by Simon Hall
It had been dawning on Dan that alongside the detective’s fondness for theatre and his obsession with his wardrobe, he was also a fan of the irritating art of delayed gratification. And there it was, encapsulated in just a single statement. It was more like a crossword clue than a straightforward method of delivering information.
Adam was waiting, an expectant look on his face. When you stripped away the defences and began to get to know him, for an experienced senior detective in his early forties the man could behave remarkably like a child.
‘Go on,’ Dan said patiently.
‘Penelope Ramsden.’
‘What about her?’
‘She had an accident.’
‘What sort of accident?’ Dan asked, in a strained voice.
‘A car accident. A crash.’
‘It happens.’
‘It does. But not like this.’
Adam sat backand nodded, his face full of a knowing look.
Dan sighed. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told me?’
After a sip of his beer, perhaps more to aid another little build-up of the suspense rather than quench his thirst, Adam did. Ramsden had pulled out of the drive of Bray’s offices too fast, hadn’t checked what other traffic was coming and her car had been hit by a lorry. She was in the local Tamarside hospital, unconscious, her condition assessed as serious but stable.
‘Right,’ Dan said. ‘Sad, but it happens. I wish her a speedy recovery, but I don’t quite see how it has any bearing on the inquiry.’
Adam smiled. ‘Maybe. But you might think differently when I tell you what happened in the minutes before the crash.’
The police had been called to Bray’s offices. It was the end of the working day. Several of the staff rang in at once. Penelope Ramsden, they said, had gone mad. She jumped up from her desk, let out a piercing scream, picked up a chair, smashed it into her own computer, then several others. She broke a couple of windows, a television and a photocopier, screaming all the while, before running outside and into her car, driving off and being hit by the lorry.
Dan sat silently, digesting the news. ‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘So, it’s either just anguish at the death of the man she claims to love, plus maybe fear for her future now he’s gone and the future of the business is uncertain, or it’s …’
‘Quite,’ Adam replied. ‘Maybe it’s the fact that she can’t live with having killed him.’
‘So what do you do now?’
‘We,’ the detective said quietly.
It took Dan a minute to comprehend all that tiny word meant. In the mundane surroundings of a high street pub, a seminal moment had passed.
‘Sorry, we.’
‘We question her. We find out just what that little outburst was about. But we can’t do it yet. The doctors say she’ll be in no fit state to answer any questions for a few days.’
‘Well, that’s certainly an interesting – occurrence.’
‘Indeed.’
The two men sat in thought as they watched the evening flow around them. Parties of men and women stood at the bar and eyed each other in that way the lubricated think of as subtle, but all others see as simply lecherous.
Then Adam sprang surprise number two of the evening. He cleared his throat and congratulated Dan on his handling of the interview with Arthur Bray.
‘I suspected you might get on better with him. And you found out what we needed to know. Well done on that. I doubt he would have told me.’
‘Really? I thought I struggled.’
‘You did at first, but you kept going and you got there. People respond well to you. I think they like talking to you. Plus, well, there’s something else too.’
‘Like what?’
‘It’s like – you can see inside people. You understand what makes them tick. You did it with Arthur, sensing the reason for the breakdown of his relationship with Edward. I’ve never been good at that psychology bit. I prefer facts.’
Dan felt his face flushing, and his spirits rising with it. ‘Well, err– thanks,’ he muttered.
They sipped at their drinks in silence, then Adam leaned forwards and said, ‘Who did it? Come on, who do you really think killed Edward Bray?’
It was a question which had been with Dan all afternoon in the MIR, and had followed him home that night. Even running around the park with Rutherford, he couldn’t shake loose its hold. For the incurably curious, a mystery could easily become an addiction.
‘I think it’s hard to bet against Gordon Clarke,’ Dan said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I agree. He’s got motive aplenty. Being the suspicious sort I am, I had Paget’s story checked, just to see if she might be spinning us a line to try to distract attention from herself as a suspect. But it’s all true. A couple of other people at that business reception say she and Clarke spent ages talking, almost to the exclusion of anyone else. Staff at the hospice confirm that flowers from him arrive more or less weekly. So he could be motivated by thinking that removing Bray would give him a real chance with Paget. Love can be the most powerful motive for action.’
‘But,’ said Dan. ‘Although that’s all true, where’s the evidence? Apart from suspicion and circumstance, we’ve got nothing.’
‘Agreed. And do you know what? I’m coming to doubt whether we’re going to get any actual hard evidence. We haven’t by now, after all, and we’re a week and a day on from the murder. This killing has clearly been carefully planned. I reckon the only way we’re going to get a conviction is if we can push someone to incriminate themselves.’
‘How? Surveillance hasn’t worked. Nor has any of the interviewing.’
Adam picked up his beer, took a long drink. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What we really need is a break. And so far we haven’t had one. Nowhere close.’
‘You know what I keep thinking about?’
‘What?’
‘That cancelled appointment. The one the week before Bray was killed. It must indicate something happened for the killer to put the murder off.’
‘Yeah, but we’ve been through all that. It was a dead end. None of our suspects had anything come up unexpectedly which might force them to delay their plans.’
