Death Comes Knocking: Policing Roy Grace’s Brighton

by Graham Bartlett

  ‘Why do they want us? Do they suspect foul play?’

  ‘They’re not sure; there’s just something they aren’t happy about.’

  ‘Jeez, they give these sergeants stripes for a reason,’ Andy muttered. ‘Why can’t they make a bloody decision? Yes, OK on my way,’ he continued, this time intending to be heard.

  The cars we were forced to drive rudely quashed any credibility Brighton’s finest detectives tried to purvey. As they were no doubt procured solely on the basis of price and economy, we never quite felt like the slick crimebusters we aspired to be as we rocked up in one of these rusting, pastel-coloured Mini Metros. Distinguished only by their whining engines and the fact they looked ridiculous with two hulking great detectives wedged into their tiny front seats, they were more suitable for a circus than the UK’s second-busiest police station. Grace’s sidekick, Branson, with his somewhat frighteningly advanced driving skills, wouldn’t have been seen dead in one of these tin cans. Still, that was all we had so, having grabbed a set of keys, off Andy went.

  The gridlock that irritates Mafia hit man Tooth after he has abducted Tyler Chase in Dead Man’s Grip is omnipresent in Brighton. Sundays are no exception. If it isn’t caused by the hordes of day-trippers clogging up the streets, it is the fanatics who insist on crawling from London to Brighton by various modes of transport ranging from veteran cars to historic lorries and good old-fashioned bicycles. Every weekend there are always people trying to make the fifty-five miles from capital to coast by one means or another, and they all seem to come to a standstill just by the police station.

  Andy used his encyclopaedic knowledge of the city to snake through the backstreets, engine shrieking, to the Royal Sussex County Hospital.

  On arrival he abandoned the car in a bay marked ‘Taxis’, slipped his Sussex Police log book – which serves as a ‘park anywhere’ permit – behind the windscreen and marched into the Accident and Emergency Department.

  Among the teams of doctors, nurses and paramedics, he located the sergeant who seemed unable to make a decision.

  ‘Right, Sarge. What have we got, then?’

  ‘Well. It’s hard to say. It seems this chap has taken a tumble out of a small casement window. It’s quite high up and we can’t really work out how he’s done it.’

  ‘Are you saying he might have been pushed?’ asked Andy, coaxing his senior colleague to express a view.

  ‘That’s the point,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ve been up to the flat and it’s a lounge window but a bit of a squeeze. Oh, and there seems to have been a bit of a disturbance in there.’

  ‘Oh, right. And what’s the deal with matey, then? I take it he’s in resus? Who is he? What are his injuries?’

  ‘Don’t know who he is but some of the neighbours say he’s only been living there for the last couple of weeks. He’s unconscious, which is definitely a bonus for him given the mess he’s in. He seems to have fallen smack bang onto some spiked railings. One has impaled him, then his weight must have pulled him back as he has fallen off them, ripping his innards in the process.’

  ‘Jesus,’ winced Andy.

  ‘What’s more, his leg is in a right state. Looks like he’s somehow got a horrendous break resulting in, well, put it this way, his knee is now fully double-jointed.’

  ‘How’s that happened if he’s fallen out belly first, landed on the spikes then fallen off? How’s he done his leg?’

  ‘That, DC Mays, is why we called you all-seeing detectives,’ the sarcastic sergeant replied, implying that Andy’s muttered dissent earlier had not been as hushed as he intended and that his sentiments had been passed up the chain of command.

  The problem with being a detective is that once you show a hint of interest in an incident, it’s yours to keep. It’s like a one-way game of Pass the Parcel – you never get to give it back.

  Like so many of the calls Grace picks up, be it the disappearance of Michael Harrison in Dead Simple or the dredging of the first body in Dead Tomorrow, the full story is seldom evident straightaway; indeed some such incidents can be dismissed by indolent, less gifted cops, thereby denying justice to victims.

  This was a dreadful fall, possibly a pretty serious suicide attempt, but something was not quite right. How does anyone actually fall out of such a small window? If the man did jump, why from there? What about that snapped leg? How did he do that at the same time as skewering himself on the ironwork below? These questions gnawed away at Andy.

