Collide-O-Scope (Norfolk Coast Investigation Stories Book 1)

by Andrea Bramhall

  “You’re supposed to wait in the car,” Kate said to the dog. She pointed back to the vehicle where Jimmy held the door open, but the dog just looked up at her blankly. Jimmy sniggered. Kate repeated her command, with no change in the standoff. “Fine. But do not bark, do not chew anything, and do not pee on the carpet.”

  Merlin whined as though she were telling Kate that she wasn’t stupid. Jimmy laughed out right and slammed the door closed. Kate locked it and picked up Merlin’s lead.

  “And don’t go wandering off either.”

  “Me or the dog?”

  Kate glared at Jimmy but didn’t respond to the jibe. She pushed open the door of the rather run-down-looking prefab building. The pebble-dashed render on the outside was covered in graffiti—cartoon images of penises, exceptionally well endowed women, and several graphically portrayed sexual positions were depicted. Kate couldn’t help but think that the imagery was much more suited to a strip club than a gun club, but teenagers were teenagers and a wall was a wall at the end of the day.

  A middle-aged man sat behind a desk, newspaper spread open in front of him. He glanced up at them. “No dogs. This isn’t the place to train gun dogs.” He turned the page.

  “I’ll bear that in mind. In the meantime, I was hoping you could help us.” Kate held out her warrant card and badge. “Detective Sergeant Brannon. This is Detective Constable Powers. Can we see the manager, please?”

  He eyed them warily. “That’d be me. Don Howe. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m in need of the help of a sharpshooter.”

  “A sharpshooter, you say. Well, I know pretty much every one of my boys here considers themselves to be a pretty sharp shooter.” He chuckled. “What specifically are you looking for?”

  “Someone who can hit a camera at four hundred yards.”

  Don whistled. “You don’t want a sharpshooter. You want a marksman. And a pretty decent one at that. You don’t find many of those outside the forces.”

  Kate nodded. “I didn’t think so. I guess you don’t know of any here at this club, then?”

  Don shook his head. “The only person I know who could’ve made that shot was me.” He pointed to a photograph on the wall of himself in uniform. “Special forces. Two tours of Afghanistan.” He shook his head. “Now I can’t even pick up a weapon without my hands shaking.” He held out a hand that was already trembling. “PTSD’s a terrible thing for a man to live with.”

  “I’m very sorry, sir.” Kate looked him in the eye, hoping she conveyed the depth of her appreciation for his service. “If you do think of anyone who can help us with our enquiries,” she said, handing him a card, “please give me a call.”

  “Sure, sure.” He nodded. “But that kind of range, you need to be looking at clubs with an outdoor range, not indoor ones like this.”

  Kate put her piece of paper on the counter. “Can you tell me which ones I should look at?”

  He put a star next to three of them. “Those are the closest ones, but there are two others farther out towards Norwich. You can try them too.” He wrote the addresses beneath her printed list.

  “Thank you for your help, Don.”

  “No problem.” He smiled. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  Three hours later, they had visited the five ranges and now had acquired a list of the people across Norfolk who could have made the kind of shot that killed Connie Wells. Of those, four were known to them.

  Matt Green, Adam Robbins, Ally Robbins, and Rupert Sands.

  “Are we going to arrest him?” Jimmy asked as they made their way back to the station.

  “Who?”

  “Sands.”

  “Rupert?”

  “Yeah. Everyone in the village hates them.”

  “Right.” Kate frowned. Nothing had changed. Everything they had against Sands was still circumstantial. They had nothing concrete. No evidence.

  “Are we?”

  “I don’t think we should.”

  “Why not? He’s got motive, opportunity, now we know he has the skill required to pull this murder off. We should arrest him.”

  Kate dialled Timmons and filled him in.

  “Do you think you have enough to arrest him?” Timmons asked.

  “No. Everything we have is circumstantial right now, and we have almost as much on three other suspects.” She chewed her lip. “I think that if it is him and we move too early he’ll get his fancy brief in and we’ll lose our advantage.”

  “Another possibility if it isn’t him, the jungle drums will start and the real killer will ditch the weapon if they haven’t already. You know what the gossips like in small villages.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I think you’re right to wait until you get the results back tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d be running a check on them all to see what firearms they have registered.”

  “Already in the works, sir.”

  “Good work, Brannon. Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good, carry on, then.”

  Kate looked at Jimmy, who sighed as she started the engine and drove back to the station. She wanted to look at the code again and see if Stella had found anything out about that bloody key. It was driving her mad.

  Merlin stayed on her heels as she walked into the police station and the desk sergeant buzzed them through. Jimmy slung his coat over the back of his chair and slumped in his seat.

  “What’s up with you?” Stella asked him.

  “He’s unhappy that we can’t go and arrest Rupert Sands,” Kate said.

  “Do we have something on him?” Stella asked.

  “Yeah. He’s got motive, no alibi, and he can make the shot that killed her,” Jimmy said.

  Stella frowned. “Am I missing something?”

  Kate quickly brought the three of them up to speed. Stella and Tom quickly agreed with her decision to wait until the test results and other information came in. Collier stayed quiet.

