The Truth About Murder

by Chris Collett

  ‘We’re pretty certain,’ I said. ‘Although there’s always the possibility of an accident, of course. Have you got contact details for her daughter?’

  He nodded, dazed. ‘You said she was found on Thursday?’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult to tell where water is involved, but speaking from my limited experience, I’m guessing she could have been in there for up to a week. When did you talk to her?’

  ‘Oh Christ, I could have been among the last people to see her alive.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ I had to concede. ‘But not inevitable. Try not to have nightmares, eh?’

  He gave me the kind of look that that deserved.

  As we left the mortuary, I called the number Greaves had given me. Naturally, Andrea Todd was a in a shocked and delicate state when I picked her up from her workplace, and I was glad I had arranged for a family liaison officer, PC Emily Kendrick, to meet us at the mortuary. Miss Todd was keen to do the identification right away. She was hoping, of course, as relatives so often did, that we had made a mistake, even though I knew that we hadn’t. Afterwards however, she was unexpectedly calm — just utterly certain that her mother would not have taken her own life. I went along with it for now. There was no point in causing her further distress.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Plum and I returned to the office, utterly stunned by this development. We had spent much of the drive back in silence, both wrapped up in our own thoughts, even Plum short on cynical observations about the world in general. In my case, it meant turning over in my mind the meeting with Rita Todd and wondering how I could have failed to realise how vulnerable she was. It explained why she was dismissive of any offers of help — she must have known that she wouldn’t need it. All I could think of was what I could and should have said to her that afternoon that might have stopped her from taking her own life.

  Jake, too, was silent as he absorbed the news.

  ‘Did you get even the slightest hint that she was suicidal?’ he said after a while.

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, doubts beginning to creep in. ‘There was an impatience about her — a kind of nervous energy, like she was wired. But then, she wasn’t exactly straight with me about her situation. What we’ve been told this morning puts a different spin on things, too.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Rita wasn’t on leave, as she implied. She’d been suspended from work.’ I recounted our conversation with Ellen Campbell.

  ‘Shit. Why?’

  ‘That we don’t know exactly, but one of her colleagues has linked it to the deaths of babies on the ward.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘There’s obviously tension in that department. There’s been some radical restructuring, which doesn’t sound like it’s been to the benefit of the existing staff. Rita and her boss, a Mr Leonard, had fallen out about it. While she was here, she told me that “the faecal matter is about to hit the fan, but not in the way Andrea thinks”. Now I don’t know if that was about the suspension from the hospital, or what she was intending to do. Either way, I badly missed an opportunity.’

  ‘You weren’t to know that,’ Jake said immediately.

  ‘I tried to talk to Leonard, but when they checked, he was too busy.’

  ‘Avoidance?’

  ‘Possibly, but in fairness, as a consultant he would be in high demand.’

  ‘Well, it’s all immaterial now anyway, isn’t it?’ said Jake. ‘There will be an inquest, which will determine Rita’s state of mind. We might find out more then. There’s more bad news too,’ said Jake, after a moment. He passed me a letter. ‘Mr Asif and his family are leaving town. Too many bad memories here.’

  And who could blame them?

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Having identified Rita Todd, all I could do was wait now for the pathologist to do his stuff. But I was still having trouble focusing on anything useful. Most of all I wanted to do something for Denny, but I was barred from both the investigation and the funeral arrangements and I could see that his desk had been cleared. There was, however, one place left. I half expected, when I got there, to find his locker clean and bare, but was ludicrously pleased to find it in its usual chaotic state. This was something I could do. The family would want to take his belongings from here, too, so it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared.

