The Concrete Ceiling

by Peter Rowlands

  Needless to say, Graham had declined both. As for me, I hadn’t received any offer, and my promotion still hadn’t run.

  I walked up the steps and pressed the bell push, and heard a buzzer sounding somewhere in the depths of the house. Nothing happened. After a long pause I buzzed again. Still nothing.

  I now noticed that the door was slightly open. I rapped firmly on it, calling round it, “Hello? Is anyone around?” Still nothing.

  Had Openshaw gone out on an errand? I turned round to face the square, but there was no sign of him. After casting another quick glance at the door, I concluded that there was nothing for it but to go home. I was about to leave when I became aware of a figure approaching from the street: Openshaw’s teenage daughter Ellie, dressed this time in black leggings and a white puffer jacket. I attempted a smile and said, “Hello again.”

  Glancing from me to the house and back, she said, “Never heard of closing the door behind you?”

  I looked over my shoulder, then back at her. “Someone must have left it open, but there’s no one in.”

  “Oh yeah?” She pushed past me, thrust the door fully open and disappeared inside, slamming it emphatically behind her.

  So much for that. I stepped down to the pavement. I was taking a final glance at the house when I heard a muffled shout from inside, followed by a piercing scream. Then another.

  Should I go back? I had no desire to confront Ellie again, but the anguish of those cries was hard to dismiss. As I hovered indecisively, I noticed that the front door had swung slightly open again. Either it had been left on the latch or the ferocity of Ellie’s slam had damaged the lock.

  Cautiously I climbed the short flight of steps again and pushed at the door.

  “Ellie? Is everything OK?”

  I waited. No sound now. No more screams. I was ready to turn round and leave her to her own devices when she appeared at the far end of the hall, looking aghast. She rasped out, “What the HELL have you done? You must be a fucking lunatic!”

  I took a pace towards her. Immediately she cried, “Don’t you dare come in here! Get the fuck out! I’ve called the police.” She glanced cautiously behind her, then back at me. “Get OUT!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I said get out! NOW!”

  “OK, OK, but can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  “You KNOW what’s wrong. Mygod mygod.” She was literally wringing her hands. She took a step forward and stopped at the foot of the staircase. Her eyes flashed between me and the stairs. She shouted, “You’re still here. GO AWAY!” Abruptly she wheeled round and shot up the stairs, her feet thumping on every tread in her desperation. She stumbled near the top, scrabbled frantically to recover herself and disappeared. I heard a door slam.

  Perhaps I should have left at that point, but Ellie had put me in a quandary. Whatever had happened inside that house, she had misinterpreted it. If I left now, her story would stick. If I stayed, I might have some chance of setting the record straight.

  I pushed the door fully open and walked warily down the hall. It ended at the door into the kitchen. I peered round, and it didn’t take me more than a moment to spot Rob Openshaw lying on the tiled floor next to the breakfast bar. His eyes were staring sightlessly upward, and there was a pool of blood round his head.

  I strode over to him and did what I’d seen countless people do in films – stooped down and put my fingers on his neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. He was well and truly dead.

  I stood up in horror. What should I do? Clearly I couldn’t leave now. Somehow I needed to take control of the situation. I wondered if Ellie had really called the police. Did she even know that the UK number was 999? I reached for my own phone. Might as well make the call myself. I tapped out the number. They told me someone would arrive within minutes.

  While I waited, I glanced round at the kitchen, which was modern and smartly fitted out in blacks and whites. A couple of white plates had fallen on the floor and smashed. Reluctantly I looked back down at Rob. There was blood in his hair, but it was impossible to make out the extent of the wound. I couldn’t work out the sequence of events that had left him lying there; it would take a forensic expert to piece it together.

  I decided I didn’t want to be found standing over the body, so I walked back down the hall and hovered by the front door. I didn’t want to be found apparently leaving either, so I resisted the inclination to go out into the street. There was no sign of Ellie, who was presumably keeping her head down and her door locked.

  I didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes I heard a car pulling up outside, and three uniformed policeman appeared in the doorway.

  Chapter 19

  The next half-hour passed in a blur. Even though I was the one who had called the police, they treated me with suspicion from the outset. I was hustled outside and questioned for a while on the doorstep, then as other police and a forensic team arrived I was bundled into a car and driven off to a nearby police station.

  The questioning continued in an interview room. What had I been doing at Rob Openshaw’s house? Why had I gone inside without being invited? What had happened when I did?

  It very soon became clear that they assumed I’d entered the house twice – once to kill Openshaw, then again after his daughter arrived and found him. They must be basing their version of events on what she’d told them. She’d walked up, engrossed as always in her phone, then glanced up to see me facing down the steps with an open door behind me. She’d assumed I’d just come out of the house, and in her place I would probably have assumed the same. Therefore I was the killer. Slam dunk.

  The two detectives doing the interviewing – a dark-haired man in his late thirties and a stockier fair-haired man in his twenties – told me I was not yet under caution. It wasn’t much consolation; they clearly had no intention of releasing me in the near future. They thought they’d caught a killer more or less red-handed, and they weren’t about to let me slip between their fingers.