  Good cops don’t ignore their niggles. The hair standing up on the back of the neck can be as good a clue as any at the outset of an enquiry. Good old copper’s nose is something you learn to trust. Sometimes you just can’t put your finger on why you feel suspicious but that is no reason to shrug off your hunches.

  As I moved up the ranks, I was always sure to help junior officers listen to their inner feelings and encouraged them to follow lines of enquiry on the sole basis that ‘something just didn’t add up’. If it didn’t feel right it probably wasn’t; the trick was to find out why.

  Andy waited at the hospital, working the phones in an attempt to find out more about this mystery man and how he ended up fighting for his life.

  Having been told the ward where he had been taken, Andy emerged from the groaning lift at Level 7 of the hospital’s Thomas Kemp Tower, and quickly orientated himself while absorbing the distinctive ‘Eau de Hospital’, an aroma of disinfectant and disease combined with death.

  Quite miraculously, after just a few hours and against the odds, the casualty, his body wrecked and saturated with morphine, regained consciousness. Despite his best efforts Andy still had little to go on other than it all seemed a bit odd. He therefore charmed his way through the medics to see him.

  Breezing past the maelstrom of activity at the nurses’ station with a quick flash of his warrant card, it didn’t take his years of detective training to locate his man. Mummified neck to toe in plaster and bandages, the victim was wired up to the same squawking machines and slowly bubbling drips that shocked Ashley in Dead Simple, when she visited the same hospital to see the aftermath of her fiancé’s disastrous stag night.

  An unannounced visit from the CID often provokes a prickly reception. This can be rooted in curiosity, guilt or just plain irritation. The reaction Andy received was no exception but he was accustomed to frostiness.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m DC Andy Mays. Looks like you’ve had better days.’

  ‘Piss off,’ grunted the stricken man.

  ‘Now let’s not be like that. I don’t do pissing off when people are lying half dead in hospital beds and in your state you’re stuck with me. Why don’t we start by you telling me who you are and see where we go from there?’

  ‘Fuck, well, I suppose you will find out eventually. I’m Angus Sherry, that’s all I’m telling you.’

  ‘That’s better. Look, you’re not in trouble, Angus, not with us anyway, but it would be nice to know how you managed to take the dive out of the window today.’

  ‘I just fell out. I was taking some air and I fell.’

  ‘Look, mate, you and I both know that’s a load of old bollocks. No-one falls out of windows like that, let alone big blokes like you. Just tell me what happened, I can go and satisfy my bosses everything is OK and, tough as it may be, we won’t need to see each other again,’ suggested Andy.

  At this, a nurse entered the ward wheeling an aged payphone on a trolley.

  ‘Angus, there’s a friend of yours on the phone. Would you like to take it now or shall I get them to call back?’ she chirped.

  Andy gave a nod of permission and settled back in the chair as she plugged the phone wire in. Angus lifted the receiver, struggling with pain.

  His face took on a deathly pallor. His eyes widened to the size of saucers as he listened intently, spluttering to get a word in. Andy could hear shouting coming through the earpiece.

  Eventually Angus managed to speak.

  ‘You fucking leave her out of this. Fuck
ing touch her and I’ll rip your fucking head off. Do what you want to me but I’m fucking warning you. Harm one hair on her head and you are dead,’ he ranted as Andy sat up, riveted by this angry call.

  A short pause, then, ‘I fucking told you yesterday. It’s safe but now you’ve done this to me it’s going to take a bit fucking longer.’ Angus slammed the phone down as the other incredulous patients stared on, fascinated by this dramatic interruption to their tedium.

  Recognizing that his intuition had, as usual, proved right, Andy swiftly arranged for Angus to be moved to a side room and made a flurry of calls to get some uniform back-up at the hospital in case it all kicked off. Once the emergency actions had been put in train, he returned to get to the truth.

  ‘Right, Angus. Shall we stop pissing around now? Something’s going on. Someone has hurt you and, unless you co-operate, sounds like someone very close to you is going to be in the next bed or even the morgue. Start talking and make it quick.’

  ‘First things first, get someone round my girlfriend’s house in Kemp Town and get her out of there. They are going to kill her and, as you can see, this lot don’t fuck about.’

