Looking Good Dead

a supply of formaldehyde up their rectum,’ the pathologist replied, just very slightly sarcastically. He pointed at a small glass vial on the dissecting tray which contained a murky-looking fluid. ‘There is no trace in there – that’s the bowel lining mucus.’
    Grace nodded and did a quick mental calculation. If he left straight after the press conference there would be time to show the beetle to the one man he was certain would be able to identify it.

20
    ‘Viking north-west, veering south-east five or six, becoming variable three or four later. Showers. Good. North Utsire, South Utsire, north-west, four or five first in South Utsire, otherwise variable three or four,’ the Weatherman said.
    He was driving his car, a crappy little white Fiat Panda with terminal rust. On the radio, some plonker, who seriously did not know what he was talking about, was explaining how easy it was to perform identity theft. But driving along the road beside Shoreham Harbour, the commercial port adjoining the City of Brighton and Hove, made the shipping forecast definitely relevant.
    On his left was the Sussex Motor Yacht Club, followed by a warehouse, on his right a row of terraced houses. He was on his way again to see Jonas Smith – or Carl Venner, his real name – and the fat man was beginning to piss him off. He had only hooked up with Venner to get revenge on the people he worked for, who really pissed him off big time. Now he had to drop everything each time Venner summoned him, because Venner refused to communicate by phone or email, like any normal person. There always had to be a ridiculous charade to go through, either meeting him in a hotel room, like the last time, in case he was followed, or on very rare occasions in his office, like now.
    At the end of the row of houses he passed a yacht chandlery, then pushed the indicator into right-turn mode, waited for a gap in the traffic and accelerated, the engine spluttering under the sudden load, across into the Portslade Units industrial estate. It was easy to spot the building he was heading for; it was the one with the helicopter, like a mutant black insect, parked on the roof. Venner’s private helicopter.
    He drove past an antiques depot, then pulled into the carport of a massive modern warehouse alongside a large black Mercedes which he knew was one of the cars that belonged to Venner. The sign on the wall said O ceanic & O ccidental I mport /E xport .
    He killed the engine, but continued to listen to Radio Five Live,wondering whether to use his mobile phone to call in and correct the plonker. But he was short of time; he needed to get back to the office. Muttering to himself, ‘Forties, Cromarty, Tyne, Dogger, north-west seven to severe gale force nine,’ he climbed out of the car, locked it and checked each door methodically, walked up to the side entrance and, showing his face to the lens of the security camera, pressed the buzzer.
    There was a klunk followed by a rasping buzz as the lock released. He pushed open the heavy-duty door and entered a ground-floor space, the size of a football pitch, filled with massive grey sea containers. Two surly eastern Europeans in overalls, one bald with a tattooed head, the other with a long mane of black hair, watched him, gave a brief nod of recognition and turned their attention back to a container being hoisted into the air on a vast mobile lift.
    The Weatherman had hacked into the company’s computer system and read the manifests. He knew what was inside the containers. Half had legitimate goods, mostly machine parts and agricultural chemicals, the other half contained stolen exotic cars for Russia and the Middle East, military equipment destined for Syria and North Korea, and out-of-date pharmaceuticals for Nigeria.
    But he wasn’t about to tell Venner he knew that. It was just useful knowledge. He just wanted to see him, tell him what he had found out, then get back to the office. And tonight he had a date with Mona – well, a date on an internet chat site. His third with her. Mona worked for an IT company in Boise, Idaho in America; they talked mostly about the environment.
    But the big thing about her was she had read Robert Anton Wilson, and they had so much else in common. She agreed with the Weatherman that quite soon people would be able to download their brains into computers and live a virtual existence, freed from all the crap restraints of being a biological human being.
    He rode the