74

Friday 16 January

Roy Grace hated coming to this place. He got the heebie-jeebies every time he drove in through the wrought-iron gates. The gold lettering made them seem like the entrance to some grand house, until you took a closer look at the wording: BRIGHTON AND HOVE MORTUARY.

Not even the Rod Stewart cassette playing on his car’s stereo, which he’d put on to try to cheer himself up, was having any effect on his gloomy mood. There was a line of cars occupying all the spaces close to the entrance, so he had to drive to the far end and park beside the exit doors to the covered receiving bay. As if to make it even worse, the rain started coming down harder - solid, pelting stair-rods. He switched the engine off and ‘Maggie May’ died with it. The wipers scratched to a halt across the screen. Then he touched the door handle and hesitated.

He was really not looking forward to this. His stomach felt as though it had curdled.

Because of the heat of the burning van in the field and the difficulty of getting any fire hoses down to it, it had been midday yesterday before the vehicle had cooled enough to allow an inspection, and for it to be identified as stolen. The stench of scorched grass, burnt rubber, paint, fuel, plastic and seared human flesh had made him retch several times. Some smells you never ever got used to, no matter how often you’d experienced them before. And some sights too. The van’s unfortunate occupant had not been a pretty one.

Nor had Sandy’s expression been when he’d arrived home, at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, to get his head down for a few hours before returning to the scene.

She had said nothing – she was in one of her silent moods. It was what she always did when she was really angry, just went silent on him, sending him to Coventry, shutting him out, sometimes for days. Not even the massive bunch of flowers he’d bought her had thawed her.

He had not been able to sleep, but it wasn’t because of Sandy. She’d get over it eventually, she always did, and then it would be forgotten. All night he’d just lain in bed thinking one thought, over and over. Was the body in the van the missing Rachael Ryan?

Charred human corpses were the worst thing of all, so far as he was concerned. As a rookie PC, he’d had to help recover the remains of two children, aged five and seven, from a burnt-out house in Portslade after an arson attack; the horror had been made ten times worse because it was children. It had given him nightmares for months.

He knew what he was about to see in the mortuary would have a similar effect and would be staying with him for a long time. But he had no choice.

Already late because his SIO, Jim Doyle, had called an early briefing which had overrun, he climbed out of the car, locked it, then hurried to the front door of the mortuary, holding the collar of his mackintosh tight around his neck.

The briefing had been attended by a sergeant from the Accident Investigation Unit, the team which forensically examined all vehicles involved in serious crashes. It was early days with the van, the sergeant had told them, but on first impressions the fire was extremely unlikely to have been caused by the accident.

He rang the bell and moments later the door was opened by the Senior Mortician herself, Elsie Sweetman, wearing a green apron over blue surgical scrubs that were tucked into long white wellington boots.

In her late forties, with a bob of curly hair, Elsie had a kind face and a remarkably cheery demeanour, considering the horrific things she had to deal with on a daily – and nightly – basis. Roy Grace always remembered she’d been kind to him when he had nearly keeled over at the first post-mortem he’d attended. She had led him into her sitting room and made him a cup of tea, telling him not to worry, that half the coppers on the force had done the same thing.

He stepped in through the door, which was like the front door of any suburban bungalow, into the narrow entrance hallway, and there the similarities ended, starting with the pervading reek of Jeyes Fluid and Trigene disinfectant. Today his nostrils detected something else, and the curdling in his stomach worsened.

In the small changing room he wrestled a green apron over his head and tied the tapes, then put on a face mask, tied that securely too, and slipped his feet into a pair of short white rubber boots that were too big. He clumped out along the corridor and turned right, passing the sealed, glassed-in room where corpses that had died of suspected contagious diseases were examined, then walked into the main post-mortem room, trying to breathe in through his mouth only.

There were three stainless-steel tables on wheels, two of which were pushed to one side against a cupboard. The third was in the centre of the room, its occupant, lying on her back, surrounded by people similarly clad to himself.

