Shot Through the Heart: DI Grace Fisher 2

by Isabelle Grey

  Tears at bedtime. That’s what her dad used to say when she and her sister were little, when it was the three of them, before he remarried. Dry your eyes. It’ll all look better in the morning. Her mum had died when Alison was born, yet their dad had coped. Or appeared to. But maybe he’d cried like this when he was on his own at night. Tears at bedtime. Well, she wasn’t going to let that be the story of her life any more than he had.

  Grace almost wished that Peter had left her something practical to do, but on the other hand getting out of bed at six in the morning was going to be enough of a struggle, given that there would still be a couple of hours before it got light. She blew her nose on a piece of kitchen roll, switched off the downstairs lights and went up the narrow staircase. There were three tiny bedrooms, and when she’d moved in four months ago she’d chosen the one at the back, using the two front rooms as an office and spare room. She liked looking at her neighbours’ little courtyard gardens and the irregularly tiled roofs of the old houses in the next street. The view was magical now, with just enough moonlight to illuminate the falling snowflakes. She realized suddenly how cold she was – the heating must have gone off hours ago – and pulled the curtains, deciding she’d get undressed after she’d washed her face and brushed her teeth. She could shower in the morning.

  It had been Colin’s debrief back at the vicarage that had kept the core team so late. Lance had reported on his visit to Russell Fewell’s modest one-bed flat on the outskirts of Dunholt’s small post-war council estate, where media satellite vans already lined the road. Most of Fewell’s shocked neighbours were elderly or retired and had said that he’d been friendly and polite, kept himself to himself, a bit shy perhaps, and given absolutely no sign of what had been to come. The flat was spotless, bed made and not even a dirty teaspoon in the sink. Scene of crime had already arrived, but had turned up nothing so far except an empty rubbish bin and, neatly laid out on the kitchen worktop, all the paperwork for his drink-drive offence, on which Fewell had opted to go to court. There was no suicide note and nothing to indicate why he had left there early that afternoon intent on committing mass murder.

  As Grace got into bed and pulled the duvet around her, she thought about what Donna Fewell had said about her ex-husband believing that Mark Kirkby had arranged for him to be followed and pulled over for a breath test. That kind of self-exonerating paranoia often became the final straw in a life already going downhill and was almost certainly no more than a symptom of whatever had driven him to his final terrible violence.

  Once Donna’s children had fallen asleep, Grace had been able to speak to her more freely. Donna had once again dismissed her ex-husband’s belief that his arrest had been somehow fixed, insisting that it would simply never occur to Mark to do such a thing, and it was all in Russell’s head. Grace knew she mustn’t let her own bitterness colour her judgement, and she had no reason to doubt Donna’s sincerity, but she knew all too well that there could be two sides to this kind of story. Back in Maidstone her fellow officers had blamed her for a popular colleague’s arrest on drug charges. They’d sent her to Coventry and put dog shit in her desk drawer. When she complained, they laughed and told her that it was all in her head. She shouldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that Fewell’s accusation against an apparently exemplary police officer might possibly have been true.

  If she was honest with herself, she’d have to admit she’d found it hard to warm to Mark Kirkby’s father or his younger brother, Adam. It’s not that she hadn’t felt for them, especially the stricken father. A former custody sergeant, John Kirkby was tall and well built with a close-shaven head; although coming up for sixty he remained fit and imposing, and it was hard to watch a man like that humbled by grief. Yet he was clearly one of those officers who had got a bit too used to being obeyed, and he still carried his authority as though it belonged to him personally, rather than to the job he’d retired from three years ago. His surviving son, a prison officer, appeared to be a silent carbon copy of his father, and Grace couldn’t help wondering whether Mark too had been one of those men – like her ex-husband, Trev – who enjoyed the power of a uniform a little too much. She wished Lance had been with her when she’d gone to talk to them; he’d have been able to separate guilt over her lack of sympathy from what was perhaps a valid insight.

  But Lance had been busy elsewhere, digging into Fewell’s background, searching for anything that might help explain his actions or shed light on his thinking. Grace didn’t envy Lance having to stay one step ahead of the reporters and camera crews, who were all in hot pursuit of the same information. On the other hand, she thought drowsily, as sleep finally seemed to be claiming her, at least Lance had Peter in his life, had a shield against the reality they’d all wake up to in the morning.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. She wasn’t happy with herself for disliking a man whose son had just been shot dead. She really hoped that her past difficulties weren’t going to turn her into someone who’d lost her ability to be objective, forever blind to how her reactions had been warped by what had happened. Bottom line: however strained the relationship between Mark Kirkby and his new partner’s ex-husband, he most certainly hadn’t deserved to die.

  Especially not when the pathologists’ preliminary findings were that the gunman had used a type of bullet chosen by snipers who wanted to make sure the job was done properly. The results had been brutal, and Grace recalled from a ballistics training course she’d done a few years ago how hollow-point bullets broke apart on impact, causing such devastating internal damage that they’d been banned from use in warfare under the Hague Convention. She didn’t want to imagine the distress knowledge of such injuries would cause the victims’ already traumatized families. Including John and Adam Kirkby.

