A Price to Pay

by Paul Gitsham

  ‘Who darns their socks these days?’ asked Warren.

  ‘Not homeless people,’ said Jordan, ‘far easier to pick up a new pair from a clothing bank. For that matter, why would the victim keep the same clothes for so long? You can get clean, second-hand clothes from homeless shelters or churches, no questions asked.’

  Remembering the offer from DC Marshall at briefing, Warren took photographs of the black trainers from several angles, including inside the shoe. Up close, it was clear that the footwear was also very well worn; with the tattered rubber soles peeling away from the uppers. The laces were frayed at the end, the aglets missing. There appeared to be the remains of a pattern on the insole, but Warren couldn’t get a clear picture. He’d ask Forensics to dismantle the shoe and photograph it under different light sources to see if it could provide any clues.

  Finishing up, Warren thanked Jordan, before removing his protective clothing. He’d deliberately worn old clothes, but as he left the morgue and headed back to his car, he felt as though he carried the stink of death with him. He’d have to shower when he got back to the station and change into his spare suit.

  Warren finally made it back to Middlesbury late afternoon. As he entered the office, Moray Ruskin got up to greet him, his face grave.

  ‘A call just came in a couple of minutes ago. They’ve found Joey McGhee. It’s not good.’

  The main train line between London and Cambridge ran through Middlesbury. The express service could deliver commuters to the centre of London in as little as forty-five minutes at peak time.

  To the south of the town, the line was raised up on a viaduct to pass over the river Herrot. It was underneath the arches that held the tracks aloft that the body of Joey McGhee was found by a cyclist. Looking at the way the cyclist was dressed, and the way that Ruskin was admiring the man’s bicycle, Warren wondered if the two of them were training for the same event.

  ‘Looks like an overdose,’ said CSM Gupta, as she clambered up the embankment to greet Warren and Ruskin. ‘He was pronounced dead at the scene. I haven’t had a chance to look at him properly, but he’s surrounded by drug paraphernalia.’

  Over her shoulder, Warren could see a bright red sleeping bag. He hoped that the man had at least been warm.

  ‘How was he found?’

  ‘Apparently, he was pretty much blocking the towpath. The cyclist had to dismount to go around him. He said it isn’t unusual for there to be rough sleepers down here, but they are usually tucked against the wall out of the way. The man’s a medical student, and he said that something didn’t feel quite right, so he had a look-see. That’s when he called it in.’

  Warren felt deflated. McGhee had been a potential witness. He cursed himself for not trying harder to keep him at the station the evening he’d shown up. But what could he have done? McGhee had been determined to leave. Even if Warren had managed to find him a warm place in a cell and plate of hot food, he knew that McGhee would probably have turned it down. He’d clearly been wanting more than just a hot meal, and he wouldn’t have been able to do what he wanted in a police station.

  He also felt a sense of guilt. It looked as though Grimshaw had been right. How much of the forty-five pounds he had given the man had he injected?

  Tuesday 17 November

  Chapter 47

  Warren’s day hadn’t started well. His first duty had been to drive down to Welwyn to deliver a press conference about the body found in Farley Woods. It had been a depressing affair. It seemed that the press had jumped to the same conclusions as Warren’s team, and assumed it was a homeless person: sad, but never mind, these things happened. Warren knew that news of the death of Joey McGhee would be similarly received when it was announced.

  The decision to hold back that the cause of death was likely to be a shotgun wound had been deliberate. They didn’t want to give too much away at this stage. Ironically, the inclusion of that titbit would likely have pulled in more journalists – gun crime in the UK, particularly outside major cities, still being rare enough to cause excitement.

  With no images of the deceased available, or even a ballpark figure for when he died, the only concrete information that they had been able to include in the press pack had been photographs of the foreign-branded T-shirt and trainers. Depending on what other news happened that day, Warren suspected that the best they could hope for was a few seconds on the local TV news and radio, and perhaps an inside page in the Middlesbury Reporter. Hopefully, the website would at least show the pictures.

  Warren’s day didn’t get much better after he returned to the office.

  ‘I’ll need to get the blood tox results back, obviously, but I’m prepared to go out on a limb and say that it was almost certainly an overdose. Heroin by the looks of it.’ Ryan Jordan was on the phone to Warren.

  The post-mortem had been performed first thing that morning, at Warren’s request. Aside from some cracked ribs and facial bruising consistent with the injuries sustained in the fight that had landed Joey McGhee in hospital the day of Cullen’s killing, there were no signs of a violent struggle, or other obvious cause of death. His stomach contained the barely digested remains of chips and a battered sausage. At least he’d had a hot meal.

  ‘Any indication of when he died?’

  ‘Difficult to say as always, but decomposition had started. Given the cold weather, I’d have to put it at more than twenty-four hours before he was found.’

  Warren thought about that. The cyclist who’d found the body hadn’t cycled that route for a few days before his discovery, so the body could have lain undisturbed for some time. Could he have been there since the night that he’d attended the station? Since the night that Warren had given him the money that he’d probably used to buy the drugs?

