by Lizzie Lewis
We have an outside light in the porch of the small modern house we’re renting, and a spy lens fitted in the door. I can see a man and a woman there, so it looks as though I’ll be safe if I open the door.
“Mrs Jones?” the man says. It’s a man I barely recognise from Sam’s work, but behind him is a female police officer whom I do know, but not well. Detective Constable Courtney Jacobs. And they both look ... glum. There’s no other word to describe them.
“I’m Detective Inspector Dickinson,” the man says, as I open the front door wider. He’s probably in his early fifties, and he’s almost bald. His moustache is rather straggly, too. “I know it’s late, but please may we come in.”
It’s not really a question.
“I’m afraid we have something to tell you,” Courtney says. “We’d like you to sit down.”
I know police have to do this sort of thing when they bring bad news. Ask the person to sit down and then break it to them gently. Someone has died.
Are they here with news about my parents in Poland? Surely Aunt Magdalena would have let me know. She wouldn’t have left it to the local police.
I don’t need to be told who it is.
“It’s Sam, isn’t it?” I say, as Courtney gently takes hold of my arm and leads me into the sitting room.
She waits until I sit down heavily in the armchair by the fireplace. It’s not really a fireplace. It’s an electric fire with a surround to make it look a bit old-fashioned. I wonder why I’m even thinking about it.
“Was it an accident?” I ask, for there is no doubt in my mind that Sam is dead.
The two officers look at each other, and I’m wondering why they hesitate.
Courtney reaches across from where she’s sitting on the sofa and holds my hand. I don’t pull it away. There’s something about Courtney that I empathise with. She’s not exactly a friend, but we’ve met a few times socially.
“Please tell me what’s happened,” I say. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Courtney just nods.
“Was it an accident?” I repeat. There’s something odd about the way the two police detectives keep looking at each other.
“Was he killed on a drugs raid?” I’m fishing for answers, but I know Sam is involved in an investigation into one of the large drug dealing gangs. He’s been quite excited lately, telling me he’s really onto something, but he says it’s a bit soon to share it at work. He just needs to carry out a few more checks.
“I’m sorry,” Courtney says, “but we can’t say yet. There’s going to be an investigation, of course.”
“Where is he now? Where did he die? Was anyone else involved?” The questions keep coming before I can stop myself. “Where did he die?” I decide that’s the most important question for now, so I repeat it.
“It was at the bridge over the Brevel by the Old Mill Factory Outlet,” Detective Inspector Dickinson says. I can see drops of sweat on his moustache. This isn’t easy for any of us. I need to put on a show of bravery, no matter what I’m feeling inside.
The River Brevel is quite wide by the Old Mill, and there’s a high stone bridge that would probably have been quite busy when the cotton mill was active until the early 1950s. The massive building is still there, and it’s recently been restored and divided up into various retail outlets, with a small museum containing several of the weaving mills that people can walk around and even touch.
This whole part of the country was an area once rich in cotton mills. The majority of them have been demolished, and others turned into offices and workshops. Or shopping centres – like ours here in Brevelstone. I really do need to concentrate.
“Under the bridge?” I ask, thinking of the dark spaces underneath the arch that would be ideal for drug dealing at night. “Was he alone?”
I see Officers Dickinson and Courtney Jacobs look at each other again. It’s not any sort of personal attraction. They are clearly embarrassed.
“He was on his own,” DI Dickinson says abruptly. “It seems that he ... fell. I regret to say that your husband was found dead under the bridge by the uniformed police, following a phone call from a concerned member of the public.”
Courtney Jacobs says, “It seems he died instantly from the fall. I’m so sorry.” And she squeezes my hand harder.
I’m trying to take this in. Sam is dead. My husband will never come through the front door again with his cheery voice. I’m a widow. Should I be feeling proud that Sam died in the course of duty? I can’t get my head round it. Nothing seems real. I know it’s a cliché, but any moment I’m going to wake up and laugh about a bad dream. Isn’t that what everybody thinks when they get news like this?
