‘Because there are some good people in the world.’
‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked bleakly.
‘Yes.’
He unwrapped the chocolate bar and broke off a section, holding it in front of her. ‘Look. She gave me money for food, for treats. She’s a good person.’
‘I thought the man at the railway station was a good person.’
‘Can you imagine being in England? In London? We could live in an apartment in London. Making good money! Away from all this shit! Maybe we’ll see rock stars there. I’ve heard that a lot of them live in London!’
‘The whole world is shit,’ she replied.
‘Please, Simona, at least come and meet her tomorrow.’
She raised a hand and took the chocolate.
‘Do you really want to spend another winter down here?’ he asked.
‘At least we are warm here.’
‘You don’t want to go to London because it is warm here? Right? How great is that? Maybe it’s warm in London too.’
‘Go fuck yourself!’
He grinned. She was perking up. ‘Valeria wants to come too.’
‘With the baby?’
‘Sure, why not?’
‘She’s coming tomorrow, this woman?’
‘Yes.’
Simona bit one square off the chocolate strip. It tasted good. So good she ate the whole bar.
38
Roy Grace stood on the touchline of the football pitch, beneath the glare of the floodlights, and jammed his gloveless hands deep into his raincoat pockets, shivering in the biting wind high up here in Whitehawk. At least the rain had stopped and there was a clear, starry sky. It felt cold enough for a frost.
It was the Friday night football league and tonight the Crew Club’s teenagers were playing against a team from the police. He had just made the last ten minutes of the game, in time to see the police being hammered 3-0.
The city of Brighton and Hove straddled several low hills and Whitehawk sprawled over one of the highest. A council development of terraced and semi-detached houses, and low- and high-rise blocks of flats, built in the 1920s to replace the slums occupying the land before, Whitehawk had long – and somewhat unjustly – held a dark reputation for violence and crime. A few of its warrens of streets, many with fabulous views across the city and the sea, were inhabited and dominated by some of the city’s roughest crime families, and their reputation infected everyone’s on the estate.
But during the past few years a carefully run community initiative supported by Sussex Police had radically changed that. At its heart was the Crew Club, sponsored by local industry to the tune of £2 million. The club boasted a smart, ultra-modern and funky-looking centre that could have been designed by Le Corbusier, which housed a range of facilities for local youngsters, including a well-equipped computer room, a music recording studio, a video studio, a spacious party room, meeting rooms and, in the grounds surrounding it, numerous sports facilities.
The club was a success because it had been created by passion, not by bureaucrats. It was a place where local kids did actually want to go and hang out. It was cool. And at its heart were a couple of Whitehawk residents, Darren and Lorraine Snow, whose vision it had been and whose energy drove it.
Both wrapped up in coats, scarves and hats so that their faces were almost invisible, they flanked Roy Grace now, along with a handful of parents and a few police colleagues. It was the first time Grace had visited, and, in his capacity as president of the Police Rugby Team, he was mentally sizing up the opportunities for a rugby challenge here. They were tough and plucky, the youngsters on that pitch, and he was quite amused to see them giving the force players a hard time.
A group thundered past, jostling, grunting and cussing, and the ball rolled over the line. Instantly the ref’s whistle blew.
But Grace’s focus was distracted by the post-mortems he had attended today, and yesterday, and the task that lay in front of him. Pulling out his pocket memo pad, he jotted down some thoughts, gripping his pen with almost numb fingers.
Suddenly there was a ragged cheer and he looked up, momentarily confused. A goal had been scored. But by which side?
From the cheers and the comments, he worked out it was the Crew Club team. The score was now 4-0.
Privately he smiled again. The Sussex Police team were being coached by retired Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Gaylor, who was an accredited football referee. As well as being a personal friend. He looked forward to ribbing him after the game.
He looked up at the stars for a moment and his thoughts suddenly flashed back to his childhood. His father had had a small telescope on a tripod and spent many hours studying the sky, often encouraging Roy to look as well. Grace’s favourite had been the rings of Saturn, and at one time he could have distinguished all the constellations, but the Plough was the only one he recognized easily now. He needed to re-educate himself, he decided, so that one day he could pass on that same knowledge – and passion – to his child. Although, he wondered wryly, would it again be mostly forgotten in time?
Then his focus went back to the inquiry. Unknown Males 1 and 2 and Unknown Female.
Three bodies. Each short of the same vital organs. Each of them teenagers. Just one possible clue to their identity: a badly executed tattoo on the upper left forearm of the dead young woman. A name perhaps…
One that meant nothing to him. But one that, he sensed, held the clue to all their identities.
Had they come from Brighton? If not, from where? He wrote down on his pad: Coastguard report. Drifting?
They could not have drifted far with those weights attached. In his own mind he was sure their proximity to Brighton made it likely that the three teenagers had died in England.
What was happening? Was there a monster at large in Brighton who killed people and stole their organs?
Experienced surgeon, he wrote down, echoing Nadiuska De Sancha’s assessment.
He looked up for a moment again at the stars in the night sky, then back at the floodlit pitch. Tania Whitlock’s Specialist Search Unit had scanned the area and not found any more bodies. So far.
But the English Channel was a big place.
39
‘You know, Jim,’ Vlad Cosmescu said, ‘it’s a very big place, the English Channel, no?’
Jim Towers, bound head to foot in duct tape once again, including his mouth, was only able to communicate with his captor via his eyes. He lay on the hard fibreglass deck of the prow cabin of the Scoob-Eee and was further concealed from anyone who might have looked down into the boat from the quay by a tarpaulin which smelled faintly of someone’s vomit.
Cosmescu, his feet in tall gumboots, steered the boat out of the mouth of Shoreham Harbour and into the open sea, a little concerned at the size of the swell. The northerly wind was stronger out here than he had realized and the sea much choppier. He sat on the plastic seat, his navigation lights on, making sure he appeared to the coastguard, and to anyone else who might be watching, just like any other fishing boat heading out for a night’s sport.
Wrinkling his nose at the smell of diesel exhaust being blown forward by the wind, he watched the illuminated compass swinging in its binnacle, steering a 160-degree course that he reckoned should take him out into mid-Channel, well away from the dredge area which he had carefully memorized from the chart.
A mobile phone rang, a very muted warbling sound. For an instant the Romanian thought it was from somewhere under the decking; then he realized it must be in one of the retired PI’s pockets. After several rings it stopped.
Towers just looked up at him, with the inert eyes of a beached fish.
‘It’s probably OK to speak now. Not too many people around to hear you,’ Cosmescu said.
He cut the throttle, stepped down into the cabin and tore the duct tape from the other man’s mouth.