  He asked Jordan.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Warren felt sick. Could he have been responsible – indirectly at least – for the man’s death? Warren was all too aware of the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of giving homeless people money, rather than other support. Some said that giving money to a person who might well be suffering addictions was potentially dangerous and irresponsible, no matter how well intentioned. Others said that such an attitude infantilised such people, taking away their right to self-determination. Warren was on the fence. There were times when he’d given money to beggars, whilst other times he’d scurried past, head down. He and Susan gave money to the local homeless shelter at Christmas, and he’d helped organize the office’s collection for the local food bank. He’d made a donation to the Phoenix Centre after his dealings with them the previous spring, but was that enough?

  Money in the hand would give a homeless person independence, allowing them to make some small choices about how they lived their lives – something that homeless people were often unable to do. But once he’d handed over that money, did the responsibility for what that money was used for transfer solely to the recipient, or did he remain morally culpable for any outcomes? He just didn’t know.

  Jordan continued, unaware of Warren’s turmoil. ‘There is something that doesn’t quite sit right with me, though.’

  The man’s voice pulled Warren’s attention back to the matter in hand. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve emailed you a picture of the inside of the man’s arm.’

  Warren opened it up.

  The crook of the man’s elbow was covered in scars and old track marks. The median cubital vein in the centre had been used this time, a spot of dark red blood showing where the needle had been inserted.

  ‘Zoom in on it,’ instructed Jordan.

  Warren followed his instruction. ‘There are two marks. Was that his regular injection site?’

  ‘Yes, but it looks as though he injected himself twice in quick succession.’

  ‘Twice? Could that be why he overdosed?’

  ‘Quite probably. There also appear to be two strap marks on his bicep, as if the tourniquet was loosened, then reapplied.’

  ‘Is that n
ormal? Maybe the first dose didn’t quite hit the spot, and he decided he needed some more?’ said Warren.

  ‘That’s what I’m not sure about. The thing is, even if the first dose wasn’t enough to satisfy him, it would probably still have knocked him senseless. He’d have had to come around, then prepare a fresh batch of heroin and reload a fresh needle. The needle he was found with was single-use. It then looks as though he reinjected himself at almost exactly the same site.’

  ‘There was only one needle found at the scene,’ said Warren, ‘although he could have chucked it in the river, I suppose.’

  Warren thought about what Jordan had told him. The sequence of events, although unusual, weren’t impossible. Maybe the heroin was poor quality, and McGhee had decided to give himself a second dose, inadvertently overdosing.

  But if that was the case, where was the second needle?

  The other possibility was that McGhee hadn’t administered the second dose himself. Maybe he had been with someone else when he died. In which case, who was that person and where were they now? If they realized that they’d accidentally killed him, that might explain why they had fled the scene and hadn’t called an ambulance.

  But what if it hadn’t been an accidental overdose? What if the second person had tried to kill him deliberately? What if it was murder?

  Warren shook himself. What he was suggesting was madness. Drug users overdosed all the time. Especially drug users who’d got forty-five pounds burning a hole in their pocket. And who knew what other drugs were sloshing around McGhee’s system after his recent spell in hospital? McGhee had clearly been in pain, when he’d appeared at the station. He could have been on painkillers; could they have combined with the heroin to deliver a fatal dose? Was Warren’s own sense of guilt encouraging him to look for another explanation for the man’s death?

  Nevertheless, he decided that he needed to know one way or the other.

  ‘Do me a favour, will you, Ryan? Fast-track the toxicology reports. And check the potency of the traces of drug left in the needle.’

  Chapter 48

  The telephone call that Warren received just after lunch ensured that a day that had started badly, continued to get worse.

  Sergeant Jan Adams, a specialist dog handler searching the surrounding area for more evidence, had made her gruesome discovery in Farley Woods in a natural dip about 250 metres to the east of where the first body had been found. It lay just outside of the initial cordon established by Grimshaw the morning that the unknown body had been found.

  The search dog was a German shepherd, by the name of Barney, its handler a middle-aged woman with a no-nonsense air, and the remains of a Scouse accent. The dog was quiet, sitting patiently as it had been trained to do, but his handler was fussing over it unnecessarily, distracting herself from the find. Warren couldn’t blame her. No amount of training or experience prepared you adequately for that sort of discovery.

  ‘In the dip, underneath that pile of leaves.’ The woman’s voice was thick. ‘He didn’t go in and disturb the scene.’

  Warren nodded his thanks. Despite the chill air, he felt hot and light-headed. His facemask felt sweaty, and he struggled to breathe.

  The trek through the trees had involved a slight incline. Warren would be the first to admit that he wasn’t as fit as he should be; that middle age had added a few pounds more than he would have liked around his midriff, but his heart shouldn’t be pounding in his chest, the blood roaring through his ears.

  Was this how Tony Sutton had felt after his stroke? An image of his friend as he lay gasping, eyes rolling as his heart struggled to maintain a regular rhythm, flashed before Warren’s eyes.

  He pushed himself forward, forcing his gaze towards the tiny pile of leaves. He tasted metal in his mouth.

