Restless Dead (Harry Grimm Book 5)

by David J Gatward

  ‘And just what does that mean?’ Dan asked. ‘Suspicious? How can a man dying in a fire be suspicious? What’s suspicious about it?’

  Harry knew he had to be careful now, because under these circumstances, with what had happened to James, he wasn’t just sharing this news with relatives, but with suspects. And if he gave too much away, then there was always a chance that he was going to give whoever was responsible a way to cover their tracks.

  ‘All we can say is that we now need to investigate the death further,’ Harry said. ‘Which is why we’re here today, to talk to you all individually about what happened last night.’

  ‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’ Ruth said.

  ‘He’s rarely anything else, to be honest,’ Matt said.

  ‘But what do you mean by suspicious?’ Dan asked. ‘That’s a bit vague, isn’t it?’

  ‘It means,’ Harry said, doing his best to explain, ‘that although we know the cause of death, how the victim, I mean James, died, we have reason to believe that it may not have been an accident.’

  At this, the room erupted and Harry sat back as everyone started speaking at once.

  ‘Not an accident?’ Ruth said. ‘Then what? What else was it? What are you saying you think dad did, kill himself? He’d never do that, ever! He just wouldn’t!’

  Patricia spoke, backing up her sister. ‘Absolutely ridiculous! Why would dad kill himself? Yes, he was upset, but I agree with Ruth, he just wouldn’t do that! This is nonsense! Who’s your superior? I want to speak to them, immediately!’

  Dan then stood up and Harry watched as the man tried to calm everything down.

  ‘Perhaps it’s best if we just give the police a chance to do their job?’ he said. ‘Clearly, we all know that there’s no way that anything suspicious happened, and it just needs clarifying or something, and I’m sure it will all work out fine. Isn’t that right, Detective?’

  Harry said nothing at that moment because really there was nothing to say.

  ‘I just don’t see how it could be suspicious,’ Ruth said, and Harry heard real confusion and not a little anger in her voice. ‘Dad would never kill himself, would he?’

  Dan, Harry noticed, was still looking at him, brow furrowed deep.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said, taking his eyes from Harry, ‘it’s not that they think it was suicide at all.’

  ‘Then what?’ Patricia demanded. ‘What else could it be?’

  It was then that the chatter finally died to nothing.

  Harry decided to speak before anyone else did, this time working to give his voice a harder, clearer edge, not aggressive as such, but commanding, demanding attention. ‘As I’ve said, we are here now to speak to you all individually about what happened last night. This will enable us to clarify certain facts about what actually happened and how that relates to the evidence so far collected.’

  ‘You think he was murdered,’ Patricia said, and her words sent a chill through the room, a ripple of doom that swept out to touch everyone.

  ‘Murdered?’ Ruth said, her voice a bark of shock and disbelief. ‘Dad? But . . . I mean, by who? Who would do that? Why? He can’t have been murdered! That’s, well, it’s just insane!’

  ‘But what about that intruder he’d been seeing?’ Dan asked.

  ‘He was just seeing things that weren’t there!’ Ruth said. ‘It wasn’t a real person, we all know that, don’t we? It was grief and exhaustion, and that’s all it was.’

  ‘But what if it wasn’t?’ Dan asked. ‘What if it was someone and he disturbed them and they killed him?’

  ‘Please,’ Patricia sighed, looking at her husband, a finger raised to shush him, ‘shut up.’

  Patricia’s words brought a moment of calm to the scene and Harry cast an eye back over his team before addressing the family again. ‘The sooner we get on with this, the sooner it’s done, and we can leave you all in peace.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Patricia said. ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on. We’re going to need more tea.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Harry was in the kitchen sitting at the large table opposite Patricia, with Jadyn beside him. Matt was with Jen and Ruth in James’ study, and Dan was on his own in the lounge. Jadyn had just confirmed Patricia’s details, her name, her telephone number, and was now waiting, pencil poised to start taking notes.

  ‘So, what is this, exactly?’ Patricia asked. ‘An interrogation? Surely I need to speak to my solicitor first, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘No, this isn’t an interrogation,’ Harry said. ‘Right now, we’re just here to ask you all a few questions, that’s all. Obviously, I can’t stop you calling your solicitor, but that will take time, and like I said, this is just us trying to establish what happened last night in the run-up to your father’s death.’

