You Are Dead (12 page)

Grace frowned. “Why would someone move her to the Lagoon from an inland burial site—to such a public place?”

“Possibly because they knew the path was being laid, boss,” said Glenn Branson. “And that then her remains would never be discovered.”

Grace stared down at the remains, pensively.

“What about,” Branson went on, “the possibility that the offender was part of the crew laying that path?”

Grace nodded. “Yes, it's a possibility. You're on to that, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

Grace looked at his watch, conscious of the need not to be late for Pewe. “Anything else that you have for me?”

Branson nodded with a wry smile. “Yeah, there is something else.” He exchanged an almost conspiratorial glance with Nadiuska De Sancha. Then he jerked a finger toward the front of the skull.

The pathologist went over to the work surface by the large, opaque window, picked up a magnifying glass and brought it over. “Take a close look, Roy.”

Peering hard with his naked eye on the front of the skull, where he estimated the top of the forehead would have been, he could just see what looked like a mark, about two inches wide by half an inch high. Then he raised the glass and looked through that. He could make out, very faintly, letters:

U R DEAD

He turned back to Nadiuska De Sancha. “Strange tattoo to have. Might she have been a Goth, or whatever it was back then?”

“It's not a tattoo, Roy.” She shook her head.

“It's not? So what is it?”

“I think it burned through the skin. It must have been done with a branding iron.”

 

26

Friday 12 December

Logan grew up on a small farm near Ripe in East Sussex. Her parents were third-generation tenant farmers, and as the EEC regulations gradually bit deeper, their income dropped progressively. They needed to make savings, and the only real ones they could make were staff. They had to let two of their farmhands go, and a few months later their herdsman, who had been working for their family for thirty years. From the age of eleven, Logan had to take turns with the rest of her family to get up at 5 a.m. and milk the cows. It was a daily routine, seven days a week, every day of the year. Cows didn't understand things like Christmas Day. They just wanted to be milked.

Her father was a committed Green environmentalist who did not believe in mod cons. The only heating in the house was supplied by a coke-fired Esse oven in the kitchen that was kept going all year round, and a wood-burning stove in the hall that was unlit during the summer months. Years later, although she now lived in a centrally heated flat in Brighton, she still woke up some nights with the smell of burning coke in her nostrils.

She could smell it now. Sharp, acrid. Was she hallucinating?

Then she opened her eyes and realized she was not, she could smell it clearly. Burning coke. Tickling her nostrils. She saw a blurry, diffused red glow above her. And pinpricks of green light beyond.

Then the familiar sliding sound, and musty-smelling air on her face. Now she could see the red glow much more clearly, directly above her.

Someone was standing over her. Someone holding something that was glowing bright red.

“Who are you?” she said, trembling with fear, her voice quavering. “Who are you?”

Suddenly she felt a gloved hand clamp her throat, forcing it down against the hard surface she was lying on. Then the red glow descended toward her midriff. An instant later she felt an agonizing burning sensation on her right thigh. She howled, crushing her eyes shut against the pain, writhing, trying to move away, but she was pinioned down. She screamed. Heard the hiss of burning flesh.

Her flesh.

“Nooooooooooooooooo!”

It was like being stung by a swarm of hornets. She screamed again.

“Ssshhhhh!” a muffled voice said. “Ssshhhh! It's OK, babe!”

She writhed in agony, as far as she could move. It was burning, stinging, hurting like hell. She tried to bite into the glove holding her down. The pain was getting worse.

More intense.

“Owwwwwwwww. Owwwwwwww.” It was burning right through her as if her entire leg was on fire.

“Owwwwwwwwwwwwww.”

Then she felt something cold and soothing on her thigh, for a brief instant. But rapidly the excruciating pain returned.

She saw the red glow rising above her. The hand released her. She gasped. The pain was unbearable.

She vomited.

Moments later a cloth, wet and reeking of some vile disinfectant, was wiping her mouth. The pain in her thigh felt as if it was burning right through to her bone, like corrosive acid.

