‘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 for his rank, he had attended far too many.

Too many to feel shocked any more.

But not too many not to care.

Lynn hated this drive at the best of times, the long slow crawl up the A23 through suburban south London. They were heading for the Royal South London Hospital, in Crystal Hill, where Caitlin was going to spend the next four days being assessed by the pre-transplant team there.

The last time Lynn had come up this way was back in April, when she had taken Caitlin to IKEA to choose some new furnishings for her bedroom. At least that had been fun – inasmuch as battling through the Sunday afternoon crush at IKEA could be any sane person’s idea of fun.

But they did have a treat at the end of the ordeal – in fact, a double treat so far as Lynn was concerned, because Caitlin did something she very rarely did. She had not just eaten something she would normally have turned her nose up at for being unhealthy, but had totally pigged out on it.

It was after they had finally got through the checkout queue, with their purchases of a bedside table, lamp, bedcover, wallpaper and curtains. They had gone to the restaurant area and eaten meatballs and new potatoes, followed by ice cream. Even naughtier, they’d bought two hotdogs as well, swamped in mustard and ketchup, as a treat for their supper, but had eaten them in the car long before they had reached home. Lynn had half expected Caitlin to want to stop and throw them up at any moment, but instead her daughter had sat there with a grin on her face, licking her lips from time to time and proclaiming, ‘That was wicked! Totally wicked!’

It was one of the few occasions in her life that Lynn could ever remember seeing Caitlin actually enjoy her food, and she had hoped at the time – a hope that was later dashed – that it might herald the start of a new and more positive phase of her daughter’s life.

They were passing IKEA now, the tall, floodlit smokestacks with the blue and yellow bands near the top, on their left. She glanced at Caitlin in the passenger seat beside her, hunched over her mobile phone, engrossed in texting. She had been texting non-stop for the past hour since they had left Brighton. The glare of oncoming headlights lit up her face, a ghostly, yellow-tinged white.

‘Fancy some meatballs, darling?’

‘Yeah, right,’ Caitlin said sleepily, without looking up, as if her mother was offering her poison.

‘We’re just passing IKEA – we could stop.’

She worked the keypad for some moments, then said, ‘They wouldn’t be open now.’

‘It’s only quarter to eight. I think they’re open until ten.’

‘Meatballs? Yuck. Do you want to poison me or something?’

‘Remember when we came here in April, to get the stuff for your room? We had some then and you really enjoyed them.’

‘I read about meatballs on the Net,’ Caitlin said, suddenly becoming animated. ‘They’re full of fat and crap. You know, some meatballs – they’ve even got bits of bone and hooves in. It’s like some burgers – they literally put the whole cow in a crushing machine. Like, everything, right? The head, skin, intestines. That way they can say it is pure beef.’

‘Not IKEA’s.’

‘Yeah, I forgot, you worship at the altar of IKEA. Like their stuff is blessed by some Nordic god.’

Lynn smiled, reached out a hand and touched her daughter’s wrist. ‘It would be better than the hospital food.’

‘Yeah, well, don’t worry. I’m not going to eat anything while I’m in that fucking place.’ She tapped her keypad again. ‘Anyhow, we just ate supper.’

‘I ate, darling. You didn’t touch your food.’

‘Whatever.’ She texted some more. Then she said, ‘Actually, that’s not true. I had some yoghurt.’ She yawned.

Lynn halted the Peugeot at traffic lights, removed her hand for a moment to put the gear lever into neutral, then put it back again on Caitlin’s wrist. ‘You must eat something tonight.’

‘What’s the point?’

‘To keep up your strength.’

‘I’m being strong.’

She squeezed her daughter’s wrist, but there was no response. Then she dug the map out of the door pocket and briefly checked it. The exhaust pipe banged on the underside of the car as the engine idled. The lights turned green. She jammed the map back into the pocket, wrenched the sticky gear lever into first and let out the clutch.