“When you say he fell, you mean as he was fighting with someone?”
“All I’m permitted to say at the moment, Mrs Jones, is that he ... fell,” DI Dickinson mumbles. The man is sweating.
“On his own?” What’s he saying?
Courtney Jacobs lets go of my hand and pats it gently. “We are not in a position to say what happened, Janika. Not just yet. We’ll be able to reveal more details later.”
“Mrs Jones,” DI Dickinson says, “I’m afraid we have a small amount of business to attend to now we’re here. We’re going to need your computer and both your phones. Just for now. There may be information of interest to us on them.”
“We only have one laptop between us,” I hear myself saying, as though in a dream. “And why do you need my phone? Sam never used it.”
“I’m sorry, Janika,” Courtney says. “You’ll get them back in a couple of days. It’s just routine.”
“You’re welcome to our laptop, as long as you don’t mess it up. But Sam had his phone with him. Presumably you can recover it.”
Detective Inspector Dickinson and Detective Constable Courtney Jacobs look at each other again. Then DI Dickinson says, “No, he definitely didn’t have his phone. Would you mind looking for it, in case he left it here.”
I shake my head. “He wouldn’t do that. Hang on, I’ll ring it just in case.”
My phone is in my bag, and I speed dial Sam’s number. I can hear the ringing tone on my phone, but there’s silence in the house. “There you are, I told you Sam had it with him.”
DI Dickinson says something to Courtney that I don’t catch as I jump up to get our laptop. DI Dickinson comes with me. I’m not sure at this stage if he’s trying to be helpful, or if he wants to make sure I don’t leave anything behind, like a memory stick or spare hard drive.
It’s ten minutes later now, and Detective Inspector Dickinson has gone, taking everything electronic he could find. Courtney Jacobs has stayed, to make sure I settle down. Settle down? I’m never going to settle down.
I’m still wondering what’s happened to Sam’s phone. He took it with him, so why didn’t they find it when they recovered ... his body? Well, if some opportunist thief has found it, the files on there won’t be much use to them.
“Sam unlocked his phone with his fingerprint,” I tell Courtney. “If you do find it, it’s no use bringing it back to me. All I know is that without using the fingerprint pad it needs a numeric pin, and I’ve no idea what it is. So I wouldn’t be able to use it anyway.”
Courtney is looking at me, and I have a feeling she’s suspicious of any husband who keeps his phone locked. Well, if that is what she’s really thinking, she’s wrong. Sam and I have no secrets. Had no secrets. I’m sure of that. A detective in the CID is entitled to have secrets on his phone. Work secrets, of course. Anyway, in the evening he would often pass me the phone and let me browse through the photographs he’d taken during the day. When the phone was unlocked I had free access to everything, and I know he wouldn’t have done that if there was anything compromising on there. Love you, Sam, you know I always trusted you.
If Sam really did have information on there of interest to whoever murdered him, I can only hope they didn’t unlock it with his finger after he fell. I presume a dead finger works just as well as a live one. I don�
�t feel like discussing the matter with Courtney, and I just shrug.
She offers to stay the night, and explains its part of her duties, but I tell her I would rather be on my own. It’s after midnight when she leaves. I need to phone my parents in Poland, but maybe not now. It will be the early hours of the morning there. Anyway, I don’t have a phone. I can’t even phone my friends.
<><><><>
It’s three days later, and I’ve worked myself up into a terrible state. Although DI Dickinson didn’t warn me, he came back the next morning with a team with a warrant to search the house. Courtney came too, looking embarrassed. She did her best to calm me down and assure me they weren’t investigating Sam.
They already have Sam’s fingerprints on record, and now they’ve taken mine. Simply to rule out our fingerprints on any equipment they find. I hope that’s the reason. I don’t have a police record, so I shouldn’t really be anxious.
