by Peter James
‘Roy, I was told you’re the on-call SIO – I thought you were off active duty for a while?’
‘I am, DG, but I’m covering for Kevin Shapland this week. What’s up?’
‘We’ve got a suspicious death. Woman in a bathtub in a block of flats in Hove. It was called in by an electrician who had apparently gone to the premises to carry out some rewiring work. A Response Unit attended, along with an ambulance crew, who declared her dead – sounds like she had been dead for a while.’
‘A while? Any idea how long? Days, weeks?’
‘No, but some hours – perhaps overnight.’
‘What about the cause of death?’
‘It looks like she might have electrocuted herself, but the officers attending were not happy about an injury to the back of her skull, and blood on the bathroom tiles, and requested supervision. Their sergeant attended and agreed with them, declaring it a potential crime scene. A senior CSI was called in, along with the duty divisional DI. There are a number of factors that make me think this looks like a job for Major Crime – can you attend and take command of the investigation, Roy?’
‘Have they got scene guards?’
‘Yes, in place.’
‘Good. We’ll need to inform the Coroner’s Officer.’
‘I’ve done that.’
‘Good. OK, if you let me have the address and any other details I’ll get there right away. What information do you have on the victim and what are the other factors you mentioned, DG?’
‘Her name is Lorna Jane Belling. She’s a domestic violence victim – white female, thirty-five, married and works from home, in Hollingbury, as a hairdresser. But the location where she has been found is a flat on Hove seafront, Vallance Mansions, where she has a monthly tenancy. It’s a run-down old block, with a landlord who’s had a ton of complaints over the years from his tenants. Health and Safety did an inspection a couple of years ago and reported him.’
‘So the landlord could be in the frame for a manslaughter charge?’
‘Well, possibly, but here’s one complicating factor. On Monday of this week a Response crew attended at this same woman’s marital home, following a violent assault by her husband, Corin Belling – his third reported assault on her in a year. He was subsequently arrested and the IDVA were notified and made contact with her. Then he was released on bail the following evening, just short of thirty-six hours, because his wife refused to press charges. It sounds like this flat in Hove might be her secret bolthole.’
‘Or love nest?’
‘Possible.’
‘Has the husband been informed?’
‘Under the circumstances, not yet, sir.’
‘Good, let’s keep it that way for now. Do we know where he works?’
‘A company called South Downs IT Solutions.’
Grace frowned. ‘That name sounds familiar.’
‘It should be, Roy! They used to be about three hundred yards from Sussex House – on that industrial estate – near the old Argus building.’
‘Duh! Of course.’
‘But they’re in Burgess Hill now.’
Grace immediately called Temporary DI Guy Batchelor, who was in the new Detectives’ Room, an open-plan area on the floor above, and asked him to come to his office right away.
Two minutes later Batchelor knocked on his door and entered. A burly, shaven-headed man, suited and booted conservatively, reeking as usual of cigarette smoke, he had a warm personality and the physique of a rugby player. In his previous office, Roy would have sat at the small, round conference table with him. Now all he could offer was the empty desk in front of his.
Grace brought him briefly up to speed and asked, ‘How do you feel about attending as my deputy SIO, Guy? I’ll come with you today, then I’ll leave you in charge until I return. Are you comfortable with that?’
‘Fine, boss,’ Batchelor responded, nodding pensively.
‘It’s a big responsibility – if you’d rather, I could ask DCI Best, who’s the on-call SIO from tomorrow.’
‘No, I’d be very happy to do this.’
‘If it does turn out to be a homicide this could be a great career break for you, Guy. I’d prefer to keep the job rather than hand it over to Nick Best, though if you find you need any urgent guidance you could speak to him – I’ll let him know.’
‘Thanks, boss, I’m very grateful. Sounds like we already have a possible suspect. Track record of abusing his wife. We might be able to wrap this up very quickly.’
‘ABC, Guy,’ Grace cautioned him with the police mantra. Assume nothing. Believe no one. Check everything.
‘Ingrained on my soul!’
Grace grinned. He liked Batchelor a lot. He was a smart detective who he believed would go far in his career. Probably further than he himself had ambitions for. All the way to the top. He could see him being a chief constable one day. ‘Good man,’ he said.
‘I won’t let you down, boss.’
‘That’s why I’ve chosen you.’
22
Thursday 21 April
As Grace drove the unmarked job car past the security gate of the Police HQ, out onto the residential street and up the hill, his right leg, where he had been hit with eleven shotgun pellets a few months ago, was still causing him discomfort. But he ignored it as he talked Batchelor through the initial procedures to follow, while the DI noted everything diligently on his pad for Operation Bantam, the random name generated by the Sussex Police computer system.
They drove through the Cuilfail tunnel under the cliffs on the edge of the county town of Lewes, and then onto the A27. Grace was feeling the same surge of adrenaline he always got when heading to a potential murder scene. The weeks of paperwork were necessary, but the real bang for him always had been and, he knew, always would be, leading a murder enquiry from the front. Excitement, mingled with both fascination and a little dread, too, at what he might be about to see. Coupled with the knowledge of the almost overwhelming burden of responsibility that came with it. All he could hope to achieve was justice for the victim, and some sort of closure for the victim’s family. The victim’s family was the most important of all. Until the offender was convicted and sentenced, the family could not start to move on.
