But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation Page 16

  “No. That is what happened.”

  “And what about you?”

  “About me? I do not-”

  “I mean, have you missed anything out?”

  The detective’s expression was still friendly, the eyes were still smiling, but something had changed. Kipras frowned as if trying to remember and shook his head slightly but the policeman said nothing more.

  “No, I have told everything, that is what happened.”

  “In that case, Detective Constable Waters will read something to us.”

  Waters picked up the notes that Smith had made during the interviews with Martin Collins and Ralph Greenwood and read aloud the parts that pertained to the assistance given to Collins by Kipras that night, when he had found himself unable to get out of the toilets. When he read aloud the times, Smith interrupted and asked him to repeat those details, watching Kipras’s face pointedly as he did so. When it was over, Smith sat with his palms raised and a look of mystification on his face.

  “Kip, you see our problem. These two gentlemen are not going to have made a mistake about the night on which that happened, are they? And they have independently told us the same time at which it happened. We could even check the TV schedule to see what time that football match was on. So…?”

  It was only momentary but Smith did not miss the first reaction on the carer’s face – it was a look of relief. He knew then that Kipras had been expecting something else, something worse – he knew then, too, that his suspicions about the nature of the relationship between Joan Riley and Kazlauskas were probably correct.

  “For five minutes, maybe for ten, yes. I forgot this – I did go to Martin. But I took the key, and when I got back there is no-one there. All was OK. I forgot this but I think it caused no harm.”

  “Kipras, did you go into Mrs Riley’s room yourself, after Ms Miller told you what to do?”

  The detective wasn’t smiling any more.

  “No, I did not.”

  “To your knowledge, did anyone else go into the room? Did you let anyone into the room?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think that anyone else might have gone into the room during the time that you were away from it?”

  Waters’ head was motionless but his eyes followed the questions back to the recipient each time, as if he was watching a game of tennis; somehow Smith had got to the net and Kipras was somewhere out beyond the baseline. This time the ball did not come back – there was only an awkward silence.

  To Smith, the explanation was simple. Fundamentally honest people will sometimes lie but they do not enjoy it, and they are not very good at it. He had concluded some time ago that Kipras Kazlauskas was fundamentally honest and so the sooner they could get past this opening exchange, the better for all concerned. When the silence had gone on a little too long, Smith sighed and placed his hands on the table, as if he was laying out the cards that he held.

  “Kipras – you are holding up this investigation. You are wasting our valuable time. I have to tell you that we’re dealing with the easy matter first. After this, I’m going to ask you to explain why you said that Mrs Riley was a generous person, and then I’m going to ask you about the missing one hundred pounds. At this rate, you’re going to be late for work, son.”

  He wanted to tell them everything but the sergeant would not make any promises. That in itself made Kipras trust him a little; the detective said it himself, that it would be very easy for him to make all sorts of promises now, here, in this informal interview that was still not being recorded, but he would not do so. If Kipras had broken the law, he would be charged – but if he had not, then maybe he would be able to keep his job. Only after he had told them what he knew would the policeman be able to decide.

  When the room had been locked the first time, Mrs Riley’s eyes had still been open. This was not a sight that he would forget or be mistaken about – her head tilted against the back of the chair, her eyes open, staring sightlessly out of the window. And the chair had been moved to that position, it was not in its usual place. It was a heavy chair, too heavy for Mrs Riley to have moved on her own since she became quite weak. The sergeant asked him again – could someone have closed the old lady’s eyes when the room was unlocked the first time, Ms Miller perhaps, but he was sure that this had not happened; when he opened the door for the manager and the policeman, the first thing he had done was to look at Mrs Riley again – and her eyes were closed.

  The two detectives talked quietly to each other, and the young one who had brought Kipras to the station left the room. Kipras was asked if he would like a fresh cup of tea, and then the sergeant began to read again through the papers in front of him, and through a little black notebook. After a minute or two, Kipras looked at his phone to check the time; he was not sure of the way from here – he would be late for work, for the first time.

  About ten minutes later the young detective returned.

  “Did you manage to speak to Olive?”

  “Yes, on the phone.”

  “You didn’t call her Olive, did you? If you did, your career might have just come to an abrupt end. What did she say? It’s a pretty weird question.”

  “Most unlikely – she has never heard of it.”

  The sergeant turned to Kipras.

  “It would appear, then, that if Mrs Riley’s eyes were closed, somebody closed them for her.”

  “But the room was locked. By me. I check before I leave it and when I came back.”

  “There are other keys. DC Waters and I will speak to everyone who has a key. However, I doubt…”

  Smith stopped speaking and stared down into the notebook, as if he had just found something there that he hadn’t noticed before. Ten slow seconds passed.

  “Kip – does each resident’s door have an individual lock? Does each one have a different key?”

  “Yes. All different, for privacy.”

  Another silence before DC Waters asked the next question.

  “What about the pass key, for when the staff have to open a door?”

