Shot Through the Heart: DI Grace Fisher 2

by Isabelle Grey

  Kenny often grumbled about the state of the track, although he knew as well as she did that Leonard chose not to improve the surface because the ruts and bumps helped deter any intruders tempted to try breaking into the secure workshop. As she set off again, she had a fleeting insight into how an outsider might view her home: it had never before occurred to her that there might be anything odd about its isolation or its need for discipline and discretion.

  She rounded the last curve of the track, heard the distant plaintive cry of a curlew and saw Leonard coming out of the workshop. He locked the door behind him as he always did and set off across the garden to the path that led to the sea wall. In each hand he carried one of the large sturdy canvas carriers from the farm shop; whatever they contained, both bags bulged oddly and looked pretty weighty. Intent on his destination, he didn’t look round, and although she could easily have attracted his attention Robyn didn’t call out to him.

  Nicola’s car was gone, and the back door to the house was locked, so she must be out somewhere. Robyn let herself in and was greeted ecstatically by the two dogs, which had as usual been shut in the boot room. As she went to the kitchen sink to run herself a glass of water, she watched her father’s figure heading away towards the bright blue water. The kitchen was orderly: the plants on the windowsill had been watered, the frayed red and white checked tea towels hung from the rail of the Aga. Everything was normal. Nothing was different or out of place. And yet she knew that everything was wrong.

  Her dad returned less than an hour later. If he was surprised to find her with her feet up in the lounge watching daytime television, he didn’t show it. Nor did he offer to explain where he’d been.

  ‘You turning into a student already?’ He pushed her legs aside so he could sit beside her on the couch. ‘What is it, Countdown?’

  ‘No, some stupid film. American heroines with big hair and shoulder pads.’

  ‘How did the chemistry exam go?’

  She was touched that he remembered. It was always Leonard rather than Nicola who kept abreast of what she was doing at school.

  ‘Not great, actually.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t seem to concentrate properly.’

  ‘Well, it’s only the mocks this time. But you’ve got to stay on course for the grades you need.’

  ‘I know. Please. I don’t need a pep talk.’

  ‘Fair enough. Look, what do you say to a bit of a break during the Easter holidays? Just a few days, but proper time off before the real exams?’ He ruffled her hair as he used to do when she was a kid. ‘Rest those brains of yours.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Shall I see if Jerry can let us have the Vale do Lobo villa again? You loved it there. Sunlounger by the pool, walks on the beach. What do you say?’

  ‘It’d be lovely,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But I could only spare a few days away from revision. Wouldn’t it be too expensive just for a few days?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. Jerry gives us mate’s rates. Besides, I bet, once you’re a student, you won’t want to holiday with us at all. So let’s make the most of it. Yes?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks!’

  He patted her knee and rose to his feet. ‘I’ll talk to your mum and get it sorted.’

  He left the room, but then immediately came back. ‘I’ve been having a tidy-up. Want to have a look?’

  Robyn was taken aback. It was taken for granted that she never entered his workshop, except occasionally as far as the reception area or office in order to call him for supper. Recovering from her surprise, she was struck by something in his expression she’d never noticed before: he wanted to please her. It made her feel afraid.

  She forced a smile and followed him outside, suddenly aware as he unlocked the workshop door of the security camera mounted above it. Stepping inside, he punched in the alarm code and then held the door for her to enter. The reception area, a deliberate pastiche of a gentleman’s club, with dark-green carpet, leather button-back chairs and framed prints of hunting dogs on the walls, along with an incongruous modern coffee machine, was unchanged since her last visit. The tiny office, where her mother worked, opened off this room and had a pleasant view of the garden. Opposite was the door to the actual workshop, and she waited curiously as Leonard punched in another security code to release the locks. The unadorned space, with its whitewashed walls and concrete floor, turned out to be smaller than she remembered, and she realized how much of its exterior footprint must be taken up by the windowless strongroom at the far end.

  ‘I realized it must be a decade or more since I had a really proper tidy-up,’ he said. ‘Another new year, and you’ll be leaving home. Time flies. The number of dead ladybirds and spiders I found in all the boxes!’

