8
Grace spotted Lance across the half-empty car park at police HQ and stood waiting for him to join her, watching her breath turn cloudy in the cold air. She reflected that his relationship with Peter was certainly having a positive effect on his appearance: he’d recently cut his brown hair a bit shorter and she was sure the well-tailored suit that made the most of his trim figure must be new. It had been a very long while since she’d gone out to buy new clothes with a particular man in mind, but her little pang of longing was swiftly buried beneath a rush of almost-panic that told her she wasn’t yet ready to open herself up again to that kind of emotional risk.
Lance greeted her with a warm smile. ‘We never thanked you for lunch.’
‘Peter did,’ she replied, returning his smile as they crunched their way across the snowy car park. ‘He did all the washing-up.’
Lance coloured with obvious pride and affection and, after entering the security code, held the entrance door open for her. Upstairs, the big open-plan MIT office was abnormally quiet, even for Boxing Day. Some desks remained unoccupied, and those who had come in were unusually subdued. As a detective inspector, Grace got a corner spot with a half-partition that gave her if not exactly enhanced status then at least some privacy. The team hadn’t had a female DI before, and although some of the team like Duncan had happily transferred their loyalty from their old boss, DCI Keith Stalgood, others had remained sceptical and quick to judge, so she was still glad to have Lance watching her back.
She was surprised to see someone sitting in her chair. John Kirkby, half-turned towards the window, made no move to get up, leaving her no choice but to stand in front of her own desk. Seeing how grey and weary he was, she could hardly begrudge him; indeed, given that the spare chair was home to a pile of accumulated files, if she had been sitting there when he’d walked in, she would have instinctively offered him her seat. And yet his occupation of it felt like an invasion.
Admonishing herself for her pettiness, she quickly cleared the files off the other chair and dragged it closer to her desk. ‘How are you today, Mr Kirkby?’ she asked, hearing immediately how trite a question it was.
‘No parent expects to outlive their child,’ he answered.
‘No,’ Grace agreed. ‘Is there anything I can do for you, anything I can help you with?’
‘I realize it’s not kosher for me to be privy to your investigations,’ he said. ‘Not now I’m retired.’ Grace fought down the sense that, in making this admission, he was somehow both granting her a favour and assuming she’d make an exception. ‘But I’d appreciate it if you’d keep Curtis Mullins up to speed. He’s a uniform PC here in Colchester and was a close friend of Mark’s. I suggested he come up later and introduce himself. You can trust his judgement on what he does and doesn’t pass on to me.’
It was a statement of fact not a request, but Grace nodded. ‘I don’t know him but I’ll be glad to meet him.’ She smiled and met Kirkby’s gaze, not acquiescing and making no promises while wishing he didn’t make her feel so antagonistic. She had no intention of allowing PC Mullins to run around MIT being John Kirkby’s private bagman.
‘Thank you.’ He pushed himself up from her chair and held out his hand across the desk. She shook it and then watched him walk to the door of the main office, the poignant dignity of his bearing forcing her to chastise herself for her prickliness.
She waited until he was gone, and then went to tap on the door to Detective Superintendent Pitman’s office. Colin looked up and beckoned her in.
‘Yeah, I know,’ he said, inclining his head towards the door through which John Kirkby had departed. ‘But I reckon we’re going to have to cut him at least a little slack. He was a local branch chair of the Police Federation, which makes him a popular guy. Not only will he have helped a lot of rank-and-file officers and their families, but he also no doubt knows one or two funny handshakes into the bargain. So, all in all, it means he’s well in with people whose cages you do not want to rattle unless you really have to.’
Grace sighed. She knew Colin was right. Best not go looking for trouble. The Police Federation was loyal to a fault and, as the nearest thing to a trade union that the police service was allowed to have, that was its brief. Yet it still rankled that the Federation had paid all of her ex-husband’s legal fees when he’d gone to court on assault charges even though she – the victim – had been a fellow officer.
‘Mark Kirkby’s a police hero, so let’s just keep his father happy, OK?’ said Colin, as if he were reading her thoughts.