Grace swallowed. The sight of her made him shiver. She didn’t look human, her blackened remains like some terrible monster created by the special effects team on a horror or sci-fi movie.

Is this you, Rachael? What happened? If it is you, how did you come to be in this stolen van?

Leaning over her, with a surgical probe in one gloved hand and tweezers in the other, was the Home Office pathologist, Dr Frazer Theobald, a man Grace always thought was a dead ringer for Groucho Marx.

Theobald was flanked by a fifty-year-old retired police officer, Donald Whitely, now a Coroner’s Officer, Elsie Sweetman, her assistant mortician, Arthur Trumble, a drily humorous man in his late forties, with Dickensian mutton chops, and a SOCO photographer, James Gartrell, who was intently focusing his lens on a section of the woman’s left leg that had a measuring rule lying across it.

Almost all of the dead woman’s hair was gone and her face was like melted black wax. It was difficult to make out her features. Grace’s stomach was feeling worse. Despite breathing through his mouth, and the mask over his nose, he could not avoid the smell. The Sunday lunchtime smell of his childhood, of roast pork and burnt crackling.

It was obscene to think that, he knew. But the smell was sending confused signals to his brain and his stomach. It was making him feel increasingly queasy and he was beginning to perspire. He looked at her again, then away, breathing deeply through his mouth. He glanced at the others in the room. They were all smelling the same thing, with the same associations too; he knew that, they’d talked about this before, yet none of them seemed affected by it the way he was. Were they all so used to it?

‘Here’s something interesting,’ the pathologist announced nonchalantly, holding up an oval object, about an inch wide, in his tweezers.

It was translucent, scorched and partially melted.

‘See this, Detective Sergeant Grace?’ Theobald seemed to be addressing him specifically.

Reluctantly, he moved closer to the corpse. It looked like it might be a contact lens of some kind.

‘This is most curious,’ the pathologist said. ‘Not what I would have expected to find in someone driving a motor vehicle.’

‘What is it?’ Grace asked.

‘An eye shield.’

‘Eye shield?’

Theobald nodded. ‘They’re used in mortuaries. The eyes start to sink quite quickly post-mortem, so morticians pop them in between the eyelids and the globes – makes them look nicer for viewing.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘As I said, not what I’d expect the driver of a motor vehicle to be wearing.’

Grace frowned. ‘Why might this woman have been wearing it?’

‘I suppose possibly if she had a false eye, or had had some kind of reconstructive surgery, it could be there for cosmetic purposes. But not in both eyes.’

‘Are you suggesting she was blind, Dr Theobald?’ Arthur Trumble said, with a mischievous twinkle.

‘A bit more than that, I’m afraid,’ he replied. ‘She was dead quite a long time before she was put into this vehicle.’

There was a long silence.

‘Are you absolutely certain?’ the Coroner’s Officer asked him.

‘There’s a small amount of lung tissue that’s survived, which I’ll need to take and examine in the lab, but from what I can see with my naked eye there is no sign of smoke or flame inhalation – which, to put it bluntly, means she wasn’t breathing when the fire started.’

‘You’re saying she was dead before the accident happened?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘I’m certain she was.’

Trying to make sense of this in his mind, Grace asked, ‘Are you able to estimate her age, Dr Theobald?’

‘I would say she’s quite old – late seventies, eighties. I can’t be specific without tests, but certainly she’s no younger than mid-fifties. I can get you a more accurate estimate in a couple of days.’

‘But definitely no younger than mid-fifties?’

Theobald nodded. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘What about dental records?’ Grace asked.

The pathologist pointed his probe at her jaw. ‘I’m afraid one of the effects of intense heat is to cause the crowns to explode. There’s nothing I can see remaining that would get you anywhere with dental records. I think DNA’s going to be your best chance.’

Grace stared back down at the corpse again. His revulsion was fading just a fraction, as he got more accustomed to the sight of her.

If you’re not Rachael Ryan, who are you? What were you doing in this van? Who put you there?

And why?