  ‘So, you’re not accusing me of anything?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said, shaking his head. ‘I am most definitely not accusing anyone, at this moment, of anything at all. This is just a few questions, a little chat, that’s all.’

  ‘But you think one of us killed Dad, don’t you?’ Patricia asked. ‘I can see it in your eyes, it’s in your voice. Otherwise, why would you be here at all?’

  ‘Like I said,’ Harry reiterated deciding to avoid Patricia’s questions, ‘we’re just going to run through a few details, that’s all for now. If we need to question anyone further, then that will happen in due course.’

  Patricia stared at Harry for a moment then switched her glare to Jadyn.

  ‘He means later on,’ Jadyn said. ‘As in another time, like, you know, not right now?’

  Harry had to wonder if Jadyn’s brain was incapable of stopping his mouth from talking or was simply happy to spend its life lazing about in the passenger seat.

  ‘I know what he means,’ Patricia said, her voice seething through her teeth, ‘but how much later? We’ve got so much to be getting on with now, as I’m sure you’ll understand. I don’t think any of us have time for this. And really, how much more do you think we can handle? You’ve seen Ruth, haven’t you? She’s a mess! We all are.’

  ‘I know, and I completely understand,’ Harry said.

  ‘Do you, though?’ Patricia snapped back. ‘Experienced many murdered family members yourself, have you?’

  Yes, actually, I have, Harry thought, but he said, ‘I understand you came up last week?’

  ‘Yes,’ Patricia nodded. ‘We’re both self-employed so we can be flexible.’

  ‘And what is it you do?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Finance,’ Patricia said. ‘I’m setting up a new consultancy, advising companies on accounting, investments, tax, that kind of thing. I’ve a lot of experience in those areas, you see. Best way to make money is to work with money, you know?’

  Harry really wasn’t interested, but asked for a few more details for Jadyn to write down, then said, ‘Can you just run through what happened last night?’

  ‘What else is there to say, other than what you already know?’ Patricia replied. ‘Dad burned to death!’

  Harry breathed deep.

  Jadyn leant across the table and said, ‘Would you like a glass of water?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Patricia said.

  ‘A glass of water,’ Jadyn repeated. ‘Sometimes helps, you know, with the questions I mean.’

  ‘Does it?’

  ‘Yes, it does,’ Jadyn said.

  ‘Well then, yes I will, thank you,’ Patricia said, and Jadyn got out of his chair and fetched her a drink.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ Patricia said, taking a sip of water, her voice calm for the first time. ‘This is all just rather a shock, you know? What with the car accident, Mum’s death, Dad’s behaviour, and now this? It’s just too much, for all of us.’

  ‘Perhaps you can tell us about what happened earlier in the evening then,’ Harry suggested. ‘Just run through the events as they happened.’

  ‘You mean the séance?’ Patricia said, a laugh at the back of her throat. ‘Really? You wa
nt to know about that?’

  Harry said nothing, just nodded, and noticed that Jadyn was already scribbling away.

  ‘Well,’ Patricia began, ‘this woman, this medium or psychic or whatever the hell she says she is, she turns up last weekend, invited over here by Dad.’

  ‘Why?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Because ever since the accident Dad was acting off, wasn’t he? Which is fair enough for most people, but Dad wasn’t most people, was he? He was a military man, good at keeping himself together.’

  ‘I was in the Paras myself,’ Harry said. ‘And I’ve seen how death can affect everyone differently.’

  ‘Yes, but this was different, wasn’t it?’ Patricia said.

  ‘You mean about how he thought he was seeing—’

  ‘Mum?’ Patricia said, finishing Harry’s sentence. ‘Yes, exactly that. The accident was horrible, but I think it affected him in ways none of us will ever really understand. Anyway, that’s why he invited this Beverly, this medium over, because he wanted to contact Mum. By which I mean talk to her, communicate with her spirit, I suppose. See? That’s just not normal.’

  ‘And how did you all feel about that?’ Jadyn asked.

  ‘Sad, more than anything, actually,’ Patricia said. ‘Mum is dead and we were all having to deal with it, with that loss, and yet there’s Dad, talking about it all like he would see her again or had seen her or was going to speak to her. It was mad.’

