Peter James - Dead Simple

'Hey, Joe!' Grace said. 'No weekend off?'

'Ha! I'm having to do the ballistics testing on the jewellery shop raid - everyone else has buggered off. And I've got the stabbing on Wednesday to deal with, thank you very much.'

Grace remembered there had been a man stabbed to death in Brighton late on Wednesday night. No one knew yet whether it was a mugging or a tiff between two gay lovers.

'Joe, I need some help. I have a sample of soil I've taken from a suspect vehicle. How can I find out, very quickly, what part of Sussex this soil is from? How specific could anyone get for me?'

'How specific do you need?'

'Within a few square feet.'

'Very funny, Roy'

'I'm not smiling.' 'Do you have a sample from the suspect area? I could get tests run and see if they match. We have chalk, clay, gravel and sand in Sussex.'

'The suspect area is Ashdown Forest.'

'The soil there is predominantly sand and clay. We can get matches from pollen, fossils, seeds, animal droppings, grasses, water, all kinds of stuff. How specific can you get?'

'Within a few square miles.'

'You'd have to do a lot better than that. There are areas all over England that would match Ashdown Forest.'

'How long would it take you to get a match without a sample from the specific area?'

'We're talking weeks - and I'd need a huge team - and one hell of a budget.' 'But you could do it?'

'Given unlimited resources and enough time, I could give you a match in a small area.'

'How small?'

'That would depend. A few hundred square feet, perhaps.'

'OK, thanks. I have something I want to bring over to you - are you in the office for a while?'

'All day, Roy'

44

An hour later, dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and a bright tie, Grace drove onto the sprawling, hilly Hollingbury industrial estate on the outskirts of Brighton, past an ASDA store, an ugly 1950s low rise, and then slowed as he reached the long, low Art Deco Sussex House, headquarters of Sussex CID.

Originally built as a factory, it had been bought by the police a few years back and transformed. If it wasn't for the dominant police insignia on the facade, a passer-by could have mistaken it for a swanky, hip hotel. Painted gleaming white, with a long, neat lawn running its full length, it wasn't until you passed the security guard and drove through the high, railed gates into the rear car park, filled with police vehicles, skips and with a formidable cell block beyond, that it became less glamorous.

Grace parked between a police off-roader and a police van, walked up to the rear entrance, held his ID card against the electronic panel to open the door and entered the building. He flashed his card at the security officer behind the front desk and made his way up the plushly carpeted stairs, past ancient truncheons in patterns mounted on blue boards and two more large blue boards halfway up the stairs on which were pinned photographs of some of the key police personnel working in this section of the building.

He knew all the faces. Ian Steel and Verity Smart, of the Specialist Investigations Branch, David Davison of the Crime Policy and Review Branch, Will Graham and Christopher Derricott in the Scientific Support Branch, James Simpson in the Operations and Intelligence Branch, Terrina Clifton-Moore of the Family Liaison Unit, and a couple of dozen more.

Then he walked through a wide open-plan area filled with desks, few of them attended today, and offices on either side labelled with their occupants' names and the Sussex Police badge.

He passed the large office of Detective Chief Superintendent

Gary Weston, who was the Head of Sussex CID. Reaching another door, he held his card up against the security panel and entered a long, cream-painted corridor lined with red noticeboards on either side, to which were pinned serious crime detection procedures. One was labelled 'Diagram - Common Possible Motives', another, 'Murder Investigation Model', another, 'Crime Scene Assessment'.

The place had a modern, cutting-edge feel, which he liked. He had spent much of his career in old, inefficient buildings that were like rabbit warrens; it was refreshing to feel that his beloved Police Force, to which he had dedicated his life, was truly embracing the twenty-first century. Although it was marred with one flaw that everyone here moaned about - there was no canteen.

He walked further along, past door after door flagged with abbreviations. The first was the Major Incident Suite, which housed the incident room for serious crimes. It was followed by the Disclosure Officers Room, the CCTV Viewing Room, the Intelligence Office Room, the Outside Enquiry Team Office, and then the stench hit him, slowly at first, but more powerful with every step.

The dense, cloying, stomach-churning reek of human putrefaction, which had become too familiar to him over the years. Much too familiar. There was no other stench like it; it enveloped you like an invisible fog, seeping into the pores of your skin, deep into your nostrils and your lungs and your stomach, and the fibres of your hair and clothes, so that you carried it away with you and continued on smelling it for hours.

As he pushed open the door of the small, pristine Scene of Crimes Office, he saw the cause: the Crime Scene Investigators' photographic studio was in action. A Hawaiian shirt, torn and heavily bloodstained, lay under the glare of bright lights, on a table, on a sheet of brown background paper. Nearby, in plastic bags, he could see trousers and a pair of camel loafers.

Peering further into the room, Grace saw a man, dressed in white overalls, who he did not recognize for a moment, staring intently into the lens of a Hasselblad mounted on a tripod. Then he realized Joe Tindall had had a makeover since he'd last seen him a few months back. The mad-professor hairstyle and large tortoiseshell glasses had gone. He now had a completely shaven head, a narrow strip of hair

running from the centre of his lower lip down to the centre of his chin and hip rectangular glasses with blue-tinged lenses. He looked more like a media trendy than a scientific boffin.

'New woman in your life?' Grace asked, by way of a greeting.

Tindall looked up at him in surprise. 'Roy, good to see you! Yes, as a matter of fact - who told you that?'

Grace grinned, looking at him more closely, almost expecting to spot an earring as well. 'Young, is she?'

'Actually - yes - how do you know?'

Grace grinned again, staring at his newly shaven pate, his trendy glasses. 'Keeping you young, isn't she?'

Then Tindall understood and grinned sheepishly. 'She's going to kill me, Roy. Three times a night every night.'

'You try three times a night or succeed?'

'Oh, fuck off!' He stared Grace up and down. 'You're looking sharp, for a Saturday. Hot date yourself?'

'A wedding, actually.'

'Congratulations - who's the lucky girl?'

'I have a feeling she's not that lucky,' Grace retorted, placing a small plastic bag containing the earth he had retrieved from Mark Warren's BMW down on the table, next to the shirt. 'I need you to pull out some stops.'

'You always need me to pull out some stops. Everyone does.'

'Not true, Joe. I gave you the Tommy Lytle material and told you there was all the time you need. This is different. I have a missing person - how fast you get this analysed might determine whether he lives or dies.'

Joe Tindall held the bag up and peered at it. He shook it gently, peering at it all the time. 'Quite sandy/ he said.

'What does that tell you?'

'You mentioned Ashdown Forest on the phone?'

'Uhhuh.'

'This might be the kind of soil you'd find there.'

'Might?'

'The UK is knee-deep in sandy soil, Roy. There's sandy soil in Ashdown Forest - but there's sandy soil in a million other places, too.'