Love You Dead (30 page)

‘I hope so, Marcel.’

He hung up, and called Glenn Branson again. ‘Glenn, I need to ask your advice on something – could you come back in?’

As Glenn sat back down opposite him, Grace told him the news from Germany. ‘What the hell do you think I should do?’

‘Shit, mate! Oh, shit!’ He was silent for a few seconds. ‘Bloody hell. God. What does Cleo think?’

‘She doesn’t know.’

‘What?’ Branson was silent again, thinking. ‘You’ve always known in your heart, haven’t you? That she’s still alive?’

‘Have I?’

The detective inspector stood up, walked around the desk and gave him a hug. As Grace breathed in his pungent aftershave, Glenn said, ‘Yes. You know you have. You’ve got to tell
Cleo.’

‘What the hell do I tell her?’

Branson went back round, sat down in front of him and leaned forward so they were eyeball to eyeball. ‘How about the truth?’

Grace stared back at him. ‘I’m scared of losing everything.’

‘Cleo’s a smart lady. I’m sure she also believes in her heart that Sandy is still alive, out there somewhere. Look, you can see how much she loves you, everyone can. But I can
also see fear in her eyes sometimes. The fear that it might not last. The fear of what would happen if Sandy suddenly walked back into your life.’

‘I’ve told her many times that it wouldn’t make any difference. That I love her more than I now realize I ever loved Sandy.’

‘And she believes you?’

‘I think so.’

‘OK, so now’s your chance to show her.’

‘What do you mean?’

Glenn Branson raised his hands in the air. ‘Look, shit, what do I really know? I loused up big time with my marriage. I’m not really a good person to give advice. But I’m going
to give you some anyway.’

Grace smiled at him. ‘OK?’

‘You go home today and you tell Cleo. You need to tell her immediately. And, mate, you offer to take her with you to Germany, to meet Sandy.’

An email pinged on Grace’s screen, but he ignored it. ‘Are you off your rocker? Take Cleo to
meet
Sandy?’

‘It’s like so many things, mate. What you have in your imagination is worse than the reality, nothing we see can ever be as scary as what we imagine. Like that scene in
Psycho
with Janet Leigh being slashed to death behind the shower curtain. Hitchcock was clever. You don’t actually see very much at all. You see the dagger striking again and again.
You see blood. But you don’t see her naked body being slashed to ribbons – that’s all in your mind.’

Grace looked at him quizzically.

‘Ever since Cleo and you became an item, from her point of view there were three of you – you, her and the ghost of Sandy. She’s probably lain in bed with you every night since
you fell in love imagining what would happen if Sandy returned. Show her the truth. Take her to meet the monster.’

‘What if it backfires on me?’

‘There’s only one way it could backfire on you. And that’s if you stood over Sandy’s hospital bed and realized you were with the wrong person. Is that going to
happen?’

‘No,’ Grace said, emphatically. ‘Not in a million years.’

‘So you have a golden opportunity. If you truly love Cleo, as I know you do, this is the only chance you might ever have. Slay your demon.’

‘What if Cleo—?’

‘Trust me. She won’t. She won’t say no.’

As Branson departed again, closing Grace’s office door, leaving him in turmoil, his phone rang.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

It was the Coroner’s Officer, Michelle Websdale.

‘Ah, Detective Superintendent?’

‘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.

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.’

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.’

Meaning,
No way on earth will you, little ugly girl.

She would show them. She longed for the day – the day that would happen – when he ate his words.

On her iPad she entered her password and opened her diary.

Then she typed:

The formalities at London’s Heathrow Airport were less arduous than Jodie had been expecting. She signed over care of her late husband’s body to the Brighton and
Hove Coroner, and was on her way down to Sussex, in the back of a BMW limousine, in just over an hour and a half after touchdown.

She had been very fortunate, she knew. It was something of an urban myth that all of ships’ captains could perform legal marriages. To do this they needed to be an officially recognized
wedding celebrant, and few were. Very conveniently for her, Rowley Carmichael had chosen to go cruising with a line that recognized, with its romantic destinations, there could be a call for such
services, and a lucrative one, so all their captains were legally recognized celebrants.