Read Not Dead Yet for Free Online Page A

happened. The best favour he could do his friend was to ensure his career came out of it intact. ‘You think taking the weekend off would help save your marriage?’
    ‘Nope.’
    Grace grinned. ‘So?’
    ‘You ever see that movie, Chicken Run ?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘You’ve lived a sheltered life.’
    ‘Lot of sex in it, was there?’ Grace retorted.
    ‘Yeah, right.’
    They put on face masks, raised their hoods and snapped on protective gloves. Then the pair of them signed in on the scene guard’s pad, and ducked under the blue and white police crime scene tape. It was a fine, blustery day. They were high up on the ridge of a hill, with open farmland stretching for miles in all directions, and the glinting blue water of the English Channel visible on the horizon to the south, beyond the Downs.
    They walked towards a long, single-storey shed with clapboard walls and a row of roof vents that stretched away into the distance, two tall steel silos standing beside it. Grace pushed the door open. They went inside to the glare of artificial lighting, to the sour stench of confined animals, and the din of thousands of protesting hens.
    ‘Had eggs for breakfast, old timer?’ Branson asked.
    ‘Actually, I had porridge.’
    ‘Guess at your age, cholesterol matters. Low fat milk?’
    ‘Cleo’s put me on soya.’
    ‘You’re under her thumb.’
    ‘She has pretty thumbs.’
    ‘That’s how every relationship starts. Pretty face, pretty thumbs, pretty damned everything. You love every inch of her body and she loves every inch of yours. Ten years on, you’re struggling to remember one damned thing about each other that you once liked.’ Branson patted him on the shoulder. ‘But hey, enjoy the ride.’
    Roy Grace stopped and Branson stopped beside him. ‘Matey, don’t become a cynic. You’re too good for that.’
    ‘I’m just a realist.’
    Grace shook his head.
    ‘Your wife vanished on your thirtieth birthday – after you’d been together several years, right?’ said Branson.
    ‘Uh huh. Getting on for ten years.’
    ‘You still loved her?’
    ‘As much as the day I met her. More.’
    ‘Maybe you’re an exception.’
    Grace looked at him. ‘I hope not.’
    Branson stared at him, his face full of pain. ‘Yeah, I hope not too. But it hurts. I think of Ari and the kids constantly, and it hurts so much.’
    Grace stared down the length of the shed, with its gridded steel floor, a section of which, towards the far end, had been lifted. He could see, suited up, the stocky Crime Scene Manager David Green; three SOCOs including the burly, intensely serious Crime Scene Photographer James Gartrell; DS Simon Bates; the Duty Inspector Roy Apps, and the Coroner’s Officer Philip Keay.
    ‘Let’s rock and roll.’ Grace stepped on to the grid.
    ‘Not sure I feel much like dancing,’ Glenn Branson said.
    ‘So, you and the dead body have something in common.’

12
    The dead body was very definitely not dancing. Partly on account of the fact that it was embedded in several feet of chicken excrement, partly because its legs were missing, and partly because it had no hands or head, either. Which would have made co-ordination difficult. A cluster of blowflies buzzed around, and the stench of ammonia was almost overpowering.
    Glenn, close to retching, turned away. Grace stared down. Whoever had done this had little forensic awareness, and even less finesse. The headless, limbless torso, with desiccated flesh missing in patches, covered in excrement and crawling with flies and maggots, was barely recognizable as human. The skin, which appeared acid-scorched in the patches where it was visible, was a dark, leathery brown, giving it the air of a shop-window dummy that had been salvaged from a bonfire. The rank stench of a decaying body, all too familiar to Grace, rose all around him, making the air feel heavy and cloying. It was a smell that always accompanied you home, in your hair, on your clothes, in every pore of