Then the muffled voice again. “You'll be OK. The pain will go. No harm done. You'll be fine.”

“What have you done, you bastard? Is this how you get your kicks?”

The sliding sound above her. Then silence. Through her tears of pain she shook in terror.

 

27

Friday 12 December

At four o'clock in the afternoon Roy Grace sat in his office on the first floor of the CID HQ, with its view out across the road. The glistening wet gray slab of the Hollingbury Asda superstore sat in the foreground, in the fading light, with the rainy landscape of the city beyond. He slipped the DVD of the interview with Jamie Ball, which he had just been handed, into his desktop computer.

The burly figure of the young man, in a gray suit, shirt and tie and black shoes, was seated, looking awkward, in one of the three red chairs in the tiny Witness Interview Room. Two detectives, DS Guy Batchelor in a sports jacket and black trousers, and DC Liz Seward, a petite woman with short, spiky blond hair, dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers, sat with him. Above their heads the lens of a wall-mounted camera stared down at them.

Grace watched the formalities of today's date and time being announced, and Ball acknowledging he was aware that the interview was being recorded. Batchelor asked Ball to outline the circumstances of his fiancée, Logan Somerville's, disappearance.

Ball related the events in a precisely identical manner as he had to Roy Grace the previous evening, and that struck Grace as a little strange. Was it rehearsed, he wondered?

“How would you describe your relationship with Ms. Somerville?” DC Seward asked.

Grace watched the man carefully. He was replying in a calm voice, but he looked anything but calm. “We were deeply in love and planning our wedding. I thought everything was great.”

“Are you sure about that?” Guy Batchelor pressed. “And that she felt the same way?”

“I thought so.”

Ball looked even more uncomfortable. He stared up for some moments at the camera, then scratched his right ear, before checking the knot of his tie.

“Do you know a lady by the name of Louise Brice?” DC Seward asked.

“Yes, very well.”

“How would you describe her relationship to Logan?” the DC asked.

“She's Logan's best friend. They go back to nursery school days. They're very close.”

“How close would you say?”

“They spoke or texted each other all the time. Several times a day, most days.”

“So Louise Brice would be likely to know quite a lot about her?”

He hesitated. Grace noted his expression change. “Yes.”

“The thing is, Jamie, one of my colleagues spoke to Louise Brice earlier today. I have the transcript of the conversation in front of me.” She looked down for some moments at a sheet of printout. “Louise Brice told her the same thing that she told a reporter on the
Argus
newspaper who contacted her. That Logan had broken off your engagement. Can you comment on that?”

Again Ball looked uncomfortable for some moments. “We were very deeply in love,” he said, with a tinge of defiance in his voice. “But recently there's been some friction—as Logan was suddenly unsure.”

“Why do you think her best friend would have said that to a newspaper reporter?” Liz Seward asked him.

Ball shrugged. “I don't know. Louise Brice and I never got on that well, if you want to know the truth. She runs Brices estate agency. She told Logan she thinks I'm a bit of a loser, and that she could do better.”

“Better than what?” Guy Batchelor asked.

“Me.”

“How did Logan react to her friend's view?” he asked.

Ball was silent for some moments. “She told me what Louise had said.”

“And how did you feel when you heard that?” Batchelor stared at him intently.

Ball touched his beard, then his stacked hair. “I told her that was very hurtful.”

“I spoke to Louise Brice earlier today,” DC Seward said. “She told me that Logan had a number of concerns about the relationship. Do you want to comment on that?”

Ball's temper visibly flared. “That's just bullshit! Louise's a snotty bitch, she never liked me, she was always trying to undermine me. Logan and I had disagreements like any couple.”

“What about?”

“Logan can be a loner at times. I felt we should develop interests that we could do together.”

“Did Louise Brice succeed in any way?” the DC asked.

“Logan told me she loved me.”

“So, is there any truth that she broke off your engagement?”