  “As much as we might want to, Jimmy lad, we can’t just arrest everyone who we don’t like,” Tom said.

  “But he’s got no alibi.”

  “At least half of the village didn’t either.”

  “Yeah, but none of them are on this list. They couldn’t have made that shot.”

  “How do you know? Just because they don’t go to one of the gun clubs you went to, doesn’t mean someone can’t practice elsewhere. It doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t have the skill.”

  Kate listened to them argue the point backward and forward while she stared at the code on the board again. LN353, 03.06.14, MK52UXB, 54.4, -3.03, 20. “Have we got the vehicle details on those registrations yet?”

  “We do, indeed.” Stella stood up and walked over to the board. “MK52 UXB is a Mitsubishi pickup registered to one Matt Green.”

  “Shit,” Jimmy said.

  Tom grinned. “See, lad, you gotta wait for all the information to come in.”

  “KL51 KLD is a Peugeot Estate registered to Leah Shaw.” Stella went on writing the information on the board. “And MN02 MRS is a Toyota Hilux registered to…any guesses?”

  “Tom or Ally Robbins,” Kate said.

  “Neh.” Stella made a rather rude buzzer sound, signalling the incorrect guess. “Close but no cigar, kid. Cedric Robbins.” She added the final name to the board.

  “So nothing to do with Rupert Sands or Edward Sands,” Kate said.

  “Nope.” Stella sat back in her seat.

  “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t him,” Jimmy said stubbornly.

  “No, but it does mean that something about these people was of interest to our victim. But Sands wasn’t.”

  “Matt Green works for Sands,” Jimmy said stubbornly.

  “Move on, Jimmy.” She pointed to the board. “What? What was it that Connie was logging here, people? What do those numbers mean? The prefix at the very beginning? What is it?”

  Tom shook his head. “Given that she was a photographer, I thought
it might have something to do with images, so I’ve been looking through her photograph library that we found on her laptop.”

  “Good thinking,” Kate complimented.

  “Don’t be so quick to congratulate me, boss. So far I haven’t found anything catalogued under any of these codes. But I did find something interesting.”

  “And that is?”

  “I can’t find any pictures for the dates on the board. Nothing.”

  “So?”

  “She took pictures every day. I’ve got backup hard drives, and everything on this machine. I mean, she took a couple hundred pictures every single day.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. She didn’t always edit them. Some of them are just sitting on there, either waiting for her to get around to them, or just practice shots. I don’t know. If nothing else, she took picture after picture of that dog.” He pointed to Merlin.

  “But nothing on those dates?”

  “Nada.”

  “That is strange. Does she store images anywhere else?”

  “I wondered about that too, so I asked Miss Temple. She said that anything taken specifically for the site was stored at work, so I went down and took a little look around the server.”

  “Find ’em?” Kate asked hopefully.

  “Zip.” Tom grinned. “We got another little mystery.”

  “I think we’ve got more than enough of those.”

  “True, but these are all pointing somewhere.”

  “Does Miss Temple have a calendar or diary for Connie’s appointments? Was there anything happening on these dates that meant she couldn’t take pictures? Let’s rule that out before we start to assume it means more than it does.”

  Tom nodded and picked up the phone.

  “Anything on that key?” Kate asked Stella.

  “It’s definitely a boat lock, but it was sold from the manufacturers in a batch about five years ago.”

  “Where did the batch go?”

  “To the chandlery at Brandale Staithe, but they don’t have any record of who that particular lock was sold to. I already phoned.”

  “So we can’t trace it?”

  “Not unless we start randomly sticking it into boat locks and seeing what happens.”

  Kate grunted. “If there weren’t so bloody many around here, I might take that idea seriously.”

  Stella chuckled. “In lieu of that, Matt Green and Rupert Sands.” She pinned a picture of each of them on the board. “Both sketchy in the alibi department. Green told Tom he was working at seven. Ed Sands says he didn’t get there till almost half past. That makes him missing at time of death. Rupert says he was home alone. Both these guys are a dab hand on a target range. These are our prime suspects.”

  “But Sands isn’t identified in Connie’s diary?”

  “No, his licence isn’t on there. We don’t know what the rest of it means, and when we figure it out, who’s to say it won’t point to him? Like Jimmy said, Green does work for him.” She shrugged. “Either way the other two points still mean we need to look into him. I want everything we can find on both of them. If they’ve not paid a parking ticket, I want to know about it.”

  Kate shook her head and decided to focus on Green. As far as she was concerned, Rupert Sands was an arse, but like all bullies who think they’re something, when it comes right down to it, they’re just full of shit. She fired up her computer and pecked away at the keys, but her eyes continued to drift back to the board.

  Missing pictures. Key to an unknown boat. Mysterious code that implicates Matt Green, Leah Shaw, and Cedric Robbins in…something. And one dead campsite owner. What the hell was going on in Brandale Staithe?

  CHAPTER 13

  Gina stared out of the window and across the fence that separated her garden from Connie’s. The last of the leaves had fallen from the sycamore tree at the edge of Connie’s property, and the debris blew haphazardly on the wind. She’d made Sammy rake up the mess in their garden earlier that day. She knew her daughter needed to be outside, and she needed to be kept out of trouble. Putting her to work seemed like a good idea. Now the pile of fallen foliage that she’d tossed onto the composting heap was blowing across the garden again and collecting against the fence. The never-ending battle with Mother Nature.

