by Peter James
Every day when Denise visited him, to check on his welfare and the state of the house, Stuie persistently asked her the same question: ‘Is Mickey coming home today?’ Then he would add, proudly, ‘We are starting a fish and chip shop!’
Some days, the way he said it broke her heart. She had tried to explain that it would not be for a while, to manage his expectations, but nothing she said could dim his sunny enthusiasm. Every day when he opened the door, he was all smiles for an instant, all expectant, then he would burst into tears when he saw it was her – or on occasions one of her co-workers – and not his brother.
At least the trial of Terence Gready, Mickey’s alleged co-conspirator, was now under way. Sentencing was just weeks off. Hopefully the judge would take into consideration that Mickey Starr had pleaded guilty, that he’d already served six months and that he had a brother who needed him.
There was no response to her ring.
She rang again. Waited.
Still no response. Unusual. Normally, Stuie opened the door within seconds. He had been coping pretty well, ordering his groceries and essentials and getting them delivered, and he kept the house scrupulously, obsessively tidy. For Mickey, he said.
Maybe he was on the loo, she wondered. Or asleep. She rang again and waited. Several minutes passed. She glanced at her watch. Another six appointments today. Reluctantly, using the key she had – much preferring for his self-esteem for him to let her in himself – she unlocked the front door and entered.
‘Stuie!’ she called out.
Silence greeted her.
A silence she did not like.
‘Stuie! It’s Denise!’ she called.
There was no response.
‘Stuie, OK if I come in?’
She waited for some moments, then closed the front door behind her. ‘Stuie?’
The silence made her uncomfortable.
‘Stuie? You OK?’
There was a handful of post on the floor. Ignoring it, she walked through into the kitchen-dining area and saw what looked like the remains of breakfast on the table. Stuie always left the kitchen immaculate in preparation, he told her, for the fish and chip restaurant he was starting with his brother.
‘Stuie?’ she called out again. ‘Stuie, it’s Denise!’ She peered out through the window at the small, neat rear garden but there was no sign of him out there.
She went through into the lounge. The television was on, the sound low, a presenter she vaguely recognized standing on a cliff in a stunningly scenic location, talking earnestly to camera about erosion.
She went out and stood at the foot of the stairs. ‘Stuie!’ she called out. ‘Stuie! Are you up there? It’s me, Denise!’
No response.
‘I’m coming upstairs, Stuie, is that OK?’
She waited, then climbed up the short steep staircase and stood on the landing. Three doors were closed and a fourth was slightly ajar. She called out his name yet again. And again, no response.
She pushed on the door that was ajar and peered in. Stuie, in a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, was curled up in a foetal position on the floor, beside the bed. The room looked like a bomb had detonated. A chair was upended and half the duvet was on the floor. The dressing-table mirror was smashed. One of the curtains had been pulled off and the rail hung down at a lopsided angle.
She ran across to Stuie and looked down. His hair, and the white rug on which his head lay, skewed sideways, were soaked with blood. There was blood on the walls and ceiling. His right arm was at a strange angle and his hand was covered in blood, too. She knelt and felt his wrist for a pulse.
Shaking, she stood up, backed away a few paces, looking wildly around, then pulled her phone out of her bag and dialled 999.
34
Thursday 9 May
It wasn’t since his more junior days that Roy Grace had been among the first to arrive at a murder scene. Mostly, as head of the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, by the time he got there, the well-oiled machinery was well under way.
This was the case now, as he approached the modern, bland red-brick housing estate, across the road from a garage, on the outskirts of the historic cathedral city of Chichester. The familiar assortment of marked and unmarked police vehicles, the large, square CSI truck, the cordon of blue-and-white police tape, and the usual cluster of media, the curious and the ghouls gathered beyond it.
For many, it would have been a profoundly disturbing sight. But not for the ones holding up their phone cameras, snapping and videoing away. Much though he disliked them – and much though he did not want to admit it – he was a bit of a ghoul himself. Murder fascinated him and always had, like all of his colleagues in Major Crime – he wouldn’t be doing this job if it didn’t.
