by Paul Gitsham
* * *
“The records are here, boss.” Pete Kent handed over a sheaf of printouts to Warren.
Warren split the pile of Clubcard purchases in two and handed half back to Kent. “Separate out the shopping trips where the buyer bought cranberry juice or cranberry products, use the list of product abbreviations to help you.”
“My pleasure.” Pete Kent was never at his most enthusiastic thirty minutes before his shift was due to end and there was football on the TV. Nevertheless, splitting the job in two meant it was completed in just a few minutes.
Warren looked at the two piles and smiled in satisfaction.
“Gotcha.”
* * *
Warren led the team of uniformed officers to the quiet cul-de-sac. Everyone wore stab-proof vests and utility belts with batons, CS spray and handcuffs. Eleven p.m. and the estate was quiet. Warren had decided that a surprise arrest was the best way, opting to use his own car for the final approach rather than a police vehicle. However, marked cars, lights off, had moved to block the entrance to the street. The flat was on the fourth floor with only one entry point and Warren was confident that there was no way their target could escape via a window without serious injury. Even so, an ambulance crew were on standby just in case.
Gaining entry to the apartment block was accomplished by the use of a key code supplied by the building management company, and Warren led the team silently up the stairs, eschewing the lift.
Flat forty-six had a wooden door that, whilst solid, would pose no serious impediment to the forced entry team’s battering ram. As Warren tried to control his breathing after the long climb, he noticed with some dismay that the small, squat sergeant who’d single-handedly lugged the metal ram up four flights of stairs hadn’t even broken a sweat. Yet again he vowed to start visiting the gym with Susan more regularly.
The lead officer of the entry team removed his stethoscope from the door and gave a thumbs-up, indicating that the flat was occupied and that the sounds of a TV and chink of light through the spyhole weren’t just for effect.
The goal was a quick entry and arrest with no time for the target to prepare. The nature of Michaelson’s killing suggested that his attacker favoured brains over brawn, but Warren wasn’t taking any chances. Who knew what a desperate person might do if cornered? Nevertheless they would only force entry if necessary.
A series of quick nods confirmed the team’s readiness. Taking a deep breath Warren stepped forward and rapped sharply on the door with his knuckles. “Police. Open up.”
* * *
The arrest was almost an anticlimax. Their target had all but packed a suitcase in anticipation of their visit and the speed with which the solicitor arrived at the station after processing made Warren wonder if she had been tipped off in advance that an arrest was imminent.
Regardless, the tape was running and the person in front of Warren and Sutton had been repeating “no comment” from the moment Warren had finished reading the rights. The solicitor sat impassively, her face stony.
“I believe that you took it in turns to buy Mr Michaelson’s shopping?”
“No comment.”
Warren sighed theatrically. “Look, we have sworn statements attesting that the three of you shared that duty. You’ve even mentioned it yourself.”
The accused glanced towards the solicitor. As far as Warren could tell, her expression never changed but her client clearly read something in her eyes.
“Yes. We shared all of the domestic duties.”
Warren nodded. “OK.” He slid a see-through evidence bag across the table. “I am showing the suspect exhibit one: a number of Tesco Clubcard vouchers, made out in the name of Mr Charles Michaelson.
“Now my understanding was that you would buy Mr Michaelson his shopping, using his Clubcard, and he would pay you back to the exact amount?”
The suspect paused, clearly contemplating another “no comment”, before deciding that there was no point denying something that was obviously already part of the record.
“For the benefit of the tape, the suspect has nodded agreement.”
“Mr Michaelson had his stroke about ten years ago, I believe, and the three of you were his principal carers for all of that time?”
Another cautious nod.
“I would assume that you are aware of the guidelines issued by the anticoagulation service at Addenbrooke’s Hospital?”
This time the mumbled “yes” was barely audible.
“If that is the case, then could you explain why these Tesco Clubcard vouchers, awarded on the basis of purchasing habits, contain coupons for cranberry juice, something that is strongly advised against in patients taking warfarin?”
There was a long silence, before a break was requested.
Warren turned off the tape and left the room without a word.
* * *
The break in proceedings was just long enough for Warren to hold a hurried conference with DSI Grayson and Tony Sutton. When the custody sergeant signalled that the suspect and solicitor were ready to continue, Warren left his colleagues to their phone calls.
“My client wishes to make it clear that these Clubcard vouchers are not evidence that cranberry juice was purchased with any regularity. And my own reading of the subject on Tesco’s website indicates that they regularly recommend different products similar to those previously bought. For example, Mr Michaelson enjoyed both apple juice and orange juice.”
Warren nodded, as if to concede the point. “OK, just to clarify. Are you saying that no cranberry juice was ever bought using his Clubcard?”
There was a long pause, whilst the person chewing a thumbnail in front of Warren thought about their answer. “If there was, it wasn’t bought by me.”
“I’m now showing the suspect exhibit two, a listing of all purchases in the past few months made using the deceased’s Clubcard. Fourteen entries are highlighted showing the purchase of cranberry juice.”
The solicitor interjected. “I believe that my client has made it clear that any such purchases were made by somebody else.”