‘I’ve been thinking about other possibilities too,’ Dan said. ‘What if there was a conspiracy, say between two or more of our suspects? That voice, the person who reported Bray’s body at the lay-by, that was a man. So if a woman killed him, it would have to be a conspiracy. Maybe the fact that it’s proving a difficult case indicates several people were involved, all painstakingly planning it out.’
Adam held up his hands. ‘Hold on. We can’t even find the evidence to point to one person yet, let alone several. As you said yourself, the person who reported Bray’s body could just have been a passer-by who didn’t want to get involved. It happens. Let’s just keep working at it without dashing off after wild possibilities.’
A couple slipped through the crowd and sat down at the next table. Adam watched them settle, then said, ‘Well, I reckon the High Honchos are going to be out of luck with their lust for a result by Christmas. Ah well, let’s forget it for now. There are other things in life apart from work.’
The change in his voice was marked, from winter to spring in a second.
‘Oh yes?’ Dan said. ‘Anything you care to share?’
‘I spoke to Annie earlier. She said she was missing me, as was Tom.’ The detective’s face broke into a smile, perhaps the first truly genuine one Dan had seen. ‘We are going to be spending Christmas together. It doesn’t mean we’re back together of course, there’s still a long way to go, but …’
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Dan reached out a hand and Adam shook it. ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Dan said, with real feeling. ‘This calls for a celebration.’
He headed to the bar to get them some more drinks. A woman thrust a piece of mistletoe at him, followed by her very full and red lips and yelled, ‘Give me a kiss, Mr TV man!’
It was a m
easure of Dan’s mood that he did, with no attempt to demur or dodge.
The evening passed by easily in a haze of conversation, so much so that they almost forgot to eat. Dan scrambled to the bar and just managed to get them a couple of cheap curries before last food orders were called.
When he got back to the table, Dan felt relaxed enough to ask Adam about the scoutmaster and the charges against him. It wasn’t the detective’s inquiry, but as a police officer and a father he knew plenty about it. There was no doubt about the man’s guilt, and it was thought unlikely the case would go to trial as the evidence was so strong.
The scoutmaster had taken photos of himself abusing children, which had been found stored on his computer.
‘Hundreds of photos,’ Adam said quietly. ‘Bloody hundreds.’
‘He deserves to be exposed then,’ Dan added.
‘I’d say what he deserves is a fair bit more than that.’
It was time for a change of subject, before the unpleasantness of the conversation soured the evening irreparably. Dan told Adam about his plans for the holiday, his dilemma about whether to see Kerry on Christmas Day, and, after much agonising about the present he had bought for her.
The detective did not produce the required reaction. He started chuckling.
‘What?’ asked a piqued Dan. ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’
‘It’s certainly practical,’ was all Adam would say in reply.
By the end of the evening it was an unsteady path they wended from the pub, picking their way through the last remnants of the drinking detritus that swirled or staggered in the currents of the night. Adam promised he would call Dan in the morning if there were any significant developments and they set off for their respective flats.
‘A break,’ was the last thing Adam said, before he staggered off down the street. ‘We just need a break.’
And, as if fate had heard the plea, felt the benevolence of the season and decided to change her fickle favour towards the investigation into the murder of Edward Bray, tomorrow the break would finally come.
Chapter Nineteen
THE CALL CAME IN at seven minutes past nine. And as so often with luck, one piece of fortune gave rise to another. If it were not the case, the break could so easily have been missed.
The detective who answered the phone in the MIR had a whole and unprecedented ten days off for Christmas, starting from tomorrow, the eve of the big day itself, and a four-year-old son who was filled with infectious festive joy. She had slept well, there were no traffic jams on the way into Charles Cross, only that rarest of wonders, a smooth and easy commute, and DC Cathy Tingle had also just heard that she was soon to become a DS. Those sergeant’s exams she had worked so hard for, despite the demands of her young son, she had passed, and passed well.
It was going to be a great Christmas. And that was before even came the call.
DC Tingle had only been in the MIR for ten minutes. She’d got in to Charles Cross well before nine, had time to forage a coffee from the canteen and share the news of her impending promotion with a couple of colleagues, before settling in the MIR to continue her work: more inquiries into the background of Edward Bray, just in case there might be a hidden motive for murder lurking there.
And then the phone rang.
The operator had taken a couple of minutes to discern what the man wanted before patching him through. He was nowhere approaching either coherent or eloquent.
And if DC Tingle had been a more impatient woman, and in less of a warm mood, she might not have teased out what it was the man had to tell.
He was speaking in a thick Devon burr, and his syntax made his sentences an oral version of a maze. He was also one of those people who know they have a point to make, but instead of getting to it continually circle around.
‘What I want to tell ’ee, well, I’s sorry if I be bothering ’ee, but I sees the news yer see, so I knows about the murder, that killing thing of the bloke that no one liked, the guy who got killed, just up the road from ’ere it was …’
DC Tingle waited for a brief pause in the passing shower of words and prompted, ‘You mean the Edward Bray murder?’
