‘Is Mr D’Eath expecting us?’ Nicholl asked.

‘With morning coffee and a box of Under Eights, I expect,’ Norman Potting said, following this with a throaty chuckle.

Ignoring the terrible joke, Grace replied, ‘The woman I spoke to from the Witness Protection Agency said they’d left a message for him.’

They pulled up outside Number 29. The 1950s bungalow looked a little more tired than the others in the street, its brown pebbledash rendering in need of repair, and repainting considerably overdue. The small front garden was in poor shape also, reminding Grace that he needed to mow his own lawn some time this weekend – and today was a perfect day for it. But when would he get the chance?

He told Norman Potting to wait in the street, in case Reginald D’Eath hadn’t got the message they were coming and tried to do a runner, then, accompanied by DC Nicholl, he walked up to the front door. It bothered him that the curtains of the front room were still drawn at a quarter to eleven on a Sunday morning. But maybe Mr D’Eath was a late riser? He pressed the plastic bell-push. Dinky chimes rang out inside the house. Then silence.

He waited some moments, then rang again.

Still no response.

Pushing open the letterbox he knelt and called out through it, ‘Hello, Mr D’Eath, it’s Detective Superintendent Grace of Brighton CID!’

Still no response.

Followed by Nicholl, he walked around the side of the house, edging through the narrow gap past the dustbins, and pushed open a high wooden gate. The rear garden was in a much worse state than the front, the lawn weedy and badly overgrown, and the borders a sad riot of bindweed and nettles. He stepped over an upturned plastic watering can, then reached a kitchen door with frosted glass panels, one of which was smashed. Shards of glass lay on the brick path.

He shot a glance at Nick Nicholl, whose dubious frown echoed his own concern. He tried the handle and it opened without resistance.

They entered a time-warp kitchen, with an ancient Lec fridge, drab fake-wood units and Formica work surfaces on which sat a clapped-out-looking toaster and a plastic jug kettle. The remains of a meal sat on a dreary little table – a plate of half-eaten and very congealed eggs and beans and a half-drunk mug of tea – and a magazine, opened at a double-page spread of naked children, was propped against a serving bowl.

‘Jesus,’ Grace commented, disgusted by the magazine. Then he dunked a finger into the tea; it was stone cold. He wiped it on a kitchen towel hanging on a rack, then called out, ‘HELLO! REGINALD D’EATH! THIS IS SUSSEX POLICE! YOU ARE SAFE TO COME OUT! WE ARE JUST HERE TO TALK TO YOU! WE NEED YOU TO HELP US IN AN ENQUIRY!’

Silence.

It was a silence Grace did not like, a silence that crawled all over his skin. There was also a smell he did not like. Not the smell of the stale, tired old kitchen, but a more astringent smell which he knew but could not place – except something in his memory was telling him it definitely did not belong in a house.

He needed D’Eath so badly. He was desperate to talk to him about what he had been looking at on his computer. He knew from Jon Rye that Reggie D’Eath had followed the same links as Tom Bryce and he had no doubt the paedophile would have information about what Tom Bryce had seen.

It was the best lead they had so far in the Janie Stretton murder enquiry. And, as he couldn’t stop thinking, it wasn’t just about driving the enquiry forward, it was about rescuing his career.

He bloody well had to succeed in this enquiry.

He nodded for Nick Nicholl to start looking around the rest of the house. The Detective Constable left the kitchen, and Grace followed him into a small sitting room, where the smell was even stronger. In here there was a cheap-looking three-piece suite, an old television, a couple of very badly framed Turner prints on the walls, and one solitary framed photograph on a mantelpiece above a fireplace containing an electric, fake-coal fire.

Grace stared at the stiffly posed couple in the photograph: a weak-looking, baby-faced man in his thirties, with thinning hair, dressed in a grey suit, a gaudy tie and a shirt collar riding too high, his arm around a hard-bitten blonde, outside the entrance of what looked like a register office.

Then he heard a shout. ‘Roy! Jesus!’

Startled, he ran out of the room, and saw the DC a short distance down the corridor, hand over his face, coughing in an open doorway.

As he reached him, the sour, acrid smell caught the back of his throat. He held his breath and stepped past the DC into an avocado-coloured bathroom. And came face to face with Reggie D’Eath, through the choking haze.

Or at least what was left of the man.

48

And now Grace knew exactly what that smell was. A sick little ditty his science master had taught everyone at school sprang into his mind:

Alas here lies poor Joe

Alas he breathes no more.

For what he thought was H ₂ O

Was H ₂ SO ₄.

Grace’s eyes were stinging and his face was smarting. It was dangerous to stay in the room for more than a few seconds, but that was enough to see all he needed.

Reggie D’Eath was lying up to his neck in a bathtub, immersed in liquid that looked as clear as water. But it was sulphuric acid. It had already consumed almost all of the skin, muscle and internal organs below his neck, leaving a clean, partly dissolved skeleton around which a few pale, sinewy tendrils, still attached, were shrinking as he watched.

A metal ligature, around his neck, was attached to a towel rail above him. The corrosive fumes were working on D’Eath’s face, blistering the skin into livid pustules.

Grace backed quickly out of the room, colliding with Nicholl. The two men stared at each other in stunned silence. ‘I need air,’ Grace gasped, heading unsteadily to the front door and out into the garden. Nicholl followed him.

‘Everything all right?’ Norman Potting asked, leaning against the car, puffing on his pipe.

‘Not exactly,’ Grace said, feeling very queasy, so disturbed he was unable to think clearly for some moments. He took several long, deep gulps of fresh air. A man a short distance up the street was washing his car. Close by was the grind-grind-grind-whrrrrr of a hand-pushed lawnmower.

Nicholl began a series of deep, hacking coughs.

Grace pulled his recently issued new phone out of his pocket, and looked down at the buttons; he’d practised with it a few times but never actually used the camera function before. Holding his handkerchief over his nose, he went back into the house, along to the bathroom, took a deep breath outside the door, entered and took several photographs in quick succession. Then he went back out of the room.

Nick Nicholl was standing there. ‘You OK, chief?’

‘Never better,’ Grace spluttered, gulping down air. Then he pocketed his camera, not relishing what he had to do next.

He took another deep breath, dived into the bathroom, grabbed a large towel off a rail, wrapped it around Reggie D’Eath’s head, and yanked hard.

After several brutal tugs, the head, along with a length of spinal cord, came free from the ligature. Surprised at how heavy it was and still holding his breath, Grace carried it out of the bathroom and laid it down on the hall floor.

The young Detective Constable took one look at the sight, keeled over, crashing into a wall, and threw up.

Grace, remembering something from his first aid training, ran into the kitchen, found a bowl in a cupboard, filled it with cold water then hurried back and emptied it over D’Eath’s face, trying to wash away the acid. If there was any forensic evidence there, it might be saved, and in any case it would help with identification. The smell of the DC’s vomit made him gag, and as he ran back for a refill he narrowly avoided throwing up himself.