  The rifle Fewell had used had been sent to a forensic weapons examiner. The Essex police armourer who had joined them at the late-night vicarage debrief had pointed out that rifles and hollow-point ammunition were used for deer hunting, and that although there wasn’t much of that around here there was plenty of sport a little further north, in Suffolk. It’s possible the rifle had been stolen in a domestic burglary and then sold on. The rest of the discussion had ranged over whether Fewell had specifically chosen hollow-point bullets in order to inflict particularly dreadful injuries and, if so, what that suggested about his state of mind. Far from cruel and sadistic, the profile they’d gathered so far suggested a man out of his depth. Whatever the truth, the prime minister’s statement on the ten o’clock news that the UK had one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world had brought little comfort.

  Grace rolled over in bed, tucking up her knees to get herself warm, yet the events of the day – yesterday now – refused to flee her brain. Despite her meeting with Mark Kirkby’s father and brother, despite watching some of the other victims’ relatives arriving at the vicarage, despite even the impact that little Davey and Ella had made upon her, her thoughts remained stubbornly with Russell Fewell. Even his ex-wife said he was the last person on earth to do such a thing. Why did that seem to hold the key to the tragedy? It was the voiceless and dispossessed who ‘went postal’. She was a police officer, a detective; it wasn’t often her job to have to explain why things happened, only how, and who was responsible. Right now the hope that there was some way to make sense of Fewell’s motives seemed futile.

  7

  It was still dark when, next morning, Robyn heard her father’s light tread move along the hall. She opened her eyes and listened for the familiar bustle and scrabble of the dogs as Leonard opened the boot-room door to let them join him in the warm kitchen. For a moment she felt cosy and safe in bed, but then she remembered: Angie was dead.

  Angie Turner, clever and athletic, able to cut through any nastiness with her droll humour, had been the first to welcome Robyn when she’d started at the private girls’ day school in Colchester nearly five years ago. Although Robyn, moving from her local state secondary school, had been determined not to be aw
ed by her new classmates’ big houses and their parents’ expensive cars, she had desperately wanted to fit in and do well because she knew what a sacrifice it was for her parents to pay the fees, and she wanted them to see how happy she was. It was Angie who had made that happen. Angie, a friend to everyone, who was now dead.

  Robyn had cried herself to sleep and now felt more tears coming, so swung her legs out of bed, grabbed her slippers and a dressing gown and went through to the kitchen to find her dad. The moment he saw her, he opened his arms and drew her into a wordless hug. At seventeen, she was now as tall as him, but he was wide and strong and smelled like all her best childhood memories. The hug didn’t last long: Leonard kissed the top of her head and pushed her lightly away.

  ‘Porridge?’ he asked. ‘Bacon? Cold roast goose?’

  She laughed in spite of herself, grateful for his customary composure, his instinctive understanding that too much sympathy would break her. ‘Porridge,’ she answered, going to sit at the kitchen table, from where she could watch as he lifted the lid on the Aga hotplate, selected a pan and a wooden spoon, and took out oats and milk. She liked watching him work: he was a craftsman, meticulous and patient in the way he chose his tools and placed the necessary materials within reach. It wouldn’t get light for another hour at least, yet, unlike the effort and rush of a school day, the warmth and electric light felt restful this morning. She noticed though that her dad hadn’t put on the radio, as he usually did.

  ‘What time are you off?’ she asked him.

  ‘I’m not going. I asked Robbie to stand in for me.’

  ‘Why?’ She spoke before the reason occurred to her; she didn’t want to hear it spoken aloud.

  ‘Seemed best to stick around today,’ he said, intent on stirring the porridge. ‘Bowls?’

  She got up and handed him two blue and white striped bowls from the cupboard. He took them without looking up from the pan, leaving her to find spoons and place a tin of Lyle’s Golden Syrup on the table. Leonard had already made a pot of tea, and she poured out two mugs. The tasks distracted her somewhat from the tears that threatened to return, but it was no good: she wasn’t going to be able to think about anything else today.

  Neither spoke as Leonard poured the thick steaming porridge into the bowls and they each twisted their clean spoons into the syrup. She waited until he had, from working habit, placed the lid neatly back on the tin before she broke their customary silence.

  ‘Do you mind if I take mine through, so I can watch the TV news?’

  Leonard sighed and looked steadily at her. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

  ‘Maybe they’ll have found out more about him and why he did it. I need to know what’s going on. Please, Dad?’

  She could see him making an assessment, weighing the pros and cons, as he did every decision, large or small. He nodded. ‘OK.’

  Robyn picked up her bowl and mug of tea and made her way through to the sitting room. She felt comforted when her father followed her, drawing back the curtains before coming to sit beside her on the sofa. And it was soothing to watch out of the corner of her eye how he concentrated, as he always did, on eating his porridge from around the rim of the bowl, where it was cool, before working his way into the hot centre. She felt a slight chill from the uncovered window; outside a low sliver of moon made the snow appear to give off a light of its own, a pure radiance that was instantly diminished by the jewel-like colours of the television screen.

