Looking Good Dead

distinctly cheered, he scanned the rest of the emails, filing some, deleting some and replying to others. Then another new one appeared.
    Dear Mr Bryce
    Last night you accessed a website you were unauthorized to visit. Now you have tried to access it again. We do not appreciate uninvited guests. If you inform the police about what you saw or if you ever try to access this site again, what is about to happen to your computer will happen to your wife, Kellie, to your son, Max, and to your daughter, Jessica. Take a good look, then have a hard think.
    Your friends at Scarab Productions
    Barely before he had time to register the words, they vanished from the screen. Then all the rest of his emails began to vanish, also, as if they were being dissolved in acid.
    Within a minute, maybe less, as he watched helplessly, his brain too paralysed to think about switching the machine off, everything on his computer vanished.
    He tapped at the keys. But there was nothing, just a blank, black screen.

13
    Dennis Ponds, the senior Sussex PRO, had been given the sobriquet Pond Life by many officers. Too many stories got leaked to the press, and the prime suspect was always his office.
    A former journalist, he looked more like a City trader than a newspaper man. In his early forties, with slicked-back black hair, mutantly large eyebrows and a penchant for sharp suits, he had the tough task of brokering the increasingly fragile relations between police and public.
    Roy Grace, swigging a bottle of mineral water, stared at him across his desk, feeling empathy with the man. Ponds wasn’t trusted by many police and the press were always suspicious of his motives. It was not a job anyone could win at. One police PRO had ended up in a sanatorium; another, Grace remembered well, sipped from a hip flask all day long.
    Ponds had just laid the entire collection of morning newspapers on Grace’s desk and was now sitting in front of him, wringing his hands. ‘At least we managed to keep it off the front page, Roy,’ he said apologetically, his eyebrows rising like two crows preparing for flight.
    They’d been lucky; a Charles and Camilla story took most of the front-page splashes. It was a reflection of modern times that the headless torso story made just a few lines on the inside pages of some papers, and was not mentioned at all in others. But, like the entire half-page of the Daily Mail open in front him, T wo D ead A fter P olice C ar C hase had made every single national paper.
    ‘You did your best,’ Grace said. Unlike many of his colleagues he recognized the importance of public relations.
    ‘You handled the conference well,’ Pond Life said. ‘The best thing we can do is build on the torso story today. I’ve set a con for two. You up for that?’
    ‘Ready to slay ’em,’ Grace retorted.
    ‘Can you give me anything for them, in advance?’

    Grace fiddled with the bottle cap, screwing it on then unscrewing it again. ‘No matches from the fingerprints. We’re waiting for a DNA report from the labs. Meantime we’re checking through the missing persons lists.’
    ‘Are we telling them the head’s missing?’
    ‘I don’t want anyone to know that yet. I’m just going to say that the body was badly mutilated, which is hampering the identification.’
    ‘I thought I was the one who doctored the truth for you guys.’
    Grace smiled. ‘You’ve obviously been a good teacher.’
    The eyebrows now flexing like wings in flight, Ponds asked, ‘Any hot leads?’
    ‘Come on, Dennis. Now you’re sounding like a journalist.’
    ‘I’d like to throw them a bone.’
    ‘There are several possible matches.’
    ‘Yes, but I hear the most likely is a Brighton girl, a trainee solicitor. Is that right?’
    Stunned at this information, Grace asked, ‘Where did you hear that?’
    The PRO shrugged. ‘Word on the street.’
    ‘What street? Who the hell told you that?’
    Ponds stared at the Detective Superintendent. ‘Three different journalists have already rung my office.’
    Grace remembered his conversation with Glenn Branson over his mobile phone yesterday afternoon, when Glenn was speculating who the young woman might be. Had someone listened in? That was near impossible – the new phones sent digitized signals, scrambled. With anger rising inside him and jabbing his bottle at the ceiling, Grace said, ‘Who the fuck talked to them? Dennis, that dead girl, whoever she is, has a family. Maybe a husband, maybe a mother, maybe a