The one thing that separated him from the onlookers was his reason for being here – and at any murder scene. It was both a privilege and a heavy burden. To do all he could to deliver justice to the victims and closure to their loved ones.
Norman Potting, who was temporarily in the role of Acting Detective Inspector for this case, parked their unmarked Mondeo estate at the rear of the cavalcade. They walked round to the boot and Grace opened it. As he did so, he noticed something silent, high up in the sky towards the edge of the city. A glider. He nodded at it. ‘Ever done that?’
Potting craned his neck. ‘Gliding?’
‘Always looks so beautiful. Must be amazing, to be up there in total silence. Like sailing without the waves.’
His colleague looked dubious. ‘A plane without an engine? Not for me, chief. Not sure I’d want to be at the mercy of updraughts, downdraughts, thermals, or whatever they call them. Like riding a horse – did that once and it scared the shit out of me. I don’t like anything that doesn’t have an ignition switch and a brake pedal.’
‘Thought you were a farm boy. Didn’t you grow up in rural Devon?’
‘Arable, we didn’t have livestock other than pets, a few hens and some pigs. Pigs are all right and a lot safer than horses.’
‘Unless you’re the wrong end of a Mafia hit and get fed to them?’ Grace said with a grin as he reached in and opened his go-bag, pulling out his protective suit, overshoes and gloves.
‘Pigs,’ Potting said. ‘They’re very efficient. If I was going to murder someone that’s what I’d do, chop ’em into bits and feed ’em to pigs.’
‘Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you, Norman.’
Potting nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Very wise, chief.’
A few minutes later, attired all in blue outer clothing, they made their way across to the scene guard, ignoring a few shouted questions. They signed the log and greeted the Crime Scene Manager, Alex Call, who had come out to meet them, along with DC John Alldridge, who had been the first Major Crime Team officer at the scene.
‘What do we have?’ Grace asked the two men.
‘It’s not pretty, boss,’ tall, burly Alldridge said, leading them under the second tape cordon across the front door. ‘A thirty-eight-year-old man with Down’s Syndrome – looks like he’s been beaten and kicked to death.’
Grace saw the post and mail shots scattered on the floor. He knelt and glanced at the name that was on all the letters. Michael Starr. He frowned. Over to his right, through an open door, he heard the sound of a television. A voice he recognized, the presenter Angela Rippon, talking about a consumer issue.
‘Who’ve you got here, Alex?’ he asked Call.
‘A POLSA and four search officers doing a finger-tip search in the gardens and pathways, James Gartrell is doing the photographs and video,’ the CSM replied. ‘Two CSIs checking for prints and DNA in the house, but excluding where the body was found. The Home Office pathologist should be here in the next hour – he wants to see the body in situ before it’s moved to the mortuary.’
‘Any early indicators of the time of death?’ Roy Grace watched a search officer through a downstairs window, in protective clothing and blue gloves, inching forward on her hands and knees across the main garden p
ath.
‘It was called in at 11 a.m. by his carer – Denise Clafferty, from social services. She normally visits every day to check on him, make sure he’s looking after himself and hasn’t done anything careless like leaving the gas on. But for once, she didn’t come yesterday because of a family emergency.’
‘He’s got Down’s Syndrome but lived on his own?’ Grace quizzed.
‘He lived with his brother, who looked out for him, but the brother was nicked last November and has been on remand in Lewes ever since.’
‘Mickey Starr?’ Grace asked.
Call nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Glenn’s case,’ Potting added, helpfully.
‘Does Glenn know, Norman?’ Grace asked.
‘Shall I tell him, chief?’
‘Yes.’
Pulling out his phone, Potting stepped outside. Grace and Call went up the stairs, across a short landing into a bedroom, where a scene of utter devastation greeted them.
The room was totally trashed, items of furniture upturned and the curtains torn down. Blood spatters all over the walls and carpet – and even the ceiling. The victim, in a T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms and trainers, lay like a fallen sack on the floor, his head on what must have been a white rug but was now mostly red from the massive wound at the rear of his head. It had stained his thinning fair hair. His face had been beaten – or kicked – into an unrecognizable pulp. There was more blood across his white T-shirt on which a legend was printed.