He never forgot that.
This sounded potentially a simple case, with a prime suspect already on the radar. Eighty per cent of victims were killed by someone they knew, and with Lorna Belling’s history of domestic abuse by her husband already well known to the police they had a good starting point. But, equally, he well knew from his years of experience that things were not always as they seemed.
‘We need to check out the electrician’s story, Guy. We also need the names of all the tenants in the building and background checks on them. And all the tradesmen who call regularly, and any other contractors working in the building, or who have recently worked there. We’ll need a list of all her friends and relatives, and any work colleagues and clients.’
Batchelor continued to make notes. ‘I should also have a check done on any known offenders against women who might recently have been released from prison, with links to Brighton and Hove.’
‘Absolutely, Guy, good thinking.’
Fifteen minutes later, crossing the lights at the junction of Hove Street and Kingsway, and making a left along the seafront, he didn’t need the satnav to find the building, just a short distance ahead. There were two marked police cars outside, a white CSI van and another car with a crest and the words HM CORONER on each door. An outer cordon of crime scene tape, attended by a uniformed PCSO scene guard, flapped in the wind outside the entrance to a shabby-looking, 1950s low-rise apartment building. So far, he was pleased to see, there were no reporters, although it would not be long, he knew, before they arrived. But he preferred to be fully informed before engaging with them.
Many detectives had an intense dislike – fuelled by mistrust – of the press, and of social media. But Grace took a different view. He believed the public had
a right to know what was going on, and his years of experience had taught him that, if respectfully treated, the press could not only be a great ally to the police, but could be invaluable in helping encourage the public to come forward with information. He had been one of the first officers to embrace social media as an investigative tool and, like many of his colleagues in Sussex Police today, regularly used Twitter in particular.
He parked just ahead of the other police vehicles, and he and Batchelor climbed out, opened the boot and grabbed their forensic suits from their go-bags. They walked up to the outer cordon scene guard, signed the log and ducked under the tape.
As they did so, Grace heard the familiar voice of Roy Apps, the Duty Inspector. He walked towards him, his face the only part of him visible in his full protective clothing.
‘Good to see you, Roy.’
‘You, too,’ he replied. ‘Someone told me you’re retiring?’
‘Yes, next year.’
‘Sorry to hear that, I’ll miss you.’
Apps gave him a wan smile. ‘It will be strange.’
‘Going back to your old career?’
‘Well, something involving the countryside. Not sure what yet.’
‘You’ll be a big loss to the force.’
‘Us old buggers have to make way for new blood, eh?’
Grace wasn’t so sure about that. When he had joined, the rule was that you retired on full pension after thirty years. To a nineteen-year-old that had seemed a lifetime away. But now turned forty, he was glad the retirement age had been extended. The force lost many talented people in their late forties. Officers who had enormous experience – and so much money invested in them. He had a lot of respect for Apps, who had originally been a gamekeeper before joining the police. He was one of the best uniform inspectors he’d ever known, an immensely able man.
‘Sure you’re not going to miss it, Roy?’
‘I’ll miss the camaraderie, but not the politics. Too much of that, these days. Know what I’m looking forward to most of all?’
‘No – what?’
‘It’s being able to go into a pub and say what I really think, without having to worry that one of my bosses gets to hear about it, or the local paper printing a piece saying, Brighton police inspector says young offenders would be better off with a slapping from their local bobby.’
Grace smiled. ‘Yup, I have to say I can’t disagree with you. So what do we have?’
‘Doesn’t look good,’ Apps replied.
The two detectives broke the seals and wormed their way into their blue paper forensic suits. They pulled on their overshoes, hats and masks, then snapped on their gloves.
It is normal at a crime scene in a public space to have an outer and inner cordon for protection – especially somewhere like this apartment block, where residents had to be permitted to enter and leave their homes. The inner cordon would prevent access to the actual flat itself.
Ignoring the ancient lift, Apps led them up three flights of stairs. As they emerged on the landing they saw the inner cordon, with another PCSO scene guard outside. They signed her log too, and as Apps stepped aside, Grace turned to Batchelor. ‘Remember the first rule, Guy, clear the ground under your feet. OK?’
The DI nodded. ‘And Locard’s Principle.’
Locard, a Frenchman born in 1877, was regarded by many as the pioneer of forensic science. His principle was that every contact leaves a trace:
Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibres from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects . . . Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value.
‘And one other thing,’ Grace reminded him. ‘Always think the unthinkable.’
‘Yes, boss!’
Grace pushed open the door and, followed by Batchelor, entered the living area of a small studio flat, with a window overlooking the seafront and the King Alfred complex. It felt chilly, and there was a smell of manky carpet and burnt plastic, but also a faint smell of disinfectant and bleach.
