But For The Grace: A DC Smith Investigation Read online

  “You have a splendid outlook from here.”

  The man lowered the paper as if he had been reading it after all, and peered at Smith over gold-rimmed spectacles.

  “Sometimes it goes on for too long.”

  “Sorry – I said you have a splendid outlook,” with a little more volume and enunciation.

  “And I said that sometimes it goes on for too long.”

  The eyes were a sharp blue, the pupils tiny in the bright afternoon light. The face, though a little shrunken and hollow around the cheeks, had always been thin but the silver hair was not; though cut short, little more than a crew cut, there was no sign of baldness.

  “Do you mean that you can see too far or that you can spend too long looking at it?”

  The man folded the paper once so that it was tabloid in size and laid it on his lap, as if the conversation might be of some slight interest after all.

  “You assume that my “it” refers to the view, whereas it might have referred to any number of things. Also, the word ‘outlook’ is rather ambiguous, and, in whatever sense one might be using it, whether it is ‘splendid’ or not is highly subjective. Nevertheless, you must remember that I am the occupant of a care home and therefore likely to make statements that are less than rational.”

  “Ralph! Our visitor was simply making conversation!”

  Irene Miller’s tone was as much amused as admonitory, raising her eyebrows as she looked from Alison Reeve to Smith. Ralph’s gaze, meanwhile, had not left Smith. On an impulse, the detective stepped forward and held out his hand.

  “David Smith.”

  The older man was taken by surprise. He looked for a moment at the proffered hand and then levered himself upwards until he was standing, taller than Smith. A large, bony, blue-veined hand was extended in return, the grip as strong as Smith had guessed it would be.

  “Ralph Greenwood.”

  “Ralph is an institution. He’s one of our longest staying residents – he must be in his fourth year, if not his fifth.”

  The three of them were back in the manager’s office, finalizing the arrangements for conducting the first interviews. When they had done so, Smith had asked about Ralph Greenwood.

  “He seems pretty sharp for – well, you know what I mean.”

  “I would advise you to leave most of your preconceptions at the door, sergeant, and not just about Ralph. These people had interesting lives, high-flying careers some of them. But Ralph is different, I know what you mean.”

  Reeve said, “You’d think someone as bright as that would still be living independently with some support. At least, I’d think that. I don’t profess to know much about it.”

  Irene Miller went across to the filing cabinet of medical records and pulled open the second drawer.

  “His file is here – it’s one you’ll most likely want to see. He had a heart attack some years ago, before he came here, which led to vascular dementia. I suppose I can tell you all this as you appear to have access anyway,” with a meaningful glance at Smith. “Unusually, he seems to have recovered much of the function he lost at that point. His daughter lives in Kings Lake, that’s why he moved up here, and she has a house big enough to accommodate him. She looked into it a couple of years ago and tried to persuade him but he chose to stay on. It wasn’t a question of the money. I think they’re well-to-do but he made his feelings clear and that was that. The elderly often worry about being a burden.”

  “Does he get visits?”

  “Yes, regularly, and he has a granddaughter too, Astra. She lights up the place when she comes.”

  She was searching for the file, walking her fingers across them and reading the names. Smith was surprised that it hadn’t all been digitised already; there was no shortage of money here.

  He said, “You said that we’d most likely want to see Mr Greenwood’s file. Why is that?”

  “Oh, he and Joan were good friends, both members of the Famous Five.”

  Both detectives were silent, one having learned from the other that sometimes it was better to let questions ask themselves.

  “For a year or two we’ve had a little group that occupied those window-side chairs in the social area, where Ralph was today. We nicknamed them the Famous Five and it sort of stuck. They were as thick as thieves and kept us on our toes.”

  “And now they are down to four…”

  “No, three, I’m afraid. Elspeth died a few months ago.”

  “How?”

  Smith’s question was simple, matter of fact even, but in the pause that followed the atmosphere in the room changed, as if the front door had been left open, allowing the heat to escape.

  “She had a heart attack.”

  “I expect that’s common enough here, isn’t it? We will have the files of the Famous Five anyway, might as well start there as anywhere. But we’ll talk to the staff first, as agreed, beginning with yourself. Say, ten minutes?”

  Miller left the office to let Rita Sanchez know what was happening. After an exchange of glances, Reeve took out her phone and tapped in a note to herself.

  She said, “I’ve just thought of something else for John to do.”

  “Coroner’s records?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s going to be busy, our John…”

  “So, if you were right, who else do you want?”

  “Depends who is available.”

  “I’ll look into when I get back, just in case. Tell me your thoughts about this, before I go. Allen’s bound to find me as soon as I’m in the building.”

  Smith was manoeuvring chairs around the manager’s office and didn’t answer immediately. He pushed the high-backed swivel chair into a corner and placed two plastic ones on the manager’s side of the desk; finally, the other, more comfortable chair for longer-staying visitors was placed in front of the desk.