Grace read the words, with a lump in his throat.
DOWN’S SYNDROME AWARENESS! I’M A HOMIE WITH AN EXTRA CHROMIE!
Poor bloody sod, he thought, anger welling up inside him. Who had done this? What bastards could have come in here and done this – to such a vulnerable person?
His mind was spinning. Was there a connection with his brother being in prison? All his experience and instinct told him there must be. He turned to the Crime Scene Manager. ‘Any idea how they got in, Alex?’
‘No, sir. None of the door locks were forced and there are no broken windows. The victim must have opened the front door and let his killers in.’
Grace nodded. ‘That fits with what I know about Down’s Syndrome from a previous case – some years ago. They are lovely, trusting people. He’d have probably opened the door and welcomed them in.’
‘So why would anyone have wanted to kill him?’ Call asked.
‘His brother’s on remand, charged with one of the biggest drug importations in Sussex history. Maybe his associates or rivals came here looking for cash or drugs and got surprised by Stuie?’
Grace paused, thinking, looking down at the body that was like a broken, bleeding rag doll. ‘If they were surprised by him, Alex, they might have knocked him out or tied him up. Why would they have done this?’
‘I agree with you, sir. This isn’t how you’d deal with someone who surprised you.’
Grace shook his head. ‘No, it isn’t. This was savage, way over the top.’
‘Do you think they might have killed him to stop him from identifying them?’ Call ventured.
‘Possibly, Alex. That’s one hypothesis. But maybe there was something else going on.’
Grace turned and looked out of the window, which overlooked a small, fenced-in garden, with a recently mown lawn and a shed at the far end. There was a basketball net on a post, with a white ball lying in the grass.
He walked across the room, over the landing and into the room opposite, which was a similar size. The bed sloppily made, the counterpane pulled over unevenly. On the bedside table sat the memoirs of Muhammad Ali. On a shelf was a row of books on boxing, and a photograph of a man in his late twenties in a boxing ring, gloves raised, head down. Hanging from a hook on the wall opposite was a pair of boxing gloves.
Grace went back out and into a third, much smaller room which appeared to be a den. There was a laptop dock on a table, with an ergonomic chair pulled up to it. Below was a set of drawers. Nothing in here looked like it had been touched. Next, he went into the bathroom. Two towels lay on the floor, another was draped over the side of the bath. The showerhead lay in the bath, at the end of its metal hose.
What had been cleaned up in here? Or who?
He went downstairs and checked out the kitchen, noticing a plate with congealed egg on it and a partly drunk mug of tea, then the little dining room and the living room, where he noticed a tall, empty glass jar on the coffee table. It stood a good two feet high and was at least six inches in diameter. He wondered what it was for. Then, as he looked around, he realized. There was a photograph of Stuie and another male, probably his brother, he assumed, as there were other photographs of this person in the house. They were standing behind this same jar, which was crammed to the brim with banknotes. There must have been hundreds, possibly even thousands of pounds in it. The money had gone. A laptop, an amount of cash. Burglars?
And suddenly, Roy Grace realized what it was he had missed the most during the past six months in the Met. Much of his work there had been about policy and politics, with the occasional adrenaline rushes, chasing and catching small-time villains and getting them off the streets. But they were nothing compared to the mental challenge of a murder scene. Especially not a potentially high-profile one like this.
35
Thursday 9 May
At 6 p.m., in the conference room of the Major Crime suite, Roy Grace addressed his small, hastily assembled team around the oval table. They included Jon Exton, Norman Potting, John Alldridge, Emma-Jane Boutwood, the Crime Scene Manager, Alex Call, as well as an indexer, a new HOLMES analyst, Luke Stanstead, and joining them for this investigation, a local community officer, Kerry Foy.
‘This is the first briefing of Operation Canoe, the investigation into the murder of Stuart – Stuie – Robert Starr, in the house owned by his brother, Michael Starr,’ Grace said. ‘DS Alexander is currently attending the postmortem on Stuie Starr at St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester, and we will have more information in the morning. As we know, Stuie’s brother is currently on remand in Lewes Prison, having pleaded guilty to a number of offences relating to the importation of six million pounds’ worth of cocaine through Newhaven Port on November 26th last year, together with other drugs offences.’
