Silent as the Grave

by Paul Gitsham

Grayson cut him off angrily. “It doesn’t matter any more. Sheehy’s in hospital, probably a vegetable, and Billy Obsanjo is no longer a problem.”

  The knot in his Warren’s gut tightened further. “What do you mean?”

  The look on Grayson’s face was pure malice.

  “Late last night, somebody used a sharpened toothbrush to make sure Billy Obsanjo’s evening shower was his last. You were his final visitor and you’ve been cosying up to the man he was accusing of corruption. Professional Standards have got their hands full at the moment, but I strongly suggest you get an appointment with your Federation representative as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 36

  Warren held things together until he made it to the gents’ toilet where the fried breakfast and stomachful of coffee finally made a reappearance. Waves of exhaustion crashed over him as he leant his forehead against the cool porcelain cistern. It was all too much.

  What was he going to do? The sensible thing was to go home and follow Grayson’s advice. He had no doubt that a summons from Professional Standards would be forthcoming in the next couple of days. He should get himself a representative from the Police Federation and start planning what to say in his defence.

  Should he just come clean, as Sutton had suggested? Professional Standards were best placed to take over this investigation. Insulated from the rest of the force, they could go wherever they pleased, talk to whomever they wanted to and demand whatever information they needed. All the questions that he had could be answered by Standards immediately.

  But was it safe to do so? Bob Windermere’s parting advice came back to him: trust nobody. Did that advice apply to Professional Standards as well?

  And even if they were trustworthy, would he ever get the answers he wanted? Would he ever be told the truth? If the key players were too senior—and who knew what position they might hold twenty years on?—would the results of any investigation ever see the light of day?

  The sudden ringing of his mobile awoke him from his reverie. He listened to the call carefully before making his mind up. Until Professional Standards decided otherwise, or DSI Grayson told him explicitly that he was no longer assigned to the case, DCI Warren Jones was still in charge and he was going to continue working it. The question was: how long did he have to produce the results he wanted?

  * * *

  The call from CSM Andy Harrison suggested that Warren’s problems were not yet common knowledge and as far as everyone else was concerned, Warren remained Senior Investigating Officer.

  “You know we’d have found the murder weapon eventually, don’t you? There was no need for you to come traipsing in and contaminating the crime scene.”

  Andy Harrison’s tone was more disappointed than angry and that made Warren feel even more guilty. He shrugged an apology.

  “The team are still doing the rest of the house, so I’ll keep it to the hanging for the time being.”

  The white paper suit was hot and Warren was already sweating. Quite how Harrison and his team could wear them all day was beyond him.

  “The knot on the rope was fairly straightforward, your basic noose. It’s easy enough to find out how to tie one on the internet. The rope itself was hemp, woven with a fifteen-millimetre diameter and brand new from what we can tell. No sign of the packaging. But that’s not the most interesting thing we’ve found.”

  The two men walked up the stairs, rustling loudly. The carpet had been searched thoroughly for trace evidence already. Nonetheless plastic sheeting had been laid down to protect it from contamination.

  Harrison pointed with a gloved finger at the banister that Sheehy had suspended himself from. “Look carefully at the rail,” he instructed as he unhooked a powerful Maglite from his belt.

  Warren bent closer. The wood had been stained a dark mahogany, and now that Harrison was shining his torch on it he could make out faint abrasions, where the lighter wood beneath was visible.

  “There are brown residues on the rope extending from the point at which it was in contact with the rail to a point about a metre further along. I’d put good money on the marks on the rope matching the varnish and wood fragments from this bannister.”

  “What are you suggesting, Andy?” asked Warren, not wanting to put ideas in the CSM’s head.

  “We know that he didn’t drop far enough to break his neck. Instead he underwent slow strangulation. But what if instead of dropping down he was hoisted up?”

  Warren’s breath caught in his throat. “How would that be possible?”

