Dead Tomorrow by Peter James Page B

limp and wrinkled, like the cast-off skin of a snake. He could not help continuing to stare at it for a moment. The penises of dead men always seemed so profoundly sad, as if the ultimate symbol of manhood, through its motionlessness, became the ultimate symbol of death. Then his eyes returned to the incision.
    ‘What the hell is that?’ Graham Lewis asked. ‘There’s no scar tissue, so it has been made post-mortem – or close to it.’
    ‘It looks very neat,’ Grace said. ‘Surgical?’
    Danny Marshall, who was standing a short distance away, next to DI Mantle, asked her anxiously how much longer it would be before the body was off-loaded and they could sail again – they had already lost over an hour of valuable discharging time. The
Arco Dee
needed to operate round the clock to earn its keep. Which meant never missing a tide. Another hour’s delay and they would not unload in time to make tonight’s tide.
    She told him the decision would be Roy Grace’s.
    For the first time in his career Marshall could understand the behaviour of a couple of skippers of fishing vessels he had met who had pulled up bodies from the deep in their nets, and confessed they had chucked them straight back rather than endure the delays that police procedures would inflict on them.
    ‘Definitely. That is not a wound,’ Lewis said. ‘This poor bastard’s had surgery. But…’ He hesitated.
    ‘But what?’ Grace prompted.
    ‘That incision definitely looks like a post-mortem one to me.’
    ‘Any idea how long you are going to be, Detective Superintendent?’ the captain asked.
    ‘It depends on the pathologist,’ Grace told him apologetically.
    ‘We have to wait?’
    At that moment, Grace’s phone rang. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said. It was the Home Office pathologist, Nadiuska De Sancha.
    ‘Roy,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been called to an emergency. I don’t know what time I’ll be able to get to you. Four or five hours at least, maybe longer.’
    ‘OK, I’ll call you back,’ he said.
    The paramedic was taking the man’s pulse. Just going through the motions. A formality.
    Grace made a decision. It was partly influenced by his desire to get to the party, but more so by the reality of the situation. There was a crew of eight on this dredger, all of whom he had already spoken to. Each person could testify that the body had been hauled up out of the sea. The photographer, James Gartrell, had taken all the photographs and the footage he needed. The body was contained within the plastic sheeting, hauled up from the seabed, which made it extremely unlikely there was any forensic evidence on the ship itself – anything there might have been would have washed off in the water on the way to the surface.
    He would be totally within his rights to impound the ship as a crime scene, but in his judgement that would serve no purpose. All the
Arco Dee
had done was haul the body up from the ocean floor. The vessel was no more a crime scene than a helicopter that hauled up a floater from the surface. The cause of death would be determined in the mortuary.
    ‘Good news for you!’ Grace said to Danny Marshall. ‘Let me have the names and addresses of all your crew members and you are free to go.’ Then he turned to the paramedic. ‘Let’s get the body ashore – keep him wrapped in the plastic.’
    ‘OK if I drop you off a statement later?’ Graham Lewis said. ‘I have to coach a young rugby team tonight.’
    ‘Coach?’
    ‘Yup!’
    ‘You’re a rugby coach?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I didn’t know that. I run the CID rugby team. We need a new coach.’
    ‘Give me a call.’
    ‘I will. Tomorrow’s fine for the statement,’ Grace said.
    Then he looked down at the bony, mutilated body again. Who are you? he wondered.
Where are you from
? Who made that incision on your body? And why?
    Always the
why.
    It was the first question Roy Grace asked, privately, at every murder scene he attended. And for a man still young