Each day that he was at work, she tried not to think about the knock on her door that might one day come from two police officers. But for now, as they arrived at their destination, Cleo’s mind was focused on the pretty young woman she and Darren had zipped into the bag. All she knew about her at this stage was her name on her passport, Florentina Shima, which the Border Agency said was a bad forgery. Her possessions had consisted of a small amount of clothes and toiletries, and a mobile phone, all of which had been taken for analysis.
Cleo drove behind the mortuary, which was well out of sight of the public, reversed up to the doors, clicked the button to raise them, then reversed further into the receiving bay.
Mindful of her bad back, injured from lifting the body of a 350-pound woman a few months ago, she helped Darren move the young woman out of the rear of the van and wheel her through into the chilly interior of the mortuary.
Before doing this job, Cleo had worked in a number of hospitals as part of her nursing degree. Mostly, the workplaces she previously knew had a quieter, slacker feel at the weekends. But ever since she had started here, every day, whether a weekday or weekend, felt the same — it was always quiet and still. Although tonight it was particularly silent and cold. The only sound was the tick of fridges, the hum of their motors and fans.
The hospitals had mostly smelled sterile. This mortuary smelled of decaying flesh and clinical disinfectants, an odour that seemed ingrained into the walls — and the very soul of this place. If asked to explain why she had ever applied for this job, she probably couldn’t. She found it grim, but fascinating. A kind of twilight world where life met death. A place where she could help and comfort the living in a time of deep distress. A place where she could make a difference in some small way. And she found it, constantly and morbidly, engaging.
The mortuary was clinical in the extreme. The harsh, cold lighting. The grey tiled walls and tiled floor. Everything designed to be sterile and minimize the risk of infection. Hoses and drain gullies to wash away blood. The scales for weighing every cadaver’s internal organs. The trophy cabinet where bits of metal recovered from bodies had been placed. Pacemakers that would explode during a cremation. Shrapnel from historic war wounds of veterans.
The place gave her a buzz every time she entered. Sometimes she wondered, irreverently, what she would do if a fridge door opened and someone climbed out. That had not yet happened here, but some years ago her predecessor, Elsie, had told her that a woman certified dead by paramedics on the beach had once sat up, asking where she was. And, sometimes, genuinely dead corpses did move or make sounds from the gases building up inside them.
Those gave Cleo the real heebie-jeebies. There was little dignity in death, but one of her tasks was, always, to try to find it.
Although she was a suspected drugs mule, because of the nature of her death Florentina was classified as High Risk — someone who might have died of a contagious tropical disease — and was to be placed straight into the mortuary’s isolation room, where the postmortem would be conducted under sterile conditions tomorrow.
As they laid the young woman on a gurney, Cleo unzipped the bag enough to look at her face, so like a porcelain doll.
You’re just a teenager, she thought. What happened?
Hopefully, Dr Frazer Theobald would find out tomorrow.
Knowing that until then she must not touch anything, she zipped up the bag again and pushed Florentina Shima into the room, where the two of them lifted her onto the postmortem table.
They carefully disinfected and sterilized the mortuary van, then returned to the office to fill in the requisite forms, before washing diligently, locking up and heading home.
50
Saturday 12 August
21.30–22.30
Open a Bitcoin account. If you wish to see Mungo alive again, you will send the sum of £250,000 as directed shortly. We will contact you again. By the way, how is your new fridge?
Roy Grace stared at the latest text purportedly from the kidnappers, which Glenn Branson had forwarded. The ransom demand. And he understood Glenn’s comment, it’s a strange one.
The mention of the fridge was, he presumed, to underline that they were watching Kipp Brown. Fine. But what bothered him was the amount of the ransom demand and the vehicle through which the kidnappers wanted it paid.
He called the DI. ‘Glenn, what’s going on? Who kidnaps someone for this amount? Who in God’s name would go to all this trouble for a relatively poxy £250k? More likely to be a million — or even five million — wouldn’t you think?’
‘But we’ve dealt recently with a kidnap ransom of just a hundred quid,’ Branson reminded him.
‘You’re right,’ Grace said. ‘But those small demands — from fifty quid to a few hundred — are usually just scuzzy little squabbles over drug debts. Something doesn’t feel right about this. They’ve made spelling mistakes, maybe they missed off a zero. What’s Brown saying?’
‘He wants to pay.’
According to the law, although blackmail was a criminal offence, paying a ransom was not. If someone wanted to pay a ransom demand, they were free to do so, and there was nothing the police could do to stop them.
‘Tell him he’s crazy if he does. They’re not going to stop at £250k, they’re just testing the water.’
‘Why would they do that?’ Branson asked.
‘Because no one’s going to go to this amount of trouble for peanuts, matey. Risk fifteen years in jail for pocket money?’
‘It’s all relative,’ Branson replied. ‘To someone who’s chopping up his door frames to keep warm in winter, £250k is a fortune, right?’
‘Maybe, but it worries me. There’s something very amateurish about the amount. Explain to Brown and his wife that if they pay this ransom money, it may not be the end. There’s likely to be another demand. Then another. His kidnappers believe Mungo’s father is a rich man with deep pockets.’
‘And how do I explain that if he doesn’t pay, his son might die, boss?’
‘Very simply. They’ve done all this, risking a decade or longer in jail for the money. They’re going to be after bigger bucks than 250 grand. Just tell him to play the long game. If Mungo dies, what do the kidnappers have? Nothing but a murder investigation, with the odds against them. We catch around ninety per cent of all killers in the UK, year on year. Tell Kipp Brown to keep them sweet, to say he’s going to download the Bitcoin app. Play for time. Meanwhile, let’s see what our good friend — not — Mr Dervishi has to say.’
He looked at Norman Potting and Velvet Wilde.
Then he was interrupted as his phone rang. It was his boss, ACC Cassian Pewe. And he was incandescent with rage.
‘Roy,’ he said. ‘Just what is going on? A bomb scare at the Amex, a kidnapped boy and now a dismembered body at a crushing plant. Meantime you are watching footy and playing lunatic heroics while you’re supposed to be the on-call SIO. I want to see you first thing tomorrow, in my office, 9 a.m., and you’d better have some bloody good answers for me.’
Grace was well aware his actions at the Amex had given Pewe the excuse to discipline him that he had long looked for. But right now, he did not care.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied.
Fuck you, he thought.
51
Saturday 12 August
22.30–23.30
‘So what made you join the police?’ Norman Potting asked his colleague, seated beside him, as he drove the unmarked Ford up the hill, heading towards the east of the city.