Grace thought about this. ‘OK, but if he died in Spain or Austria, what is he doing ten miles off the coast of England?’

There was a shrill ring on the doorbell. Darren, the Assistant Mortuary Technician, hurried out of the room. A couple of minutes later he returned with Sergeant Tania Whitlock, from the Specialist Search Unit, gowned and in protective boots.

Roy Grace brought her up to speed. She asked to see the plastic sheeting and weights in which the body had been found, and Cleo took her out into the storage area to show her. Then they returned to the post-mortem room. The Home Office pathologist was busy dictating notes into her machine. Grace, Glenn Branson and Michael Forman were standing near the cadaver. The photographer walked out to the storage area to start working on close-ups of the wrapping and binding.

‘Do you think he could have drifted in the currents from a designated burial-at-sea area?’ Grace asked Tania.

‘It’s possible,’ she said, breathing in through her mouth, trying to ignore the stench. ‘But those weights are pretty heavy, and we’ve had mild weather conditions recently. I can get you a plot done, showing where it might have come from with lesser weights on, if that would be helpful.’

‘It might be. Could it be a burial at sea where they got the position wrong?’

‘A possibility,’ she said. ‘But I’ve checked with the Arco Dee. They found him fifteen nautical miles east of the designated Brighton and Hove burial-at-sea site. It would be a pretty big error.’

‘That’s what I’m thinking too,’ he said. ‘We have a fairly precise position where he was brought up from, right?’

‘Very accurate,’ the Sergeant said. ‘To within a couple of hundred yards or so.’

‘I think we should take a look at what else might be down there, as quickly as possible,’ Grace said. ‘Do you have time to start today?’

Tania looked at the clock on the wall and then, as if mistrusting it, at her chunky diver’s watch. Next she glanced at the window. ‘Sunset is about four o’clock today,’ she said. ‘Ten miles out in the Channel, the sea’s going to be quite choppy – we’d need to rent a bigger dive boat than our inflatable for working out there. We have about three hours of daylight left. What I suggest is we get a dive boat sorted for first light in the morning – this time of year there are a few deep-sea fishing charter boats that don’t have many customers. We can start at dawn. But in the meantime, we can get out to the area in the inflatable and buoy it off, to make sure the dredgers don’t disturb anything else down there.’

‘Brilliant!’ he said.

‘That’s what we’re here for!’ she said, feeling a lot more cheerful than when she had arrived. She could get all that organized and still make it home in time to prepare the meal.

Turning to Glenn Branson, Grace said, ‘You look a bit peaky.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. Does it to me every time, this place.’

‘You know what you need?’

‘What?’

‘A spot of sea air! A nice cruise.’

‘Yeah. A cruise would be very nice.’

‘Good!’ Grace gave him a pat on the back. ‘You’re going on one tomorrow morning with Tania.’

Branson screwed up his face and pointed at the window. ‘Shit, man, the forecast’s crap! I thought you meant the Caribbean or something!’

‘Start with the Channel. It’s a good place to get your sea legs.’

‘I haven’t even got any yachting gear!’ he moaned.

‘You won’t need any, you’ll be larging it on the first-class deck!’

Tania eyed Glenn dubiously. ‘The forecast’s not great. Are you a good sailor?’

‘No, I’m not,’ he said. ‘Believe me!’

There had been no deterioration in Nat’s condition overnight, which was one blessing, Susan thought, trying to find positive things as she sat on her long vigil beside his bed. But there had been no improvement either. He continued to be a silent stranger, propped up at his thirty-degree angle, wired and plumbed into the almost bewildering array of life-support and monitoring apparatus.

The round institutional clock on the wall said ten to one. Nearly lunchtime, which would not mean much to Nat, or to most of his fellow patients here in the ITU. The nutrients entered his body all day and night through a constant trickle down the nasogastric tube. And suddenly, despite her tiredness, Susan smiled at a thought. She was always chiding Nat for being late for meals. His hours as a medic at the hospital were utterly erratic and often, with no prior warning, he had to stay on late into the night. But even when he was at home, he always had just one more email to check, darling! whenever she called out to him that lunch or dinner was on the table.

Well, at least you are not late for your meals in here, she thought, and smiled again wistfully. Then she sniffed, pulled a tissue from the pocket of her jacket and dabbed away tears that were rolling down her cheeks.

Shit. This cannot be how it ends. Surely not?

As if in agreement, or to give her reassurance, the baby kicked inside her.

‘Thank you, Bump,’ she whispered.

Since the consultant, dressed in an open-necked shirt and grey trousers, accompanied by a group of gowned medics, had finished his round half an hour or so ago, the ITU seemed eerily quiet. Almost the only sounds were the alarms going off every few minutes, sounds that were increasingly getting on Susan’s nerves. There were alarms on the vital-signs monitors of each of the patients.

Despite the fact that there was one nurse on duty for every patient in here, the place seemed deserted. There was some activity going on behind the drawn blue curtains of the bed opposite, and Susan could see a woman polishing the floor, a yellow warning sign saying CLEANING IN PROGRESS set out near her. A couple of beds along, a physiotherapist was massaging the legs of an elderly, wired and intubated man. All the patients were silent, some sleeping, some staring vacantly. Susan had seen several visitors come and go, but at the moment she was the only one on the ward itself.

She heard again the almost musical beep-beep-bong of an alarm, like the chimes on an aircraft from an irritated passenger trying to summon a stewardess. It was coming from somewhere out of sight, over on the far side of the ward.

Nat was in Bed 14. The beds in here were numbered from 1 to 17. But, in fact, there were only sixteen beds in this unit. Because of superstition, there was no Bed 13. So Bed 14 was actually Bed 13.

Nat was a good doctor. He thought about everything, analysed everything, rationalized everything. He had no truck with superstition of any kind. Whereas Susan had always been very superstitious. She didn’t like to see a single magpie without spotting a second one, or to stare at a new moon through glass, and she would never, ever, knowingly walk under a ladder. She was not at all happy that he was in this particular bed. But the ward was full, so she could hardly ask for him to be swapped with someone else.

She stood up, stifling a yawn, and walked a couple of paces to the end of the bed, where the nurse’s laptop sat on a trolley. Yesterday had been a long day. She’d stayed here until close on midnight, then had driven home and tried to sleep, but after a few fitful hours, she’d given up. Instead she had showered, made herself a strong coffee, collected some of Nat’s Eagles and Snow Patrol CDs and his wash things, as the nurse had suggested, and driven back.

The iPod headset had been plugged into his ears for several hours now, but so far he had shown no response. Usually, even seated in his den, he swayed, nodded his head, rolled his shoulders, waved his arms around in slow motion whenever he played his music. He was a great dancer on the occasions when he let his hair down. She remembered being mesmerized by his timing when he’d rock ’n’ rolled with her the first time they’d danced together, at a nurse’s birthday party.