But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation

  Chapter One

  “Hello? Do I have the right number for Sarah Bradley?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Could I speak to her?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “It’s rather important that I do. If I ring back in a few minutes?”

  “Afraid not – she won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. Who is this?”

  “Irene Miller, from Rosemary House. That’s Mr Bradley, isn’t it?”

  “Hello Miss Miller – yes, Tony Bradley. Has she had another fall? What’s she broken this time?”

  There was a pause and he wondered whether he had sounded a little too irritated, a little too offhand.

  “It’s not that, Mr Bradley. I … should really speak to Sarah. She’s the named person and I… Does she have a mobile?”

  “She’s at a show in London.” He glanced down at his watch – almost half past nine. “And I expect she’ll have the thing turned off as usual. What’s this about?”

  “Well, in the absence of your wife, Mr Bradley, I should tell you then – Joan has passed away this evening. I’m sorry to be the bearer of such dreadful news. And I’m sorry to pass on to you the responsibility of telling Sarah. It’s come as a shock to us all here.”

  Tony Bradley held the phone away from his ear for a moment and looked at it as if it had developed a fault. Eventually he heard a tinny, disembodied voice asking him if he was alright.

  “Passed away? How? We only came to see her this morning. She looked right as rain. What happened?”

  “We don’t know, Mr Bradley. It wasn’t a fall. One of the carers found her sitting in her chair and thought she had fallen asleep but… The doctor is on her way, and the police are here already.”

  “The police?”

  “It’s the procedure with any sudden death, Mr Bradley. Don’t read anything into-”

  “It’s sudden alright. If anything she seemed better this morning. God knows what Sarah will say. If she’d had another fall… Was it her heart, then?”

  “I really can’t say. She was 78, with various conditions. I’m very sorry, Mr Bradley. We will all miss her. I don’t know what else I can say. It’s up to the doctor now to tell us how this happened.”

  Another pause. He had not drawn the blinds across the back window. The small, cold garden beyond it was invisible; he could see only the streaks of rain across his own dark reflection.

  “Yes, I’m sorry to ask stupid questions. It’s the shock, isn’t it – you don’t know what to say. I’ll send a text and a voice-mail to Sarah, tell her to ring me as soon as possible. She’ll get a train or a taxi or something… They went on a coach. Pantomime – ‘Puss in Boots’. And I’ll call her brother, Geoff. He’ll have to drive from Wrexham.”

  “Will you be alright, Mr Bradley? I know she wasn’t your mother but we get close to people, don’t we? Is there anyone you can call on?”

  He pulled the blinds and then sat down at the desk they used to sort out the bills and VAT receipts.

  “No, I’ll be fine, Miss Miller. It just comes as a shock when you hear it – but as you say, she was getting on and not in the best of health, I suppose. You must have a hundred things to do. Can I just ask what happens next, I mean tonight?”

  “Of course. Dr Tremewan will be here shortly. She will examine Joan’s – examine Joan. I’ve no doubt that she will have a few questions for us, and then she will probably sign a death certificate, all being well. She will arrange for Joan to be taken somewhere to be looked after properly.”

  “Probably sign it? I don’t really know anything about all this.”

  “Well, it’s not my field either – but if she thinks it is plainly natural causes and related to Joan’s medical history, she can complete the certificate. On the other hand, it is a sudden death. I don’t know Dr Tremewan well, she hasn’t been at the practice long but she’s been in several times recently, and she did see Joan. In fact…”

  Bradley heard her turn away from the phone. As he waited, he pulled open the file drawer of the desk.

  “Yes, she was here only yesterday. She saw three of our ladies, and Joan was one of them. Isn’t that ironic? I suppose it might help her decide.”

  “What will happen to the body – to Joan? In case Sarah asks.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she will be taken to Kings Lake General some time tonight. I can give you a number.”

  “No, we’ll manage. You’ve been very patient, Miss Miller, and very thoughtful. I’ll let you get on – these things must be a nightmare for you. Thank you.”

  “It isn’t the nicest part of my job, Mr Bradley. If there is anything else, just ring me.”

  Bradley repeated his thanks and put down the phone. He leaned back into the swivel chair and raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, as he might have done if he had won ten pounds on a lottery ticket. Then he looked down into the drawer. It was the first box file he saw, marked on the back in black felt-tip pen with his wife’s small, square capitals – ‘Mum’s Stuff’. He knew what the house had been sold for, to pay for the care, and he knew that she had been at Rosemary House for not quite two years. Not the cheapest place by a long way, he’d pointed that out at the time, but he had a rough idea what would be left. To look at it now would be a bit ghoulish, though. It would come round soon enough. The will wasn’t going anywhere now.

  Irene Miller put down the phone and looked up as the young uniformed policeman came back into the office. Neither of them spoke for a moment, and both were thinking that a long night now lay ahead of them.

  “I’m sorry, constable, I didn’t catch your name in all the confusion.”

  “PC Richard Ford, Kings Lake central.”