  He took another step. Warren had been a police officer for twenty years. In that time, he’d attended dozens of unexplained deaths. As a uniformed officer, he’d been the first on scene many times; as a senior detective he was usually called in after the first responders had assessed the scene. He’d witnessed everything from natural causes, to accidents, to suicides and brutal murders. All of them were seared in his memory. All of them had left their mark.

  The death of a child or a baby was something different. Those were the ones that stayed with him the longest. Those were the ones that haunted his dreams and hung over him like a dark cloud for hours after he awoke.

  A change in wind direction rustled the few leaves that remained on the trees and delivered the familiar smell to his nose, and he felt the bile rise in his throat.

  He tried to take another step, but suddenly his legs wouldn’t work.

  Behind him the handler was saying something to him, an urgent questioning note in her voice.

  Another gust of wind whipped the pile of leaves, finally revealing the tiny form lying hidden beneath.

  That was the last thing Warren remembered.

  Shame, horror and embarrassment all competed for primacy as Warren perched on the rear tailgate of the dog handler’s van, his paper suit rolled down to his waist. The hot, sweet tea warmed his hands, the sugar hit chasing away his light-headedness.

  ‘Happens to the best of us, Sir.’

  The dog handler’s tone had been kind but had done nothing to minimize Warren’s feeling of humiliation.

  In two decades of front-line policing, he had never before compromised a crime scene. The facemask had caught most of the vomit, and the handler had caught his arm, stopping him from fainting directly into the dip. Nevertheless, he worried that he’d made the CSI’s job harder. Had his weakness destroyed valuable evidence?

  The scrunch of gravel signalled the arrival of another vehicle. Warren looked up and groaned. Could the day get any worse?

  John Grayson was dressed for an evening at the golf club.

  Warren closed his eyes briefly. It was bad enough that he’d thrown up and passed out in front of the dog handler and CSI team, but now he was going to have to brief his superior on what had transpired.

  ‘I heard what happened,’ said Grayson, his tone awkward. ‘Happens to the best of us.’

  If Warren heard that one more time … He nodded his thanks silently.

  Grayson looked around. The lay-by and carriageway were now filled with more than a dozen vehicles, and a similar number of personnel, all studiously pretending to ignore the two men. He motioned toward his car. ‘Let’s talk.’

  Warren drained the last of the tea and stood up.

  ‘Would you mind …’ Grayson nodded toward Warren’s paper suit, splattered as it was with mud and traces of sick. Warren removed the paper suit, and placed it in a biohazard waste bag, before joining Grayson.

  The interior of the Mercedes was warm, comfortable and – most importantly – soundproof.

  ‘Warren, what’s going on?’ Grayson’s tone was kind, but firm.

  ‘Sorry. I had scrambled eggs for breakfast. Today was their use-by date …’

  Grayson easily saw through the lie. ‘That’s not it, Warren.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m not daft. For the past year or more, you’ve been taking half-days here and half-days there, booking personal time. A week ago, you received a phone call about Susan and raced out of the office as white as a sheet, then took personal leave the next day …’

  ‘I’ve made up the time,’ protested Warren.

  ‘That’s not what this is about. You’re one of the hardest working officers I know. But like I said, I’m not daft. All this personal time, then today you are unexpectedly faced with … that scene, and you suddenly take ill.’

  Grayson paused, before awkwardly reaching out a hand to Warren’s shoulder. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything. Your private life is your private life, but if you want to talk … I think I know what you’re going through, and I am willing to listen.’

  Warren stared out of the window. Ever since he’d joined Middlesbury four years previously, his relationship with John Grayson had been complicated. On the surfac
e, Grayson could be seen as venal and even lazy, more concerned with securing one last promotion before he retired, to ensure a bigger pension. Tony Sutton had never warmed to the man; he still suspected that Grayson’s commitment to maintaining Middlesbury CID’s unique position as a first-response unit was only as strong as his perception of its usefulness in advancing his career.

  It was certainly true that Grayson spent an inordinate amount of time with top brass, either down at headquarters in Welwyn, or out on the golf course, rather than in his office in Middlesbury. He invariably delegated the role of Senior Investigating Officer to Warren, happy to leave most of the legwork to his DCI, whilst taking credit for the team’s considerable successes over the years. It was also true that he loved appearing on television and giving interviews to the press, his immaculate grooming closer to the media-loving prosecutors in the US than the typically more reticent officers running British policing.

  But outside of work, Grayson had a kindness that few witnessed. The two men were far from drinking buddies; Warren didn’t know one end of a golf club from the other and his knowledge of fine whisky was non-existent, yet Warren would always be grateful for the care and understanding that Grayson had shown to him when his beloved grandmother had passed away. And he could never forget how the man had thrown open his home to Warren, Susan and her parents during the horrific Delgado affair years before.

  And who else could Warren talk to? Tony Sutton had too many problems of his own for Warren to confide in him at the moment. They had yet to break their sad news to Granddad Jack and Susan’s parents. With his own parents long dead and no remaining relatives that he was close to, who could he speak with? It had been so long since Warren had heard from his brother, that he now thought of himself as an only child. Even the best man at his wedding now lived overseas, their once close relationship eroded by the passage of time.