  “Bring him underneath the bannister with the rope around his neck, throw the rope over the bannister and use it like a pulley to pull him up. All that weight on the rope would have caused enough friction for traces of the wooden bannister to become embedded in the rope’s fibres.”

  “How many people would it have taken?”

  Harrison shrugged. “In theory, as long as the person doing the hoisting was heavier than DCI Sheehy, it would only take one person to do the actual lifting. They’d just use their body weight and gravity. I suppose they could lift him up onto the stool whilst they tied off the rope, but in practice it would probably take two people.”

  “And then they kicked the stool away.”

  Harrison nodded. “The drop isn’t enough to kill instantly. The only way you could get a standard drop is to tie the noose around the neck and drop the body over the bannister. That might do it.”

  Warren nodded. He’d seen that done before. “So why not do it that way? It looks as though they left him dangling and he was able to get his weight onto the overturned stool. That probably saved his life.” Warren tried not to think how long the man had hung there, slowly throttling, before they’d forced the door. Despite his hatred at what the man had covered up all those years ago, nobody deserved that. “And why didn’t he put up a fight?”

  “I reckon he was already incapacitated when they strung him up. Was he drunk? Drugged?” asked Harrison.

  Warren shook his head. “His blood alcohol level was high but not enough to knock him out. Preliminary tests have ruled out any drugs.”

  “I’d get the docs at the hospital to have a look at his neck. A fracture of the hyoid bone would indicate strangulation beforehand.”

  “Already done. They did an X-ray to check for spinal damage and they reported nothing. I’m sure they’d have spotted damage to the hyoid.”

  “Assuming the ligature hasn’t covered them check for bruises around the carotids then. A basic chokehold or strangulation would have been enough to knock him out long enough to hoist him up. If they’d stuck around long enough after they’d kicked the stool away they’d have probably seen the strangling sensation wake him enough for him to try and support his weight on the stool.”

  The two men lapsed into silence.

  “Seems a bit inefficient, don’t you think? Why not just chuck him off the banister?”

  “Trying to make it seem more like a real suicide is my guess. It goes against a hell of a lot of hardwired instincts to jump off the top of the stairs. I don’t see it very often. Most folks just kick away the stool. I guess they don’t realise how long it takes to die that way, probably ten minutes or more.”

  Warren felt a sudden cold chill. Whoever had tried to kill Sheehy had almost certainly been in the house just a few minutes before he and Sutton had turned up.

  “Thanks, Andy,” he called over his shoulder as he ran down the stairs as quickly as possible without sliding on the slick plastic sheeting.

  He called over a uniformed sergeant blocking the doorway from prying eyes. “Get teams doorknocking. We need to find out if anybody saw anyone suspicious around in the hour or so before DI Sutton and I arrived at eight p.m.”

  “DCI Jones?” It was Harrison again.

  “You know why else they might have chosen that method,” he continued soberly. “They could just be sick bastards and wanted him to suffer.”

  Chapter 37

  It’s not difficult to get into a patient
’s room when the bored constable outside is under the impression that his role is to stop the comatose patient inside from escaping, rather than prevent somebody else from getting in. In this case an urgent call for assistance in the hospital’s casualty department over his police radio was sufficient for the constable to leave his post, hoping that a bit of late-evening fisticuffs might liven up an otherwise dull shift. It would be several minutes before the bewildered officer returned.

  A single desultory bunch of service-station daffodils sat in a vase on a bedside table not exactly covered in cards. News of what had happened hadn’t been widely publicised and, besides, Gavin Sheehy wasn’t top of anybody’s “get well soon” list at the moment.

  They say that when a person is in a coma they look relaxed, their faces unlined and composed. Not Sheehy; months of stress had formed creases across his forehead and the corners of his mouth. His complexion was greyish, the only splashes of colour the vivid rainbow of bruises across his throat and the tiny pinprick haemorrhages dotting his face and nose and, if anyone looked, his eyeballs.

  The only sound in the room was the faint susurration from the oxygen mask—for all the good it was doing. The doctors said that he’d probably not wake up and if he did he’d probably have brain damage and that he’d probably not remember anything.