  ‘So, this behaviour wasn’t entirely normal, then?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Good God, no!’ Patricia replied. ‘Military man, remember? But he’d been blaming himself for what happened, the accident I mean, and then he was seeing things, wasn’t he? A woman he thought was Mum, which was clearly the most ridiculous thing ever.’

  ‘And do you know why he blamed himself?’ Harry asked. ‘Did he say anything to you about it?’

  ‘I have no idea at all why,’ Patricia said. ‘Just guilt I think.’

  Harry remembered then what Ruth had said about Helen not being too happy about driving at night. ‘So, he never said anything specific?’

  Patricia shook her head, then said, ‘Oh, you mean about Mum and her not being able to see in the dark thing? That?’

  Harry said nothing, just waited for Patricia to keep talking.

  ‘She just didn’t like driving at night, that was all. It was her funny little secret.’

  ‘Secret?’ Jadyn said.

  ‘She didn’t think that we knew about it, but of course, we all did. And Dad did all the driving anyway, well, most of it. So, I guess that’s what was playing on his mind.’

  Harry decided to move the conversation back to the night before, the hours before James died. ‘So, this séance,’ he said.

  ‘Dad had never been into anything that weird before,’ Patricia said. ‘Not at all. I think he found out about that woman on the internet or something. But anyway, she comes over for a visit, and the next thing we know she’s back over again, after the funeral. Can you imagine? I mean, we’d just buried Mum, and there she was! What the hell Dad was thinking, I don’t know, but it was all about him right then. Very selfish.’

  ‘Do you have her details?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Patricia said then reached over and took Jadyn’s notebook and pencil before he could do anything to stop her. ‘There,’ she said, handing it back. ‘I’ve a mind for numbers, you see.’

  Harry was about to ask Patricia about the séance when she started speaking again.

  ‘Of course, she just flounces in here like having a séance is completely normal, something that everyone does all the time, but it isn’t, is it? I mean, this isn’t the 1890s, is it? We’re not all running off to some spooky gathering at a Victorian mansion to discuss faeries and ectoplasm!’

  ‘Are you saying Mr Fletcher said he saw faeries as well?’ Jadyn asked.

  The look Harry and Patricia both gave him made him slump just a little further down into his chair.

  ‘In she comes,’ Patricia said, ‘this medium, and she asks to be left in the room alone for a few minutes, and we’re stood outside in the hall, and that was all a bit awkward, I can tell you.’

  ‘She was in the room alone?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Patricia nodded. ‘To add to the theatre of it all, I’m sure, you know? Perhaps even to creep us out a bit?’

  ‘And then you went back in,’ Jadyn prompted.

  ‘Yes,’ Patricia said. ‘We all sat around the coffee table and there was a photo of Mum on the table, next to her wedding ring and a favourite book of hers, and then, well, it all got very strange indeed, didn’t it?’

  ‘Strange how?’ Harry asked. ‘What actually happened?’

  Patricia explained then about the tapping at the window, the strange voices Beverly had used, and how it had all finally come to a somewhat inglorious end.

  ‘We threw her out straight away!’ she said. ‘Honestly, it was horrendous! Everyone was so jumpy! Dad was really upset. It was a total nightmare. We really shouldn’t have gone ahead with it, but Dad was pretty insistent.’

  ‘And you all heard this tapping at the window?’ Harry asked. ‘But there was no one outside?’

  ‘Well, there must have been, I’m sure of it,’ Patricia said. ‘How else would she have done it? And it certainly scared us all, but Dan went and looked out the window and saw nothing so they’d obviously disappeared by that point.’

  ‘Did you go outside?’

  ‘What was the point?’ Patricia said. ‘It was a horribly dark night, and whoever it was out there, whoever that woman had brought along with her to help, I doubt we would have been able to see or find them. Dan did, though. I think he decided to be all manly for a moment. Very unlike him.’

  ‘So, there’s this medium doing her thing,’ Jadyn said, ‘and then we’ve someone throwing stones at the window.’

  ‘That’s what it sounded like,’ Patricia said. ‘Tap-tap-tap, against the glass. And if you ask me, this Beverly woman, she was just there to make a name for herself or something.’

  ‘How so?’ Harry asked.