‘Sure.’ She forced a quick smile. ‘Anything new come in?’
‘Not really. Doesn’t look like the post-mortems are going to throw up any surprises beyond what’s already evident. The gun was unlicensed, not reported stolen, and there’s no match on the unsolved crime index. Wendy and the other scene examiners have managed to recover spent bullet casings from most of the scenes. They’ve been sent to a ballistics expert for examination, although it’s doubtful that rifle rounds are going to yield links to other criminal activity.’
They both knew that criminals preferred handguns or sawn-off shotguns, making a rifle unlikely to come up on any forensic databases.
‘If the rifle was borrowed from someone without a firearms certificate,’ said Grace, ‘then there might be someone out there right now with a very guilty conscience. We could put out an appeal for information on where the gun came from. Offer an amnesty, perhaps?’
‘Good idea,’ said Colin. ‘People are often more willing to hand over illicit weapons after this kind of tragedy. I’ll have a word with Hilary, get her to sell it to the chief con as a positive initiative.’ He looked at his watch. ‘And, speaking of our ever-popular communications director, I’d better go and smarten up ready for her press conference.’
Grace thought he looked smart enough already. Her boss was good-looking and knew it. He kept in shape, always wore a pristine white shirt and had a full head of dark hair that was beginning to turn a distinguished grey at the temples. The fact that he was a self-serving hypocritical coward was not evident in a single line of his face.
‘Sir,’ Grace called after him as he headed off. ‘Perhaps John Kirkby would like to be included in the press conference?’
Colin smiled, a smile that, however well she knew him, could still make her feel like she’d won a prize. ‘Hilary’s already ahead of you,’ he said. ‘She’s prepping him now.’
Grace went back to her own desk – and her own chair – feeling wrong-footed and dissatisfied. The hushed world outside her window, still blanketed with snow and with none of its familiar traffic noise thanks to the rest of the population sleeping off its Christmas Day excesses, made her feel even more surreal. She’d had three or four months in which to master the knack of not letting it get to her that she once again had Colin Pitman as a boss, and now she mustn’t let John Kirkby’s high-handedness rub her up the wrong way either. She’d dealt with plenty of overbearing officers in her time, and most of them turned out to be totally decent by-the-book reliable family men. There was nothing to suggest that John Kirkby wasn’t among them, so she should simply pack away her cat-and-dog antipathy to the poor man.
Maybe it was the nature of the investigation itself that was bothering her: apart from doing their best to line everything up for the coroner’s inquest, there was little to do. The perpetrator was dead. Whatever they discovered about Russell Fewell’s balance of mind as he set out yesterday afternoon on his killing spree, and however he’d come by his weapon, none of it would bring back his victims or prevent further harm – it was too late for that. But, she reminded herself, some semblance of knowledge and understanding, however superficial, would help the victims’ loved ones to let go of their anguish, however slightly. She could imagine all too well how firmly grief would anchor itself to one single question: why?
The balance of Russell Fewell’s mind was likely to be of most concern to the coroner, so Grace checked through any new information
that had come in since last night. Lance had been tasked with finding out everything he could about him; local doctors, teachers and others had already come forward with offers of help, so they knew that Fewell had not visited his GP in several years, had no recorded history of mental health problems and was not known to have abused either drugs or alcohol. He’d left school at sixteen with a few good-enough qualifications and had been in more or less continuous work since. Eyewitnesses to the shootings said he had appeared calm and controlled. One woman thought he’d been crying but that it might also have been the cold stinging his eyes. The tiny flat he’d moved into after the divorce had been clean and tidy. Unless someone higher up had the clout to gain holiday access to the banking system, they wouldn’t have his financial records until Monday, but as yet there was nothing to suggest hidden gambling debts or a nightmare payday-loan scenario. The only clue to his state of mind was the one he’d chosen to leave for them: the summons to appear in court on a drink-drive charge.
