‘What’s up?’ he asked her.
‘You haven’t heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘About Janet McWhirter?’
‘Our Janet, from the PNC?’
Eleanor nodded at him encouragingly, through her large glasses, as if she was helping him to a solution in a game of charades.
Janet McWhirter had, until four months ago, held a responsible position here in Sussex House as head of the Police National Computer department, a sizeable office of forty people. One of their main functions was information and intelligence gathering for the detectives here.
A plain, single girl in her mid-thirties, quiet and studious and slightly old-fashioned-looking, she had been popular because of her willingness to help, working whatever hours were needed while always remaining polite. She had reminded Grace, both in appearance and in her quietly earnest demeanour, of a dormouse.
Janet had surprised everyone back in April, when she resigned, saying that she’d decided to spend a year travelling. Then, very secretively and coyly, she had told her two closest friends in the department that she had met and fallen in love with a man. They were already engaged, and she was emigrating with him to Australia and would get married there.
It was Brian Cook, the Scientific Support Branch Manager and one of Grace’s friends here, who turned to him. ‘She’s been found dead, Roy,’ he said in his blunt voice. ‘Washed up on the beach on Saturday night – been in the sea some considerable time. She’s just been identified from her dental records. And it looks like she was dead before she went in the water.’
Grace was silent for a moment. Stunned. He’d had a lot of dealings with Janet over the years and really liked her. ‘Shit,’ he said. For a moment it was as if a dark cloud had covered the windows and he felt a sudden cold swirl, deep inside him. Deaths happened, but something instinctively felt very wrong about this.
‘Doesn’t look like she made it to Australia,’ Cook added sardonically.
‘Or the altar?’
Cook shrugged.
‘Has the fiancé been contacted?’
‘We only heard the news a few minutes ago. He could be dead too.’ Then he added, ‘You might want to pop along and say something to the team in her department – I imagine they’re all going to be extremely upset.’
‘I’ll do that when I get a gap. Who’s going to head the inquiry?’
‘Don’t know yet.’
Grace nodded, then led his shocked MSA away from the group and back to her office. He had barely ten minutes to give her his dictation, then get over to the custody centre for the second interview with Brian Bishop.
But he couldn’t clear the image of Janet McWhirter’s plain little face from his mind. She was the most pleasant and helpful person. Why would someone kill her? A mugger? A rapist? Something to do with her work?
Mulling on it, he thought to himself, She spends fifteen years working for Sussex Police, much of it in the PNC unit, falls in love with a man, then goes for a career change, a lifestyle change. Leaves. Then dies.
He was a firm believer in always looking at the most obvious things first. He knew where he would start, if he was the SIO on her investigation. But at this moment, Janet McWhirter’s death, although deeply shocking and sad, was not his problem.
Or so he thought.
93
‘Jeezizzz, mon! Will you turn that fekkin’, bleedin’, soddin’ thing off! It’s been goin’ all bloody mornin’! Can’t you fekkin’ answer it or summat?’
Skunk opened one eye, which felt as if it had been hit recently with a hammer. So did his head. It also felt as if someone was sawing through his brain with a cheese-wire. And the whole camper seemed to be pitchpoling like a small boat in a storm.
Preeep-preeep-bnnnzzzzz-preeep-preeeep-bnnnzzzzz. His phone, he realized, was slithering around on the floor, vibrating, flashing, ringing.
‘Answer it yousself, you fuckwit!’ he mumbled back at his latest, unwelcome, lodger-du-jour – some scumbag he’d encountered in a Brighton bat-cave in the early hours of this morning, who’d bummed a bed off him for the night. ‘This isn’t the fucking Hilton! We don’t have fucking twenty-four-hour room service.’
‘If I answer it, laddie, it’s going straight up yer rectum, so fekkin’ far ye’ll have ter stick yer fingers down yer tonsils ter find it.’
Skunk opened his other eye as well, then shut it again as blinding morning sunlight lasered into it, through his brain, through the back of his skull and deep into the Earth’s core, pinning his head to his sodden, lumpy pillow like a pin through a fly. He closed his eye and made an effort to sit up, which was rewarded by a hard crack on his head from the Luton roof above him.
‘Fuck! Shit!’
This was the gratitude he got for letting fucking useless tossers crash in his home! Wide awake now, on the verge of throwing up, he reached out an arm that felt totally disembodied from the rest of him, as if someone had attached it to his shoulder by a few threads during the night. Numb fingers fumbled around on the floor until they found the phone.
He lifted it up, hand shaking, his whole body shaking, thumbed the green button and brought it to his ear. ‘Urr?’ he said.
‘Where the hell have you been, you piece of shit?’
It was Barry Spiker.
And suddenly he was really wide awake, a whole bunch of confused thoughts colliding inside his brain.
‘It’s the middle of the fucking night,’ he said sullenly.
‘Maybe on your planet, shitface. On mine it’s eleven in the morning. Missed holy communion again, have you?’
And then it came to Skunk. Paul Packer. Detective Constable Paul Packer!
Suddenly, his morning was feeling a bit better. Recollections of a deal he had made with DC Packer were now surfacing through the foggy, drug-starved maelstrom of pain that was his mind. He was on a promise to Packer. To let him know the next time Barry Spiker gave him a job. It would be cutting his nose off to spite his face, to shop Spiker. But the pleasure the thought gave him overrode that. Spiker had stiffed him on their last deal. Packer had promised him a payment.
Cash payments from the police were crap. But if he was really smart, he could do a deal, get paid by Spiker and the police. That would be cool!
Ching. Ching. Ching.
Al, his hamster, was busy on his treadmill, going round and round, as usual, despite his paw in its splint. Al needed another visit to the vet. He owed money to Beth. Two birds with one stone! Spiker and DC Packer. Al and Beth! It was a done deal!
‘Just got back from mass, actually,’ he said.
‘Good. I’ve a job for you.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘That’s your fucking problem. All ears, no brains.’
‘So what you got for me?’
Spiker briefed him. ‘I need it tonight,’ he said. ‘Any time. I’ll be there all night. One-fifty if you get the spec right this time. Are you capable of it?’
‘I’m fit.’
‘Don’t fuck up.’
The phone went dead.
Skunk sat up in excitement. And nearly split his skull open, again, on the roof.
‘Fuck!’ he said.
‘Fek you, Jimmy!’ came the voice from the far end of his van.
94
Glenn Branson terminated the second interview with Brian Bishop at twelve twenty p.m. Then, leaving Bishop alone with his solicitor in the interview room for a lunch break, the interviewing team regrouped in Grace’s office.