“I understand. However, the date and time at which these items were bought is clearly logged. Would you be willing to tell me who did Mr Michaelson’s shopping on these dates?”
The “no comment” overlapped with the solicitor’s protestation that the question was unfair.
“Some of these purchases go back weeks, DCI Jones. Surely you can’t expect my client to remember individual shopping visits?”
“No, that’s fair enough I suppose.”
The solicitor turned her eyes away. She wasn’t daft. She knew exactly what was going to happen next and was powerless to intervene.
“Fortunately, we don’t need to rely on your memory. Visa can help us.” Warren tapped the list of purchases with his pen. “Could you tell us who this debit card belongs to? The card used to pay on every occasion that the cranberry juice was bought?”
“Shit.”
They requested another break.
* * *
If anything, the man in front of Warren and Sutton looked relieved that everything was over. Warren doubted that he’d be feeling the same way over the next few months and years, but he was going to exploit his co-operation whilst he could.
The story was pretty much what Warren had surmised.
“I had the idea a few months ago after Kathy said how she’d cut him when she was shaving him. It had bled for ages and really gave her a fright. I knew that people on warfarin bleed more than normal and that they’re at risk of brain haemorrhages and stuff if they bang their heads.”
“So what did you do?” Warren had a good idea, but he wanted the full story in the man’s own words on the record.
“I remember reading on the warfarin information leaflet that eating cranberries or drinking their juice can increase the blood clotting time and so I started giving him a large glass whenever I could. I used to mix it with lemonade or orange juice—he loved the stuff.
; “I thought there was a certain irony to him paying for the thing that would finally kill him. I guess I shouldn’t have bought it using his Clubcard.”
The solicitor winced as her client sabotaged her plans for mitigation with his callous admission.
“But it didn’t work, did it?”
The man across the table’s shoulders slumped and for the first time his voice shook slightly. “No. A couple of weeks after I started giving him the juice I nicked him with the razor. He bled, but it wasn’t a big deal. I got on the web and they said that the whole cranberry thing was a bit of an exaggeration.”
“So what did you do?” Warren’s voice was softer now.
“I thought about giving it up. But I couldn’t. He was an evil old man and he had ruined so many lives. He needed to be punished, so we could all move on.” He took a sip of the water in front of him. “Then I thought about giving him an overdose of his warfarin. I figured that if you did a blood test, you’d only find what you expected. He’d been on the drug for years; he’d be full of it. I was going to use his pills but they come in packs of twenty-eight and I didn’t think there were enough. Besides, the chemist would know how many he should have left and people would get suspicious if there were too many missing. Then I remembered that he used to call it rat poison. So I went back on the web and found that rat poison contains warfarin.”
A little knowledge could be a dangerous thing, Warren mused. If he’d read a bit further, he’d have found out that warfarin was no longer the active ingredient in most rodenticides and perhaps this whole mad plan would have been shelved.
“I found that you can get the stuff premixed with grain. So I baked it into a cake.”
The solicitor closed her eyes briefly.
He continued, his voice almost mechanical as if what he’d described was the most natural thing in the world. “I’d never win The Great British Bake Off, but I tried a bit and it tasted OK. He wolfed it down.”
“When was this?”
“About a week or so ago.”
That tied in with Kathy Mackay’s reports that her father had been a bit under the weather in the days before his death.
“So what did you do next?”
“I figured it would take a few days to get into his system. By Sunday he was complaining he felt tired. I offered to give him a wet shave and nicked him again. He bled like a stuck pig. Almost too much. It got to the point where I was worried that he was going to bleed out there and then. Fortunately I managed to stop it.”
“So you decided he was ready?”
Warren was careful to keep his tone neutral, matching the man’s dispassion with his own. He worried that if he introduced too much emotion the killer before him would dry up and stop the flow of information.
“Yeah. It was now or never.” He paused again and took another mouthful of water.
“I knew that he had a habit of falling asleep in the chair, watching the telly. The TV switches itself off to save power late at night so I figured that if I turned the lights off as well, the room would be pitch black.” He paused, his eyes glazing over slightly at the memory.
“What happened on the night he died?” prompted Warren, careful to avoid emotive words such as “killed” or, God forbid, “murdered”.
The man’s voice was dull, flat. “I turned up about eleven. I could hear the TV still going and the lights were on, but he snores something rotten. He’s half deaf, so it wasn’t difficult to let myself in without waking him. I needed it to look like an accident, so I turned up the corner of the rug in front of the fireplace, pushed his wheeled tray out of reach and moved his walking stick. Then I switched the lights off and turned the TV to standby.”
“And then what?”
The man’s voice lost its robotic edge and a tremble entered his speech. “I was going to leave him. Let nature take its course. But what if it didn’t work? So I sat down on the sofa and waited.”
The man took another sip of water, spilling a few drops down his chin. He didn’t notice. “For over two hours I sat there. Listening to his breathing. Remembering what he did. About one a.m. I nearly called the whole thing off. I even went to put the light back on, so I could straighten the rug and move everything back to where it belonged. But then I remembered why I was doing it. For ten years our lives have revolved around that man, whilst he sits in that bloody chair on a pile of money that could solve everyone’s problems in one go, yet he’s too tight to pay a penny towards his own care, treating his own family like unpaid domestic help. He needed to be punished for what he did and to stop him ever doing it again.”
