But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation Read online

  “What kind of a school do you think that I went to?”

  Smith smiled and shrugged.

  “Well, I don’t know but I suppose I could make a reasonable guess. Are you going to answer the question, by the way?”

  She was looking down at something, and then Smith realized that it was his ID badge which he taken off and put onto the table. When her eyes met his again, it was with a different expression.

  “Yes, I am, and no, they have not.”

  After another pause, Reeve said, “Sergeant Smith is now going to ask you some questions about another, but a possibly related, matter. I would like to remind you that although you are not under arrest, you still have the right to representation and that…”

  Smith had opened the folder. The photograph lay on the top, and he gazed down at it, knowing that she would be bound to do the same. Then he said, “Tell me about your relationship with your grandfather.”

  And she did. Smith wondered whether anyone else had noticed that she did not object or ask what on earth had that to do with the police. It’s all about the spaces in between, the things that are not said, the things that are not done. She told them that they were close, especially since her father had left the family home; without her grandfather’s help, her mother would have struggled in those first years and the bright young girl’s intuitive understanding of that had blossomed into strong affection for the old man. That all made sense to Smith but what surprised him a little was the sense that she wanted to tell someone this here and now, that she was more than willing to talk to them about Ralph Greenwood, her grandfather.

  But when, having listened understandingly, he began to lead her a little, she saw immediately what he was doing and stepped back – there might even have been a trace of the ironic smile that would have appeared on Ralph’s own face at that moment. Smith had said, “I’ve met your grandfather – I’m sure that you already know that. He struck me as someone very loyal and very caring about people close to him.” She had nodded. Smith had continued with, “Someone who would not allow those close to him to suffer if he could in any way alleviate that suffering.”

  “Grandpa is a kind man.”

  “And a man with strong beliefs and principles, like yourself. I expect that’s where you get it from, don’t you?”

  No answer this time.

  “Would you say that your grandfather has had a lot of influence over you?”

  “I’d like to think so – but it would only have been for my own good.”

  “You have great respect for him.”

  “And love.”

  She had wobbled then, ever so briefly, and the voice had almost given way. He had heard it and had seen the eyes blink once or twice more than they needed but he had not acted on it, had not followed then the instincts that were already whispering ideas that he could not quite make out.

  Instead he had said, “You would do anything for him.”

  “Wouldn’t you, for someone you loved?”

  That had caught him unawares, and he had fought off the impulse to glance at Alison Reeve. The girl was not being obstructive or devious – she was looking hard at Smith, waiting for an answer, waiting, perhaps, for some validation of whatever it was she had done – and he had backed away.

  “Astra, tell me about some of your grandfather’s friends, the ones you’ve met at Rosemary House.”

  Now the four of them stood in front of the screen in the adjacent room, quiet for a moment, watching Astra Maitland sitting in the chair. A cup of tea had been put in front of the girl but she had not touched it.

  Smith shook his head and said, “What’s the time?”

  Waters looked at his phone – “Nearly half eleven.”

  Smith shook his head again, slowly.

  Reeve said, “Well, you haven’t put it to her directly, which is about all you’ve got left. With respect, DC, we’ve been all around the houses in the last couple of hours. She’s cooperated and not cooperated – she’s told us lots and told us nothing. Whether it’s deliberate or not, we can’t keep her here all day.”

  Smith did not take his eyes off the screen as he answered.

  “With respect, ma’am, we aren’t.”

  “Explain.”

  “She knows her rights, better than most. She has been free to leave at any time in the past two hours but she hasn’t even asked how much longer this will take. She is keeping herself here.”

  The figure on the screen made a slight movement, and John Murray said, “But she’s keeping track of the time, DC – she keeps looking at her watch.”

  “Yes, I know, every few minutes.”

  Reeve said, “Not something we can charge her with, though.”

  Smith ignored it, saying instead, “I don’t get it. She’s a bit left wing, a bit bolshy, smart as they come, and she’s just sitting there. She hasn’t once questioned why we’re asking all this about her grandfather and his friends, which means she’s either dim – and you can forget that – or she already knows. But then, a guilty party complicit in something will usually at least make a pretence of ‘What’s all this about?’ She isn’t doing that either. She’s not asking why she’s here, and she’s not asking to leave.”

  “What’s your gut feeling? Did she provide him with heroin?”

  Smith finally looked away from the screen. It was a fair question from his senior officer but it took him away for a moment from something more important.

  “Yes.”

  “But we have not a shred of evidence.”

  “Ah, that’s it! I knew there was something bugging me. If only we had some evidence…”

  Murray and Waters looked at each other and then away at nothing in particular.

  “DC? Please do not-”

  But now he was looking at Murray with a new expression.

  “John? That phone call. Tell me about it again.”

  Murray did so but was interrupted after a few seconds.

  “Did you ask to see her phone, who she was phoning?”

  “No. She showed me herself.”

  “Why would she do that, people? A bit too cooperative? Tell me what was said again, the actual words. You said earlier that she said ‘Mum’ several times? Why? Do we normally keep repeating the name of the person we’re talking to?”

