‘Do you want to share it with us?’ Grace asked.
The DS was wearing the same jacket he always seemed to wear at weekends, whether winter or summer. A crumpled tweed affair with shoulder epaulettes and poacher’s pockets. He dug his hand into one, with slow deliberation, as if about to pull out something of great significance, but instead just left it there, irritatingly jingling some loose coins or keys as he spoke.
‘There’s a world shortage of human organs,’ he announced. Then he pursed his lips and nodded his head sagely. ‘Particularly kidneys and livers. Do you know why?’
‘No, but I’m sure we are about to find out,’ Bella Moy said irritably, and popped another Malteser into her mouth.
‘Car seat belts!’ Potting said triumphantly. ‘The best donors are those who die from head injuries, with the rest of their bodies left intact. Now that more people wear seat belts in cars, they only tend to die if they are totally mangled, or incinerated. How’s that for irony? In the old days, people would hit the windscreen head-first and die from that. It’s mostly motorcyclists today.’
‘Thank you, Norman,’ said Grace.
‘Something else that might be of interest,’ Potting said. ‘Manila in the Philippines is now actually nicknamed One Kidney Island.’
Bella shook her head cynically and said, ‘Oh, come on. That’s an urban myth!’
Grace cautioned her with a raised hand. ‘What’s the significance, Norman?’
‘It’s where wealthy Westerners go to buy kidneys from poor locals. The locals get a grand – a substantial sum of money by their standards. By the time you’ve bought it and had it transplanted, you’re looking at forty to sixty grand.’
‘Forty to sixty thousand pounds?’ Grace repeated, astonished.
‘A liver can fetch five or six times that amount,’ Potting replied. ‘People who’ve been on a waiting list for years get desperate.’
‘The people here aren’t Filipinos,’ Bella said.
‘I spoke to the coastguard again,’ Potting said, ignoring her. ‘Gave him the weight of the breeze blocks holding down our first poor sod. He doesn’t think the weather conditions of the past week would have been strong enough to have moved him. Most of the current is on or near the surface. Maybe if there had been a tsunami, but not otherwise.’
‘Thank you. That’s good information,’ Grace said, noting it down. ‘Nick?’
Glenn Branson, still looking ragged, raised a hand. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Just a quick point, Roy. All three of these persons could have been killed in another country, or even on a ship, and just dumped into the Channel, right? The story that you told the Argus?’
‘Yes. A few more miles further off the coast and they would not have been our problem. But they were found inside UK territorial waters, so they are. I’ve already got two of our researchers compiling a list of every known vessel that has passed through the Channel in the last seven days. But I don’t know yet how we are going to find the resources to follow up that information, or even if it’s worth trying.’
‘Well,’ Branson went on, ‘the bodies were found in about sixty-five feet of water – so if they hadn’t drifted they were dropped there, from a boat or a plane or a chopper. Some of the bigger container ships and supertankers using the English Channel need more draught than that, so we should be able to eliminate quite a bit of shipping. Also, I would have thought that any boat skipper would know from the Admiralty charts that it was a dredge area, and keep clear of it as a dump site if he didn’t want these to be discovered. A chopper or private plane pilot might not have looked at the Admiralty charts – or noticed. So I think we ought to check out the local airports, particularly Shoreham, find out what aircraft have been up during the past week and check them out.’
‘I agree,’ DI Mantle said. ‘Glenn’s making a good point. The problem is we don’t know what might have taken off from a private airfield without filing a flight plan. If it was a light aircraft on a mission to dump bodies, it’s quite possible the pilot wouldn’t have done.’
‘Or it could have been a plane from overseas somewhere,’ Nick Nicholl said.
‘I doubt that, Nick,’ Grace said. ‘Any foreign aircraft, say from France, would just go out a few miles into the Channel. They wouldn’t fly into British airspace.’
Branson shook his head. ‘No, sorry, chief, I disagree. They might have done it deliberately.’
‘How do you mean deliberately?’ DI Mantle asked.
‘Like, a double-bluff kind of thing,’ the DS replied. ‘Knowing we might find them and assume they were from England.’
Grace smiled. ‘Glenn, I think you’ve watched too many films. If someone from overseas was dumping bodies in the sea, they’d be doing it because they didn’t want them to be found – and they wouldn’t fly that close to the English coastline.’ He jotted down a note. ‘But we need to check every local airport and flying club – and air traffic controllers. And that can be done over the weekend, as they’ll be open.’
David Browne raised a hand. The Crime Scene Manager, in his early forties, could easily have passed for the actor Daniel Craig’s freckled, ginger-haired brother. It had long been a standing joke among his colleagues that a few years back, when the film company was casting the new James Bond, it had sent the contract to the wrong man. Dressed in a zippered fleece jacket, over an open-neck shirt, jeans and trainers, with his powerful shoulders and close-cropped hair, he appeared every inch an action man. But Browne’s looks belied his thorough approach to crime scenes, and his tireless attention to detail, which had taken him almost as high up the SOCO ladder as it was possible to rise.
‘All three bodies were wrapped in similar industrial-strength PVC, which can be purchased from any hardware or DIY store. They were bound with high-tensile cord that’s again widely available. My view is whoever did this wasn’t intending them to come back up. So far as the perp was concerned, it was job done.’
‘What are the chances of finding out where these items were purchased?’ Grace asked.
‘It wasn’t a big quantity,’ Browne said. ‘Not enough to stick in anyone’s mind. There are hundreds of places that sell them. But it would be worth doing a trawl of all the local suppliers. Most of them will be open over the weekend.’
Grace made another note on his Resourcing list. Then he turned to DC Nicholl again.
‘Nick?’
‘I’ve checked the Mispers lists. They have quite a number of missing teenagers who could be matches. They want me to let them have photographs of the victims.’
‘Chris Heaver’s been given photographs of all three of them. He’s preparing sanitized versions to release to the press on Monday. You can send them to the Missing People office at the same time.’
Chris Heaver was the Facial Identification Officer.
‘We’ll also get them circulated to every police station in the south-east, and see if we can get them on Crimewatch if we’ve no joy by the time the next show screens. Anyone know when that is?’
‘Tuesday week,’ Bella said. ‘I checked.’
Grace screwed up his face in disappointment. It was a long time to wait. Then he addressed the young DC, Emma-Jane Boutwood.
‘E-J?’
‘Well,’ she said, in her plummy, public-school voice, ‘I’ve looked into the case of the headless and limbless torso of the small boy that was recovered from the Thames in 2001. The police gave the poor little chap, who has never been identified, the name Adam. It was eventually established that he had come from Nigeria by the examination of microscopic granules of plants found in his intestines. The expert used was a Dr Hazel Wilkinson of the Jodrell Laboratory at Kew Gardens.’