  He gave a name and address, which Andy scribbled down, before dashing out to the nurses’ station to put in the call that would send a marked police car straight round to protect her.

  He slid back into Angus’s room and quietly clicked the door shut.

  ‘Right. She will be safe. Now everything, please.’

  ‘Well, I’m not a grass so you ain’t getting everything, but as you will have worked out, I’m in a bit of shit. I’m no angel and I’ve fallen out with some very bad people.’

  ‘Well, that was a bit careless,’ quipped Andy.

  ‘Yeah, right. Anyway, I’ve pissed them off big time.’

  ‘Right, I want to know how much shit you are in and what we need to do. No doubt we will need to speak to you later in more detail about what you’ve done but for now let’s just see if we can keep you and your girlfriend alive, shall we? What happened today for you to end up in here?’

  ‘Well, I had a visit. They’ve been after me for a couple of weeks. They reckon I’m trying to cut them out of a deal. Anyway, they were in a bad, bad mood. They came down to beat the crap out of me until I gave them what they wanted. When I wouldn’t play ball the three of them started on me. First it was just a few slaps, then they got more and more angry. Kidney punches, cigarette burns, knives at my bollocks, the whole lot.’

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘They could see that I was holding out and they were livid. They knocked me around so much I was just a heap on the floor. Then they rolled me on my back, held me down, and put my leg up on a chair. I couldn’t move. My leg was completely locked out. I had one bloke holding me down and another sitting on my foot; I was trapped. I couldn’t work out what was going to happen. Then the third bloke climbed onto the table just by my side. The penny still didn’t drop. Then the bloke on my foot yelled, “One more chance ’cos this will fucking hurt.” I stared back at him and told him to fuck off.

  ‘He then just nodded to the bloke on the table who jumped in the air and, with both feet, crashed down onto my leg, crunching right through my kneecap. The last thing I remember was a crack like a gun going off and seeing my foot flipping up towards my face. I was in fucking agony; it shot through my whole body. They knew they had gone too far, as I was screaming my head off. They needed to shut me up. The next thing, I was being grabbed, the lounge window was opened and they carried me over to it. Thank God I can’t remember being chucked out or landing on the railings. They wanted to kill me. They will next time.’

  ‘Jesus,’ muttered a stunned Andy, ‘who did that and why?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. You just need to protect me and my girlfriend. They will kill us if you don’t help.’

  Three uniformed PCs arrived and Andy told them to take positions outside the room to prevent anyone dodgy getting near Angus. He briefed the hospital staff, informed hospital security and did his best to ensure no-one had a second go at punishing this mysterious villain. After all, the windows here were significantly higher than the last one he had been thrown out of.

  Everything in place, Andy phoned his DI, John Grant, and asked to meet him back at the police station. John abandoned his plans for a night in front of the telly, made his excuses to his wife and rushed back to the nick to run his own real-life drama.

  They needed to find out who was behind all of this. With Angus disinclined to further endanger his precarious future by naming names, the only hope was Jenny, the girlfriend.

  Andy briefed John while they headed off to find the tiny Kemp Town flat. It was relatively easy – the marked police car guarding her door was a bit of a giveaway.

  Kemp Town features heavily in Peter James’ novels due to its quirky multiple characteristics. It is described in Looking Good Dead as having evolved from a posh Regency enclave to one that has ‘the same seedy tatty aura that has corroded the rest of Brighton’. Logan Somerville in You Are Dead was kidnapped in that neighbourhood and an officer met a fiery death there in Want You Dead.

  Playing good cop, bad cop, Andy and John pumped Jenny for information, Andy using his matey charm in an effort to persuade her to see the sense of spilling the beans and his boss adopting a less compromising style. The combination soon drew from her what they wanted.

  She knew that Angus had been in deep trouble for a few weeks. It was all down to some money that three blokes accused him of stealing. As the phone calls had become increasingly menacing, so he had been getting more and more scared. She insisted that she did not know their names or what it was all about, but she gave enough to set the police on the trail.

  ‘Right, love, where are you going to stay tonight?’ demanded John.