  He waved a hand towards a wall hung with neat rows of yellow, blue and green plastic box-trays. Robyn remembered her first glimpse inside this room on her fourteenth birthday, the age at which she’d been legally permitted to handle a rifle and ammunition. It was the first time she’d been allowed to see the detail of what her father did for a living, and she had been fascinated by the coloured boxes containing different sizes of casings, primers, die sets, loading blocks and the other paraphernalia required for loading rifle rounds. On one wooden workbench were green metal presses, die plates, a powder dispenser, scales and tumblers, plus, mounted on delineated boards, various drills and other tools; a second bench had lathes and wood-and metal-working tools for repairing, servicing and renovating the weapons themselves. Everything looked spotless and pristine, exactly as it had on her birthday nearly four years ago. She couldn’t imagine that her father’s tidy-up had taken very long.

  ‘You’re the neatest person I know,’ she told him, wondering why he’d wanted her to come in here again now, what it was he wanted her to see.

  ‘Some people think the big thing in life is to express yourself, to be creative. Painting, dancing, music, that kind of stuff. I like accuracy,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Precision.’

  ‘You don’t need to tell me!’

  ‘Everything went to pieces when my father died,’ he said quietly. ‘Whenever I see an earthquake or something like that terrible tsunami on the news, that’s how it felt. They probably have some fancy name for it now, but I simply wanted to put everything back the way it was.’ Without even being aware of doing it, he straightened a metal punch so that it lined up with the edge of the workbench. ‘I wanted to provide properly for you and your mum, so you’d never have to know what it was like to live so precariously.’

  ‘You do look after us!’ Robyn went to hug him. Feeling his warmth, the comforting chug of his heart against her ear, a dreadful thought struck her and she drew back. ‘Dad, you’re not ill or anything, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not. Why on earth would you think that?’

  And then his eyes had that invisible screen again, so that, although he was looking at her quite naturally, candidly even, she knew she was not seeing his real self. She took a step back, looking around the workshop, a place that appeared to her not to have changed at all since four years ago. Did that make it ordinary? Was ordinary something you should trust? She looked again at her father’s face, the most familiar thing in the world and now also utterly strange to her. Could she tell him how she felt? Explain her fears to him? Or might that risk making everything worse?

  ‘It’s weird to think that by the end of the year I’ll be living somewhere else,’ she said. ‘I bet I’ll be really homesick.’

  ‘I know how much we’re going to miss you. But I’m so proud of you, Birdie.’ He swept an arm out, gesturing to the whole workshop. ‘This is for you. It’s all for you.’

  She could see how much he loved her. That much was undeniably genuine and true. But, if bringing her in here now to see his work was a demonstration of his loyalty to her, then to what exactly did he expect her to be loyal in return?

  26

  Looking at the gaudy blue, white and gold statue of mad King George III, Ivo could only assume that His R
oyal Highness had never visited Weymouth in January; only a balmy summer could possibly have transformed a harbour town into a bling eighteenth-century holiday destination, complete with esplanade, assembly rooms and hotels facing the wide sweep of especially fine sand. The seafront terraces remained, and the resort still made a living from visitors, although the amusement arcades and posters for a Christmas pantomime suggested a slightly less fashionable clientele. Ivo had vacillated between booking himself into one of the haughty-looking Regency hotels, where, totally out of season, he’d be likely to rattle around on his own, or one of the cosier places individualized by coloured awnings over their front doors. In the end he’d gone for something between the two, and now stood looking out of an admittedly rather pretty first-floor bay window at a slate-grey sea across which a vast and incongruous catamaran nosed its way towards the ferry terminal on the west side of the bay.

  The light was fading, and the chill coming off the glass of the window promised that as soon as it got fully dark the temperature would drop viciously. For a brief moment Ivo longed to seek out the familiar snugness of some ye olde English pub, but automatically shook off the lure: the charms of a curry house would have to do, even without a cold Kingfisher to wash down his rogan josh. He wondered what Donna Fewell and her kids did with themselves down here, two hundred miles from anyone they knew and loved. Where the fuck could they go on a night like this for warmth or company or distraction, let alone entertainment?