  Waters said, “Because she wanted us to know who she was talking to, maybe?”

  “Or maybe who she wanted us to think she was talking to…”

  He was back in the interview room before all of them had left the screen.

  “Astra, listen. My boss says I should put this to you directly. Did you supply your grandfather with heroin?”

  She shook her head but slowly and strangely – it was not in answer to his question.

  “I’m not asking because I want to get you sent down. I don’t give a toss about that. I think you know why I’m asking.”

  Still nothing.

  “Give me your phone. I’ve got grounds for reasonable suspicion but if you want to waste a few more seconds while I arrest you, we can do that.”

  He held out his hand and she placed the phone into it, and then he realized that she had begun to cry. He signalled to Julie Conroy, opened the phone and tapped on ‘Recents’.

  “You phoned your GP? Except that…”

  He redialled the number, waited for it to connect and listened intently, eyes still on the girl. The other three were now back in the room, watching and waiting. They could hear a voice, a recording of a man’s voice, saying that he could not take a call right now.

  “Chris, get Irene Miller on the phone in the incident room. I’ll be there in a second. John, get a car round to the front door, take yours, it’ll be quicker – engine running.”

  He spoke to Reeve as they walked rapidly to the incident room.

  “That was Ralph Greenwood’s mobile phone. She called him from here early this morning. Now she’s sitting in there crying her eyes out. No need to waste any time wondering why. Silly girl.”


  Waters was on the phone, speaking. He began to explain something to Smith, said, “Rita Sanchez” as Smith took the phone out of his hands.

  Smith listened and then said, “What sort of incident?”

  More listening and then, “What about a pass key?”

  Then Reeve saw his eyes close and his knuckles whiten as he gripped the handset.

  “Rita, listen. Tell her not to wait for a locksmith. Tell them to break the door down. And call for an ambulance.”

  Smith walked quickly along the corridor. Turning the last angle before Greenwood’s room, he noticed that he had re-entered Peace but ahead of him was what looked like a crowd of people, a crowd of silent people. He noted faces – Nancy Bishop was there and Martin Collins, a little way from the people in the doorway, and also a little apart from each other. Both of them saw him but he was past them too quickly for them to attempt any sort of acknowledgement. At the doorway he turned to Murray and said, “John, clear as much of this as you can, and keep it clear. Chris, you come in with me.”

  Irene Miller stood just inside, watching and maintaining some sort of order but there were still too many involved – a couple of uniformed staff members that he did not recognize, and a burly, bearded man in overalls holding, for some reason, a huge screwdriver. Then Smith glanced at the door and saw that it had been levered off its hinges – there were splintered gashes in the door-frame. By the bed, Mrs Reed was closest to Ralph Greenwood, fussing, re-arranging something on the bed, half-obscuring the man himself.

  Smith turned to Waters and said, “Most of these people need to leave now.”

  Waters set about it immediately, and within seconds only Irene Miller, Mrs Reed and the two detectives remained. Smith moved to the bedside, overcoming his impulse to say to the supervisor that she should touch nothing further; he had known what he would find as soon as he saw the crowd of people, saw the faces of those in the room and their body language, just as he could already the visualize the wording on the autopsy report.

  Mrs Reed straightened up, looked at the body and said, “There,” as if she had done no more than tucked in his sheets or adjusted his pillows.

  On the carpet by the bed, at the head end, was a small stain of vomit, soaking into the fabric now. They must have found him hanging off the bed, and turned him back into it – unlikely that they had lifted him off the floor, such a tall, heavily-boned man, but he would have to ask at some point. The face was pale and the bloodless lips were parted a little as if he was, or had been, about to make one more remark about the whole absurd affair. To the left of the head, on the pillow, was a pair of headphones, presumably connected wirelessly to the amplifier that was still blinking on the shelf a few feet away. And there, on the bedside unit itself, an empty glass standing on a piece of card.

  After a moment Smith said, “Is this how you found him?”

  Mrs Reed nodded. “Yes, but his head was hanging off the bed, so I… I couldn’t leave him like that, I’m afraid.”

  “Not a problem. How long ago? You’ve checked, obviously.”

  She looked at him as if he was something of a fool.

  “Yes – obviously. I’ve had to do that too many times. We weren’t even close, I’d say. We couldn’t push the door in. We had to wait for Rolly – he was out in the grounds clearing snow from the paths. It took a while to find him.”

  “What about the pass key?”

  “It just wouldn’t turn. I have no idea why.”

  Smith walked past Irene Miller, who had still said nothing, and examined the door that leaned at an angle against the inside wall. Just outside he could see the man who must be Rolly, some sort of caretaker or handy man. When he saw Smith bending to look at the lock, he stepped closer, pointed and said, “Been glued – super-glued. That was never going to turn. I had to lever the hinge screws out of the frame.”

  Smith couldn’t stop the brief smile but it was gone before he straightened and faced Irene Miller. “You were here when they finally got in, I assume?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know when he was last seen?”

  He realized that she was stunned, probably close to shock but sometimes that’s when to ask the questions. He felt clumsy and officious, all the same.

