Looking Good Dead

Stretton––’
    ‘That’s what this is about, Dennis,’ Grace interrupted him. ‘But it’s also about something else. You may not have heard yet, but a vehicle my team was pursuing late last night was in collision with a taxi, in Kemp Town.’
    Pond’s face fell. ‘No, I hadn’t heard.’
    ‘As a consequence of trying to apprehend the vehicle before it drove off, one of my best young officers is on life support at Sussex County. I just came off the phone. She’s survived a five-hour operation but it still doesn’t look good. She put her life on the line to stop that fucking vehicle – a Ford Transit. Do you understand that? She put her fucking life on the line, Dennis. She’s twenty-four years old; she’s one of the brightest and bravest young cops I’ve ever seen. She clung to the side of that vehicle to try to stop it, and the scumbag driving it smashed her into a parked car. She was trying to do her job, to uphold the law. Are you still with me?’
    Hesitantly, Ponds nodded.
    ‘I’ve got an officer on life support. I’ve got a scumbag suspect unconscious. I’ve got an innocent taxi passenger with a broken leg.’
    ‘I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at,’ Ponds said.
    Grace realized all the caffeine might be making him seem a little aggressive. ‘What I’m getting at, Dennis, is I want the editor of the Argus , and the editors of any other papers, radio news or television news that might pick up this story, to cut me some slack. I don’t want to have to deal with a room full of braying vultures after another cheap let’s-have-a-pop-at-the-police story about how reckless we are, endangeringpublic lives, when actually we are trying to save lives, and risking our own in the process.’
    ‘I hear what you are saying,’ Ponds said. ‘But it’s not easy.’
    ‘That’s why you are coming to the briefing, Dennis. I’m going to show you something that I saw earlier this morning. Then I’m going to give you a copy of it. I think you’ll find it’ll make things a whole lot easier.’ He gave Ponds an almost demonic grin.
    They walked a few yards along the corridor and into the Briefing Room, which was quickly filling up, both with members of Grace’s team and with the new team that had been assembled during the course of yesterday by Detective Superintendent Dave Gaylor for the Reggie D’Eath murder enquiry – there were several clear areas of crossover between the two.
    Grace had decided to use the Briefing Room for this session rather than MIR One partly because of the extra space, but mainly because there was a large plasma screen on the wall, into which DS Jon Rye, whom Grace had also summoned to the briefing, was currently plugging the laptop DC Nicholl had recovered from the crashed Transit.
    Sitting down in front of the curved Crimestoppers display board, it felt at this moment as if his team couldn’t stop a bloody bus, Grace thought, and remembered gloomily that today was the day Cassian Pewe started. How great it would be to get transferred to Newcastle just as he and Cleo were getting together, he thought. Putting them at opposite ends of the country. Three hundred bloody miles apart. Well it was not going to sodding well happen!
    None of them would enjoy the four-minute show Grace was putting on. To start their week with the worst horror movie most of them would ever see in their lives was hardly a Monday morning treat. These were shock tactics, he knew, and they wouldn’t make him any friends. But making friends was right at the bottom of his list of priorities at this exact moment.
    He started the session in the way he always did. ‘The time is eight thirty, Monday, June sixth,’ he read out. ‘This is our sixth briefing of Operation Nightingale, the investigation into the murder of Jane – known as Janie – Susan Amanda Stretton, conducted on day five following the discovery of her remains. I will now summarize events following the incident.’

    For some minutes, mainly for the benefit of the newcomers from Detective Superintendent Gaylor’s team, he went over the circumstances surrounding Janie Stretton’s death, the investigations and actions that had been put in place subsequently and the key events. These he listed as: the theft of the computer disk which had enabled Tom Bryce, apparently, to witness Janie Stretton’s murder; the discovery that Janie Stretton had been supplementing her income as a trainee lawyer by working as a prostitute; the