  Tacked to the inside of the locker door alongside the usual family line-ups were a couple of photos of Denny with Kevin Booth. I’d never studied them before, but saw now that they were taken in happier times at social events. Both featured a number of empty or half-empty glasses in front of them, which had undoubtedly been instrumental in Kevin Booth’s drink problem. It made me wonder again what it was that had prompted his sudden departure. Dependence on alcohol was hardly something novel in this job. But those I’d spoken to had hinted that there was more to it than that. The few direct enquiries I’d made had met with a brick wall, meaning that people had liked Booth and were reluctant to bad-mouth him, which was interesting. And now that Denny had gone, I was unlikely to learn anything more.

  Like any copper’s locker, Denny’s was a repository for useless odds and ends: curled up copies of Police Review, a couple of crumpled and dusty T-shirts, a sports flask with the stopper missing, a ball of crushed plastic carrier bags. At the bottom, under it all, was a nylon drawstring bag with a sports logo on the side. That raised a smile. I couldn’t imagine Denny had ever done anything remotely athletic in his life. His boast was always that the closest he got to any physical activity was when he pressed the button to change channels on his television.

  I should have simply dumped the bag in the archive box along with everything else. What Denny chose to keep in his locker was nothing to do with me. But something — idle curiosity, I suppose — made me pull open the neck of the bag. What harm could it do to look? I tugged at the cord and peered inside. It took me several moments to make sense of what I saw, and although bewildering and initially meaningless, the contents made my heart thud with apprehension. Inside was a miscellaneous collection of purses, wallets and mobile phones, and a clear plastic bag stuffed with jewellery. I realised I was holding my breath.

  There had to be a rational explanation for this — lost property, perhaps, that Denny had forgotten to check in. Except that didn’t make sense. No one simply handed lost property to a copper, not in this quantity. This had to be more than oversight. And it was clear from its location that it had been deliberately stashed away from prying eyes. I stared uncomprehending for a couple of minutes, then, with clumsy fingers, reluctantly picked up one of the wallets and opened it up. It appeared intact, with credit cards but no cash and, according to the Visa debit card (which had recently passed its expiry date), belonged to Mr L. Jones. I tried another. It was old and battered, but again contained bank cards, library cards, a couple of minutely folded press cuttings, and a strip of pictures from a photo booth. All of which apparently belonged to an I. Whiteacre. I tried the phones. A couple of them were smartphones but the rest were old-fashioned mobiles. Most were dead, but one, the newest looking, had some life left in it.

  The contacts list was just names and numbers, but they were somehow less random than I had expected and halfway down I felt a horrible pang of recognition that made my stomach lurch. Fumbling through the remainder of the wallets, I came to the one that was thickest. Unlike the others, this one still contained a wad of cash, as well as the mandatory credit cards. By the time I took one out and read it, I’d already worked out whom it belonged to, courtesy of that address list. Stefan Greaves. I felt sick. What the hell did this mean? Greaves had been mugged and beaten for his wallet, watch and phone. Denny had told me that himself. So how had they all ended up at the bottom of his locker? He must have taken them from Greaves when he got to the scene, before I arrived. I thought back to how it had played out that evening.

  I seemed to remember that Denny had been typically uncommunicative that night, and more than a little on edge, another of those things I’d put
down to retirement nerves. We’d done the usual circuit of the Flatwood when Denny fancied a coffee. As he was driving at the time, he pulled up outside the high street fast-food place so that I could go and get us a couple of takeouts. Afterwards, he’d decided we should go and take a look up at the south end of the town. Anomaly one. I’d joked that the most we were likely to see up there was a bit of wife-swapping, but Denny had insisted we go on the grounds of some vague spate of burglaries, and convinced me that it was a reasonable use of our time. It was how we came to be so close to Meridian Close when the call came through from dispatch.

  Anomaly two: after establishing what was going on, Denny had sent me back to the car for the spare torch because his wasn’t working properly. By the time I returned, there was also a blanket covering Greaves, meaning that Denny must have sent Keeley away to fetch that, too. Left on his own with an unconscious victim, he would have had ample time and opportunity to relieve Greaves of his possessions and hide them about his person. Oh Denny, what had you been doing?