Again Jamie Ball fell silent for several moments. Then he said, “Yes. Well, the thing is—we were going through a bit of a bad patch. But it was all starting to come good again. I mean—what I mean is—you know—we talked through it. All couples go through rough patches, don't they?”

“I also spoke to Mrs. Tina Somerville today,” Liz Seward said. “That's Logan's mother, correct?”

“Yes.”

“She told me that Logan spent last weekend with her and her husband, alone. Without you. That she had spent much of the time in a state of some distress, telling them that you would not accept that the relationship was over. Would you like to comment on that?”

Again he shrugged. “I'm surprised—but not surprised. She always told me there was friction with her parents. They're tenant farmers—I don't know if you understand how that system works?”

“Would you like to tell us?” the female detective said.

“Much of farming in England works on a strange—quite feudal system. The aristocratic landowners own most of the land in this country—with their vast estates. Historically they've given farming families three-generation tenancies on fairly low rents. The deal is, in return the farmers look after the land—and make their money out of what they earn off the land. So in one way it's a good deal for the farmers—they get substantial acreages of arable or dairy or sheep-farming land. But the downside is they don't own their farms or their land. At the end of the third generation they have to renew their tenancies. It only works if that generation is happy to take on the same deal—as I understand it. Her parents were not happy that I had no interest in farming, they'd hoped Logan would marry someone who was.”

“So their tenancy was under threat?”

“Yes. They're in their sixties and have never bought a property of their own. So they're faced with the possibility of losing their home. They're angry at her for not finding a potential husband willing to carry on. But the truth is that Logan is not interested herself. Farming is a tough life.”

Grace continued watching the recording, but there was nothing further that Jamie Ball said of any significance. He'd said enough already.

Logan Somerville had broken off the engagement and Jamie Ball had not accepted it. His position was they were on the verge of getting back together again. Not a view shared either by her best friend or by her parents.

Was he behind her disappearance?

Grace did not have enough information to make a decision either way. Yet.

 

28

Friday 12 December

Edward Crisp said good-bye to his last patient of the week, Rob Lowe, an elderly property developer who was convinced, just as he had been on a regular basis for the past twenty-five years, that he was terminally ill.

Lowe had been one of the patients he had taken on when he had first set up this practice. Referred to him by his then GP who was retiring, the man had initially come into his office complaining of a recurrent sharp pain in his neck, which had convinced him he was suffering from cancer of the throat. Crisp had been able to calm him down by establishing that it was neck strain from tennis. Since then, there had seldom been two consecutive months when Lowe, sometimes accompanied by his wife, Julie, had not turned up in his office with a fresh imagined terminal illness manifested through some other pain in his body. Chest pains. Lumbar pains. Groin pains. Loss of appetite. Weight loss.

One day, of course, if a heart attack, a stroke, an accident or pneumonia didn't carry him off first, Rob Lowe would be right. Almost everyone who lived long enough would eventually be diagnosed with some form of cancer. But at eighty-three, Lowe was still going strong, and his latest imaginary terminal illness, a brain tumor, causing him blurred vision, had turned out to be no more serious than a need for a cataract operation.

Crisp's secretary, Jenni, popped her head in through the door to say good night, then stood in the doorway, lingering, giving him the same curious, almost expectant stare she always gave him.

“What are you up to this weekend?” he asked, out of politeness rather than interest.

“Taking my niece and nephew, Star and Ashton, to Thorpe Park tomorrow,” she said. “Otherwise I don't have any plans.” Her stare was irritating him intensely tonight. Although, at the moment, everything was irritating him. Why was the bloody woman staring at him? Was she expecting him to suddenly leap out of his chair and declare his love for her?

A handsome woman, with a classic English rose face framed by short, elegantly cut brown hair, she was a sad and slightly tragic figure. He knew all about her private life, because she had confessed to him some years ago, when he had taken her out for their traditional pre-Christmas lunch, that she had been having an affair with a married man with three children, a prominent solicitor in Brighton, who had been stringing her along for years. One day, he had promised, when his kids were old enough to understand, he would leave his wife. But Crisp had always sensed that was never going to happen.