They have reason to believe Sam left a notebook or some other record of what he’s been doing. It’s possible he’s put together some names, but not yet recorded them officially at work. I told them to get on with the search while I went for a walk to try and clear my head.
I couldn’t keep away from the house for long, and when I got back I asked when they were going to return my laptop, because I needed it to email various people. I gathered it hadn’t yet shown anything of interest, and I would get it back in a couple of days ‒ unless there was a need to keep it for evidence. Evidence of what, DI Dickinson didn’t elucidate, but he returned my phone, which meant I could contact my parents and one or two other people who needed to know.
That was two days ago. More details of Sam’s death have been revealed. Horrible ones. There’s going to be an inquest. Detective Inspector Dickinson, who seems to be in charge of the case, has already told me what the outcome of the inquest is going to be. Not likely to be, but what it’s going to be. Suicide.
I can see why things are heading this way, because to someone who didn’t know Sam, suicide would seem like the easy option. The landlord is about to evict us, because we’re three months behind with the rent. It’s not Sam’s fault, and it’s not really mine. We weren’t even managing to keep up with the rent and utility bills when we were both working. A young detective in the local CID doesn’t earn a lot. When I lost my job at the hairstylists because of the need to reduce overheads with a diminishing customer base, we ran up against a brick wall. And an uncompromising and heartless landlord.
Brevelstone is by far the largest town in the area and the economy is in a bad way, with lots of closed businesses. We were planning to move in with Sam’s friends because we wouldn’t be able to rent another property with such a bad financial record. Landlords always check on the status of a potential tenant. When I told my parents we were being evicted, my father told us we could stay with them in Poland, but I had some unhappy years there with Bruno Kamiński, which is the reason I came back to England four years ago. And Brevelstone is where I met my lovely Sam Jones.
Courtney has called in to check up on me, and our impending eviction somehow gets mentioned. It seems that our financial and housing status hasn’t been a secret at work.
Courtney explains that Sam and I being desperately short of money won’t necessarily lead the coroner to bring in a verdict of suicide. But it will be a contributing factor.
“I know Sam was working on a project to trace a major drugs distributor working out of Brevelstone. He told me he wanted to be sure of his facts before presenting the evidence to DI Dickinson.”
Courtney is nodding. “That’s what we were hoping to find on your laptop. So you don’t know if Sam’s left a notebook or folder that maybe he’s hidden away for security?”
“Wouldn’t it be at work?”
Courtney shrugs. “That’s what we were looking for in the house search. I’m so, so sorry that your privacy was invaded like that. Especially as we found nothing of interest. Well, if you come across anything, you must let me know immediately, and I’ll pass it on.”
I ask Courtney about the inquest, and she tells me it’s important I get a solicitor to represent me when it takes place. I ask why.
“I shouldn’t be the one to be telling you this,” Courtney says. “It’s going to be mentioned at the inquest. A woman made a phone call.”
Although I didn’t really take it in at the time, I remember Detective Inspector Dickinson mentioning a phone call. I’m waiting for Courtney to go on. She doesn’t seem to know exactly how to phrase it. I guess she’s betraying confidences, and that annoys me. Not that she’s betraying anything, but this is important information I don’t know, and I clearly need to know it.
“We have a recording received from a mobile phone,” Courtney explains at last, swallowing hard. “An unidentified woman phoned 999 to say she could see a man standing on the parapet of Mill Bridge, and she was afraid he was about to jump. She asked the police to come quickly.”
I feel the blood draining from my face. This can’t be true.
“That’s all we know,” Courtney says. “I’m so sorry, Janika. The woman screamed and then the phone went dead. So, that must be the moment‒‒‒‒”
I cut her off. There’s no need for Courtney to say any more. My head feels weird, but perhaps I need to know the truth. “Who is she? I want to talk to her. Perhaps there’s been a mistake.”
Through my tears I can see Courtney shaking her head. “We’ve not been able to trace her. Not yet.”
