The place had a modern, cutting-edge feel, which he liked. He had spent much of his career in old, inefficient buildings that were like rabbit warrens; it was refreshing to feel that his beloved Police Force, to which he had dedicated his life, was truly embracing the twenty-first century. Although it was marred with one flaw that everyone here moaned about - there was no canteen.
He walked further along, past door after door flagged with abbreviations. The first was the Major Incident Suite, which housed the incident room for serious crimes. It was followed by the Disclosure Officers Room, the CCTV Viewing Room, the Intelligence Office Room, the Outside Enquiry Team Office, and then the stench hit him, slowly at first, but more powerful with every step.
The dense, cloying, stomach-churning reek of human putrefaction, which had become too familiar to him over the years. Much too familiar. There was no other stench like it; it enveloped you like an invisible fog, seeping into the pores of your skin, deep into your nostrils and your lungs and your stomach, and the fibres of your hair and clothes, so that you carried it away with you and continued on smelling it for hours.
As he pushed open the door of the small, pristine Scene of Crimes Office, he saw the cause: the Crime Scene Investigators' photographic studio was in action. A Hawaiian shirt, torn and heavily bloodstained, lay under the glare of bright lights, on a table, on a sheet of brown background paper. Nearby, in plastic bags, he could see trousers and a pair of camel loafers.
Peering further into the room, Grace saw a man, dressed in white overalls, who he did not recognize for a moment, staring intently into the lens of a Hasselblad mounted on a tripod. Then he realized Joe Tindall had had a makeover since he'd last seen him a few months back. The mad-professor hairstyle and large tortoiseshell glasses had gone. He now had a completely shaven head, a narrow strip of hair
running from the centre of his lower lip down to the centre of his chin and hip rectangular glasses with blue-tinged lenses. He looked more like a media trendy than a scientific boffin.
'New woman in your life?' Grace asked, by way of a greeting.
Tindall looked up at him in surprise. 'Roy, good to see you! Yes, as a matter of fact - who told you that?'
Grace grinned, looking at him more closely, almost expecting to spot an earring as well. 'Young, is she?'
'Actually - yes - how do you know?'
Grace grinned again, staring at his newly shaven pate, his trendy glasses. 'Keeping you young, isn't she?'
Then Tindall understood and grinned sheepishly. 'She's going to kill me, Roy. Three times a night every night.'
'You try three times a night or succeed?'
'Oh, fuck off!' He stared Grace up and down. 'You're looking sharp, for a Saturday. Hot date yourself?'
'A wedding, actually.'
'Congratulations - who's the lucky girl?'
'I have a feeling she's not that lucky,' Grace retorted, placing a small plastic bag containing the earth he had retrieved from Mark Warren's BMW down on the table, next to the shirt. 'I need you to pull out some stops.'
'You always need me to pull out some stops. Everyone does.'
'Not true, Joe. I gave you the Tommy Lytle material and told you there was all the time you need. This is different. I have a missing person - how fast you get this analysed might determine whether he lives or dies.'
Joe Tindall held the bag up and peered at it. He shook it gently, peering at it all the time. 'Quite sandy/ he said.
'What does that tell you?'
'You mentioned Ashdown Forest on the phone?'
'Uhhuh.'
'This might be the kind of soil you'd find there.'
'Might?'
'The UK is knee-deep in sandy soil, Roy. There's sandy soil in Ashdown Forest - but there's sandy soil in a million other places, too.'
'I need an area that's about seven foot long and three foot wide.'
'Sounds like a grave.'
'It is a grave.'
Joe Tindall nodded, peering closely at the earth again. 'You want me to locate a grave in the middle of Ashdown Forest from this little bag of earth?'
'You're catching on.'
The SOCO officer removed his glasses for some moments, as if that would give him clarity of vision, then put them on again. 'Here's the deal, Roy. You locate the grave and I'll get you an analysis on whether this soil matches or doesn't.'
'Actually, I need it to be the other way around.'
Tindall held up the plastic bag. 'I see. Who do you think I am? David Blaine? Derren Brown? I swing this in the air and somehow magic up a grave in the middle of a ten-thousand-hectare forest?'
'You have a problem with that?'
'Actually, yes, I do have a problem with that.'
45
A few hours later, Grace cruised slowly up a steep hill past All Saints' church in Patcham Village, where a certain wedding had been scheduled to happen at two o'clock this afternoon - in exactly three-quarters of an hour.
This was his own personal favourite church in the area. A classic Early English parish church, intimate, simple, with unadorned grey stonework, a small tower, a fine stained-glass window behind the altar and tombstones going back centuries in the overgrown graveyard out the front and along the sides.
The heavy rain had eased to a light drizzle as he sat in his Alfa, parked close to the entrance, on a grass bank opposite the church, giving him a commanding view of all the arrivals. No sign of anyone yet. Just a few pieces of sodden confetti on the wet tarmac, from an earlier wedding, probably this morning.
He watched an elderly woman in a hooded PVC raincoat wheel a shopping basket down the pavement and pause to exchange a few words with a huge man in an anorak with a tiny dog on a leash, who was walking up in the opposite direction. The dog cocked its leg on a lamppost.
A blue Ford Focus pulled up and a man with a couple of cameras slung around his neck climbed out. Grace observed him, wondering whether he was the official wedding photographer, or press. Moments later a small brown Vauxhall pulled up behind it, and a young man in an anorak emerged, carrying a distinctive reporter's notebook. The two men greeted each other and began chatting, both looking around, waiting.
After ten minutes he saw a silver BMW off-roader pull up. Because of its tinted glass windows and the rain, he could not make out who was inside, but he recognized immediately Mark Warren's number plate. Moments later, Warren, in a dark raincoat, jumped down and hurried up the path to the main entrance of the church.
He disappeared inside, then came out almost immediately and hurried back to his car.
A taxi pulled up, and a tall, distinguished-looking man with silver hair, dressed in a morning suit with a red carnation in the buttonhole, and holding a grey top hat, closed the rear door and walked towards the church. The taxi had evidently been paid to wait. Then a silver Audi TT sports car pulled up. Grace remembered seeing one like it parked in front of Ashley Harper's house.
The driver's door opened, and Ashley, holding a small umbrella, emerged, in a smart white, wedding dress, her hair up. An older woman appeared from the passenger door, in a white-trimmed blue dress and neatly coiffed silver-grey hair. Ashley waved acknowledgement to the BMW, then huddled under the umbrella. The pair hurried up the path and disappeared into the church. Mark Warren followed.
Then, at five to two, Grace saw the vicar cut across the graveyard and enter, and decided it was time to make his move. He left his car, tugging on his Tommy Hilfiger blue and yellow anorak. As he crossed the road the young man with the notebook approached him. He was in his mid-twenties, sharp-faced, wearing a cheap grey suit with his tie knotted massively but slackly, so the top button of his white shirt showed above it, and chewing gum.
'Detective Superintendent Grace, isn't it?'
Grace eyeballed him, used to being recognized by the press, but wary all the same. And you are?'