He pointed at a group of three whiteboards in front of the flat-screen, wall-mounted monitor. On one were several photographs taken by a crime scene photographer, showing Stuie Starr on the floor, and the blood around him. Two other photographs showed the trashed state of his bedroom. The second whiteboard showed a photograph of Mickey Starr along with a series of photographs of the Ferrari being dismantled in the Newhaven Customs shed. Pinned to the third was a family tree of the Starr family and, next to it, an association chart. Grace stood up and walked over to the whiteboards.
First, he talked his team through the visible injuries inflicted on Stuie, working from what he had witnessed himself at the crime scene, and from the preliminary thoughts of the pathologist. Next, he pointed at the photograph of Mickey Starr, making reference to his past history as a suspected drug dealer, arrested but then subsequently released on appeal due to a chain of evidence issue. Grace made it clear that although he had been acquitted by a clever brief, in the view of the police, back then, there was no doubting the man’s culpability. He then went on to the family tree and the association charts. Both were fairly threadbare.
‘The big question is why Stuie Starr was killed,’ he said. ‘It is possible that this was a random house burglary gone wrong. Whilst at the scene I noticed a jar that I believe may have contained a substantial sum in banknotes, and it appears a laptop is also missing. There were signs of a ransacking type search. But, despite these indications of a burglary, I think we need to look deeper. What reason would anyone have for harming a thirty-eight-year-old with Down’s Syndrome?’ Grace paused. ‘Pure sadistic pleasure – or some other, darker reason? I am looking at a connection to Glenn’s large drugs case. Particularly at Mickey Starr’s alleged co-conspirator, Te
rence Gready.
‘Let’s say Mickey Starr has enough evidence to completely kibosh Gready’s defence. Mickey Starr has already pleaded guilty to get a reduced sentence. If I was Terence Gready and – pure supposition – Mickey Starr was my wingman, I’d be worried about him making a deal with the prosecution.’
Potting frowned. ‘Good point.’
‘And . . . if I was Terence Gready on trial and facing incarceration for a good chunk of the rest of my life, I’d bust anyone’s balls to get off the charges. Whatever it took.’
Potting nodded. ‘If I’m reading you correctly, chief, you are suggesting that Stuie Starr might have been murdered on Terence Gready’s instructions?’
‘Exactly,’ Grace replied. ‘My primary hypothesis is this: could Terence Gready have become worried about his colleague, friend, right-hand man – Michael Starr – doing a plea bargain of some kind against him? Gready arranges to put the frighteners on Starr by having his brother roughed up a bit? And the thugs he hired went a bit too far? There is evidence of a burglary, but was that staged to throw us off the scent? I can’t see any other reason why a seemingly harmless man like Stuie should be so brutally attacked. Do you have any ideas?’
‘Except,’ EJ chipped in, ‘in our sick modern world, it could be someone or a group targeting Stuie because of who he is. There have been cases here where teens have targeted and attacked vulnerable people, usually with tragic consequences.’
‘What about a revenge attack?’ Jon Exton suggested. ‘And it was mistaken identity?’
Grace nodded. ‘It’s another possibility, Jon. But if it’s a revenge attack on Mickey for some past quarrel, I doubt from these photos anyone could mistake his brother, Stuie, for him, and besides, everyone would know Mickey is in prison.’ Thinking hard, he noted down Kids in his Policy Book. But he doubted that was the scenario here.
The dead man’s brother had pleaded guilty to very serious drugs importation charges on a scale rarely encountered in Sussex. His – as yet unproven – associate Terence Gready was currently on trial for his part in those offences of drug importation and distribution. The two men were suspected of running a major county lines distribution network. The masterminds of these networks were brutal people. They would stoop as low as it took, and they were operating in waters teeming with rivals. They could have any number of enemies, all after the same lucrative business. And any of these, knowing the two men were currently out of action, might be behind the break-in. Stuie could simply have been collateral damage. Getting in the way of their search of the house.