But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation Page 4

  “Before that, I want you to hear from Dr Robinson. The body of Mrs Joan Riley was brought to the police mortuary on the night of the 6th of December last year, the mortuary at Kings Lake General being full. The cold spell then and the flu outbreak meant that business had been rather brisk.”

  He paused and looked for a response to his bon mot but none seemed to be forthcoming. Perhaps it was rather early in the morning for humour, and he pressed on.

  “You all know Dr Robinson, I’m sure, and he will be explaining the test results to you himself. This is an opportunity for different elements of the service to show closely they can work together for the common good.”

  Smith wondered whether Allen viewed even his private moments in his private loo, en suite to his private office, as a political opportunity too. On balance, he probably did – or at the very least, he used those moments to compose political speeches.

  “There are a number of sensitive aspects to this case, as DI Reeve will explain, and it will therefore require some – er…”; Smith could see that Allen was struggling for a word here but he could not guess which word was either being sought or avoided – he awaited the outcome with some interest.

  “Will require some sensitive investigation.”

  That was it, he had tried to avoid the repetition – the perils of high office know no bounds.

  “That is why we have, initially, assembled such a small team of people, handpicked, I might say, by Detective Inspector Reeve.”

  Smith noted the little sideways glance to Reeve, the movement of the mouth that might have been a smile on another face, and realized that Allen was, in giving her that credit, simultaneously distancing himself from any future catastrophes. Allen nodded to Dr Robinson.

  The good doctor was either half-asleep or only half-interested. He managed to pick up a document, just a couple of sheets stapled together, and waved it about at no-one in particular before he began to speak in a vaguely Welsh accent.

  “The deceased was 78 years of age. On the night of the 6th of December, her body was brought into the police mortuary. Detective Superintendent Allen has explained why but it has little bearing on the matter. After consulting with Lake General, the post mortem examination was carried out by us in exactly the same way that it would have been done at the hospital. This has happened occasionally in the past, when we don’t have enough corpses of our own. You could try harder so that we are not shut down. Anyway, you have a summary of the results in your files…”

  He stopped briefly, as if considering that that would surely be enough – most policemen being able to read these days.

  “But I will summarise that summary for you. We could find no evidence of external trauma, and an examination of the major organs showed no definitive cause of death. Again, not that unusual. The standard femoral blood and urine samples were then sent to the hospital’s pathology lab for basic screening; for those of you who like to know all the details, that was immuno-assay testing. A week ago we received notice that the additional copy samples held by us were required as there had been some unexpected results. After discussion with Superintendent Allen and the hospital’s pathologist, these additional samples were sent to our own forensic service, where they could be expedited. Mass spectrometry analysis confirmed the hospital’s earlier results.”

  He paused. Smith had already reached the end of the report in front of him, and had already understood what he was about to be told. When he looked up, Robinson continued.

  “Mrs Riley died from an overdose of morphine. Looking at the numbers, one would have to say a very significant overdose. Morphine, as you all know, is the medical pain-killer of last resort. However, these results tell us a little more. The identification of chemicals by mass and charge is a sophisticated tool; in this case it is highly likely that the morphine discovered in the body had been metabolized by the body before and during the process of death – this is what happens when someone has taken a significant amount of heroin.”

  All of them were looking at the report now – though still only two pages, it seemed to have somehow become more substantial.

  “A heroin overdose first inhibits the breathing response, leading to unconsciousness and then cardiac arrest. The only slightly puzzling thing for me is that physically the heart showed little sign of such an event; on the other hand, the dose appears to have been massive and the heart perhaps had little time in which to put up a fight. So to speak.”

  He glanced at Allen as if to say ‘Is that enough?’ Allen looked around to see if there were any questions and then thanked the pathologist for his time. He made another joke about having people waiting for him, and then Dr Robinson was gone.

  Superintendent Allen had repeated his warnings about the sensitive nature of the case without, again, explaining what these were, and then he too had departed after asking DI Reeve for their planned outline of approach before taking any action or speaking to anyone that might be involved.

  Alison Reeve’s first move was to rearrange the tables in the incident room so that they were sitting round a couple of them in a more informal way. Then she phoned her office support girl, Amanda, and asked for tea and coffee and the two packets of biscuits concealed under the files in the bottom drawer of her desk. As she busied herself, she caught Smith’s eye and was grateful for the nod of encouragement and the smile. It would be a mistake to wait for the drinks, though, and fortunately she realized that.

  “OK, let’s get going. Any questions about what we’ve heard so far?”

  They looked around at each other, which didn’t take long. It was Richard Ford who asked the obvious newbie’s question.

  “So, if you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, is this a murder inquiry?”

  Maggie smiled at Smith who put up a hand as if he was the best-behaved boy in class.

  “Yes, DC?”

  “Can I just say that if Fordy has been promoted to CID, someone should tell him about the dress code.”

  Richard Ford had been feeling out of place all morning, and now, with everyone turning to look and smiling, one of them openly grinning, he blushed.