‘That it be! That be it! That’s the one, m’luvver.’
‘What do you want to tell us about it?’
‘Well, see, it be Christmas, and there ain’t a lot going on, not on the farm, not at the moment like, so I don’t like being idle, not me, me dad said that always made work for the Devil see, idle hands and all that, so I’s thought I’d do some ditching like.’
‘Ditching?’
‘Aye, bit of ditching like.’
‘Digging a ditch?’
The burr took on a surprised tone. ‘Digging? No me lover, no digging, we’s got plenty o’ ditches. Hundreds of the buggers we’s got. Clearing! Clearing ’em oot. Them gets blocked up see, specially in all this rain and mud like. Ain’t yous never ’ad to clear a ditch?’
DC Tingle couldn’t say she had. ‘So, what was it you wanted to tell us about the ditch?’ she persisted.
‘Well, that’s it see. I’s was clearing me ditch from first thing, the one runs down bottom of long meadow, down by the road see, and that’s when I saws it. I’s found it, I did. I’s didn’t know what ter do at first, I’s just looked, then I thought about it and remembered all that fuss with the police and on the telly and all that, so I thought I’s best be calling yer like.’
DC Tingle waited for another rare gap in the rustic monologue, then prompted, ‘Saw what? Found what?’
There was a pause on the end of the line. The answer, when it came, was simple, but not helpful.
‘It. That’s when I’s found it.’
One more try, Cathy told herself, and then she would get on with some real work.
‘What did you find, sir?’
And then, amongst the great heap of ice shone the hidden diamond.
‘The gun. That’s when I’s found the shotgun.’
Dan had been sitting in the news library, attempting to avoid Lizzie, but well aware it was a hopeless task. It was like trying to dodge your destiny.
He’d arrived at work, plodded up the stairs to the newsroom and heard her berating the early producer for the lack of decent stories in the breakfast bulletins before he’d even reached halfway up the flight. He rapidly turned around again and made for the canteen. Dan just had time to get a coffee before the fast thud of stilettos warned of the prowling editor beast’s imminent arrival, so he slipped out of the back doors and headed for the library.
It was only a temporary respite, but better than nothing. Sometimes it took a while to start the day, and the onslaught of Lizzie could set back progress by several hours.
Dan had already rung Adam, who hadn’t been surprised to hear from him. ‘No, there are no developments yet,’ the detective said patiently. ‘Yes, I will call the moment something happens. Yes, I know you need a story but I can’t just create them, however much I might like to.’
So, he would face Lizzie without a sacrifice to offer. Still, at least he’d resolved one issue this morning. Another text had arrived from Kerry, asking again about plans for Christmas, and Dan had steeled himself and given her a call. He would love to see her, of course he would, but he had a lonely, vulnerable and sensitive friend who he’d promised to look after on the day itself and he couldn’t break that pledge. How about they get together on Christmas Eve, to exchange presents and celebrate the season?
There had been disappointment in her voice, but she’d taken it well enough. Best not to tell her the lonely and sensitive friend was Dirty El, as vulnerable as a fortress and surely one of the most scurrilous and insensitive people to shame the planet.
El had called earlier too, not to ask about Christmas but instead whether there was any possibility of getting a snap of the scoutmaster. He was still being held in the cells at Charles Cross and the papers were howling for it.
Not yet, Dan said, but perhaps. While in the police station canteen yest
erday, he’d overheard a conversation between a couple of officers which might give them a chance. It would require working a little trick and some waiting for the moment and opportunity, but should be possible.
The clock ticked round to a quarter past nine. Time for the newsroom morning meeting: the forum for ideas for tonight’s programme. The facing of Lizzie could be postponed no more.
And then came the call.
The gun had been found in an overgrown ditch on the edge of a field by the road to Ermington. It was no more than a couple of miles from Gordon Clarke’s office.
Dan thought he knew Adam well enough now to see what the detective was thinking. Clarke would have driven this way most days. If he was planning a killing, he would need somewhere to get rid of the shotgun. He wouldn’t want to risk driving far with it in the boot of his car. The ditch was only a few miles from the lay-by, perhaps five or ten minutes drive at the most. And Clarke would know it was in a remote spot where no one was likely to walk, deep, very overgrown, and filled with water. If the gun were ever found at all, it would be likely to take a long time.
But they’d been lucky. They’d got their break. Courtesy of a bored farmer and his Christmas ditch clearing.
Dan had run into the newsroom, stopping the morning meeting in a second.
‘What?’ Lizzie snapped, arms folded, lips thin and heel grinding the carpet; a true triple whammy, three danger signs at once. My, she was in a bad mood today.
‘Bray case, cops, they’ve found the shotgun that killed him.’
‘Can we film it?’
‘Yes,’ Dan panted, without hesitation.
‘Interview the cops?’
‘Yes.’
‘Splash it on the lunchtime bulletin?’
‘Yes.’
‘As an exclusive?’
Now Dan paused. He hadn’t asked Adam about any of this. But the climb down from the self-inflicted summit was far too vertiginous to contemplate.