  ‘You know the stories about the house, right?’ Patricia said. ‘About how it’s apparently haunted. Not that anyone’s ever seen anything. But she said she knew about the house when she arrived, so I reckon that’s what all this was about, not Dad at all.’

  ‘Did you have to pay her?’ asked Jadyn.

  ‘No,’ Patricia said. ‘And we wouldn’t have anyway, not after what happened. Honestly, it was awful. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised that if we hadn’t allowed it to happen, then Dad would still be here. I’m sure of it, actually.’

  Harry decided not to follow that line of thought. It was more than a little tenuous. Then his mind cast a line back to what Patricia had said a few moments ago. ‘The stones against the window, they actually sounded like that did they? Tap-tap-tap?’

  ‘Isn’t that how stones sound on a window?’ Patricia asked.

  ‘No, what I mean is,’ Harry explained, ‘you said tap-tap-tap, like there was a rhythm to it, and that doesn’t sound like someone throwing something at the window, does it?’

  ‘No, I suppose it doesn’t,’ Patricia said.

  Harry made a mental note about the sound at the window, then said, ‘So, later on, after the séance, did anything happen before the fire?’

  ‘No,’ Patricia said, shaking her head. ‘We all went to bed. Dad went off to his cabin. After a day like we’d all had, we were exhausted.’

  ‘On that,’ Harry said, remembering what the pathologist had said about the drugs found in James’ body, ‘can I ask if you ever take anything to help you sleep?’

  ‘No, never,’ Patricia said. ‘but I wish I had done last night, I was so exhausted, by the stress of everything, you know? And today I just don’t feel like I’ve slept at all. I should’ve had one of Dan’s, but they don’t agree with me.’

  ‘Dan takes sleeping tablets?’ Harry asked.

  Patricia nodded. ‘Not all the
time, just when he really needs to.’

  ‘What about everyone else?’ Harry asked. ‘They all went straight to bed as well?’

  ‘Ruth and Anthony headed back to their house, the cottage. Dad went to the shed or cabin or whatever it is you want to call it. Dan and I went to bed.’

  ‘So, if you were in bed,’ Harry said, ‘how did you know about the fire?’

  ‘It was the smell that woke me,’ Patricia said. ‘Woke us all I think. The smoke. Dan and I rushed outside and there was Dad’s cabin, just this huge inferno, you couldn’t go near it. And we couldn’t find Dad anywhere.’

  ‘And then you called the emergency services?’ Jadyn asked.

  ‘Immediately,’ Patricia said. ‘Well, Ruth did, didn’t she? And we all kept looking for Dad all around the place, checked every room, the garden. We none of us thought for a minute that he was in there, you know, in the fire. It didn’t even cross our minds.’

  ‘Is there anything else that you can remember?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Patricia said. ‘We had the séance, we all went to bed, the smell from the fire woke me up, and now here we are.’ She sighed, then added, ‘It’s bloody horrific, isn’t it?’

  Harry said nothing for a moment, then asked, ‘Is there anything else you can think of, anything that seemed odd or out of place or strange?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In any way at all,’ Harry said.

  Patricia shook her head and leaned back in her chair. ‘Everything that’s happened has been odd,’ she said. ‘None of this is normal.’

  Harry had to agree with her, and after he thanked her for her time, Patricia stood up and left the room.

  ‘So, what do you think so far?’ Harry asked, looking across at Jadyn.

  Constable Okri checked his notes, then looked up at Harry, shaking his head. ‘To be honest, Boss, I haven’t got a sodding clue.’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Neither have I.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dan glanced across the table into the stony face of Detective Chief Inspector Harry Grimm and couldn’t help but feel guilty. It wasn’t just the detective’s eyes that did it, though they were things of hard, cold stone, he thought. No. And it wasn’t the scarring either, though that really was something to behold, the man’s skin cracked like the surface of a lava flow. It was what lay beneath all of it, he realised, an invisible and altogether frightening presence which seemed to seep from the man like fog, to wrap around him and choke him. He’d seen Patricia briefly in passing, as he’d been called in by the constable for a chat, and she had certainly looked drained. And Ruth had looked just the same as well. So, now it was his turn, and that feeling of guilt just wasn’t shifting. And that wasn’t good, was it?