  She didn’t need to select a channel; the same twenty-four-hour news they’d been avidly watching last night came up automatically as she turned on the set. The mass shootings in Dunholt remained the lead story, although apart from images the media had not had the night before there was little new. The gunman, Russell Fewell, was now revealed to be a slight wiry man in his early thirties, described as a domestic appliance engineer, divorced with two children. Were it not for the new context in which he had placed himself, the photograph shown most often might have suggested that he was reticent and embarrassed by having his picture taken: now he appeared shifty, resentful and malevolent. Of all the victims, the channel had the most information about the first, Mark Kirkby, with numerous photographs of him in police uniform at his passing-out parade, with his father and brother at a family wedding and, rugged and heroic, on a sponsored climb of Kilimanjaro, raising money for a kids’ cancer charity.

  There was better news of the survivors, all still in hospital: two were recovering and although the condition of the third, the woman Donna knew who worked in the Co-op, remained critical she was now thought likely to pull through. A talking-head expert then explained that their injuries had been mitigated by the gunman’s choice of ammunition, which, after passing through window glass, had been unable to cause the kind of devastating injuries inflicted on the people who had died. With a fresh pang of anguish, Robyn recognized Angie’s father in a short clip from the night before, making his way into some unnamed building, pursued by reporters repeatedly calling out his name. Robyn thought he looked as if he were in hell. Mercifully, the segment cut to a reporter standing in brightly-lit snow as he read out the royal message of condolence.

  Leonard put his half-eaten bowl of porridge down on the coffee table. Robyn hadn’t yet touched hers.

  ‘Why don’t you turn it off?’ he said. ‘Go and get dressed. Take the dogs for a run. Nothing to be gained from moping.’

  ‘He must’ve used hollow points,’ she said, turning to him, trying not to imagine Angie sustaining the kind of wounds she had seen when hunters shot deer or, once in the West Country with her dad, a wild boar.

  ‘He was a madman,’ Leonard said firmly. ‘A lunatic. Probably high on something or other. Why don’t you and your mum write to Angie’s parents? A letter of condolence. You have to think of it like a terrible freak accident. Put it behind you. It’s not what life’s really like. You mustn’t start thinking like that.’

  Robyn knew her dad was right: he was always right – a sensible, reassuring and dependable sort of right. But the horror of her grief and shock felt too raw for her to be able to believe his words. She was sure she would in time, but not yet. ‘I’ll go and have a shower,’ she said. She glanced at her untouched bowl on the coffee table. ‘Sorry about the porridge.’

  When, an hour or so later, Robyn returned to the house with the dogs after giving them a long icy run along the grassy bank of the sea wall, she was surprised to see a van backed up to the door of Leonard’s workshop: someone must need a delivery pretty urgently for the courier to turn out so early on Boxing Day. But then, she supposed, her dad was a regular customer. She knew most of the drivers by name – it was a small company with only two or three properly certified staff and vans secure enough to transport firearms – and she waved to Kenny as she shooed the dogs indoors. She paused by the back door to observe a skein of Brent geese flying in along the estuary. The sky was now a pale cloudless blue, making the snow almost unbearably bright where the low sun shone across its crisp surfaces.

  Her cheeks tingled with the cold, and the house felt stuffy, the air still rich with yesterday’s cooking smells but no longer in a good way. Martha and Bounder rushed to their water bowls, then looked expectantly from her face to the door, imploring to be let back out. She called to her mother, but there was no reply. Nicola, who acted as office manager, must also be over in the workshop, double-checking the paperwork for whatever order was going out.

  Robyn had been trained since childhood to respect the invisible line between home and business, and beyond a smile or occasional helpful response to a question never engaged with any of Leonard’s visitors. He took his legal responsibilities extremely seriously, and even though she was now old enough to handle all the weapons and ammunition, she was very seldom allowed in the secure workshop, and never unsupervised. When he was working, she knew to remain obediently invisible.

  ‘Sorry, guys,’ she said to the two dogs. ‘You’ll have to wait until Kenny’s gone.’

  She
was hungry now but, helping herself to a cold roast potato from the fridge, was immediately assailed by guilt at the thought of the luxurious feeling she’d had yesterday afternoon, stretching her toes towards the fire, her stomach full, laughing with her parents at the Christmas movie on television, while all the time Russell Fewell was loading his rifle and setting out to kill Angie and her grandmother, who she now knew had merely popped down the street to check on an elderly neighbour. She threw the remains of the potato into the compost bin.

  Robyn didn’t want to be alone with this leaden lump of grief lodged under her heart. Last night her parents had made her turn off her phone, not wanting her to be deluged with texts and calls from grieving school friends until she was ready to deal with them. Now, though she craved company, she was scared of everything becoming too real; once she turned on her phone and began to listen to her friends’ tears and disbelief, she wasn’t sure she would cope. She went to look out of the window to see if the green courier van had left yet. She was relieved to see it trundling carefully off up the snowy drive: now she could go in search of her father.