  “Thank you, DC. Richard has not been ‘promoted’ to CID – as you well know, CID is no longer viewed as ‘promotion’, it is simply police work that utilizes a different skill-set.”

  Reeve’s imitation of management speak had them all smiling, and she was sharp enough to know that Smith’s comment had been made only to give her such an opportunity.

  “Richard is here because he was the officer who attended Rosemary House on the night of Joan Riley’s death, and also because a uniformed presence might be useful at some point in view of the place where most of this inquiry will take place – also Rosemary House. Finally, I thought it would be good experience for an officer who might in the future wish to utilize a different skill-set.”

  Smith half-turned and winked at Ford. The blush still lingered on the sides of the uniformed constable’s neck but he knew that, as initiations go, it could have been much worse.

  John Murray spoke for the first time that morning.

  “It’s a fair question though, boss. What exactly are we looking at here?”

  “Over the next few days - let’s hope it isn’t weeks – some of you are going to get to know the ins and outs of Rosemary House all too well. I did a bit of research last night – you should all look at the website before you go there. It’s an up-market care home for the elderly, part of a small chain that is well-established and has a good name in the business. A proportion of the residents, reading between the lines, will have some form of dementia or at least be at risk of harm if they were not in this monitored environment. All the doors are key-coded and the residents are not allowed free exit from the building.”

  Smith knew the place well enough, or at least he knew where it was. A two-storey building that overlooked the golf course beyond Gorsefields, and not that far from where the Subics lived – funny that, all those years focusing on the docks and the dodgy parts o
f the city, and then two cases out in the leafies, almost one after the other. It was a modern building, and probably purpose built, though he couldn’t remember it going up. Nice gardens, some trees and lawns – one side of it must have decent views of the golf course, and they’d be able to see Superintendent Allen in his checkered trousers and flat cap on Saturday afternoons.

  “The significance of the doors should be fairly obvious to all; even if we can imagine a 78 year-old woman going down to the Towers to buy heroin, she would not be able to leave the building to do so, at least not alone. Therefore it is most likely that someone supplied it, at the very least. Whatever happened subsequently, another party is involved, and whichever way you look at the law, that party has committed offences.”

  Periodically she looked in Smith’s direction but she needn’t worry – she looked and sounded the part already. The coffee arrived and Smith again offered Amanda his Irish sixpence as a tip which she again politely refused. They all took biscuits and there was a pause in the proceedings – he managed to resist the temptation to say “Well, this is nice.”

  “So, the sensitive aspects that Superintendent Allen mentioned – by the way, I’m just going to keep talking but anyone can jump in at any point. First, as I’ve already said, some of the people that we interview might have difficulties in remembering or in understanding what it is that we have asked them. We will need to be very clear that though what they tell us might be important, it might also quite innocently be completely mistaken or confused. The rules are not clear as to whether they should have a friend or representative present – we will play that by ear, but if they have given power of attorney to another person, it might have implications – I’ve got someone looking into that. Because of these issues, and to get better continuity, I’ve decided that initially all the interviewing will be done by two people – Maggie and DC, who have both had the advanced interviewing techniques training. If you think about it-” and clearly, thought Smith, you’ve been thinking about nothing else since this landed in your lap – welcome to the club – “we will have to interview the residents in situ, we can’t go hauling them down to the station. And neither can we go in mob-handed and disrupt their routines. These are the kinds of problems we face in this investigation.”

  She stopped and drank some coffee. The nerves were all gone now and the adrenalin had taken over – too much of that coffee and we might have to restrain her for a few minutes. Smith could recall that feeling, could recall years ago trying to explain it to someone, saying it must be something like people get on a frosty autumn morning, before the hunt, the horses impatiently snorting, the hounds whirling around in a pack, the odd rituals the riders go through before the bugle sounds. He tried to imagine Alison Reeve in a scarlet jacket and jodhpurs but it was still too early in the day.

  “Boss?”

  “Yes, John?”

  “What do you want me to do, then?”

  As she opened her mouth to answer, her mobile buzzed on the desk. She looked at it, waved an apology to John Murray and left the room.

  “John, I’ve had an idea.”

  “Go on, DC.”

  “You could arrange a trip to the seaside for some of the residents that we’re not interviewing. They’d love that and so would the brass – community relations, the human face of the modern police force. Or a garden centre if it’s too chilly on the coast.”

  Maggie nodded enthusiastically, and Richard Ford looked from one to the other, wondering if he’d have to go as the uniformed presence until Murray raised a single finger in the general direction of Smith.

  Reeve returned and sat down.

  “Sorry. Superintendent Allen wanted to remind me of something that I hadn’t forgotten. I’ll tell you now in the unlikely event that I do forget it. One of the residents that you might meet at Rosemary House is a Mrs Lily Devine. Sorry again, John, I’ll answer your question in a moment.”

  The news seemed to have little impact until Smith raised a hand and said, “Would that be Devine with an ‘e’?”