  As he answered, he took out a small tablet device from one of the numerous pockets and pouches that were situated all over his jacket and waistcoat.

  “You’re local then?”

  “Yes – Lake born and bred.”

  “Have you been to one of these before?”

  “Yes, a couple. Would you mind if I got some of the routine out of the way before the next lot arrive?”

  “No, not at all. Go ahead. When you went up just now, the room was locked, wasn’t it? It should have been – they all know what to do.”

  “Yes, locked up, with someone sitting outside.”

  “Kipras. He was close to her, to Joan. They always have their favourites.”

  “You mean the carers?”

  “I meant the residents but the carers do it too – form attachments. It can cause complications.”

  PC Ford tapped on the screen, waiting for the appropriate pages to load; these new tablets probably were the way forward but it didn’t take this long to find a new page in a notebook. Still, there wouldn’t be much typing up to do, just plug it in and press ‘print’. His eyes looked past the screen to the manager of the care home. For her, apparently, close relationships between the carers and their – what, patients, customers, clients? – were a cause of complications. It seemed an odd thing to say, but the desk was tidy, and the filing cabinets around the room were new, clearly labelled and dust-free. He glanced back at the woman herself; late thirties, trim, short dark hair, no wedding ring.

  “Here we go then – sorry for the wait. The lady was found at what time?”

  Irene Miller looked down at the A4 pad on her desk.

  “Eight minutes past nine – 21.08.”

  “Thanks. And it’s the 6th of the twelth…”

  She watched him as he tapped away.

  “Found by?”

  “Kayleigh Greene, with an ‘e’.”

  “One of your carers?”

  “Yes.”

/>   “You’ve got all their details here if someone needs to speak to any of them?”

  He pointed around the room at the filing cabinets and shelves of manuals, and she nodded.

  “The body hasn’t been moved or touched at all?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  The constable looked up and frowned.

  “Well, there would have been a fuss as soon as she was discovered. Other carers would have gone into the room. Someone might have touched her, felt for a pulse or something – but she was found in her chair and that’s where she still is. As far as I know.”

  There was no box on the screen into which Ford could type the phrase ‘a little defensive’. He held the manager’s gaze for a little longer, flipped the cover over the tablet and held out a hand towards the office door.

  “No telling how long this doctor will be on a Saturday night. I’ll go up and take a look inside myself. If you’d like to accompany me…”

  Irene Miller stood up. He might be young but he didn’t lack confidence. Did his eyes glance down and follow her as she passed him and went by the door he was holding open for her? He might have confidence, then, but he lacked some sort of experience. It hardly mattered.

  Kipras Kazlauskas unlocked the door and then handed the key to Miss Miller – it would not be right for him to hold onto it with the manager and the uniformed officer of the law present, though he would have had difficulty explaining how he knew that to be the case. Then he stood just inside the doorway, uncertain of his part now that the room he had been guarding was open once more.

  Someone had forgotten to draw the curtains. As a result, the old woman’s right side was faintly illuminated by the orange glow from a security lamp out in the car park. The profile of her face was outlined by that lurid light. Kipras wanted to step in and close off the window, it seemed to him a little indecent, but then the manager turned on the light-switch that someone else must have turned off as a mark of respect.

  Joan Riley had been kind to him – he muttered the name silently to himself a couple of times. Joan Riley had been kind to him and now she was dead. Some of the others teased him, some of the others resented him and his foreignness, and made little attempt to hide the fact, but this old lady had been kind. She had asked about his family back in Lithuania. He had sat on her bed and shown her the photographs on his phone. Then he had brought in more old photographs, real ones, and she had asked about his grandparents. In time he had ventured questions about her own people, and after that, whenever he was on duty, he would pop into her room and they would laugh and inquire after each other’s relatives as if they had lived on the same street all of their lives. Sometimes she would seek him out as he worked in someone else’s room and in time he had been accepted by more of them – in time the little group that always sat at the same window table in the day room began to call him ‘Kip’ and he liked that.

  The policeman looked around the room and said nothing for at least one minute. Kipras followed his gaze and wondered what there was to see. Everything was tidy, as it always was in this room. The only thing out of place was the glass over on its side by the chair in which the old woman was sitting. There was no stain on the carpet – the glass must have been empty when it tipped over – but he wanted to go in and pick it up, wanted to place it the right way up on her bedside table where it belonged.

  The policeman stepped over to the body of Joan Riley, turned and spoke to the manager. It was a new and unfamiliar voice – Kipras didn’t catch all that was said but it was something about whether this was her usual chair, her usual position. The manager answered yes, but she didn’t know, not as well as Kipras, who was here almost every day, sometimes ten or twelve hours a day. They never asked him, hardly knew he was there but he could have told them that the chair had been moved to face the window; yes, this was her favourite but it was always at the end of her bed, not there by the window.

