Peter James - You Are Dead

Location: Big Beach Cafe

Transcript: Shortly after 7.15pm Roy Grace and Detective Inspector Glenn Branson hurried, heads bowed against the driving rain, towards the battery of bright lights illuminating the small Crime Scene Investigation tent that had been erected a short distance in front of the Big Beach Café at Hove Lagoon. It was surrounded by two cordons of fluttering blue and white crime scene tape. To the right, inside the inner cordon, was a second similar-sized tent.

So much for a quiet weekend, Grace was thinking. First a possible abduction, and now this. If the abduction was real – and he was increasingly certain that was the case – he would have to delegate one case as he couldn’t run two simultaneously.

They were greeted by the tall, friendly figure of the duty CID inspector, Charlie Hepburn, in a blue, hooded oversuit and protective shoes, and the uniformed duty inspector, Roy Apps, with rain dripping off his peaked cap. ‘Nice weather for ducks,’ Apps said. ‘Yeah, well you should know,’ quipped Branson. Apps had been a gamekeeper in his former life before joining Sussex Police. ‘Haha!’ ‘Nice to see you, Charlie,’ Roy Grace said. ‘How are Rachel, Archie and my namesake, Grace?’ ‘All good, thanks – Archie and Grace are getting very excited for Christmas.’ ‘I would be, too,’ Grace replied, ‘if I’d done any of my bloody shopping! Anyhow, what do we have?’ ‘A pretty good mess, Hepburn said. ‘Why the hell didn’t they stop the moment they uncovered the bones, instead of carrying on?’ ‘Want us to suit up? Grace asked. ‘I suppose you’d better, so Dave doesn’t get even more pissed off.’ He jerked a finger at the tent over the path, right behind him.

Grace and Branson went into the second tent, out of the rain. Chris Gee, a Crime Scene Investigator – formerly known as a Scenes of Crime Officer – handed them each an oversuit and shoes and offered them tea or coffee, which they both declined. They struggled into the suits, pulled on the shoes, went back out and signed the scene log. Then they followed Hepburn into the brightly lit tent covering the exposed parts of the skeleton…