Dead Man’s Footsteps

20

Blowflies or bluebottles – or blue-arsed flies, as the Aussies called them – can scent a dead body from twelve miles away. Which gives them a considerable amount in common with crime reporters, Roy Grace was fond of telling members of his team. They feed on the fluid protein excretions that ooze from a decomposing cadaver. Not much different from crime reporters there either, he liked to add.

And, no surprise, there was one outside the door of the SOCO van at this very moment, the Argus’s most persistent – and best informed, it had to be said – crime reporter, Kevin Spinella. Sometimes too well informed.

Grace told the scene guard who had radioed to inform him of the reporter’s presence that he would speak to Spinella, and stepped outside into the rain, relieved to get away from the rank smell of Norman Potting. As he walked towards the reporter, he noticed two photographers hanging around.

Spinella stood without an umbrella, hands in his pockets, wearing a sodden gumshoe raincoat with epaulettes and a belt, and the collar turned up. He was a slight, thin-faced man in his early twenties with alert eyes and his mouth was busily working a piece of chewing gum. His thin black hair, brushed and gelled forward, was at this moment matted to his head by the rain.

Beneath the reporter’s coat, Grace could see, he was wearing a dark business suit and a shirt that was at least one size too big for him, as if he hadn’t grown into it yet. The collar was hanging slack around his neck, despite the big, clumsy knot of his crimson polyester tie pulled tight. His flashy black shoes were caked in mud.

‘You’re a bit late, old son,’ Grace said as a greeting.

‘Late?’ The reporter frowned.

‘The blowflies beat you by several years.’

Spinella gave him the merest hint of a smile, as if unsure to what extent Grace was taking the mickey. ‘Wondered if I could ask you a few questions, Detective Superintendent.’

‘I’ll be holding a press conference on Monday.’

‘Is there anything you can tell me in the meantime?’

‘I thought maybe you might be able to tell me something – you normally appear to be better informed than I am.’

Again the reporter seemed uncertain about his attitude. With a thin smile of acknowledgement he said, ‘Heard you found a skeleton, a woman, down in a storm drain just over there on the site. Is that correct?’

The casual way he asked the question, as if they were remains of no significance, angered Grace. But he needed to keep his cool. There was nothing to be gained by antagonizing Spinella; it was always better, in his experience of dealing with the press, to be guardedly helpful.

‘The remains are human,’ he replied. ‘But so far the gender hasn’t been positively ascertained.’

‘I heard it is definitely a female.’

Grace smiled. ‘You see, I just said you were better informed than me.’

‘So – er – is it?’

‘Who do you want to trust, your sources or me?’

The reporter stared at Grace for a few moments, as if trying to read him. A drip formed on the bottom of his nose, but he made no attempt to wipe it off. ‘Can I ask you something else?’

‘If it’s quick.’

‘I hear you’ve got a new colleague starting at Sussex House on Monday – an officer from the Met, Detective Superintendent Pewe?’

Grace felt himself tighten. One more smug remark and he was going to knock that drip off Spinella’s nose with his bare fist. ‘You hear correctly.’

‘I understand the Met is the first police force in the UK to start cutting down on bureaucracy properly.’

‘You do, do you?’

The reporter’s snide grin was almost unbearable, as if he knew all kinds of secrets he was not revealing. For a wild moment Grace even thought that he might have been leaked something confidential by Alison Vosper.

‘They’re employing civilian clerks to book people into custody, so their arresting officers can go straight back out on patrol – instead of spending hours filling out forms,’ Spinella said. ‘Do you reckon Sussex CID will be learning things from Detective Superintendent Pewe?’

Fighting his anger, Grace was careful with his answer. ‘I’m sure Detective Superintendent Pewe is going to be a valuable member of the Sussex CID team,’ he said.

‘I can quote you on that, can I?’ The grin was getting even worse.

What do you know, you little shit?

Roy’s radio phone crackled. He held it to his ear. ‘Roy Grace?’

It was one of the SOCOs in the tu

Grace politely excused himself from the reporter and made his way back to the storm drain, phoning Norman Potting to tell him he would be some minutes. It was strange how things in life changed on you constantly, he thought. A little while ago, he could not wait to get out of the storm drain. Now, when the alternatives were either standing in the rain and talking to Spinella or going back to being closeted in the SOCO van with Norman Potting, suddenly it seemed to have a lot going for it.

21

It was Abby’s room-mate, Sue, who had inadvertently changed her life. The two of them had met working in a bar down on the Yarra waterfront in Melbourne and became instant friends. They were the same age and, like Abby, Sue had gone to Australia from England in search of adventure.

One evening, nearly a year ago, Sue told Abby that a couple of good-looking blokes, a bit older than them but very charming, had been in the bar, chatting to her. They said they were going to a barbie on Sunday with a fun crowd of people and to come along if she was free, to bring a girlfriend with her if she liked.

Having no better offers, they went. The barbecue was at a cool bachelor pad, a penthouse apartment in one of Melbourne’s hippest districts, with fine views across the bay. But in those heady first hours, Abby had barely taken in her surroundings, because she had been instantly and totally smitten with her host, Dave Nelson.

There were a couple of dozen other people at the party. The men, ranging from about ten years older than her to north of sixty, looked like extras from the set of a gangster film, and the women, dripping with bling, all seemed to have just stepped out of beauty salons. But she barely noticed them either. In fact, she hardly spoke a word to anyone else from the moment she set foot in the door.

Dave was a tall, lean, rough diamond in his mid-forties with a rich tan, short gelled hair and a world-weary face that had probably been seriously handsome in his youth, but now looked comfortably lived in. And that was how she felt, instantaneously, with him. Comfortable.

He moved around the apartment with an easy, animal grace, lavishly sloshing out Krug from magnum bottles all afternoon. He was tired, he said, because he had been playing poker for three days around the clock, in an international tournament, the Aussie Millions, at the Crown Plaza casino. He’d paid an entry fee of one thousand dollars, and had survived four rounds, building up a pot of over one hundred thousand, before being knocked out. A trip of aces, he’d told Abby ruefully. How was he to know the guy had two aces in the hole? When he had three kings, two hidden, for Christ’s sake!

Abby had never played poker before. But that night, after the rest of the guests had gone, he’d sat her down and taught her. She’d liked the attention, liked the way he looked at her all the time, told her how pretty she was, then how beautiful she was, then how good she made him feel just being there with him. His eyes scarcely left her face in all the hours they sat there together, as if nothing else mattered. They were good eyes, brown with a hint of green, alert but tinged with sadness, as if there was some loss hurting him deep inside. It made her want to protect him, to mother him.