  During a break I was led to another room where they took my fingerprints. Then it was back to the interview room, where I was left on my own for a while. The room was like all those I’d ever seen in films or read about in books – bleak, featureless and empty apart from a metal table and four hard chairs. It smelled of the sweat of past occupants, and looking around, I was strongly aware that for many previous visitors, a period in here must have led to a dawning realisation that life was never going to be the same again.

  Finally the two detectives came back in and sat down opposite me. The older one, Ratcliffe, folded his hands on the table and fixed me with a weary, almost disappointed stare. “Right, Mr Stanhope, I’d like to run your story past you one more time.”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve told us you paid this man Robert Openshaw to help you sell your digital novel to readers, but he did nothing to follow through with his undertaking, so you did an internet search to find out where he lived, and you went to his house to confront him. But according to you, he was already dead when you got there. You were alerted to this fact when his daughter Ellie arrived and discovered his body. You went into the house to determine what had alarmed her, and when you found Mr Openshaw you called the police.”

  “That’s about right, yes.”

  “But you see, there are discrepancies. For a start, Ms Openshaw saw you leaving the house. You’d already been inside when she arrived.”

  “Not true! She must have misinterpreted what she saw.”

  “So you say. But we’ve found your fingerprints all over the house – in the hallway, in the front room, on the doors, in the kitchen.”

  Forcing myself to be patient, I said, “I’ve already told you, I went there before, last week. Rob Openshaw invited me in.” I paused to think. “Ellie saw me. She’ll confirm it.”

  “You went into the kitchen?”

  “No! I went in there this afternoon, to find out what was wrong. If I’d known he was dead, I would have avoided touching anythi
ng that would arouse your suspicions, but I didn’t know that, did I? I just did what normal people do.”

  “Sarcasm isn’t helpful.”

  “Then listen to what I’m telling you!”

  He straightened, stretched, then said, “Let me give you my version of events. I think you paid this man to help you sell your book, but he failed to meet your expectations, so you went to his house to confront him. In your anger, you knocked him down, and he suffered a fatal blow. You didn’t mean to kill him – it was a regrettable accident. Whatever the circumstances, you decided to make your retreat, but you only got as far as the doorstep when his daughter arrived home.”

  “But why would I go back inside if that were true? Why didn’t I just leave at that point?”

  He gave a slightly smug smile. “You’re not a fool, Mr Stanhope. You immediately realised we would track you down, so you decided to stay put and invent this alternative scenario that you’re feeding us.”

  I stared at him without saying anything. We always assume that fairness will prevail in life, however frequently events might seem to prove otherwise. At the back of my mind I was convinced that these people would gradually come to see the rightness of my protestations, and we could all go home. But I was seeing precious little sign of it.

  Finally I said, “Do you know how much I paid this man for his services? Eight hundred pounds! Do you seriously think I would kill a man over that amount of money? It’s beyond ridiculous!”

  Ratcliffe shook his head. “Intentionally? Possibly not. In my experience people have killed for a lot less than that, but in this case I think tempers flared, and the situation simply got out of hand. It happens every day, I’m sorry to say. People don’t necessarily go out planning to kill someone – it just ends up like that. The thought processes in the killer’s mind are immaterial. It doesn’t make the victim any less dead.”

  I wondered how to get out of this vicious circle. I said, “What about closed-circuit television? There must be cameras in that square. Why don’t you check them? Presumably they’ll show the real killer arriving and leaving, and you’ll be able to see that it wasn’t me.”

  Baird, the fair-haired detective, shook his head. “There are no public CCTV cameras in the square. We’ve already looked.”

  “What about the adjoining streets? There must be cameras somewhere around that neighbourhood.”

  “But who would we be looking for? The only person we know was in the house is you.”

  I shrugged helplessly. “Can’t you check them anyway? Then all you’ll need to do is look into this man’s life, and see if any of the people you find on camera have some kind of grudge against him. Someone must have. You just have to join the dots.”

  Ratcliffe chipped in, “Is that how you would write it in one of your thrillers?”

  I looked round at him and attempted a withering stare, but it didn’t work very well. “I’m just trying to be helpful.”

  “Trying to avoid reality, it seems to me.”

  There was a knock at the door, and another man peered round. Ratcliffe stood up and went over to confer with him, and he handed Ratcliffe a piece of paper.

  Ratcliffe came back to the table and sat down. “You sent threatening emails to Mr Openshaw – is that right?”

  “No way! What on earth makes you say that?”

  “This is from an email sent by you to Mr Openshaw.” He looked down at the paper he’d been handed and read from it. “‘You have done nothing to implement the promotion I paid for, or taken the steps you promised to make good. Would you kindly let me know when you intend to take action on this? I don’t like having to trouble you at home about this, but I am more than happy to do so again if necessary, and I have to tell you that my patience is wearing thin.’” He looked up at me. “Are those your words, Mr Stanhope?”

  “Yes, but that’s not a threat! That’s just being firm. Sometimes if you’re nice to people they don’t pay you any attention.”

  “So does ‘being firm’ include knocking people to the ground and killing them?”

