Dead Tomorrow

Grace raised his voice, feeling tired and tetchy after his long day, which was far from over, and trying to finish reading the agenda before everyone had settled down.
    Potting shrugged.
    Grace read on in silence as more people shuffled in, then he started.
    ‘Right, this is our sixteenth briefing of Operation Neptune. We have another body, which may or may not be linked to this operation.’ He looked at Glenn. ‘Would our reluctant fisherman like to talk us through it?’
    Branson smiled grimly. ‘Seems like we found poor old Jim Towers. Because he’s bound up head to foot, it’s impossible to see if he has had surgery, so we’ll have to wait for the PM. There’s no one available tonight, it’s being done in the morning.’
    ‘Has he beenformally identified?’ Lizzie Mantle said.
    ‘From a gold bracelet and his watch,’ Branson replied. ‘We decided not to let his wife have a look at him. He’s not a pretty sight. Remember that face, underwater, in Jaws ? The one that popped through the hole in the hull, with its eyeball hanging out, and scared the shit out of Richard Dreyfuss? He looks like that.’
    ‘Too much information, Glenn!’ Bella Moy said in disgust, changing her mind about popping a Malteser into her mouth.
    ‘What do we know, so far?’ Grace asked.
    ‘The boat was scuttled–it wasn’t in a collision.’
    ‘Any possibility it could have been suicide?’
    ‘Difficult to scuttle your own boat when you’re trussed up like a mummy in gaffer tape, chief. Unless he had a secret life as an escapologist.’
    There was a titter of laugher.
    Grace smiled too, then said, ‘For the immediate time being, the investigations will be done by this team. DI Mantle will head a dedicated group investigating this, and will decide whether a separate murder inquiry needs to be set up–to some extent dependent on what the postmortem tells us.’
    He looked at her.
    ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’d want you to be part of this team, Glenn, as you’ve already met Towers’s wife–widow.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘We need to handle the press carefully on this one,’ Grace said. ‘Again, let’s wait and see what we learn from the post-mortem.’
    ‘I agree,’ DI Mantle said.
    Branson said, ‘I’m increasingly unhappy about Vlad Cosmescu. The DNA tests on the cigarette butts prove he was at Shoreham Harbour. Then the outboard—’
    ‘It’s evidence thathe was there, Glenn,’ Roy Grace corrected him. ‘But not absolute proof . Someone else could have dropped them. You–everyone–’ he paused to look around his team–’we all need to be aware that if you say that something confirms or proves something, there is a big danger that in court you could be picked to pieces by a smart brief, who’ll accuse you of misdirecting the jury. The word to use is evidence , OK? Never say proved or proof . It’s the fast-track way to lose a case.’
    Almost everyone nodded.
    ‘So what else do you have on him, Glenn?’
    ‘We know he’s a Person of Interest to Europol and Interpol, in several inquiries they have running into human trafficking and money laundering.’
    ‘But no charges, and no convictions against him, on record?’
    ‘No, Roy.’
    ‘The Channel’s not turning out to be a very good hiding place, is it?’ Bella Moy commented. ‘If you want to hide a body or an engine, you’d do better to plonk it in the middle of Churchill Square. At least someone might nick it for you!’
    ‘I’d like to pull him in for questioning, get a search warrant, go through his residence, get his phone details,’ Branson went on.
    ‘Because of a couple of dog-ends at Shoreham Harbour and an abandoned outboard motor?’ Grace quizzed.
    ‘Because he was watching the Scoob-Eee through binoculars. Why was he doing that? It’s an old fishing boat, what was so special about it–before the dead teenagers were hauled up on to it? I have a hunch about this man, Roy.’
    ‘Is the boat salvageable?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Yes, but it would be a big operation, and extremely expensive. Iwent through it with Tania Whitlock. I think you’d have a hard time selling the cost to ACC Vosper.’
    ‘If your hunches are right, you’re going to need evidence he was on that boat–someone who saw him, or something forensic, or something belonging to him.’
    Branson looked pensive. ‘Perhaps they could dive on it again and do a thorough search.’
    Grace thought for some moments. ‘Do you have any ideas on what his involvement