  “Only one pass key, it opens all doors.”

  Now all three of them seemed to be puzzling over the problem.

  Smith broke the silence eventually.

  “Kip, is it possible that one of the residents might have a pass key?”

  “No, no, not allowed at all. Ms Miller is very careful about keys. Every week we are told about security – never tell the codes and never put down keys, always in the pocket. It would not be allowed.”

  “I know it’s not allowed, son, but I asked if it was possible.”

  The boy wasn’t stupid. He understood his second language well enough to see the difference and eventually he nodded.

  “Right. Now then, Kip. When you get back to work, I don’t want you discussing this with anyone, there’s no need and your life will be simpler if you just keep quiet about it – alright?”

  Kipras nodded. This sounded hopeful, as if he would be there soon, away from this police station. Then the older detective closed the little notebook, shuffled the papers together and leaned back in his chair with a serious expression. Kipras had forgotten about the other questions he was to be asked.

  “I don’t think you are a bad person, Kip. And I want to make this easy for you. I’m going to tell you what I think, and then you tell me where I’ve got it wrong. You told me and my other colleague that Mrs Riley was a kind person, a generous person. You had a good relationship with Mrs Riley – some people might even say that you were friends. Am I right so far?”

  “Yes.”

  “So before we go any further, you should understand that I know about the one hundred pounds. I know exactly when it was given to Mrs Riley, and I know what she said to her daughter when she was asked why she wanted that money. She said ‘It’s not for me’.”

  For the first time, Kipras looked emotional but he said nothing.

  “I’m assuming then, Kip, that you did not steal the money from Mrs Riley.”


  “No! I never would do such a thing. She was the kindest person to me. She-”

  “So she gave you the money. All of it?”

  He nodded.

  “Did you buy drugs with it, Kip?”

  The tears that had formed in Kipras’s eyes suddenly became tears of rage. He was half out of the seat as if he was coming across the table and Waters had instinctively reached his left arm across between the other two men. But Smith had not moved, not an inch – he was simply holding the Lithuanian’s angry glare with his own calm gaze.

  Slowly Kipras sat down.

  “Why always this assumption, that we are drug dealers, criminals, scum? You are wrong. It is educated people who come here because our own economy is even more ruined than your own, that is all.”

  “I know that, Kip. Educated people like Mr Radvila and his boys, picking fruit. Educated people like you, training to be a doctor. What happened?”

  The surprise was obvious and Kipras made no attempt to conceal it.

  “Sorry, son. Despite appearances, we are quite thorough. Tell me how you ended up here.”

  Brothers and sisters, too many of them, and a father at first with no work and then with no hope. As the oldest, Kipras took responsibility; this is what family means in his country, with a pointed look at the two detectives that neither could take offence at. Maybe one day he would go back to his studies.

  “All credit to you, boy, that’s all I can say. Just try to understand that part of my job is to ask people questions that they don’t want to hear, for all sorts of reasons. It’s not what we call ‘personal’. I’m going to ask you another one. Did Mrs Riley ask you to use the money to buy anything you shouldn’t – or did you offer to buy anything for her?”

  The anger had gone.

  “No. Neither of those things. The idea is ridiculous.”

  Something in the use of the word brought a smile to Smith’s face, and Kipras did not take offence.

  “Fair enough. So tell me what you did with it.”

  “I did exactly what she wanted – I sent it to my family, for their Christmas. This was her wish. She had a great…heart, do you say?”

  Smith didn’t answer straight away. He glanced at Waters, opened the little notebook and wrote something down, just a word or two.

  “You understand that I need to check that, Kip?”

  “Yes. Go ahead. Check.”

  “How did you send it home?”

  “Bank transfer.”

  “You bank online? If so, would you be prepared to log on and show my colleague your account, so that we can clear this up straight away?”

  “Yes.”

  As they did so, Smith took another close look at Kipras Kazlauskas. Something had lightened in him over the past hour – there was no resentment as Waters took him through the process. It was relief that nothing now was concealed, nothing was weighing down his conscience. He was a decent young man who had made a great sacrifice for his family, and that was probably what Joan Riley had seen in him. She had wanted to do that thing for the children that she would never meet who lived in a country that she had never visited – give them a good Christmas.

  Waters looked up and nodded.

  “Right then, Kip. You should have told us all this earlier but we’ve got there in the end. We might need to talk to you again but don’t panic if we do. You’ve broken one of the rules at Rosemary House but that’s not our business. My colleague will now work out how he is going to keep his promise of giving you a lift. Over to you, DC Waters.”