  She considered asking Sammy to clear Connie’s garden too, but given the way she’d stayed at least five feet from the fence and refused to look into the neighbouring garden the whole time she was out there, Gina couldn’t do it. She supposed she’d have to do it herself at some point. Who knew what was going to happen to the place now. She knew Connie had owned her own property, and she assumed it would now go to Leah. Unless Connie had changed her will after they split up. If she even had one. Jesus, it was a mine field. She shook her head and put the kettle on. Her hands were still cold and the only thing that seemed to thaw them was holding on to a hot mug.

  She’d just poured water into the cup when she felt tears on her cheek. She swiped at them but it wasn’t enough to wipe away the memories of all the times she’d shared this simple ritual with Connie. How many times had she made them both a brew? Tea for her and coffee for Connie. “You won’t catch me drinking that gnat’s piss,” Connie had said to her time and again, usually as she gratefully received her mug and reached for a biscuit to dunk. Gina sat back at the table, stared over into Connie’s garden again, and smiled sadly.

  She’d wished over the years of their friendship that the house had been her own. One she was buying rather than renting. One that offered her and Sammy more security than a year’s contract at a time. But there was no way she could afford a mortgage on a place like this. Instead, she had to rely on wealthy landowners like the Sands for a roof over her head as she lined their pockets with her hard-earned cash and they sat in the lap of luxury. Bastards.

  “Don’t let ’em get you down, kiddo,” Connie’s voice whispered in her head. The phrase she’d said to Gina more times than she could count. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

  “I won’t.” Gina whispered. “And I won’t let everything you worked for go to waste, Connie. You have my word on that.” Her hands felt warm for the first time in days. The sun shone through the window, casting bright swathes of light across the scarred wooden surface and over her hands. She smiled. She’d never considered herself a believer in God or religion, or life after death, or anything like that. She was more concerned with living from day to day and making the best life possible for herself and Sammy. But the warmth across her hands as she thought of Connie at that moment, well, she could have sworn she was being given a message. A positive one. Perhaps even one of forgiveness.

  She felt lighter than she had since Sammy had spilled her secret and thrown them into a panicked tailspin. She felt as though maybe, just maybe, everything was going to work out all right. Connie had always been able to do that. Convince her that everything would be okay, with that quiet competence that was so often overlooked. Connie had never felt the need to go around shouting about what she did, or how good she was to anyone who would listen. She just quietly got on with it and let the results speak for themselves. Something she’d encouraged Gina to do more than once.

  Gina sipped her drink and watched the sun set on another day, and a thought struck her. Who’s arranging Connie’s funeral?

  It had been three days now since the body had been found, but she had no idea what was going on with the arrangements, or who was taking care of them. She knew that Connie had no family left since her grandmother had passed away eighteen months before. As far as Gina could see, that left only Leah and she seriously doubted Leah could arrange her own bed anymore. A funeral was likely to be well beyond her current capabilities. Given that it was her daughter who had killed her, surely arranging a funeral was the least she could do, right? It was the right thing to do, right? To say her goodbyes properly, to show Connie the respect she deserved. That made sense, right?

  She hadn’t noticed the sun sink beyond the horizon, or t
he darkness descend as she sat wondering, worrying, trying to work out what she could do for her friend. She’d never been closely involved in a death before. She didn’t know what needed to be done, or arranged. What would she be allowed to do, since the police were conducting a murder enquiry? So many things she didn’t know the answers to. She retrieved the card DS Brannon had given her and dialled the number before she had the chance to talk herself out of it.

  “Hello?”

  Oh, her voice sounds just as lovely over the phone. “Detective? It’s Gina Temple.”

  “Well, hello, Miss Temple. What can I do for you this evening?”

  “I, erm, well, I was wondering who was organising the funeral for Connie?”

  “Oh, I see. At the moment, no one is. The body hasn’t been released and won’t be while the investigation is ongoing.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “After that, it depends on who comes forward to claim the body.”

  “And who is that normally?”

  “Relatives, a partner, children, parents, or sometimes close friends.”

  “And if not? What happens then?”

  “The local authority would organise it.”

  “The council?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she’d just be carted off from the hospital and thrown in some sort of pauper’s grave?” Gina was aghast.

  “Well, not exactly. Most councils do go above and beyond their legal duty which would be to bury or cremate the remains. Most arrange a simple service and hire one of those professional mourners so that there’s someone there to see the person off. It’s done with as much dignity and respect as they can.”

  “A professional mourner?”

  “Yeah, I know. Sounds like a really morbid job, doesn’t it? But I spoke to a woman who was one once, and she said it wasn’t morbid at all. She said it was respectful and offered a little something to the poor person who was being buried that they wouldn’t otherwise have. She said she remembered the name of every person whose funeral she attended and mentioned them in her prayers every night. She felt that by never forgetting them, she gave them what the family of most other people gave their loved ones. The gift of not being forgotten.”