  “I think that it’s going to be very tight, with just Maggie and me in here – I mean operationally, I’m not implying she’s putting on weight. Example – I’ve just arranged to interview Ms Miller and realized I should be going upstairs with Fordy to look at the room, so this will have to wait a few minutes. As for first impressions…”

  He sat in one of the plastic chairs, frowned, got up and sat in the other one. They appeared identical but some subtle difference made him return to the first and claim it as the one that he would use.

  “Mrs Riley was given what she took by someone. Not necessarily a single someone… She might have been forced to swallow it, assuming that she did swallow it. Did she? Has anyone had another look at the body? Needle marks can be easy to miss. Anyway – that would be murder in my simple world. She might have been tricked into it – also murder. Be good to have had that glass Fordy picked up, eh? Or she might have taken it willingly, might even have asked for it, in which case we are into grey areas. But for all that, someone assisted and could be looking at – fourteen years, isn’t it?”

  Reeve nodded and said, “Family, staff, residents?”

  “That would be the most likely order from what I know at the moment. The place isn’t as secure as I’d thought but a break-in or a resident is pretty unlikely. But I’m sure we’ll have great fun interviewing them.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Odd choice of weapon, heroin.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “We’ll need to speak to the GP.”

  “OK, DC, I’m going to leave you to it. I’ve got to go and break the news to Mrs Riley’s daughter on my way back to the station, before it leaks out. Ann Crisp is family liaison on this, she’s meeting me there.”

  “I’d like to see how Mrs Bradley reacts.”

  “You can’t be everywhere. I’ll let you know.”

  As she reached the door, Smith said, “Can you do The Times crossword?”

  “God no. I don’t even understand half the clues. Why?”

  “Just an idle thought of an idle fellow. I used to be able to get a few of them, and then I realized that life was too sh
ort. Let me know how it goes with the daughter.”

  Chapter Five

  Smith sat at his desk that evening, transcribing the notes he had made in his working Alwych notebook into the second one, his personal record of the cases that he worked upon. On the shelf above the desk every one of his notebooks stood in a line, in date order, with an index of its contents printed neatly inside the back cover. About once a year, Sheila used to take them down and flick a cloth over them – she would say something like “Just dusting down your life’s work” if he was in the room at the time, and then he would put them all back again, in date order.

  As he worked, he summarized, and the process made him stop, think and re-evaluate what he had heard and seen. Richard Ford had realized the importance of the glass as soon as Smith began to question him about it. He said, “So, DC, tell me honestly – if you’d been there that night, on the scene, what would you have done?”

  “I’d have had that glass in a bag and in my pocket.”

  “Analysed for its contents?”

  “Prints first. I’d have quietly picked up some personal thing, just to check them.”

  Ford had been mildly devastated, not least because he believed that he had blown any chance of making it into CID, never mind the fact that his mistake suggested he might not belong there anyway. Smith had laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Fordy, there are some good career prospects in traffic, they tell me.”

  But that made him think about the GP. Ford had taken her name and number, it was on his tablet thing, and Smith made a point of complimenting him on that. It wasn’t a name that he recognized. Some of the regular, experienced GPs – and you got to know them over time – would have at least have had a sniff at the glass and wondered. Ford also remembered that he thought the manager was a little defensive in general, that she would rather the police were not wandering about the place and upsetting her residents; having met her, Smith thought that made some sense but she might, of course, have other motives for feeling that way. It was still too early to say. Other than that, the room was tidy, and the old lady appeared well cared for apart from the fact that she was dead.

  The interview with Irene Miller had been straightforward at first. The little bit of what Smith termed ‘creative friction’ that he had engineered between them earlier in the day seemed to have dissipated – she had had time to compose herself and spoke professionally about the home, her role and her expectations of staff. Maggie asked most of the questions, as they had arranged beforehand, and Smith made the occasional note. Kayleigh Greene – with an ‘e’ – had found Mrs Riley at just after nine in the evening. She had called for help and Kipras Kazlauskas had appeared from the corridor seconds later. Within two minutes at the most, Irene Miller had been in the room. It was apparent to her that Mrs Riley had been dead for some time and that emergency resuscitation would not be appropriate, especially in view of the advance directive which she knew to be in Joan’s file. At that point, Smith had intervened.

  “Nine is late to be working, isn’t it?”

  “Caring is a twenty four hour business, sergeant.”

  “I meant for you. You work full days – surely you are normally at home in the evening?”

  “No. I also do two or three evenings a week, until about ten o’clock.”

  “Do you have a rota for that?”

  “Yes. We don’t do these things randomly.”

  “So you could show us a rota that said you were due to be on duty that evening?”

  She could, and did. Then Smith asked about her medical knowledge, and whether she felt qualified to judge how long Mrs Riley had been dead. Irene Miller held advanced first aid certificates, which were framed on the wall of her office – she pointed them out before the detective asked to see them for himself. Finally, he inquired about the advance directive.

  “It isn’t that unusual these days. A few of our residents have them now.”

  “How many?”

  “I really haven’t counted them. Why would I?”

  “An estimate will be fine.”

  He was smiling again and the creative friction seemed to be back.

  “At any one time, we have about fifty residents here across the two floors. I imagine that ten per cent will have such a directive in their files.”