  First he saw Astra’s red Yaris, her eighteenth birthday present from him, come quickly up the drive – she must have parked close to the front of the building, just out of sight unless he got up and went to the window. Then he looked back at the road beyond the entrance and noticed the police car. A Skoda – how things change! One of those VRS estates, it pulled up just before the gates. Two people in the front, and then the back door opened and someone was getting out. Ralph Greenwood squinted a little, just to be sure that he had not made a mistake. The figure leaned down a little and spoke to whoever was in the front passenger seat. Ralph managed to get Martin’s attention without saying anything and nodded towards the window. They both watched as Kipras Kazlauskas straightened up again and the police car drew off into the midday traffic. Then the young man began to walk up the drive towards Rosemary House.

  “Trouble?”

  Martin spoke quietly but it seemed that Nancy’s snoozing had become a midday sleep. Ralph was still considering it and there was no need for an answer immediately. Dropping him at the end of the drive was quite discreet, as if they didn’t want to make it obvious where Kip had been; if they had wanted to make a point or were trying to scare the boy, they would have driven to the front door and found reasons to hang around for several minutes. He knew how they worked – but it was obvious that Kip had been questioned again.

  “Nothing to worry about.”

  Martin looked back at the television while Ralph continued to watch through the window. Kip raised a hand but it was not up towards the social room – it was to someone on the drive near the building, and then Ralph saw his granddaughter walking towards Kip. They both stopped for a moment, chatting, laughing as young people do, but not touching, not embracing, two or three feet of space still between them. She had got to know him during her visits, and Ralph was well aware that she liked the boy, that perhaps her grandfather was not now the only reason that she came to visit once or twice a week. From where she had parked, however, she should not have seen the police car, which was good.

  In a minute or two she would be here in the social room and he would say something like ‘Here she is, the light of my life!’ and then Martin and Nancy would say something similar. She might sit on the arm of his chair, and they would pester the carer on duty for extra cups of tea. If it was one of the miserable ones, Astra might go into the kitchen again and make them all tea herself, against the rules, but one day, when Mrs Reed had come to complain, Astra had asked her so sweetly whether she, Mrs Reed, would like a cup too, that everyone had laughed, except Mrs Reed, of course.

  He smiled in anticipation but was aware, too, of the wave of drowsiness again. This new medication - better check online for the side effects. He couldn’t have anything that slowed him up, anything that would cost him his edge, not now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After lunch, Smith called the team, such as it was, together. John Murray and Alison Reeve joined Waters and him in the incident room. Murray told them that Maggie had been instructed to refrain from work until she had passed four months – then she could do light duties. Reeve said that there were no signs of suspicious activity in any of the Bradleys’ bank accounts. She had also looked at that of Joan Riley and even the one hundred pounds did not show there – her daughter must have given her own money to her mother. Smith reported on the morning’s interview with Kipras Kazlauskas, ending with the point that as far as he was concerned, the carer was not under suspicion for anything other than being too kind to his charges.

  “So that just leaves?”

  Reeve wasn’t being impatient or cynical. Plenty of senior officers would have been banging on about a lack of progress long before this, even though there had been no such thing. Smith put it down to the modern obsession with forensic evidence; the science had developed so rapidly and now so dominated their thinking that when a case came along in which it had little to offer, many investigating officers were stumped. Apart from the post-mortem test results, forensics had nothing for them in this case – it was down to old-fashioned investigation, interviewing and elimination. As far as those were concerned, there had been plenty of progress.

  Waters said, “Another resident?”

  “Or residents.”

  All eyes turned to Smith.

  “Don’t get me wrong – I don’t know anything that you people don’t. But Joan had a circle of close friends, four of whom have advance directives in their medical folders. Presumab
ly they talk about such things in amongst the football results and their fond reminiscences of Maggie Thatcher. Now two of them are gone in vaguely similar circumstances. And we have the strong likelihood that someone went into the room and closed Joan’s eyes after she died. We need to ask why, and who, because it’s not something that most people would feel comfortable doing, is it? Did they go in just to do that or were they ‘tidying up’? In which case, how did they miss the glass, which could have given the whole game away there and then?”

  Nobody else commented; suddenly there seemed to be a lot of questions.

  “Anyway, we don’t have much else left. If anyone comes up with something new, please do not keep it to yourself unless doing so guarantees you promotion. John, can you find out about Elspeth Grey’s last resting place? I’m hoping that she went up the chimney, because if she didn’t, we might have to…”

  Reeve was the first to understand.

  “DC, we absolutely do not need one of those, no way. Not after last time.”

  Waters looked puzzled until Murray said, “An exhumation.”

  “What happened last time?”

  “Detective Superintendent Allen appeared on local television.”

  “And became,” said Smith, with a faraway look in his eyes, “an overnight sensation. Is it still on You Tube? Let’s hope that Ms Grey had the common sense to get herself cremated. This afternoon, Waters and I will dig away yet again at the three remaining musketeers in the hope that we have missed something. Boss, just to remind you that tomorrow morning I have to go and see Gloria QC about the Subic mitigation. I thought I’d take Chris with me, so that he can see what he’s up against should he ever solve a crime of his own.”

  “Right, good luck. Do give her my regards. Ask her when she’s going onto the bench.”