  Bending down, the policeman looked into Joan Riley’s face. The eyes were closed. The policeman might think that she died like that but Kipras was the second person into the room, after he heard Kayleigh’s call for help, and Mrs Riley’s eyes had been open then. Someone had closed them, had touched the face in order to close them. He did not know whether this mattered but if he spoke up there might be questions – who touched her? Did you touch her? What else did you do in this room? What have you taken? It is often better to say nothing, he thought, in such situations.

  Richard Ford looked around the room and tried to imagine that he was not in uniform. What might he be wearing in a situation like this in future? He had been told by Detective Inspector Reeve that his application for CID was a good one, that for someone with his record it was only a matter of time – but the cuts and the reorganization had slowed things up for everybody, not just him.

  He noticed the glass on the floor immediately but if it had been on the arm of the chair, she might have knocked it off at any point, whether or not she was having a heart attack. The manager told him that this was where Mrs Riley sat of an evening, if she wasn’t down in the day room. When he examined the face more closely, he could see no trace of fluids from the mouth or nostrils – he had been to enough crime scenes now to have an idea of what to look for, and he was rather proud of the fact that bodies didn’t bother him much at all, unlike others he could name.

  Straightening up, he looked around the rest of the room. The bed was made, slippers and shoes tucked neatly under the table that was against the back wall. Built-in wardrobes that he was tempted to open and inspect but that might be going too far. The room was en suite and had its own small kitchen; Ford knew that Rosemary House was one of the more comfortable, and probably more expensive, homes in Kings Lake. He sniffed but there was not the smell of age that he had noticed in one or two other places. It was all clean and light, with pictures on the walls, some commercial but one or two looked like originals, naïve and colourful portraits probably done by grandchildren. Hopefully it was a long way off, but if it came to it, he wouldn’t mind his own parents coming to a place like this.

  There wasn’t much more that he could do, and a somewhat awkward silence grew in the room. He walked over the window as if the view from it might be important, and tried to remember the code, the sequence of events after any sudden death. He had secured access to the body, had ensured that a medical practitioner was sent for, had collected some factual information about the deceased…

  That was it, really. He was about to ask that the room be locked again when steps outside in the corridor caught his attention. They all turned towards the doorway. Irene Miller gesticulated towards the carer that he should push the door to, obviously fearing that another resident might wander in and see the body, but before he could do so a woman had appeared, a woman in a green tracksuit, carrying a doctor’s black bag.

  She was flushed and a little breathless, knew that there would be colour in her cheeks – she had hurried even though her return phone call to Rosemary House had made it perfectly clear that her patient was already dead.

  The manager said to the policeman, “This is Dr Tremewan,” and the policeman nodded and waited.

  The doctor went across to the body of the old woman and put down her bag.

  “So it is Mrs Riley. How odd. I spoke to her only yesterday.”

  “And did you examine her?”

  The policeman’s voice seemed abrupt and left behind it another awkward silence. The doctor and the manager exchanged a glance.

  “Not fully. It was a routine visit, part of a new approach to the work we do in care homes. We just drop in more socially, have a quick chat and do any checks that seem appropriate. It’s less threatening for some of the residents, less intrusive than formal visits.”

  She could have just said no. The policeman sensed that he had stepped on someone’s professional toes but he could not let it end quite yet.

  “And she seemed well?”

  “I made notes, as always. You are welcome to a copy of them.
”

  And then she turned away from him to the manager.

  “It’s Irene, isn’t it? Phew! Just about got my breath back – we were playing badminton at the school. Right – let’s have a look at the poor thing.”

  She had done this a number of times now but it still felt odd having an audience, as if she was back on her training ward. She did the basic vital signs checks, and they might think that absurd, but there was a protocol for everything, and she knew them by heart. She noticed the blood beginning to pool at the extremities but not heavily – a lay person would not see it. The jaw was relaxed and she could feel inside the mouth – no obstructions or fluids. Tilting the head back and using her torch, she looked into the mouth but could see no signs of trauma, no bitten tongue. The body wasn’t cold yet, either.

  She took a thermometer and placed it inside the mouth, holding the lower jaw closed a little.

  “I know this looks odd but it can sometimes help to calculate the time of death. Especially if they do another reading at the hospital later on.”

  The care assistant standing in the doorway looked upset and she tried to smile at him reassuringly as she waited for the reading. Overhead, the light bulb was beginning to buzz, and out in the corridor there were voices. An old woman’s voice said “Why not?” and then came the sound of her being led away by others. Several times the “Why not” was repeated, each fainter than the last until the corridor was quiet once more.

  Miriam Tremewan had to think quickly, and she left the thermometer in a little longer than was necessary, to give herself time. Mrs Riley had seemed well yesterday afternoon. They had chatted briefly in her room, the doctor listening and smiling and then bringing the subject around again to the various health issues of her patient, until she was satisfied. And she had been completely satisfied that Mrs Riley was doing as well as she was ever likely to. Of course, she had not listened to the heart but there were no signs here of a catastrophic heart event. Quite the reverse, in fact – Joan Riley appeared to have died the most peaceful of deaths.