The man paused, before continuing quietly. His lip trembled slightly. “And then there’s Callum. The fear and the way he gets upset and won’t talk whenever somebody mentions his granddad and I knew I had to go through with it.”
Spent, he sat back in his chair. After a few seconds he started again. “It was getting on for half past one and I was beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. Perhaps he’d just sleep through until dawn. And then he woke up. My eyes had adapted to the darkness a bit, but I knew there was no way he could see me and he wouldn’t hear me.
“He started sweeping the air with his hand, looking for his trolley and swearing about light bulbs. Then he gave up and started looking for his walking stick. When he didn’t find it, I thought he might just give up and wait for morning when Kathy arrived to do his breakfast, but he started muttering something about being found in his own piss and shit.
“When he stood up, I thought he was going to turn the chair over, because he was leaning on one side. I hadn’t thought of that. But eventually he was on his feet, shuffling along the carpet. I could just about see him as he stumbled on the rug. But he caught himself, managed not to fall…”
The man opposite the two officers fell silent. The seconds ticked by, but Warren and Sutton said nothing. Even his solicitor seemed to be holding her breath.
“So I pushed him—” another long pause “—in the small of the back. He went straight down, just as I’d planned, straight into the mantelpiece. He didn’t make a sound.”
The man covered his mouth, but his words remained distinct enough for the recorder. “I stood and stared at him for a few minutes. And then I left.”
* * *
At the solicitor’s request, they’d taken another short break. Both Warren and Sutton had been relieved. The most important part of the interview, the confession, was over and the two officers were feeling almost as wrung out as the man they’d interviewed.
Now the tape was back on again.
“Can you tell me why you did it?”
“You were right about his liking for children. He had a thing for small boys.” The man’s voice shook slightly. “There was never any evidence but when the rumours started circulating about him joining the scouts I knew that they were true. But then he got kicked out and I figured it would be OK. And when he had his stroke I thought, that’s it then. He’s not going to be a danger to kids any more. And so we just carried on. Feeding him, cleaning him and waiting for him to die.
“And then Callum had his meltdown and I just knew. Even though he wouldn’t say anything, I knew it was happening again. That he was abusing Callum the same way he did all those years ago.”
A single tear rolled down the man’s cheek.
“The same way he did it to me, when I was Callum’s age.”
The man fell silent and Warren knew it was time. A bitter taste filled his mouth. There were no winners in this case. He felt no triumph, just a grim satisfaction that he’d done his job. There’d be no celebration down the Saracen’s Head tonight. A glance at Sutton revealed his colleague’s own discomfort. But he had no choice. Justice must be served, the rule of law upheld. Forcing the compassion from his voice he pushed the CPS charge sheet across the desk towards the broken man in front of him.
“Thomas Michaelson, you are charged with the murder of Charles Michaelson.”
Need a new page-turner? Keep reading fo
r a sneak peak of Silent as the Grave, the next full-length DCI Warren Jones novel.
Prologue
The teenage boy walked carefully, balancing an overfilled mug in each hand. The kettle had boiled only moments before and his mother had called down the garden, asking if his father wanted coffee. There had been no reply, but in twenty years of marriage Aileen MacNamara had never known her husband refuse a hot drink. So, curious to know what his father had been doing all evening, the fourteen-year-old had poured himself one as well and set off down the path.
The garage door was a sturdy, wooden affair, the handle missing for as long as the boy could remember, the hasp for the padlock its replacement. Looping a free finger around the metal bracket, he unhooked it then pulled as hard as he could. The door, warped from years of hot summers and cold winters, resisted before screeching open with a sudden jerk, spilling scalding liquid all over his hands. The teenager swore quietly.
Niall MacNamara had patrolled the streets of Coventry for over twenty-five years and had seen—and heard—it all. Nevertheless he had zero tolerance for foul language in his home and his son wasn’t in the mood for a lecture.
The garage was dark, filled with tools and gardening implements. A spate of recent vandalism had prompted Niall to enlist the help of his two sons to clear enough space for him to park the family car in there overnight, but it was a tight fit.
The boy started to cough at the same moment he saw the hosepipe snaking from the rear of the car and in through the partially open driver’s side window. With an incoherent shout, he dropped both mugs, forcing himself around the car’s bonnet to the driver’s side. After yanking the hosepipe from the window, he pulled the door handle. Locked. Through the clouds of exhaust filling the car, he could see his father, head slumped forward in the driver’s seat. Choking, the boy cast his teary eyes around wildly before spotting a claw hammer hanging from a hook. With so little room to swing it took three desperate attempts before he shattered the window, all the while screaming for his mother. After pulling the door lock button, he opened the door. An empty whisky bottle rolled off his father’s lap and clattered onto the concrete floor. Reaching in, he took the keys from the ignition. But he knew it was too little, too late.