‘Probably delayed in the lock.’

Grace nodded, and climbed out of the car, walking to the very edge, still limping and tender from rolling his beloved Alfa Romeo during a pursuit a while back. He stood beside an iron bollard, the wind feeling icy on his face. The light was fading fast, and if it wasn’t such a cloudless sky, it would already be almost dark. A mile or so in the distance he could see the closed lock gates and an orange superstructure, probably that of the dredger, beyond. He pulled his overcoat tightly around himself, shivering against the cold, dug his hands into his pockets and pulled on his leather gloves. Then he glanced at his watch.

Ten to five. Jim Wilkinson’s retirement party started at seven, over on the far side of Worthing. He had planned to go home and change, then collect Cleo. Now, by the time he finished here, depending on what he found, and on how much examination the pathologist would want to do in situ, he would be lucky to make the party at all. The one blessing was that they had been allocated Nadiuska De Sancha, the quicker – and more fun – of the two specialist Home Office pathologists they worked with most regularly.

On the far side of the harbour he saw a large fishing boat, its navigation lights on, chug away from its berth. The water was almost black.

He heard doors open and slam behind him, then a chirpy voice said, ‘Cor, you’re going to cop it from the missus if you’re late. Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes, Roy!’

He turned to see Walter Hordern, a tall, dapper man, who was always smartly and discreetly attired in a dark suit, white shirt and black tie. His official role was Chief of Brighton and Hove Cemeteries, but his duties also included spending a part of his time helping in the process of collecting bodies from the scene of their death and dealing with the considerable paperwork that was required for each one. Despite the gravitas of his job, Walter had a mischievous sense of humour and loved nothing better than to wind Roy up.

‘Why’s that, Walter?’

‘She’s gone and spent a bleedin’ fortune at the hairdresser’s today – for the party tonight. She’ll be well miffed if you blow it out.’

‘I’m not blowing it out.’

Walter pointedly looked at his own watch. Then raised his eyes dubiously.

‘If necessary I’ll put you in charge of the sodding investigation, Walter.’

The man shook his head. ‘Na, I only like dealing with stiffs. You never get any lip from a stiff. Good as gold, they are.’

Grace grinned. ‘Darren here?’

Darren was Cleo’s assistant in the mortuary.

Walter jerked a thumb at the van. ‘He’s in there, on the dog-and-bone, having a barney with his girlfriend.’ He shrugged, then rolled his eyes. ‘That’s wimmin for you.’

Grace nodded, texting his:

Ship not here yet. Going to be late. Better meet u there. XXX

Just as he stuck his phone back in his pocket, it beeped twice sharply. He pulled it back out and looked at the display. It was a reply from Cleo:

Don’t be 2 late. I have something to tell you.

He frowned, unsettled by the tone of the message, and by the fact that there was no ‘X’ on the end. Stepping out of earshot of Walter and DI Mantle, who had just climbed out of the car, he called Cleo’s number. She answered immediately.

‘Can’t talk,’ she said curtly. ‘Got a family just arrived for an identification.’

‘What is it you have to tell me?’ he said, aware his voice sounded anxious.

‘I want to tell you face to face, not over the phone. Later, OK?’ She hung up.

Shit. He stared at the phone for a moment, even more worried now, then put it back in his pocket.

He did not like the way she had sounded at all.

Simona learned to inhale Aurolac vapour from a plastic bag. A small bottle of the metallic paint, which she was able to steal easily from any paint store, would last for several days. It was Romeo who had taught her how to steal, and how to blow into the bag to get the paint to mix with air, then suck it in, blow it back into the bag again and inhale it again.

When she inhaled, the hunger pangs went.

When she inhaled, life in her home became tolerable. The home she had lived in for as far back as she could, or rather wanted to remember. The home she entered by scrambling through a gap in the broken concrete pavement and clambering down a metal ladder beneath the busy, unmade road, into the underground cavity that had been bored out for inspection and maintenance of the steam pipe. The pipe, thirteen feet in diameter, was part of the communal central-heating network that fed most of the buildings in the city. It made the space down here snug and dry in winter, but intolerably hot during the spring months until it was turned off.

And in a tiny part of this space, a tight recess between the pipe and the wall, she had made her home. It was marked out by an old duvet she had found, discarded, on a rubbish tip, and Gogu, who had been with her as far back as she could remember. Gogu was a beige, shapeless, mangy strip of fake fur that she slept with, pressed to her face, every night. Beyond the clothes she wore and Gogu, she had no possessions at all.

There were five of them, six including the baby, who lived here permanently. From time to time others came and stayed for a while, then moved on. The place was lit with candles, and music played throughout the days and nights when they had batteries. Western pop music that sometimes brought Simona joy and sometimes demented her, because it was always loud and rarely stopped. They argued about it constantly, but always it played. Beyoncé was singing at the moment and she liked Beyoncé. Liked the way she looked. One day, she dreamed, she would look like Beyoncé, sing like Beyoncé. One day she would live in a house.

Romeo told her she was beautiful, that one day she would be rich and famous.

The baby was crying again and there was a faint stink of shit. Valeria’s eight-month-old son, Antonio. Valeria, with all their help, had managed to keep him hidden from the authorities, who would have taken him from her.

Valeria, who was much older than the rest of them, had been pretty once, but her face at twenty-eight, haggard and heavily lined from this life, was now the face of an old woman. She had long, straight brown hair and eyes that had once been sultry but were now dead, and was dressed brightly, an emerald puffa over a ragged, turquoise, yellow and pink jogging suit, and red plastic sandals – scavenged, like most of their clothes, from bins in the better parts of the city, or accepted eagerly from hand-out centres.

She rocked her baby, who was wrapped up in an old, fur-lined suede coat, in her arms. The damn child’s crying was worse than the constant music. Simona knew that the baby cried because he was hungry. They were all hungry, almost all of the time. They ate what they stole, or what they bought with the money they begged, or got from the old newspapers they occasionally sold, or from the wallets and purses they sometimes pickpocketed from tourists, or from selling the mobile phones and cameras they just grabbed from them.

Romeo, with his big blue eyes like saucers, his cute, innocent face, his short black hair brushed forward and his withered hand, was a fast runner. Fast as hell! He did not know how old he was. Maybe fourteen, he thought. Or perhaps thirteen. Simona did not know how old she was either. The stuff had not started to happen yet, the stuff that Valeria told her about. So Simona reckoned she was twelve or thirteen.

She did not really care. All she wanted was for these people, her family, to be pleased with her. And they were pleased every time she and Romeo returned with food or money or, best of all, both. And, sometimes, batteries. Returned to the rank smells of sulphur and dry dust and unwashed bodies and baby shit, which were the smells she knew best in the world.