  Three “probablies”. It wasn’t enough for the man standing in front of the bed holding a plastic bag in his hand. It wasn’t his intention to kill the man—at least not directly. He just needed to silence him. Turn “probably” into “definitely”. And then, when Sheehy finally passed away and they conducted the autopsy, they’d find evidence of asphyxiation—but then they already knew that, didn’t they? They’d found him hanging from a failed suicide attempt and they wouldn’t see anything at the autopsy that they weren’t expecting.

  He opened the bag out then placed it across the man’s face. No struggling this time. He was too far gone.

  “Why did you do it, Pete?”

  The voice was quiet, but DS Peter Kent nearly collapsed.

  Warren Jones and Tony Sutton walked out of the tiny en-suite bathroom.

  “You’ve known Gavin Sheehy since you joined CID.” Sutton’s voice was taut with anger. “He was at your wedding; he’s your son’s godfather.”

  Kent said nothing, his eyes darting wildly, even as he held the plastic bag over Sheehy’s face.

  “How far does it go back, Pete?” Warren’s voice just sounded weary now. “Were you part of the original framing or were you brought in afterwards? How hands-on were you? You’re trying to kill Sheehy now. I imagine you at least helped to hang him. What about Reggie Williamson?” Warren’s voice started to rise as he moved towards him. “Zachary Eddleston?” Spittle flecked the sergeant’s face as Warren shouted right at him. “What about my father?”

  The heavy glass vase caught the edge of Warren’s temple, knocking him backwards into a portable ECG machine. As Warren floundered on the floor, Kent charged at Sutton like a bull. Although he’d been mostly deskbound for the past few years and was coming up to retirement, the DS still turned out most weekends for the force’s senior rugby team and was quite capable of wading into a bar fight when necessary.

  The two men skidded across the floor, crashing into the wall. Recovering his feet quickly, Kent charged for the open door and raced down the corridor.

  Sutton reached the door first, followed a second later by Warren, but by this point Kent was already past the nurses’ station, heading for the fire exit. Forcing their way past the wheeled medicine cart that suddenly blocked their path and ignoring the shouts from the nursing staff, the two officers pounded after him, Sutton pulling ahead as Warren fumbled with his radio for assistance.

  The cool night air rushed in as Kent hit the crash bar, barely slowing as the door slammed open. By the time Sutton and Warren exited the building themselves, the fleeing detective was already halfway down the four flights of metal stairs, the clanging of their boots soon joining his in an echoing cacophony that rang across the quiet car park.

  The emergency staircase opened onto a small patch of tarmac next to a footpath and service road, which curved towards the main entrance and exit. Follow that road to the left and it took you onto the main road; to the right and it headed towards the short-term parking bays in front of the A&E main entrance.

  Kent headed to the right. Immediately a white Honda Accord pulled out of one of the bays, heading towards him. He raised his hand as if flagging a taxi.

  Warren nearly fumbled his radio as he hit the bottom step. Sutton, already a half-dozen paces ahead of him, was sprinting after Kent.

  “Suspect is flagging down a White Honda, index number…” Warren’s voice caught in his throat.

  Ahead of them the white car accelerated towards Kent, its tyres squealing in protest. The racing detective dropped his arm, turning, but it was too late. With a crunch that could be heard clear across the car park, the Honda impacted Kent on his left hip, folding him like a pair of scissors. Even from several metres away, the explosion of blood as his head caved in the windscreen was shocking in its vividness, and then his body was in the air, spinning, arms and legs flapping loose like a marionette with its strings cut.

  Sutton threw himself behind a parked ambulance, using its bulk to protect himself, but the driver lost interest, heading instead for the main road and escape.

  * * *

  “Looks as though it was stolen.” Gary Hastings’ face was pale. The shock of Kent’s betrayal had been enough—his sudden death even worse.

