Dead Tomorrow

‘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 Mantlesaid. ‘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.’
    DavidBrowne 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