  “Yes, it would.”

  Maggie closed her eyes, John Murray said “Gordon Bennett!” and Reeve explained it to Ford.

  “Apparently, Assistant Chief Constable Devine’s mother has been in Rosemary House for some years. He visits her regularly and knows the staff there. So we can expect that he will-”

  “Be taking a personal interest in this case. Sorry – ma’am – but remember what happened when he did that last time? Waters can still hardly bear to look in the mirror.”

  “Just be aware, that’s all. It won’t alter our approach in any way. Talking of which, we need to get on with that now. I want to visit the home today before there is any chance of the autopsy results reaching them by another route. Intelligence first.”

  That was one of Smith’s mottoes, and he saw both Maggie and John look first at each other and then at him. Reeve was turning pages in her folder, unaware that what she had said was the subject of any scrutiny. But she was right to go in quickly and Smith decided to reinforce the point.

  “With respect to the softly, softly approach needed here, I don’t disagree but I think we still need to do a bit of a raid as far as the intelligence is concerned. How long ago was it? About a month? Whoever else was involved has probably assumed that they’re in the clear by now. Everyone imagines that tests results come back within about ten minutes like on the TV, so if anyone had their guard up, they might have lowered it. If we’re seen just hanging about, stuff could disappear – we need to make a list of what we want, go straight in and secure it.”

  Ford had been a little disappointed so far but this sounded more like it.

  “What sort of thing?”

  “Time for a brainstorm, Fordy. I’d put in any visitors’ logs, going back several weeks, and the residents’ personal files. We’ll need access to them…”

  “Medical records?”

  “Good lad. A problem, though,” addressing this to Reeve, “is that we won’t be able to remove them for obvious reasons. We’ll need some sort of copying facility on site – and for anything else on paper, come to that. Blimey, this could solve the budget crisis – we could afford a new DCI.”

  She was busy making notes, so Smith looked at Maggie.

  “Staff files for everyone, management down to carers and cleaners.”

  “And records of any other contacts she had with family apart from the visitors’ book.”

  Smith continued, “Thanks, John, I reckon that’ll keep them busy for a while. And we need enough of us there this afternoon so that we can see what is where and who does what. We don’t want anything walking out or getting flushed away. In particular, we want copies of everything we can think of relating to Joan Riley today – no putting that off until tomorrow. It’ll seem a bit heavy and someone won’t like it but I don’t see any alternative.”

  Reeve understood what he was saying, and nodded. She would have the tricky job of explaining all that to Allen before lunch if they were to get this going after it.

  “Er, boss?”

  “Sorry, John! I’d like you to come in with us this afternoon, and you, Richard. Five of us should be able to do what DC has suggested. But your towering presence might intimidate some of our interviewees, so after today I’d like you to be station-bound on this one, looking into anything that DC and Maggie come up with while they carry on with the interviews at Rosemary House. Everyone OK with that as a plan?”

  So far, so good but Smith thought that she had miscalculated on one thing – best to say so as holding back might look as if he was treading too carefully where Reeve was concerned.

  “I’m not sure that one pair of hands will be enough to do that, even John’s huge mitts. This will throw up a lot of stuff that needs checking as soon as we start delving into files and records.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll be around as well and can do some of it, thanks DC. OK, it’s Wednesday. We need to set ourselves a target. Where do we want
to be by the end of play on Friday?”

  Sitting down with his feet up, cup of tea, watching the rugby on telly would be nice. Or driving through the Norfolk dusk towards Pinehills? Getting ready to give the caravan its winter once-over, and then maybe a pint at the club… “If I’d wanted to hit targets, I’d have taken up archery,” his old boss DCI Miller had said in that flat Lancashire accent when the nonsense first began, and not long after that it had driven him out. Like so many others, he had died within a couple of years of leaving the force, almost as if when you left the force, the force left you. Another reason for not going just yet? Or another reason to think again about what Dougie Waters had said to him only last night?

  Chapter Four

  “I’m sorry to ask – but is there any chance that someone has a made a mistake here?”

  “I’m afraid not. Two independent laboratories came up with identical results.”

  Irene Miller turned from the face of the well-dressed Detective Inspector to the rather insignificant-looking Detective Sergeant who sat by her side. He had said nothing yet, had spent his time looking idly around the office and out of the side window that gave a view of the entrance lobby. It was the Inspector who had given her the dreadful news.

  “I don’t know what to say. I have never come across anything like this, and…”

  Her voice tailed away. After a moment, the sergeant looked at her with an odd expression, something between sympathy for her plight and a vapid, inappropriate smile.

  “I need to speak to my head office. Could you wait outside?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Ms Miller. It is Ms, isn’t it?”

  Smith had noted the absence of a ring, too, but these days who knows what lies behind the unencumbered third finger?

  “Yes, it is. I don’t think it is your decision whether I need to take advice from my management about how to proceed in such an unusual event. I-”