  ‘Well, er, here, can’t I?’ she asked, glancing from one officer to the other, seeking reassurance.

  ‘No you can’t,’ replied John. ‘I’m not giving you a twenty-four-hour guard. You need to find someone who can put you up where these delightful people can’t find you. Once you have found somewhere, give the details to your babysitter here,’ pointing to the bored-looking police constable, ‘and we will get there like yesterday.’

  On the short drive back to the police station, at around 2 a.m., they agreed that Andy would need to turn the screw on Angus. The time for pussy-footing around had come to an end. Others would be following up the scant leads they had picked up so far, but Angus needed to fill in the gaps.

  As Andy slipped into the side ward shortly after 7 a.m., an almost indiscernible flick of his head gave the uniformed guard the clear message that he was not welcome for the moment. He stepped outside.

  Angus tried to sit up, momentarily forgetting in his trepidation the extent of his massive injuries. He was convinced that Andy was bearing bad news. Sensing his anxiety Andy quietly reassured him, ‘Jenny’s fine, Angus.’

  Visible relief washed through him.

  ‘Jenny is safe, out of the way, but you and me are going to have a chat.’

  ‘I’ve told you all I can,’ Sherry replied.

  A common tactic when trying to get someone to do or say something they would rather not is to blame an uncompromising higher authority.

  ‘Listen, Angus,’ urged Andy, ‘my boss is getting very pissed off. When you see Jenny, ask her how he spoke to her. He can’t stand what he calls “tossers like this” upsetting his city. He doesn’t much care what you do to each other, but it never looks good with people flying out of windows on a Sunday evening and then us having to tie up our scarce cops sorting it all out and protecting people like you.’

  Before Angus could argue Andy held up a hand. ‘His words not mine. So. Let’s have it. Everything. No more bullshit. No more misguided loyalty to blokes who use kneecaps as trampolines. I want everything and I want it now or else, the mood my governor’s in, the next time you see me I could be wearing a hospital gown identical to yours.’

  Silence i
s a powerful tool. People hate it. The power lies with the person who left it; the person whose turn it is to speak feels an almost irresistible urge to fill the gap.

  Andy just sat there; nothing but the whirr of machines and the distant chatter of nurses punctuated the hush. He simply stared at the man in plaster. He knew he would give in first. They always did.

  ‘Shit, I’ve never been a grass before.’

  Bingo. Works every time. Now for a little encouragement.

  ‘You’re not grassing, Angus. You’ll be saving your life and Jenny’s. It doesn’t get much bigger than that. Tell it from the beginning and we can stop all this.’ Keep it all positive. Emphasize the benefits, don’t mention the risks.

  Criminals would have you believe that they subscribe to some Mafia-like code of omertà – or not informing to the police. Unlike in Sicily, most UK villains are more fickle in its application. Darren Spicer, the career burglar in Not Dead Yet and Dead Like You, is typical of many in being happy to play Judas when it suited him.

  ‘What will happen when I’ve told you?’ asked Sherry.

  ‘We will look after you and Jenny will be safe, but we have to know. You have to trust us. We can’t do this without you and, from where I’m sitting, you need all the help you can get right now.’

  ‘What are my options?’

  ‘You’ve run out of those.’

  ‘Shit.’ Angus closed his eyes. His fists clenched. He shook his head. Andy saw that he was in turmoil. He was weighing it all up. This was positive. So long as he was thinking about it, rather than telling Andy to go fuck himself, there was hope.

  Silence again, then: ‘Bollocks. Right, here goes.’

  In the back of the net! Andy was all ears.

  ‘You’ll have worked out I’m no choirboy. You’re right but, believe it or not, I have some honour. I never break my word, I am loyal to my mates and, until now, I’ve never grassed.’

  Andy kept quiet; just a nod of the head encouraged Sherry to continue.

  ‘Me and my mates, we’ve been very busy. You must have heard about what we have been up to but hopefully not who we are. All across the south of England, we’ve been robbing travel agents. Their security is a joke compared to banks or building societies but they all have thousands of pounds in traveller’s cheques and foreign currency. I’ve got a mate who tells me which shops are having cheques delivered and when.’