A shallow grave works better than a deep one: Peter James

Crime-solving is a team-effort, says UK-based writer Peter James, who is fascinated by the idea of the ‘guy next door’ committing the most heinous crimes. He wears a handcuff brooch — “a gift from the German police” — but also owns a “real set of handcuffs”. DNA caught up with the author on his first trip to Mumbai last week. Excerpts:

Your latest novel, Dead Like You, was about a mystery solved by an entire team of detectives, forensics experts and a psychological profiler. In that sense, isn’t it very different from other crime novels where one detective solves the crime?
When I was asked to create a detective, I looked at a lot of fictional and television detectives. I’ve been to many homicide enquiries and I’ve seen that they work as a team.

Any major crime is big team work. This presents a problem for the writer because it’s much easier to just write about one character — and he does the investigation. But the reality is that on a major crime, there are at least 30-40 people investigating the crime.

Over the last six books, I’ve put Roy Grace as the head of a small team and we see them evolve with each book. In a sense, it’s like writing a soap opera with each book.

How do you tackle a subject as sensitive as rape?
My starting point was the Sussex police. About 10-12 years ago, a raped woman would report it to the police. She’d be met by a fat male policeman whose response would be: “In that miniskirt, you bloody well asked for it, didn’t you?”

Today, that same woman would be met by a female police officer from the Sexual Offences Liaison Office (SOLO), trained to deal with rape victims. [SOLO] were keen on me writing the book. They felt it would highlight the issue.

I wanted to write scenes of rape but at the same time I didn’t want them to be erotic. Two of the women heading that team worked with me on the rape scenes. They changed the wording so that the brutality was there without being titillating or exciting.

When did you start writing crime fiction?
When I was seven I decided I wanted to be a writer. When I was eight, I read my first Sherlock Holmes story. I knew then that I wanted to create a detective with that power of observation.

I grew up in Brighton, which luckily — or unluckily — is known as the crime capital of England. It looks like a beautiful seaside resort, but it has always had a dark underbelly. When I was 14, I read Graham Greene’s novel about a drug lord.

They were dangerous people but they also felt guilty. The book was riveting. I knew that I wanted to write a crime novel set in Brighton.

How did you come to start following the police?
About 20 years ago, we got burgled and a detective came around to the house for fingerprints. He gave me his card and said I could call him if I ever needed any research. We got friendly and he invited us to dinner and later, he invited me on a patrol.

Then, about 15 years ago, I met a senior detective, Inspector David Gaylor. Every inch of his office was covered in boxes with manila folders. I asked him if he was moving. He said, “No. These are my dead friends.

Each one of these boxes contains unsolved murders. I’ve been asked to reopen the cases and use modern forensics to solve the cases. I’m the last chance that victims have for justice and their families have for closure.” I loved that human image of him.

He became detective superintendent and can fix anything for me. It’s come to a point where he tells me: “We’re going on a drug raid. Do you want to come along?”

Nine years ago, my publisher asked if I would write a crime novel. So I asked David if he’d like to be a fictional detective. He said yes, and I got to observe his way of work. I always joke that I’m travelling with my own private detective [laughs].

What is it like to accompany the police to crime scenes?
Usually, during a raid and such, there’s no press involved, so I get to be the photographer. Last summer, I was with the police when they were busting into an armed robber’s house. I was warned it would be dangerous and that I could get shot. We weren’t wearing armour because it stands out. We didn’t want to alert the robber.

We had to enter a big block of flats but the main door was locked. In the movies, it would have been easy. We started ringing the doorbells of neighbours. One woman answered and we told her we had a FedEx delivery. She let us in. We went to the robber’s flat.

They shouted “POLICE! POLICE!” and broke open the door. The robber jumped at the cops, bit one on the nose and jammed his fingers into the eyes of another. When he was overpowered, he shouted: “You b******s, you better fix my door because the last time you broke it, I got burgled.”

Right then, this old lady comes up from next door. A policeman told her to go back in as this was a police raid. “Police!” she said, “I rang you last week because my cat went missing.” They told her to go back in, but she screamed: “I WILL NOT.” This is something you don’t see on TV.

You see the most dreadful sights too. A few weeks back, they had a drug raid at the house of a woman who lived with her son. They had a dog that bit the police last time. So the police carried a fire extinguisher to spray at the dog’s face.

“You frightened my doggy and now look, he’s crapped on the floor,” she said, and then bent down and picked it up. She threw it out and wiped her hand on her dress. Her dress was the cleanest thing in the room.

Any crime scenes that you’ll never forget…
One of the crimes that really affected me was the true story behind Dead Like You. There were a series of rapes in Yorkshire between 1983 and 87. He would tie them up, rape them and take their shoes. In 1993, the police caught a woman for drink driving.

Two weeks later, the lab told the police they had a ‘familial match’ for the rapist. The police asked her if she had a brother. She did. He was a regular guy — married, and owned a paper manufacturing business.

It’s fascinating how so many killers turn out to be the ‘guy-next-door’. There was another case which I drew my research on. In Kansas, there was a man known as BTK. He was a church warden and had 3 kids.

He would stalk a woman for a year, buy a Barbie doll and practise on the doll what he wanted to do to the woman. This carried on for 11 years. Almost 12 years later, he started again. He’d stopped because he was in a satisfying relationship.

When approaching a crime with a policeman, are you looking at the incident from the point of view of a cop?
A detective and I were driving to a crime scene last summer. I turned around and asked him if he looked at the world differently from me. He said: “You’re looking through the windscreen at people out on a beautiful sunny day. I’m looking out to see a man standing in the wrong place.”

This is kind of innate in them. They also have a callous, sick humour that works as their survival mechanism. Ordinary people wouldn’t understand this, but it’s the only way they can avoid going crazy.

I do think like a policeman now. When I go into a bar, I know where a policeman would be sitting: Always at the back of the bar with a view of the room. Now, I watch people all the time.

Why do so many writers take to the crime-thriller genre?
I feel that if you write, you have a responsibility to get things right. I think too many people don’t make that effort. They just write what they think a detective might do. To me, that kind of book is pointless. I’m interested in reality.

The writers that I like actually do that kind of research. I like the Americans much better than the English that way. Most crime writers in America actually know that world. I’m always looking to read a book and think “I wish I’d written that.” That doesn’t happen very often.

How has crime writing changed from the time of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie?
One word: Forensics. In those days, it always started with a body and then the mystery unravelled. These days, while the crime scene is still important, what’s more important is the forensic evidence. You couldn’t have Agatha Christie’s Poirot or Miss Marple function today. Imagine asking Poirot for forensic evidence!

What is the best way to dispose of a body?
The traditional way is to feed it to pigs. But sulphuric acid works just as well. Another good way is to chop up the body and dispose of the pieces. A shallow grave actually works better than a deep grave, because animals will help dispose of the bones. In a deep grave, the body just lies for years.