  The obvious conclusion was that this was about money, but it smacked of desperation and Denny surely wasn’t that desperate. He was retiring on a good pension and he’d told me himself that he and Sheila were minted when they’d sold the house to buy the property in Portugal. Besides, the cash was still here in Greaves’ wallet. It made me wonder if Denny had been having some kind of mental breakdown, but there would surely have been other visible symptoms. It might, however, explain why he had failed to take Greaves’ clothes for forensic examination. Was he completely losing the plot and I hadn’t noticed? Even if that were true, there was nothing to be gained by discrediting the man now. Turning these in would shatter his reputation, and for what? Denny had been a lot of things, but I felt certain that bent wasn’t one of them. There had to be some explanation. In addition, the discovery raised questions about Stefan Greaves’ attack. If he hadn’t been set on for his possessions, then what was that all about?

  I glanced at my watch. The locker room was quiet right now but there was a shift change due in about ten minutes. I needed time to think through all the possible implications before doing anything rash. There was no one around to see, so I stashed the bag inside my hold-all back in my own locker. Then I gathered all the other things from Denny’s locker and put them into the archive box to await collection.

  * * *

  On Friday evening, after what had seemed like an eternal week, I arrived at Cate’s flat at the appointed time. Her building was more upmarket than my place, with plush carpeted hallways and a proper concierge. When she opened the door to me, she had already changed, her towelling robe hanging open over a dark one-piece swimsuit that, from what I could see, accentuated all the right places.

  ‘The poolside facilities aren’t that great,’ she explained. ‘We’re better off getting changed up here.’ She handed me a robe almost identical to hers. ‘My sister and her family often come to stay. It’s a treat for the kids. So I keep spares,’ she added, in case I got the wrong idea. She directed me towards the guest bedroom, which, like the rest of her flat, was modern, functional and minimalist except for the framed photographs on almost every surface, one or two featuring Cate herself but most showing friends and family.

  ‘It’ll take me a few minutes,’ I warned her.

  ‘We’ve got all night.’

  Jesus. I hoped she wasn’t expecting too much. When I was ready, we went down to the basement in the lift. It being the middle of a Friday evening, there were only a handful of other people swimming, and unlike the local public baths, this was a very adult affair. Everyone was sedately swimming lengths and keeping their own distance, and all were too polite to take much notice of me, which was nice. There were no children. We joined in and gradually the pool emptied, leaving us and a lone middle-aged man in a hat and goggles ploughing up and down. Cate joined me in the shallow end.

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘Fantastic.’ It was no exaggeration. The water had a way of both supporting and relaxing me and I felt better than I had all week.

  She reached out and touched the bruising on my stomach.

  ‘Couple more weeks and it will all be gone.’ Despite the cool of the water, her touch burned into my flesh. I caught her hand, locking my fingers awkwardly around hers. The air sizzled a little between us. Seeing the other swimmer heading away from us towards the far end of the pool, I leaned forward and kissed Cate. At first she moved in, pressing her damp body against mine, but then she broke it off. Unimpressed by my technique, perhaps? But, as if reading my mind, she nodded at the CCTV camera high on the wall. ‘Strictly no petting in the pool,’ she said. ‘You’ll get me evicted.’

  We went up in the lift, each clutching the plastic bags that contained our costumes to avoid dripping all over the hallways, the air dense with anticipation in the knowledge that underneath the robes was nothing but bare flesh. But thanks to another camera, there would be no funny business in here either. Inside her flat, Cate headed for the kitchen.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she said.

  I did as I was told and sank down into the soft leather sofa. She reappeared minutes later with two glasses of red wine.

  ‘I know how partial you are to a nice burgundy,’ she said, handing one to me. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  We clinked glasses. Cate placed down her glass on the coffee table, then unfastened her robe, shook it loose from her shoulders, and let it drop.

  I gaped at her, and suddenly she was self-conscious.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You’re so . . . perfect,’ I whispered. See, there’s the rub. Despite all my own shortcomings, I’m a sucker for perfection, just like anyone else.