  “Registered keeper is a Mr Quint; lives in Basingstoke with his wife and twin three-year-olds. Hampshire Constabulary spoke to his neighbours who reckon they’ve gone camping in Spain for a fortnight, leaving their car in long-term parking at Stansted Airport.”

  It wasn’t a big surprise. Warren hadn’t expected the car to be linked to the driver. Now they just had to hope that forensics could retrieve something from the burnt-out wreck just reported in a remote field in rural Cambridgeshire.

  “CCTV is on its way over from the hospital, but I doubt it’ll be much use. The head of security reckons unless the driver got out of the car, you won’t see him.”

  The air in the briefing room was a weighty mixture of shock, despondency, sadness and anger at what had just happened to a long-standing colleague and friend, tempered by what he’d done and tried to do.

  Warren stood up abruptly. He needed to take charge, to reinvigorate his beleaguered team. “OK, everything DS Kent retrieved from HOLMES and the PNC is to be considered suspect. Gary, I want you to retrace Kent’s footsteps. Everything he downloaded, you download. Everything he accessed, you access. Karen, I want you to work with him. Compare the documents that he gave us—” he pushed a bulging folder across the desk “—with the originals on the computer. I want to see what else he was hiding.”

  The two constables hurried out of the room, a renewed sense of purpose in their steps. Nobody in the CID office yet knew the full story aside from Tony Sutton, and the two men had yet to decide what to tell the rest of the team. Warren felt uncomfortable about keeping his colleagues in the dark, but he wasn’t ready to reveal his own central role in the affair yet.

  Furthermore he worried about the flow of information out of the office. The betrayal by Pete Kent had been completely unexpected. What other surprises lay in store? They needed to take great care when deciding who to share information with. Gary Hastings had already appeared at Warren’s door, grey-faced and sickened. As a courtesy, he’d emailed Pete Kent to tell him his idea about visiting the archives to look for duplicate copies of the missing documents. Hastings didn’t know what was going on, but he’d put enough pieces together to realise that he may have had a small role in Pete Kent’s decision to try and kill Sheehy.

  “So where does this leave Grayson?” Sutton’s voice was quiet, even though the two men were now alone.

  Warren instinctively glanced at the door as if the superintendent was about to walk i
n. “Well we know that he wasn’t in the Honda. I checked the logs and he’s been in his office on the phone all afternoon. He couldn’t have been at the hospital.”

  “So if he is involved that makes three of them at least: Kent, Grayson and whoever was driving that Honda.”

  Warren pursed his lips in frustration. “Am I clutching at straws, Tony? Do I want Grayson to be involved, just because of who he is, or am I following the evidence?”

  Sutton said nothing, just rubbed his eyes wearily.

  Wednesday 11 April

  Chapter 38

  Another day, another dawn briefing. The events of the previous day were still sinking in. CID was full of officers, many of whom were officially off duty that morning. The only notable absence was John Grayson, who was no doubt explaining the situation to the chief constable and working with the communications team on how to present it to the media. Warren felt a twinge of sympathy for the man, even as he filled his coffee cup yet again. He glanced at his watch. Four hours had elapsed since his last paracetamol and he swallowed the white caplets gratefully.

  As before, he and Tony Sutton had held a discreet conference to decide how much information to share with their team and with Professional Standards. The call to meet them hadn’t come through yet, but Warren expected it at any time.

  His desk phone rang. It was his Federation representative.

  “Tony, I need you to take briefing. I’ve got something I need to sort out.”

  * * *

  “Please take a seat, DCI Jones.”

  The interview room was a nondescript affair. Equipped with generic office furniture consisting of a cheap wooden table and a half-dozen padded, but still uncomfortable, metal-framed chairs, it resembled a score or more similar rooms that Warren had spent countless hours in during his career. However, this was the first time that he had found himself sitting on this side of the table.

  “Please state your name, rank and current position for the record.”

  Warren’s mouth was dry; however, he found enough moisture to answer confidently and clearly. “Detective Chief Inspector Warren Jones. CID Middlesbury, Hertfordshire Constabulary.”