  The first thing he’d done on arriving in Weymouth was check out the location of their apartment. Even though the block had no doubt been thrown up in order to cash in on the sailing events of the 2012 Olympics, a couple of the ‘exclusive’ one-bedroom flats had yet to be sold, and its soubriquet of ‘luxury’ seemed justified solely by some glossy glass-fronted balconies. Ivo reckoned that, for all its slick brochures and sea views, it must be as much of a cage for Davey, Ella and Donna as the modern prison hulk that not so long ago had been moored a little way along the coast.

  Ivo shivered not with cold but with the anger that had carried him down to Weymouth. He wasn’t sure why Davey’s plight had got under his skin so badly. Or maybe he was. But so far he’d always managed to dodge that emotional bullet and, if he hadn’t taken one for king and country to please the expensive trick-cyclist to whom the Courier had sent him to cure his drinking, then he certainly wasn’t about to do so now. No, the real reason was simple hatred of those in authority who misused their power. Maybe that’s why he’d crossed the line for the Ice Maiden last year; all that business with her thug of an ex-husband, and the way her work colleagues – those twisted little Dixons of Dock Green – had frozen her out for standing up for herself. Jesus Christ, if you can’t turn to the boys in blue when you’re in trouble, what can you do?

  But at least Grace Fisher had known the people she was dealing with and what she’d got herself into. Davey presumably had no idea; Ella was little more than a baby, and Donna Fewell, well, either she’d been too fuck-struck to want to see the truth about Mark Kirkby, or he’d done his dance of the seven veils so adroitly that she had absolutely no clue as what he and his school chum were really up to in their vindictive persecution of her ex-husband.

  What a treasure Mark Kirkby must’ve been! Ivo was fully prepared, given the chance, to embark on some strategic character assassination at the inquest. He could see that DI Fisher’s hands were tied: coppers look after their own – fair enough, so do most professions – and using the uniform for an occasional spot of private enterprise was a time-honoured perk. No one would thank her for daring to interfere in such sport. But there were some rules that mattered more in certain professions. Call him old-fashioned, but Ivo believed that, if standing by a mate meant turning a blind eye to a fit-up, then a line had been crossed. Which is where the clarion voice of the fifth estate was supposed to come into play.

  Ivo whiled away a couple of hours in his room catching up on emails and watching the television news until he reckoned it was sufficiently late to go out and select a place to eat. The achingly cold wind off the sea stung any bit of exposed skin it could find and convinced him to stumble into the nearest curry house without even looking at the menu posted in the window. He was glad to see he wouldn’t be the only diner – that is until he recognized the rugged-looking bloke sitting at a table towards the back of the restaurant, facing the door. Fuck him if it wasn’t John Kirkby.

  Ivo quickly took stock, wondering if Kirkby would recognize him. It was over a fortnight since the press conference that followed the shootings, but Ivo couldn’t be sure whether John Kirkby would recall his face from the media scrum or perhaps be familiar with his name. For all he knew, it had been John Kirkby himself who’d got the Federation lawyers to lean on Ivo’s editor and force him to back off from investigating his son. He decided to play safe, and gave the man a friendly nod, choosing a table diagonally across from him in the otherwise empty restaurant. He concentrated on the overlarge menu, giving the other man time to make the first move.

  Once he’d ordered his food and been presented with a glass of tap water, he looked up and found John Kirkby trying to catch his eye.

  ‘Here on business?’ Kirkby asked pleasantly. Ivo decided it was a fair bet that he’d not been rumbled.

  ‘Checking out some properties,’ Ivo responded. ‘Now my dad’s on his own, he seems to think the seaside would be bracing.’

  ‘It’s certainly that!’ Kirkby agreed.