  “So only about five.”

  Finally, Maggie had asked the manager to give them her impressions of Joan Riley in the days before her death. The staff had reported that she had seemed somewhat quieter than normal, and had stayed for longer in her room, but that some of her friends amongst the residents had still been going in to sit with her that week. She had not been viewed as depressed but had been put on the list for the routine GP visit on the Friday morning.

  Maggie had said, “Do you think that she was ill, Ms Miller?”

  “No, I don’t. I think she was feeling her age. That isn’t a flippant remark – it’s something that we recognize here. There are often long spells of temperate behaviour, when individuals feel calm and settled, and then something will remind them that they are old and frail. It can be something physical but equally it can be social or psychological. They can quite suddenly ‘go downhill’.”

  “What do you do in those circumstances?”

  “Our best.”

  The three of them had sat in silence for a few seconds before Irene Miller added a final comment.

  “To someone outside this closed world, this might seem hard to accept but – people often know when their time is over. They say or do things which, when they are gone, you realise were indications that they sensed their own end was near. Joan didn’t say anything to me personally but her behaviour fits that pattern, in my opinion. I think she knew she was going to die.”

  That was difficult to summarise. When Smith closed the notebooks, putting one into his jacket pocket and leaving the other on the desk ready for tomorrow, it was almost eleven o’clock. He fancied another cup of tea but didn’t fancy getting up in the night as a result. A tricky decision… On the desk he noticed a business card, one that he had put there last night, and he picked it up. Expensive card that, with nicely understated print telling him that Marcia Williams was very well qualified in accountancy, with lots of As and Cs in various combinations after her name. He turned it over and realized for the first time that there was a handwritten message on the back – ‘If you ever need help making things add up’. When had she had the time to write that? He recalled clearly how she had taken the card from her bag as they said goodbye as if it was merely an afterthought.

  From the shelves above the desk, three photographs of Sheila looked down upon him like the three graces. He flicked the card over again, reading the name, the print and the card itself for more clues before opening the top drawer and placing it there amongst the other odds and ends.

  All he could see was Charlie Hills’ large backside poking out from under the desk behind the counter, and all he could hear was a muttering and the click of switches on and off. He leaned forward and said, “When you’re ready landlord, mine’s a pint and a packet of cheese and onion crisps.”

  The backside reversed out slowly before its owner straightened up and brushed himself down.

  “And have one yourself.”

  “Good morning, DC. I’ll have a triple scotch. Something’s gone wrong with my mouse.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard the rumours. I suppose your Mrs is quite relieved. Alcohol won’t help.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Nothing, Charlie, but don’t take that personally. Is DI Reeve in? Save me going up the stairs if she isn’t yet.”

  “She was in half an hour ago, very industrious-looking. First time SIO, isn’t it?”

  Smith nodded and then shook his head wistfully.

  “Yes, those were the days. When all was spring, and summer beckoning… Ah well. I know a couple of girls down at the docks who can sort out faulty mice if you’re interested, Charlie.”

  “Very good of you, DC. In my role
as your personal messaging service, here you are.”

  Charlie picked up a notepad.

  “Dame Butterfield’s clerk left a couple of dates when she will be in Lake if you need to run through a mitigation? I expect her clerk gets paid more than I do for being yours.”

  He tore off the first sheet and handed it to Smith.

  “And there’s this woman been trying to get hold of you, she rang more than once yesterday.”

  “Another one? Why do they always want to get hold of me? Ah, but this is a dream isn’t it, and any minute now I wake up. What did she sound like?”

  “I already said – a woman.”

  “Did she sound tall? Because I have a bit of a problem with that.”

  Charlie was trying to read his own writing.

  “Jo Evison.”

  “Jo? And you’re sure that was a female Jo?”

  “Well, here you are. Ring back, make your own mind up.”

  “What did she want? You must have asked.”

  “I’m not one to pry, DC, you know that. But when I inquired if it was business or personal, she said ‘Both’. She sounded nice and about five foot seven.”

  “Never heard of her. See you later, Charlie.”

  Reeve was not in her office, and he wasn’t going up to Allen’s to see if she was there. On his way back down, he detoured past Incident Room 1 to see if it had been secured for the investigation as he had requested. It had – there were boards in readiness, and when he stepped closer and looked through the glass panel he could John Murray bending over a screen and having something pointed out to him by Chris Waters. Good decision from Reeve – he’d had it in mind but did not want to be seen as directing the boy’s course, especially after last time. He should be safe in here, and far enough away from any elderly miscreants who wanted to punch him on the nose.

  When he left the main building by the side door, the January air caught him unawares. There had been no snow this winter yet, just weeks of grey, miserable rain, but now the chill was tangible and he pushed his hands into his trouser pockets as he crossed the tarmac towards the police mortuary. Was there time for a cigarette? He remembered his last visit, seeing the body of young Wayne Fletcher - that had been a four-cigarette day. He had no intention of meeting the mortal remains of Joan Riley in person but would hold on to the cigarette, just in case.