Grace typed in the relevant details, curious enough to check out the background to Fewell’s arrest for herself. He had been pulled over soon after leaving a pub on the outskirts of Colchester when a patrol car had spotted a broken rear light. He refused to be breathalysed, but a test taken later at the station showed him to be minimally over the limit. Something about the date caught Grace’s eye, and she realized it was the same day and month as his date of birth. If he’d been out celebrating with some mates, it would’ve been all too easy go over the limit. Sheer rotten luck. No wonder he felt fate was victimizing him. Then she read the name of the arresting officer. It was Mark Kirkby’s friend, PC Curtis Mullins.
9
Ivo had covered all the usual bases – as had all his esteemed colleagues: it was like the queue to climb bloody Everest, with everyone chasing the same small pool of interviewees – but so far he had come up with nothing worthy of a front page, let alone a headline. He needed to box a bit more clever. A couple of the Dunholt pubs had reopened, offering at least some sense of community, but then it turned out that the staff had barely known Russell Fewell. The bastard seemed like a model citizen, neither a drinker nor rabble-rouser, not a ladies’ man nor a wife-beater. Ivo felt like quoting that old Monty Python sketch about the accountant who wanted to be a lion-tamer. Could yesterday’s tragic rampage really be as banal as that?
Ivo mentally shook himself: he had a reputation to protect and the rest of the afternoon to dredge up an angle that none of the others would think of.
It was brass-monkey weather out there, and he’d retreated to his B & B to pick up his gloves, which in a senior moment he’d taken out of his coat pocket and left on the bed. His widowed landlady was as loquacious as he’d often found B & B owners to be – they must do it for the company as much as the cash – so he made his way down to the kitchen for a chat. Mrs Cotman had a good heart and was keen to tell him that Dunholt really wasn’t a bad place, as if the little town somehow shared responsibility for Russell Fewell’s sins. She was also happy to answer his questions about what people around here did with their spare time. Twenty minutes later he’d gleaned a couple of suggestions worth following up, and retreated to the patchwork and frills of his room to google angling clubs: fishing, according to Mrs Cotman, was a popular local sport, and the website of the club nearest to Dunholt very helpfully supplied the home phone number of its membership secretary.
Ten minutes later Ivo was following exceptionally precise and twice-repeated directions to Gable End Cottage in an outlying village. The trip would probably be a total waste of time, but he reminded himself that he’d stumbled across some of his finest stories merely by asking a few random people a few random questions. Plus he’d immediately detected in Martin Leyburn’s voice an eagerness to be helpful tinged with half-smothered excitement at being brought, however tangentially, into the spotlight that was both familiar and faintly dispiriting. On the other hand, he had no brighter ideas for spinning this story across two columns.
Ivo rapped the dolphin-shaped knocker on the pale-blue front door, and moments later Martin Leyburn welcomed him in, offering tea or coffee, both of which Ivo declined. A man his age had to show some consideration for his prostate, and he’d just drunk two industrial-strength cups with Mrs Cotman. The Dunholt Angling Association membership secretary, who wore a Viyella shirt under a green sweater, with trousers, socks and shoes in more or less the same shade of grey, led him into a small black-beamed sitting room with an open fire. Martin winced as he sat down, explaining that he was on the waiting list for a hip replacement. Ivo took a quick look around. It appeared from the limited-edition framed prints of Spitfires and Hurricanes on the walls and the books on bidding conventions in bridge on the table beside the armchair that he was dealing with a man who appreciated method and structure.
If there was a Mrs Leyburn, she must be busy elsewhere, and Ivo hoped that was where she’d remain. Maybe it was because women better understood the power of gossip, but they tended to be warier and less cooperative than men, who were generally easier to draw out. Or perhaps it was simply innate male arrogance about the soundness of their own judgement that blinded them to the possibility that they were being milked. Ivo took a weary pride in his ability to win and retain people’s trust. It was an art, one he was sure that the world’s greatest fraudsters must possess in trumps. Not that Ivo regarded himself as a con man, far from it: he and the Daily Courier were after all the very bastions of truth. It was simply that, when people were dazed, struggling to comprehend and desperate to go over and over every tiny detail, well, then there were no limits to the time and patience he was prepared to offer.