  Sitting down beside me, she tugged the belt on my robe and pulled it open.

  ‘Well,’ she murmured, moving her mouth towards mine, and running her hand up the inside of my thigh. ‘Laura wasn’t kidding. You have got a lot going for you.’

  Maybe she’d elaborately engineered it that way, but not having to wrestle with clothing made it the simplest and most relaxed foreplay I’d ever experienced and Cate seemed to read me faultlessly, allowing me the initiative, yet conscious of my limitations. We never made it as far as the bedroom, and afterwards lay on the sofa, limbs intertwined and wrapped in a blanket.

  ‘I should cook dinner,’ she said, eventually, sliding out of the blanket and into her robe again. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t take long.’

  ‘Want any help?’

  ‘Give me ten minutes and then you can set the table.’

  I was nervous about the meal, hoping that my body wouldn’t let me down by making me spit dim sum all over her. But if I did, Cate seemed to take it all in her stride. We sat at the table for a while after we’d eaten, until I started to get uncomfortable.

  ‘My ribs,’ I said, which was partly the truth.

  ‘Do the police have any ideas about who attacked you yet?’ Cate asked when we’d settled back on the sofa.

  ‘Not really. They took my wallet, watch and phone so chances are it was theft, probably drug-related.’

  ‘Hmm, so the voluntary sterilisation programme hasn’t started to take effect yet.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Yes, I was rather shocked too,’ she said, swirling her wine in the glass. ‘A memo got circulated a couple of months ago from the health trust, giving GPs the opportunity to sign up to a pilot scheme that would offer voluntary sterilisation to people with drug and alcohol abuse issues — smackhead begets smackhead is the theory — and pay them accordingly. See, if I had signed up, maybe you wouldn’t have been attacked.’ Her sardonic expression said she didn’t really believe it.

  ‘That sounds pretty radical.’

  ‘It’s come over here from the States, of course. It’s quite popular there, I understand.’

  ‘Are you going to sign up?’

  ‘Absolutely not. There are all kinds of ethical issues I would struggle with. I’ve dealt with my fair
share of substance abusers and I don’t know how anyone could be sure that they were in a condition to make a rational decision about something like that, especially when there are financial rewards on offer. It plays to their addiction because naturally, in the short-term, they’ll take the money and run. On the other hand, the argument is that it would reduce the numbers of children being born with drug dependency and foetal alcohol syndrome. That’s where it gets tricky, when you have a chance to alleviate the suffering of children. Ultimately, you’re balancing the rights of the unborn child against those of the adult. It’s a very controversial scheme, which is probably why it’s only been suggested as a pilot so far.’

  ‘Do you know if anyone is taking it on?’

  ‘Not yet, although even if they were, I’m not sure it’s something that colleagues would openly admit to. I think some of them might privately be in favour of it and there are some tempting funding incentives attached. On the other hand, it can be very costly, supporting addicts. I’ve heard rumours about having some kind of central facility in the area to manage it, presumably because on an individual level people are reluctant. Anyway,’ she added, with a smile, putting a hand on my thigh. ‘This is all getting a bit too much like work, and I thought you’d come round to play.’

  * * *

  I’d been slow to catch on with the concept of brunch, and I hadn’t remembered ever having had it before, but when Cate suggested at about ten thirty on Saturday morning that we get up and go out to eat, it seemed like not a bad idea. She took me to somewhere new — always a challenge, but good for me.

  We found a booth towards the back of the restaurant, Cate facing the door. Brunch turned out to be less of a deal than I expected. Coffee and pastries was about all we could manage. We were on our second round of cappuccinos when the door pinged and a couple entered the restaurant.

  Cate exclaimed in recognition. ‘Guy! Joss! How lovely to see you!’

  They came over to our table, all smiles. We both, in my case rather awkwardly, got to our feet and there were hugs all round. Then Cate turned to me.