‘Yes, hi, Michelle. I was told you’d be calling.’
‘Well — ah — yes, sir — but actually I’m not calling about Shelby Stonor, it’s another matter. It’s regarding an elderly Brighton resident, a Mr Rowley Burnett Carmichael, who has died after being taken ill on a cruise ship. The circumstances of his death are regarded as suspicious.’
‘Oh? Do you have the cause of death?’
‘Well, yes, this is why I thought you might be interested. He became ill, apparently, after a shore visit to a nature reserve near Mumbai in India. The doctor on board suspected initially he’d either caught a bug that had been going round the ship or possibly had food poisoning, but then became very concerned when Carmichael developed further symptoms, and wondered if they could be related to what in his opinion looked like a puncture mark on his leg from a bite — although there was none of the localized swelling that would normally have been present. As soon as they docked in Goa, he was transferred to a local hospital but he died en route. The subsequent post-mortem examination indicated that he died from a venomous snake bite, the symptoms of which are consistent with that of a saw-scaled viper, but they are awaiting confirmation from toxicology tests.’
‘A saw-scaled viper?’ Grace said.
‘Yes.’
‘The same venom that we believe killed Shelby Stonor?’
‘Precisely.’
Grace considered this carefully. Today was Monday 9 March. Shelby Stonor had died a week ago from the venom of a saw-scaled viper. ‘That’s a bit of a coincidence. Two Brighton residents dying from the same thing in one week — and — about what — four thousand miles apart — don’t you think?’
‘You’re the detective, sir,’ Michelle Websdale said, breezily. ‘What do you think?’
Remembering Potting’s nugget of information, he said, ‘I understand that saw-scaled vipers kill thousands of people a year in India alone.’
‘And how many in Sussex?’
‘Rather fewer, I would imagine,’ Grace replied, drily.
‘I’ve checked deaths in Sussex by poisonous bites as far back as records go,’ the Coroner’s Officer said. ‘There have been none. Now two Sussex residents in one week. Let’s hope it is, as you say, just coincidence. Do you have any possible reason to believe it’s not coincidence?’
Grace hesitated, thinking hard, wary of falling into the trap he so often warned about, of making assumptions. But he didn’t like what he had just heard. ‘I think we need to know more about the circumstances. Do we need a second post-mortem here, Michelle?’
‘Our laws require a repatriated body to be embalmed first.’
Grace cursed under his breath. Although being embalmed didn’t make a second post-mortem impossible, it would be less likely they would find anything of evidential value.
‘Did the pathologist in Goa give an exact cause of death?’
‘Yes, he confirmed cause of death as being a snake bite, almost certainly from an Echis carinatus — that’s the Latin name, sir, for the saw-scaled viper.’
‘Thanks for the biology lesson! What information do you have on the victim?’
‘Well, only scant information so far, supplied by the ship’s Purser. Rowley Carmichael’s a retired art dealer. I googled him and looked him up on Wikipedia. He was a very prominent figure in the art world. The tragedy is that he got married on board a week ago — last Monday — to a very beautiful and apparently much younger lady. She’s understandably distraught.’
‘So they were on their honeymoon?’
‘It seems so. She’s also a Brighton resident.’
‘Has she been interviewed?’
‘She accompanied her husband ashore, and gave a statement to the police in Goa. I’m having a scan of it sent to me — I’ll email it to you as soon as I receive it.’
‘When will Carmichael’s body be repatriated to England?’
‘I’m liaising with the Goan police on this now, Detective Superintendent. Within the next few days. I believe his widow intends to accompany it home.’
‘What information do you have on her?’ he asked.
‘So far only what she put on the form: her name, Jodie Carmichael, née Danforth, and an address in Brighton, in Alexandra Villas.’
Grace made a mental note to get one of his team to place a marker at the relevant UK airports for her return. Then he asked Websdale if she could arrange for photographs of the couple to be emailed over to him, as well as the cruise ship’s itinerary and passenger and crew manifests.
In addition to his unfolding personal nightmare, something about this case was starting to trouble Grace, though he wasn’t yet sure exactly what.
70
Monday 9 March
As soon as he had ended the call, Grace sat thinking, Sandy temporarily put to one side. Two Brighton residents dead from snake bites within one week of each other. And the same kind of snake. His naturally suspicious mind was telling him this might not be a coincidence, however much it seemed to be.
He started jotting down thoughts. Then he picked up the phone and asked DS Guy Batchelor to come to his office.
A few minutes later, with the burly detective, reeking of tobacco smoke, seated in front of him, he said, ‘Guy, I may have to be absent for a couple of days. I’d like you to give these actions to the Operation Spider team.’
‘Of course, boss. What do you need?’
‘Firstly, I want you to find out everything you can about a Jodie Carmichael, previously Danforth, with an address in Alexandra Villas, in the Seven Dials area of Brighton — I’ll be getting the details imminently. Find out who she is, and what her background is.’ Then looking down at his notes, he continued, ‘Have someone speak to that expert from London Zoo. I want more specific information about venomous snake bites.’
Batchelor pulled out his notepad and began to write.
‘I want to know everything about this snake — where it lives, what countries you can find it in, how venomous it is, what the antidotes are, if it’s ever kept as a pet, what does it look like, how big it is, would you need a licence to keep it, how could you import it into the UK, what conditions would it need to be kept in if you did have such a snake in England.’
Batchelor nodded, writing furiously.
Grace went on. ‘What would the bite symptoms be, how quickly would you need treatment if bitten, and is it always fatal?’
‘Got all that, sir.’
‘Good man.’
‘Leave it with me.’
‘Good news regarding your promotion, Guy. Hopefully you’ll stay with the team. It would be useful for you to spend the next few days as an Acting DI, whilst Glenn and I are both away.’
Batchelor looked delighted. ‘Thank you, sir, I won’t let you down.’
71
Tuesday 10 March
For the second time in a month, a grieving woman accompanied her loved one’s body on a flight home after his sudden, tragic death in a foreign country.
And for the second time in that month she consoled herself on the flight, whilst composing and rehearsing her story, with the very acceptable bubbly served in British Airways First Class.
As her glass was topped up by a smiling, sympathetic steward, she dug her fingers into the bowl of warm, roasted nuts. Chewing on a sweet cashew, she switched her thoughts to the book she planned to write one day from her villa on the shore of Lake Como. The villas had gone up in value since that holiday, all those years back with her family. It would take somewhere upwards of fifty million pounds to buy a place impressive enough to be pointed out by a tour boat. Enough to impress her father. And her mother.
‘How do you get to afford one of those? The way you do it, Jodie, is you marry a millionaire.’