather than lying flat. They adjusted the ligature so that it was now supporting him, clearly deeply uncomfortable and cutting into his neck but no longer strangling him.

An unseen hand tossed a wriggling scarab beetle onto his chest. The little creature tumbled over backwards almost comically, coming to rest on D’Eath’s genitals. It started to right itself, but too late.

Without wasting any time the two men lifted the chemical drum, moving carefully out of the view of the camera, so as not to obstruct it, and tipped a good gallon of the liquid, which Grace knew to be sulphuric acid, straight onto D’Eath’s genitals.

Steam rose.

Grace had never in his life seen a body shake and contort the way the unfortunate D’Eath’s was doing now. The man’s head was snapping from left to right, as if he was trying to saw the wire through his carotid artery; his eyes were strobing. As surreptitiously as he could, Grace glanced at the reactions of his colleagues. Ponds was holding his hand over his mouth. Every single one of them looked numb.

He turned back to the screen. The men continued pouring, emptying the entire contents of the drum into the bath. Within moments D’Eath’s body ceased to move. The room slowly filled with a haze of chemical steam.

The video faded to black. Then appeared:

DEARLY VALUED CUSTOMER, we hope you enjoyed our little bonus show. Remember to log in at 21.15 on Tuesday for our next Big Attraction – A man and his wife together. Our first ever DOUBLE KILLING!

Grace turned the lights back on.

From the parchment colour of Alfonso Zafferone’s face, Grace guessed he wasn’t going to have any more arrogance from this young DC for a while. He could not recall, in his entire career, when he had been in a room full of people so quiet.

Dennis Ponds was staring, bug-eyed and unfocused, as if he had just been told he was going to be put in the bathtub next.

It was Norman Potting who finally broke the silence. He coughed, clearing his throat, then said, ‘Do we presume this is a snuff movie, Roy?’

‘Well it’s not his fucking family album,’ Glenn Branson rounded on him.

There was no titter of laughter. Nothing. One of the female indexers was staring down at the table as if afraid to lift her eyes, in case there was more.

‘Dennis,’ Grace said, ‘I’m going to give you a copy on your laptop to take to the editor of the Argus . Don’t show him everything, but make him aware of just what we’re dealing with here. I want him to run photographs of Mr and Mrs Bryce on the front page of the midday edition of his paper. We have a day and a half to find these people. Does everyone understand that? That they are going to be killed and video’d?’

Branson took a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. ‘Man, who watches that kind of shit?’

‘A lot of very ordinary people with sick minds,’ Grace said. ‘It could be any one of us in this room – or your neighbour, your doctor, your plumber, your vicar, your mortgage broker. The same kind of people who slow down to rubberneck road accidents. Voyeurs. There’s a little bit of it in all of us.’

‘Not me,’ Branson said. ‘I couldn’t watch stuff like that.’

‘Are you saying that we are all potential killers?’ Nick Nicholl asked.

Grace remembered something a psychological profiler who had lectured on snuff movies at a homicide convention in the States had told him late one night in a bar. ‘We all have the capacity to kill, but only a small percentage of us have the ability to live with having killed. But there are plenty of us who are curious; we’d like to experience it vicariously. Snuff movies enable you to do that – to experience the killing of a human being. Think about it,’ he said. ‘There’s no opportunity for normal people to actually kill someone.’

‘I could have happily killed my mother-in-law,’ Potting said.

‘Thank you, Norman,’ Grace said, silencing him before he could go on. Then he turned to Glenn Branson. ‘Tom Bryce left his house in the middle of the night in a Renault Espace. There can’t have been much traffic on the road. We don’t know where he was going. We don’t know how much fuel there was in the vehicle. I want you to call off the search for Janie Stretton’s head and redeploy every single officer, all the Specials and all the CSOs to cover every CCTV camera – police, civic, petrol station, the lot – within a thirty-mile radius of this city.’

‘Right away.’

Then, turning back to DS Barker, he said, ‘Don, I want someone to go through all of Reggie D’Eath’s personal records – bank statements, credit card statements-’

‘Someone’s already on to that.’

‘Good.’

Grace checked his watch. He had a nine thirty with Alison Vosper, then somehow had to get to a 10.00 a.m. appointment he had made on the other side of town. ‘I’ll see you all back here at six thirty p.m. Everyone know what they’ve got to do? Any further questions?’

Usually there would be plenty. This morning there were none.

Then a phone rang. It was answered by the secretary, who handed it after a few moments to Glenn Branson. Everyone watched him as if sensing there was some important news coming.

Branson asked the caller to hold for a moment, covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and said, ‘The Bryces’ Renault Espace has been found down a farm track off the A23 at Bolney,’ he said.