  “At breakfast. He was in the room. He spoke to a couple of people but…”

  “What?”

  “One of the staff told me that he hadn’t eaten anything. He usually did, so – I’d made a mental note to ask him about it later, to see if he was alright. After what you said, I’d… This is what you meant, isn’t it, or something like it? I …”

  Smith caught Mrs Reed’s eye and nodded sideways towards the manager. To her credit, she had Irene Miller out of the room and away in seconds, saying that they had to leave it to the police now that they were here.

  The sizeable presence of Murray had established calm out in the corridor and no-one was now visible through the doorway. Smith turned to Waters, raised his eyebrows and blew out his cheeks as if to say, at last. He knew that Waters had been to a funeral but not whether he had ever seen a body in such circumstances – better get him talking and find out.

  “So, what now?”

  “We can’t do much until a doctor has been. We should examine the room, though.”

  He looked positively keen to get at it. Smith reached into a jacket pocket and took out two pairs of disposable gloves, passing one to Waters.

  “Yes, very good. Start with your eyes – don’t go rootling into stuff straight off. Just look, slowly and carefully.”

  Smith went to the window. The top vent was an inch or two open, almost as far as it would go. Perhaps Ralph liked fresh air every night, or perhaps on this special occasion he had thought that he would have it cold and snow-scented, for his last breaths. Does anyone know what goes through the mind of someone as they plan their suicide? Has anyone ever changed their mind and then written it all down? If they had, would he want to read it? He wondered, too, whether Ralph had stood at the window, looking out at the world for the final time, just as Joan Riley had had her chair moved for that purpose. It must have been Ralph who did that for her, a big man, still strong enough… And had he sat with her until the end? Almost certainly.

  But why make his own exit now? The girl knew, as soon as she had made that phone call. It must have been planned, of course, Greenwood would have left nothing to chance, but still, why now? He was ill, in some sort of pain, Smith had seen that much.

  “DC?”

  He turned around. Waters had come to the side of the bed, and was leaning over the cabinet, holding the glass in one gloved hand. Smith stepped across and followed Waters’ finger. Printed neatly on the piece of white card was the one word ‘Forensics’.

  Smith laughed aloud. Waters said, “That is a pretty macabre sense of humour.”

  “Macabre, is it? Mr Greenwood would have approved of your choice of word. ‘Forensics’! I like it! I wish someone would label all my SOCs. Look in the bottom of the glass – a few grains of something. Nip down to the car and get some evidence bags, John’s bound to have some, ask him on the way.”

  Alone in the room, he looked at the body again. Peace… Nothing else remains, of course – death’s the end of all. He picked up the earphones and listened into one side. Nothing playing now but they were still switched on. He went across to the CD and pressed the eject switch. The Brandenburg Concertos, with Benjamin Britten. By the rack of CDs he found the empty case and replaced the disc; the rack was organized alphabetically by composer – it was easy to find the right space.

  The chessboard was on the low, glass-topped table. One move had been made – pawn to e4, as if Ralph had been planning another game by himself after all, and then Smith remembered that he had never taken up the invitation to play. It would not have been wise, but had the old boy made that move wondering whether Smith would at this point be back in the room? Was it another card under the glass, another message, another joke? He picked up the black pawn, admired it b
riefly and placed it down on e5 – there you are, Ralph, I’m a bit rusty but three more moves and we have the Ruy Lopez, I think.

  He heard someone come into the room behind him and turned. It was John Murray.

  “We’ve got an ambulance crew down at reception, and a bloke out in the corridor who says he’s Ralph Greenwood’s doctor, DC.”

  “Dr Ibrahim?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “OK, send him in. Ask the crew to hold on if they don’t get a 999. See if they can take this one straight to our morgue – it’ll be simpler if Robinson and Olive do the job. We won’t be long.”

  Murray disappeared and was replaced by a portly, smartly suited, middle-aged Asian man complete with black bag. Smith looked pointedly at the bed and said, “You’re a little on the late side, Doctor.”

  There was no reply. He came further into the room, eyes fixed on his erstwhile patient and put his bag down by the side of the bed. Smith said nothing more as he watched the procedure. Eventually, as he was putting the stethoscope away, the doctor said, “You are the officer in charge here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought we might be waiting for someone else, that is all. I don’t want to-”

  “We’ve spoken before, Dr Ibrahim. On the telephone, quite recently. Detective Sergeant Smith. There were various things that you felt unable to tell me – let’s hope that they don’t turn out to have too much bearing on what’s just happened here.”

  The slender brown hands replaced the items of his trade meticulously into the bag, one by one, and then he took out a pad of pre-printed forms upon which the death would be recorded – Smith wondered how many remained on that particular pad, how many stories it would end before a new one was begun.

  “Had Mr Greenwood been a patient of yours for long?”

  “A few years – since he came to the home here.”

  “And may I ask how it happens to be you attending here this afternoon? How did you know?”

  The doctor nodded, realizing the question’s possible significance.

  “Miss Sanchez telephoned me when she knew there might be a problem. It is our arrangement.”