Looking Good Dead

‘What is going to, umm – going to, ummm – to the girl? Happen to her?’
    ‘Mick’s taking her home. What’s your problem?’
    ‘Ummm – no I, umm – good. OK, great.’
    ‘Do you have what I asked you to bring? What I’m fucking paying you for?’
    The Weatherman unbuttoned the back pocket of his trousers and pulled out a small, lined sheet of paper torn from a notebook andfolded twice. He handed it to Venner, who took it with a grunt. ‘You are one-hundred-per-cent sure?’
    ‘Yes.’
    This seemed to satisfy Venner, who waddled over to his desk to read it.
    Written on it was the address of Tom and Kellie Bryce.

21
    Professor Lars Johansson was a man who, in Grace’s opinion, looked more like an international banker than a scientist who had spent much of his life crawling through bat caves, swamps and hostile jungles around the globe in search of rare insects.
    Over six foot tall, with smooth blond hair and suave good looks, attired in a three-piece chalk-striped suit, the Anglo-Swede exuded urbane charm and confidence. He sat at his large desk, in his cluttered office on the top floor of London’s Natural History Museum, with his half-moon tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of his nose, surrounded by display cases and bell jars filled with rare specimens, a microscope, and a raft of medical implements, rulers and weights. The entire room could have come straight from the set of an Indiana Jones movie, Grace thought.
    The two men had met and become friends a few years back at the International Homicide Investigators Association Convention, an event hosted in different US cities, which Grace attended annually. Ordinarily Grace would have sent one of his team to see Johansson, but he knew he’d get quicker answers by coming in person.
    The entomologist removed the plastic bag containing the beetle from the buff-coloured police evidence bag. ‘It’s been swabbed, Roy?’ he asked in his cultured English accent.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘So it is OK to take it out?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    Johansson carefully extracted the two-inch-long beetle with a pair of tweezers and laid it on his blotter pad. He studied it in silence for some moments with a large magnifying glass while Grace sipped gratefully on a mug of black coffee, thinking ruefully for a moment about the date with Cleo he had had to cancel tonight, in order to first be here and then get back to Sussex House for a late briefing of his team. He had been looking forward to it more than anything he could remember in avery long time and felt gutted he was not going to see her. But at least they had made a new date, for Saturday, just two days away. And the bonus was that that would give him time to buy some new gear.
    ‘It’s a good specimen, Roy,’ he said. ‘Very fine.’
    ‘What can you tell me about it?’
    ‘Where exactly did you find this?’
    Grace explained, and the entomologist, to his credit, barely raised an eyebrow.
    ‘That would fit,’ he said. ‘Very sick but very apt.’
    ‘Fit?’ Grace asked.
    ‘It is an appropriate location – for reasons that will become clear to you.’ He gave a wry smile.
    ‘I’m all ears.’
    ‘Do you want the full Year Two university biology class lecture on this little fellow? Or the short summary.’
    ‘Just the simpleton download – I’ll have to pass it on to some people who are even bigger numbskulls than myself.’
    The entomologist smiled. ‘His name is Copris lunaris , and he’s about average length – they are normally fifteen to twenty-five millimetres. He’s indigenous to southern Europe and North Africa.’
    ‘Are they found here at all?’
    ‘Not outside a zoo.’
    Grace frowned, thinking about the ramifications of this.
    The Professor continued: ‘It was considered a sacred creature by the ancient Egyptians, and is also known as a dung beetle or Scarab.’
    Now Grace understood. ‘ Dung beetle?’
    ‘Exactly. The best known are the subspecies called dung-rollers. They use their head and front legs to scrape up the dung and shape it into a ball, then they roll it along until they find a suitable place to bury it, so it can mature and break down.’
    ‘Sounds delicious,’ Grace said.
    ‘I think I prefer Swedish meatballs.’
    Grace thought for a moment. ‘So putting this beetle up the woman’s rectum has some significance.’
    ‘It would seem a warped one, but yes.’
    A siren whupped past in the street below. ‘I think it’s a fair assumption that we’re