“Didn’t anyone get her phone number?”
“I’m so sorry, Janika. I really am. Unfortunately, the phone wasn’t registered to anyone.”
“Isn’t that suspicious?” Is that a silly question? Actually, it’s a sensible question. A very sensible question. Alarm bells are already ringing.
Courtney is shaking her head again. “Not that uncommon, Janika. A lot of people buy a phone with a SIM card with money already on it. They can go to the supermarket or a cash point to top it up. There’s currently no legal requirement in England for anyone to register a phone, and since it’s a lot of trouble, plenty of people don’t bother. Which doesn’t help the emergency services, of course.”
“No way would Sam take his own life,” I say, probably sounding like a robot. It’s not something I’ve rehearsed, it’s just something I know. Yes, we’re short of money. Stony broke, in fact. About to lose our home, but Sam taking his life wasn’t going to help. He must have known our life insurance wouldn’t pay out on the new policy. And it’s not likely I’ll get any money from the police. Not like I would if Sam died in the course of his duties.
“Was he on duty?” I ask. “He said he was working that evening.”
Courtney comes really close to me. It’s like we’re best friends, although we don’t know each other well. It’s a friendship I welcome. “He was on duty until eight,” she says. “The phone call was received just after 9:30.”
“Maybe Sam was following somebody and couldn’t just walk away,” I say. “Underneath that bridge would be a good place for drug deals to take place. He might have been hiding down there in the shadows, and afraid to leave in case they spotted him. Surely he can run up overtime if the job demands it.”
Courtney shakes her head. “He definitely fell from the roadway. There’s no nice way to say this, Janika, but there are traces of blood where he hit his head on one of the bridge piers on the way down. It will all come out at the inquest, so you might as well hear it from me now.”
A sudden idea jumps into my head. It’s obvious. “He was leaning over to see what was happening below, and he leaned over too far and fell.” No, that doesn’t seem right. “Apart from the woman’s phone call, of course,” I add.
“I’m sorry” Courtney says, patting my hand again. It’s an action I find surprisingly comforting.
I’m guessing Courtney is slightly younger than me. Probably not yet thirty, but I gather she’s been with the police a long time. This means she likely knows what she’s talking about
, but something doesn’t fit easily with me. Sam isn’t ... wasn’t ... someone who would walk away from problems. We talked about our financial difficulties sensibly. Sam has friends in town and they’ve invited us to stay with them. They have a large Victorian house with plenty of room to spare. Much worse things happen to people than being temporarily homeless.
I take a deep breath, trying not to be sick. It was bad enough when Courtney came round with DI Dickinson to break the news of Sam’s death. At the time I was convinced he’d been killed in the course of duty. Suicide? My whole life is falling apart.
Courtney is standing up, as though ready to leave. I pull her back onto the sofa where we’ve been sitting together. “What do you think, Courtney? Did Sam take his own life?”
I can see she doesn’t want to commit herself. Or, more likely, doesn’t want to tell me that she suspects he did.
“Is there any chance of tracking down the woman who made the phone call?” I ask. I’m probably clutching at straws, and I know I’m in denial. So would anybody be who knows Sam. Knew Sam.
Courtney Jacobs doesn’t shake her head, but her expression tells me everything. “I’m sorry, Janika.”
I’m not going to let it go. Yes, I’m going to need Sam’s life insurance and some sort of police pension – or whatever it is for death during official duty. But that’s not the point. Sam did not take his own life. I’d bet my own life on it.
I look up at Courtney and her eyes meet mine. “Courtney, you’re my only hope. I don’t feel like confiding in your Detective Inspector. He seems a moody sort of man.”
“Roger Dickinson has things on his mind,” Courtney says. “Family matters. He has a wife and two children. They’ve just left him.”
Well, that explains why he seems rather lacking in enthusiasm. An idea occurs to me. “Courtney, will you help me investigate Sam’s death?”