  The short exchange gave Ivo a chance to study the man: he looked tired and sick. His jowls and lower eyelids drooped as if he’d lost suddenly lost weight, and he wasn’t showing much appetite for the prawn biriani in front of him. Ivo checked himself: don’t go feeling sorry for the bastard!

  ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘Family business,’ said Kirkby. ‘Much the same as you.’

  So they were both lying, thought Ivo. The best way to get people to tell you what was really on their minds was silence, so he smiled and nodded, grateful to the waiter for choosing this moment to bring poppadoms and pickles, with which he could legitimately busy himself while Kirkby decided how desperate he was to confide in a stranger. After a moment Ivo heard a sigh and deliberately waited just that little bit too long before looking up.

  ‘You wonder sometimes what it’s all for, don’t you?’ Kirkby informed the otherwise empty restaurant.

  Ivo gave a smile of encouragement. ‘Yeah, well . . .’

  ‘I’m guessing your dad’s retired? So what did he do?’

  Ivo’s father had in fact long ago retired to the cemetery, but he answered the rest of the question honestly enough. ‘He was an aircraft engineer. Served in the RAF during the war and fell in love with flying.’

  ‘And now? What’s he got to show for it?’

  ‘Not much,’ agreed Ivo.

  Kirkby shook his head and signalled to the waiter for another beer. ‘Can I get you one?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m off the sauce,’ said Ivo. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

  ‘See what I mean? A man works his guts out, and then what? Can’t even enjoy a beer when he wants one. Mind you – don’t get me wrong – I loved my job. Police sergeant. Loved the service. Proud to wear the uniform. But now?’

  Ivo strove to keep the cynical sneer off his face. ‘No respect,’ he suggested. ‘Political correctness, government cutbacks.’

  ‘And the rest!’

  Ivo wondered how much of this he could stomach, coming from the father of a cheap bully, but was again rescued from having to respond at any length by the arrival of his rogan josh. In any case, Kirkby was only beginning to get into his stride.

  ‘I wasn’t the only one to sacrifice my marriage to the job. And for what? You know they don’t even have canteens in police stations any more? You come in from a long shift in weather like this after dealing with the scum of the earth, and all they offer you is a microwave to heat up your own food. And what do we get in return? All this human
rights rubbish – pink and fluffy welfare visits to granny-bashers, or making sure that some Albanian drug lord who just sold Tinkerbell to a trafficking gang gets free legal advice and an interpreter. And after all that, the best the politicians can find to do is give us grief over our pensions. It’s taking the piss.’

  ‘At least you’ve not been privatized,’ said Ivo between mouthfuls.

  ‘Not yet, maybe. But all these new ACPO types with their fancy management degrees telling us we have to work smarter when what they really mean is, let petty criminals give us the finger and walk free . . . It’s us who has to tell the burglary victims who live next door to a crack den that they’ll be taking care of themselves from now on. I mean, all this after the flak my generation took during the miners’ strike and the poll tax riots. I ask you! The politicians then were happy enough to shove us into the front line so yobs could throw bricks at us. The government ought to show more bloody respect. We’re the ones who defend the most vulnerable in society. We’re the service of last resort. And they’d do well not to forget it, in case one day they call us and we’re not bloody there!’

  ‘The state should look after its own,’ Ivo agreed blandly.

  ‘Too right.’ Kirkby seemed to deflate, all his hot air spent. He shook his head wearily. ‘Still’ – he sighed – ‘charity begins at home, right? You’ve got to try and do what’s right by those nearest to you, however hard.’

  Ivo speculated whether he meant Donna Fewell and not for the first time wondered precisely why John Kirkby had taken it upon himself to look out for the family of his son’s murderer. ‘So how long are you down here for?’ he asked casually but with keen interest in the answer.

  ‘I go home tomorrow.’ Kirkby pushed away his half-drunk glass of beer. ‘Home!’ he repeated bitterly. ‘I lost my son recently.’ He pursed his lips together tightly, and Ivo suspected that he was battling not to well up. ‘I’ve two boys. He was my first. Couldn’t ask for a more wonderful son. The best. So I’m here, trying to do what he would have wanted.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘What more can you do?’