  “Of course it doesn’t! I would never have done that in a million years.”

  He looked back down at the sheet of paper in his hand. “Are you acquainted with a man named Graham Bulwell?”

  The sudden switch in tack took me aback, and for a moment I said nothing. “Certainly. He’s another client of Rob Openshaw’s book promotion service.”

  “And did Mr Bulwell recently pay Mr Openshaw six hundred pounds to promote his electronic book?”

  “Yes he did.” I was wondering where this was going.

  “So in fact you weren’t just confronting Mr Openshaw over the eight hundred pounds you paid him, you were also trying to recoup the six hundred for Mr Bulwell. Were you planning to split the pay-out between you?”

  “Good god, no!”

  “So you didn’t agree to represent Mr Bulwell to Mr Openshaw.”

  I wasn’t sure how to reply. I said, “Well yes, in a way I was acting on Graham’s behalf, but that was just out of good will. I wanted Openshaw to return his money as well as mine.”

  He looked at me triumphantly.

  “But that doesn’t mean I killed for him, for god’s sake! Why would I do that? What would be in it for me?”

  “I’m not saying you did it for the money, I’m saying the stakes were higher than you’ve made out. You were looking for repayment or retribution for yourself and Mr Bulwell.” He gave me a long stare. “I think you’re a man who doesn’t like to be crossed. You decided on your own course of action to resolve the situation, and things got out of hand.”

  I sat back. His accusation was almost laughable. I said, “For god’s sake, this is book publishing we’re talking about here, not some drug cartel or international smuggling ring. In the scheme of things, the amount of money involved is trivial. If this really was a plot for a thriller, I would throw it out as completely implausible.”

  He pushed his chair back noisily and frowned at me. “I advise you not to treat this situation as a joke, Mr Stanhope. You’re in serious trouble here, and you need to think carefully what you say to me.”

  Chastened, I said “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make light of anything. I just want you to know that you’re misreading things. Someone apparently killed Rob Openshaw, but it wasn’t me.” I sat forward. “Look, Graham Bulwell and I can’t have been the only people Rob Openshaw ripped off. There are probably loads of other authors out there baying for his blood – maybe people with a lot more reason to kill him than we had. Why don’t you take a look at his finances – find out who had a proper motive?”

  “We’ll be looking into all that,” Ratcliffe said tersely. “But the fact is that these hypothetical other people weren’t in Mr Openshaw’s kitchen this afternoon, and didn’t come out with blood on their hands, leaving fingerprints all over the house and a witness who saw them emerge. You were, and you did. We can’t ignore the evidence in front of us.”

  Chapter 20

  They arrested me and locked me up.

  As the interview progressed, I could see that there was going to be no easy end to it. Finally they read me my rights, took away my personal belongings and led me to a cell.

  I sat on the bench, staring at the door and reeling at the shock of being forcibly restrained by other people – people, moreover, who were doing it with the backing of the law.

  I’d never in my wildest nightmares imagined this could happen to me. When they told me they were going to hold me overnight, initially I couldn’t decide which was going to be the worst aspect of it – the sense of injustice, the humiliation, or the feeling of impotence. Once I was in the cell, the impotence immediately drowned out everything else. I was all too aware that it could easily spill over into the horror of claustrophobia. Somehow I had to keep that at bay.

  I had to keep reassuring myself that I hadn’t been abandoned here indefinitely. I was in a system. People would give me food and drink, and eventually they would let me out. The
y hadn’t thrown away the key. Intellectually I understood this, but that knowledge did little to assuage the fight-or-flight impulse that was pushing me towards blind panic.

  I tried reminding myself that across the world, hundreds of thousands of other people were at that moment incarcerated somewhere, and many of them, like me, were innocent of the crimes that had put them where they were. They were surviving, and I would too. The thought brought some consolation, but not much.

  I’d been allowed to make a phone call, but initially I’d been uncertain who to nominate. Ashley was on the other side of the world. Telling her about this would have given her a shock, but from California there was precious little she could have done to help. Joanna, my friend in Germany, would certainly have offered encouragement, but like Ashley she was too far away to intervene in any practical way.

  I had a get-out-of-jail-free card up my sleeve – my friendship with Dave Matthews, a detective inspector in south London. He’d helped me unofficially on various stories I’d worked on over the years, and he’d also intervened more than once to extricate me from tight spots with the authorities. But I’d never had to call on him literally to get me out of jail, and I suspected that even asking would be pushing him beyond the limits of his influence.

  A more practical objection to calling him was the fact that I happened to know he was on holiday with his girlfriend in Madeira, and he’d actually commented to me that the mobile signal at their resort might be poor. Even if I had been able to reach him, there would have been little he could do. I would have been invading his holiday (not for the first time) without necessarily achieving anything.

  In the end I phoned Sam. If I was honest with myself, hers was the voice I most wanted to hear. She picked up straight away.

  “Mike! How did you get on with Noel?”

  “He was really helpful, but this is about something else. The police have arrested me in connection with a death, and I wanted to tell someone I was here. You’re the lucky candidate.”