Dead Man's Grip

shirt, dark workman’s trousers and heavy-duty rubber boots and seemed impervious to the biting wind.
    ‘Hi, Roy and Glenn,’ she said cheerily. ‘This is Keith Wadey, the Assistant Chief Engineer of Shoreham Port. Keith, this is Detective Superintendent Grace, the Senior Investigating Officer, and Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson, the Deputy SIO.’
    They shook hands. Grace took an instant liking to Wadey, who exuded a friendly air of confidence and experience.
    He turned back to Tracy. ‘Have you run a check on the van’s index?’
    ‘Yes, chief. False plates. The serial number’s been filed off the chassis and engine block, so it’s almost certainly nicked, but that’s about all we know.’
    Grace thanked her, then spoke to Wadey. ‘What do we have?’ he asked, looking at the figure in the van again.
    ‘Well, sir,’ Wadey said, addressing Grace but including Branson. ‘We carry out regular side-scan sonar sweeps of the canal, checking for silt levels and for any obstructions. Yesterday afternoon at around 4.30 p.m. we identified what looked like a vehicle about a hundred and twenty feet off the edge of this quay, in twenty-five feet of water. It was upside down, wheels in the air. That tends to happen with motor vehicles that go into deep water – the engine in the front pulls them down and they flip over as they sink.’
    Grace nodded.
    ‘There’s zero visibility down there. The current caused by the opening and closing of the lock gates churns up the deep layer of mud. I found the vehicle with the aid of a shot line and jackstay, sunk into four feet of mud. I then contacted the police dive team – the Specialist Search Unit – our standard procedure, and we assisted them recovering the vehicle from the water this morning, approximately one hour ago. I’m afraid we found a poor sod in there. Dunno if he’s a suicide – we get quite a few of them – because he doesn’t seem to have made any effort to get out.’
    Grace glanced at their surroundings. A large, rusting warehouse that looked derelict, although the presence of the skip indicated some work was going on.
    ‘What is this place?’ he asked.
    ‘It now belongs to Dudman, the aggregates company. They bought it a couple of months ago. It had been empty for several years – a bankruptcy.’
    ‘Anyone working here? Any security guards?’
    ‘No security guards or cameras, sir. There were some workmen
here last week, but they’ve been diverted to do some maintenance on another of the company’s buildings.’
    This was a secluded spot, Grace thought. Carefully chosen? It wasn’t the kind of place you find by accident.
    ‘Is it locked at night?’
    ‘Padlocked with a chain, yes,’ Wadey said. ‘But it was open when we got here. Either someone unlocked it or picked the lock.’
    Grace walked across to the driver’s side of the van.
    ‘How long has he been in the water?’
    ‘My guess would be a maximum of three or four days,’ the engineer replied. ‘You can see the bloating, which starts to happen within twenty-four hours, but he’s intact – the fish and crustaceans like to wait for a week or so, until the flesh has started to break down, before they set to work.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    Grace peered in through the driver’s window, which was down, as was the passenger’s, he noted. To help the vehicle sink more quickly, he wondered? The rear doors were open, too. The immediate question in his mind was whether this was an accident, suicide or murder. His experience had taught him never to jump to conclusions.
    Even though the body was bloated from gases, the face was still thin, streaked with mud, eyes wide open, staring ahead with a look of shock. In the flesh, he looked even paler than in the photographs, and the gelled hair of the picture was now lifelessly matted to the scalp. But his identity was still clear. Just to double-check, Roy Grace pulled the photograph of Ewan Preece from his pocket and held it up.
    And now he was certain. From the knife scar below his right eye, the thin gold chain around his neck and the leather wrist bracelet. Even so, it would take a fingerprint or DNA sample to confirm it beyond doubt. Grace was not inclined to trust a next-of-kin identification by any member of Preece’s crooked family. He looked at the dead man’s hands.
    Preece was gripping the steering wheel as if with grim determination. As if he had thought that somehow, if he kept hold of it, he could steer himself out of