‘See that, boss?’ Batchelor pointed at a knotted carrier bag on the floor by the door. ‘I wonder what’s in there – might be of interest.’
Grace nodded. ‘Make sure the forensic team pick that up.’
The room was furnished with a small sofa, an armchair and a cheap-looking kitchen table, on which lay a dirty ashtray; two wooden chairs were drawn up to it; there was a double bed with a fur throw; two Brighton prints hung on the walls, one of the old Brighton chain pier, which from his limited knowledge of Brighton’s history was destroyed in a storm in 1896, and the other depicting the Old Steine from around the same era. To the right of this print he noticed a rectangle, very slightly darker than the rest of the cream Artex wall, with a picture hook in the middle.
Had another picture been removed recently, he wondered? He pointed it out to Batchelor, who made a note on his pad.
The two detectives entered the bathroom. Grace tensed as he went in first. If he had been asked to count the number of dead bodies he had encountered in his nearly twenty-two years in the police force, he would not have been able to give a figure. Nor would he have been able to describe his reactions to each one of them. But there was one thing that every murder victim had in common, and that was just how utterly motionless they were.
With a living human, even one comatose, there was constant movement. But a dead person was like a waxwork figure. Sometimes he had to really focus his mind to remember this had been, just a short while ago, a living human being. And someone’s loved one.
He glanced at Batchelor’s pale face, and realized that although the DI had been involved in many murder enquiries and seen many bodies, they always had an effect. Especially ones like this, with their sightless eyes open.
‘You OK?’ he asked, gently.
Batchelor nodded. ‘Fine, boss, I’m good.’
Grace studied Lorna Belling’s body carefully. She was lying in the tub, with water up to her midriff, her head lying back against the tiles. The hairdryer cable ran from the blackened plug socket down into the water. There were bloodstains on the cracked tile behind her. She must have hit the wall with some force – pushed? Thrown back by the force of the electric shock? Slipped in the bath?
She had an almost classically beautiful English-rose face, shoulder-length fair hair tinted with highlights, and a toned figure, but with a number of bruise marks on her upper torso and above her right eye. There were pale lines round her neck, which had darkened from the blood that had drained down from her head, and tiny clusters of red dots, each the size of a pinhead, were present on her forehead and cheeks. He peered into her eyes and could see more of them there. Clear signs of strangulation.
God, what kind of a bastard of a husband could have been this violent? The answer, he knew, was far too many. Domestic abuse always angered him. Regardless of the sex of the abuser.
Cleo had given him a ton of books to read relating to her Open University degree course in philosophy, and he had been dutifully working through them ever since they had first started dating, aware of just how much knowledge he lacked from his own education. Some of the stuff he had found impenetrable, but he had learned a lot from others. The words of one writer, the American poet and philosopher Henry Thoreau, had stuck in his mind: ‘lives of quiet desperation’.
He looked at the bruises on Lorna’s body. Had that been her tragic life? One of quiet desperation? Had this little place been her escape?
He pointed out the marks on her neck to Batchelor. ‘What do you think, Guy? Any hypothesis?’
‘Well, boss, I’d say from what we know of the husband, he might have murdered her and then tried to make it look like suicide. But I don’t think we can rule ou
t anything at this stage, even suicide.’
Grace nodded. ‘She could have been attacked by her husband. Or by someone else. Or suicide. Until we find her phone, laptop or other electronic devices we won’t know for sure she didn’t write or send a note.’ He stepped back out into the main room and looked at the ashtray. ‘Was she a smoker?’
Then he was interrupted by his phone ringing. ‘Roy Grace?’
Instantly his heart sank as he heard the voice of the most pedantic of all the Home Office pathologists on-call to Sussex Police. Frazer Theobald.
‘Hello, Roy. I’m just finishing off a job in Woking, then I’ll be heading down. Should be with you in about two hours.’
The most pedantic, but the most thorough, Grace acknowledged with grudging respect as he ended the call. ‘I’ll be leaving you to it shortly, Guy. OK?’
‘Absolutely, boss.’
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’
‘I’ll take care of everything. You won’t need to worry.’
‘Check out the Murder Manual when you get back to the office, OK? It has everything you need as an SIO.’
‘I will.’
They stepped out of the flat, not wanting to disturb the crime scene more than they needed, and were met moments later by Crime Scene Investigator Alex Call, who had just arrived. Grace introduced Batchelor, explaining his role. Then he instructed the CSI to lay down a forensic grid, and to ascertain if there were any fast-track opportunities for forensic retrieval of evidence. He and Batchelor would wait out here whilst Call did his first cursory sweep.
Grace looked at his watch, working back from the time he needed to be at the airport. Lorna’s husband needed to be informed, and he wanted to break the news himself to the man. How he reacted could be vitally significant. But he needed to remain here at the crime scene with Guy, waiting for Alex Call’s initial assessment, in case there was something blindingly obvious he had overlooked, which Call’s trained eye spotted and could lead them to a swift resolution.
They stood on the landing chatting to the scene guard, then the Crime Scene Manager who arrived with James Gartrell, a CSI photographer, who would video the scene.