‘You’re in the right place. You want SRO. That’s what you want.’
‘SRO?’
‘Single Room Occupancy. That’s what you want. You pay cash, they no ask you questions. My cousin has SRO house. Ten minutes’ walk. You want I give you the address?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ Ronnie replied.
The Russian showed him his teeth again. ‘Plan? You have plan? Good plan?’
‘Carpe diem!’
‘Huh?’
‘It’s an expression.’
‘Carpe diem?’ The Russian pronounced it slowly, clumsily.
Ronnie grinned, then bought him another drink.
45
Major Incident Room One was the larger of two airy rooms in the Major Incident Suite of Sussex House, which housed the inquiry teams working on serious crime investigations. Roy Grace entered it shortly before 6.30, carrying a mug of coffee.
An open, modern-feeling L-shaped room, it was divided up by three principal work stations, each comprising a long, curved, light-coloured wooden desk with space for up to eight people to sit, and massive whiteboards, most of which at the moment were blank, apart from one marked Operation Dingo, and another on which were several close-up photographs of the Unknown Female in the storm drain and some exterior shots of the New England Quarter development. On one, a red circle drawn in marker pen indicated the position of the body in the drain.
A large inquiry might have used up all the space in here, but because of the relative lack of urgency in this case – and therefore the need to budget manpower and resources accordingly – Grace’s team occupied only one of the work stations. At the moment the others were vacant, but that could change at any time.
Unlike the work stations throughout the rest of the building, there were few signs of anything personal on the desks or the walls here: no pictures of families, football fixture lists, jokey cartoons. Almost every single object in this room – apart from the furniture and the business hardware – was related to the matters under investigation. There wasn’t a lot of banter either. Just the silence of fierce concentration, the muted warble of phones, the clack-clack-clack of paper shuffling from printers.
Seated at the work station were the team Grace had selected for Operation Dingo. An ardent believer in keeping the same people together whenever possible, he had worked with all of them during the previous months. His only hesitant choice had been Norman Potting, who constantly upset people, but the man was an extremely capable detective.
Acting as his deputy SIO was Detective Inspector Lizzie Mantle. Grace liked her a lot and in truth had long had a sneaking fancy for her. In her late thirties, she was attractive, with neat, shoulder-length fair hair, and exuded a femininity that belied a surprisingly tough personality. She tended to favour trouser suits and she was wearing one today, in grey pinstripe, that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a stockbroker, over a white man’s shirt.
Her fair good looks were something Lizzie shared with another DI at Sussex House, Kim Murphy, and there had been some sour-grape rumblings that if you wanted to get ahead in this force, having the looks of a bimbo was your best asset. It was totally untrue, of course, Grace knew. Both women had achieved their ranks, at relatively young ages, because they thoroughly deserved it.
Roy’s promotion would undoubtedly result in new demands on his time, so he was going to have to rely heavily on Lizzie’s support in running this investigation.
Along with her, he had selected Detective Sergeants Glenn Branson, Norman Potting and Bella Moy. Thirty-five years old and cheery-faced beneath a tangle of hennaed brown hair, Bella was sitting, as ever, with an open box of Maltesers inches from her keyboard. Roy crossed the room, watching as she typed in deep concentration. Every so often her right hand would suddenly stray from the keyboard, like some creature with a life of its own, pluck a chocolate, deliver it to her mouth and return to the keyboard. She was a slim woman, yet she ate more chocolate than anyone Grace had ever come across.
Next to her sat, gangly, tousle-haired Detective Constable Nick Nicholl, who was twenty-seven and beanpole tall. A zealous detective and once a handy centre forward, he had been encouraged by Grace to take up rugby and was now a useful member of the Sussex Police team – though not as useful at the moment as Grace had hoped, because he was a recent father and appeared to be suffering from constant sleep deprivation.
Opposite him, reading her way through a thick wodge of computer printouts, was young, feisty DC Emma-Jane Boutwood. A few months earlier she had been badly injured on a case when she was crushed against a wall by a stolen van in a pursuit. By rights she should still be convalescing, but she had begged Grace to let her come back and do light duties.
The team was completed by an analyst, an indexer, a typist and the system supervisor.
Glenn Branson, dressed in a black suit, a violent blue shirt and a scarlet tie, looked up as Grace entered. ‘Yo, old-timer,’ he said, but more flatly than usual. ‘Any chance of a quiet chat later?’
Grace nodded at his friend. ‘Of course.’
Branson’s greeting prompted a few other heads to be raised as well.
‘Well, here comes God!’ said Norman Potting, doffing a nonexistent hat. ‘May I be the first to proffer my congratulations on your elevation to the brass!’ he said.
‘Thank you, Norman, but there’s nothing very special about brass.’
‘Well, that’s where you are wrong, Roy,’ Potting retorted. ‘A lot of metals rust, you see. But brass doesn’t. It corrodes.’ He beamed with pride as if he had just delivered the complete, final and incontrovertible Theory of Everything.
Bella, who very much disliked Potting, rounded on him, her fingers hovering above the Maltesers like the talons of a bird of prey. ‘That’s just semantics, Norman. Rust, corrosion, what’s the difference?’
‘Quite a lot actually,’ Potting said.
‘Perhaps you should have been a metallurgist instead of a policeman,’ she said, and popped another Malteser in her mouth.
Grace sat down in the one empty seat, at the end of the work station between Potting and Bella, and immediately crinkled his nose at the stale reek of pipe tobacco on the man.
Bella turned to Grace. ‘Congratulations, Roy. Very well deserved.’
The Detective Superintendent spent some moments accepting and acknowledging congratulations from the rest of the team, then laid his policy book and agenda for the meeting out in front of him.
‘Right. This is the second briefing of Operation Dingo, the investigation into the suspected murder of an unidentified female, conducted on day three following the discovery of her remains.’
For some minutes he summarized the report of the forensic archaeologist. Then he read out the key points from Theobald’s lengthy assessment. Death by strangulation, evidenced by the woman’s broken hyoid, was a possibility. Forensic tests for toxins were being carried out from hair samples recovered. There were no other signs of injury to the skeleton, such as breakages, or cuts indicating knife wounds.
Grace paused to drink some water and noticed that Norman Potting was looking very smug.
‘OK, Resourcing. In view of the estimated time period of the incident I am not looking to expand the inquiry team at this stage.’ He went on through the various headings. Meeting cycles: he announced there would be the usual daily 8.30 a.m. and 6.30 p.m. briefings. He reported that the HOLMES computer team had been up and running since Friday night. He read out the list under the heading Investigative Strategies, which included Communications/Media, emphasizing the need for press coverage, and said that they were working on getting this case featured on next week’s Crimewatch television programme, although they were struggling because it wasn’t considered newsworthy enough. Then he handed the floor to his team, asking Emma-Jane Boutwood to report first.