Ivo had already explained on the phone that he was after the human-interest story – what kind of man Fewell was and what might have propelled him towards such a terrible act. Now Martin was at pains to make clear that, although he wouldn’t describe himself as a friend, he’d known Russell Fewell for well over ten years and – he stressed this – had always liked him. Ivo admired Martin for that, especially after speaking to so many others who were only too keen to disown the rogue gunman.
Martin must have used Ivo’s journey time to search out Fewell’s club membership records, for he now handed over a couple of printed-out computer entries, explaining that Russell had joined as a teenager and taken part in a fair number of matches over the years, although he’d only ever won three or four.
‘He wasn’t one to put himself forward,’ said Martin. ‘Not really bothered about competing. He just liked to be out and beside the water. I knew his father better. He passed away three years ago, so I was pleased as punch when Russell started to bring his own boy, Davey, along with him.’
Ivo already knew that Fewell had two kids, Davey and a younger sister, Ella. He couldn’t help a natural curiosity about Davey: Ivo had lost a parent at much the same age. ‘Did Russell get on well with his son?’ he asked.
‘Very well. Both of them quiet types. Russell seemed to enjoy showing him the ropes, watching him learn.’ Martin shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I wish I’d done more. Wish I could’ve helped him. It should never have come to this.’
‘What do you think went wrong?’ Ivo held his breath.
‘He’d started to come on his own, without Davey. Then he stopped coming altogether. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of months.’
Ivo was pretty sure he could detect a rider to that statement, and nudged as gently as he could. ‘So you hadn’t seen him recently?’
Immediately Ivo detected the small and familiar tussle of conscience he’d expected. Now it could go either way. Martin might clam up, unwilling to break a confidence, even that of a murderous dead man. Or the temptation to play his part in the drama, that illicit thrill of contributing his unique perspective to the debate, would prove irresistible, in which case Ivo knew how little prompting it would probably take to get him to spill whatever he had to tell.
‘You wanted to help him?’ Ivo prodded.
Martin nodded, and Ivo couldn’
t help feeling a stab of disappointment that yet again thrill won out over conscience.
‘He hadn’t responded to my annual renewal reminders,’ said Martin. ‘I knew his dad, remember, and we don’t have that many memberships that span three generations. So I called round to see him.’
‘How was he?’
‘In a bad way. I knew his marriage had broken up a while back, but he’d seemed to take that in his stride. It hadn’t stopped his days out with Davey. But that last time I saw him he looked . . .’
Martin broke off, and Ivo waited, genuinely curious now to gain some insight into what had happened to push a pleasant-sounding bloke who cared about his kids right off the edge and into the abyss.
Martin sighed. ‘I didn’t know how seriously to take it. I mean, no question, he was wound up, but how much of it was real? And now you read in the paper that the guy he was accusing of all these things was a policeman, so then you don’t know what to think, do you? I mean, the local bobby is hardly likely to behave like that, is he?’
‘You mean Constable Mark Kirkby?’
Martin nodded, clearly now having uncomfortable second thoughts. This was the moment when it became vital for Ivo to cut off all retreat and extract every last crumb of information.
‘Russell must’ve been relieved to have someone to talk to. Sounds like he was in a pretty bad way. And you were a mate of his dad’s, after all. A father figure even.’
Martin looked relieved, grateful almost for Ivo’s absolution. ‘He was in a terrible state,’ he agreed. ‘He said his wife’s new boyfriend was turning her against him, trying to steal his kids, making his life a misery.’
‘Was he ill, do you think?’ asked Ivo. ‘Mentally?’
‘He didn’t strike me that way at the time. But then I’m no expert. He was angry and upset, but mainly about losing his kids. Scared more than anything. It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?’ He gave a nervous chuckle. ‘What is it they say? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.’
Shot Through the Heart: DI Grace Fisher 2 Page 5