Shot Through the Heart: DI Grace Fisher 2

by Isabelle Grey

  She reached the point where the creek opened off the main river and stopped, hands on her thighs, to get her breath. Looking up, the freezing water and mud, the wintry grass and reeds all appeared desolate to her, and she was glad to turn back. As she ran she tried to think positively, made herself picture a comforting hot shower and breakfast. But she still had some serious thinking to do. She needed to work out how to know what she should fight for, and when. She also needed to be sure she fought hard enough, especially in the face of a consensus insisting that everything possible was being done.

  Was she chasing shadows? Colin would no doubt tell her she was. She had no evidence of a corrupt conspiracy between Curtis Mullins and Mark Kirkby, let alone between Mark Kirkby and Leonard Ingold. There was no one to corroborate Davey Fewell’s story, and certainly none of Mark’s family, friends or colleagues was likely to step forward to sully his good name.

  She longed to know what Ivo Sweatman was up to, if perhaps he’d found out anything new about Mark Kirkby, but, given the repercussions of being caught sharing information with a journalist, she dared not renew contact. She hoped he would come to the inquest, as she’d suggested, and blow some of the Kirkby family’s complacency out of the water.

  Meanwhile there must be something more she could do, some untried avenue of inquiry she could explore. She concentrated on her breathing and the rhythm of her feet, trying to let random ideas bounce around in her mind. It didn’t take long for something to snag: if a shooter was experienced, he’d know to pick up his spent casings so there’d be no ballistics match to other incidents involving the rifle and ammunition he was using. If she searched for other shootings where a rifle and hollow-point ammunition had been used, even if no casings had been recovered, she might pick up a trail. Mark Kirkby had run the risk of being caught in possession of an unlicensed firearm for a reason, and she wanted to know what it was.

  It was grasping at straws, but it was better than nothing. Grace quickened her pace, eager now to get in to work, regardless of her weekend off. She looked ahead, gauging how long it would take her to reach home. Another runner was coming down the path towards her, and she moved to her left to give him room to pass. As he got nearer, she prepared to make eye contact and smile, but, no doubt to keep out the cold, his grey hood was pulled too far forward over his face.

  At the last moment he veered sideways and bent forward to ram his right shoulder hard into her chest, like a rugby player. She gasped with shock and immediately lost her stride, giving him the opportunity to aim a kick at the most painful part of her shin and then hook his foot around hers so that she went flying to the ground. She cried out as another well-aimed kick sent her rolling down the slope towards the deep freezing mud of the river. She managed to grab at a tuft of tough grass to halt her slide and looked up to see her attacker running on towards the creek.

  Frozen by terror, Grace lay still, her face against the earth, and tried to steady her ragged breath as her brain did a rapid mental stock check, assessing whether it was safe to straighten her legs and spine. Fear brought a wave of shame, and she longed to weep. As each pain slowly became separate – wrenched shoulder, damaged shin, bruised ribs where he had kicked her – the panic subsided, and she was able to haul herself up the slope on her hands and knees and then carefully stand up straight. Her shin hurt enough to make her limp, and there was a trickle of blood running down into her shoe. There was no point giving chase: she’d never catch up with him now, and, besides, there were several different side paths he could take that led to the Alresford road. She satisfied herself by uselessly screaming Bastard! at his retreating back.

  She looked around to check if there was anyone who might have witnessed the encounter, but apart from some wheeling seagulls she was alone. She had her phone with her and considered calling for back-up, but there was no point. She hadn’t seen the man’s face and would be unable to identify him. Her first thought was that it had been a warning from Warren Cox not to name him as her source, but then a worse fear knotted her gut: what if the hoodie-wearing thug had been sent by Curtis to pay her back for her meddling? What if she’d just been assaulted by a fellow police officer?

  31

  Grace wrapped a towel around herself and opened the steamed-up mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet in search of some antiseptic for the weal on her shin. She’d allowed herself a brief cry in the shower, but now her shoulder was starting to ache, as were her ribs where the bastard had kicked her down the bank, and she was badly shaken. She had just squeezed some cream onto her finger when she heard her phone ring on her bed next door. Trying to wipe her hand so she didn’t smear the cream, she registered that the call was from Lance, even though he was in Portugal.

  ‘Hey, Lance, how are you?’

  ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Of course.’ She sat on the bed, swinging her feet up and covering her legs with the duvet so that, pretty much naked, she didn’t get chilled. ‘What’s it like there? You got good weather?’

  ‘Can I come round?’

  ‘I don’t understand. You’re back already?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Why? You’ve only been there a couple of days. I thought you were staying until next week?’

  ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’

  ‘Sure. Are you OK? Look, why don’t you come over for supper tonight?’

  ‘No, now.’

  ‘I was planning to—’

  ‘Please, Grace. I need to talk to you now.’

  ‘OK, but—’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  Lance ended the call. He’d sounded strung out, and must be in a pretty bad way to have come home so abruptly. All the same, Grace was frustrated that she couldn’t now go into work as she’d planned and initiate a data search for other rifle incidents. She recognized that her urgent need to act was a displacement for her shock, and that the last thing she felt able to cope with right now was having to revisit the moral quandary she’d shelved when Lance had departed for the Algarve, but her guilt at wishing to avoid him was heavily laced with shame that she could even consider refusing him the comfort and friendship he clearly needed.

  Her hands shook as she did up the buttons on her blouse. Rejecting a skirt in favour of trousers that would hide the messy wound on her shin, her tears threatened to return. Her wobbliness scared her. It wasn’t like her. She hated being feeble. She needed to get a grip and not let the bastards, whoever they were, grind her down. The thug had probably just been some aggrieved idiot who’d had a row with his girlfriend and had randomly taken it out on her. She finished dressing, combed her hair and went downstairs to make coffee.

  By the time Lance arrived twenty minutes later, Grace had thought through the implications of sharing her extremely sketchy new theories and had decided to keep them to herself for now. He looked stressed and preoccupied, and replied to her questions distractedly. He carried a glossy property magazine, its cover all blue sky and swimming pool against dazzling white minimalist architecture. Glancing at it on her kitchen table as she poured fresh coffee, and wondering why he’d brought it, she thought the image made her own little patio look more wintry and bedraggled than ever.

  ‘Was it just too hard, being there alone?’ she asked.

  ‘Actually it helped in a way,’ he said. ‘The resort was so surreal, it kind of matched the idea of Peter being dead, which is surreal enough. But then I saw this.’

  He pushed the magazine towards her, and she noticed that a sheet of paper had been inserted as a bookmark. She opened it at the marker and saw a double-page spread with photographs of an emerald-green golf course where men and women in colourful polo shirts and baseball caps posed against a background of white-capped ocean and picturesque umbrella pines.

  ‘He never mentioned going to Portugal,’ said Lance, his voice strangled and tense.

  Puzzled, Grace looked more closely and recognized Peter standing in the midst of one of the smiling groups. ‘But this could have
been taken years ago.’ She checked the front cover – the date was current – and then flicked back through the magazine, seeing page after page of luxury living and endless blue skies. ‘These are just generic publicity shots, surely?’

  Lance shook his head. ‘No, I checked. I actually phoned the magazine to ask. I couldn’t bear not knowing. It was taken last October.’

  ‘Was Peter away somewhere last October?’

  ‘Head office in London, that’s what he told me,’ said Lance miserably. ‘I went to the golf club and asked around to try and find out if he was there with someone, but no one seemed to know. Why would they?’

  Grace longed to put him out of his misery. ‘Maybe there was some work reason he couldn’t tell you,’ she said desperately. ‘Client confidentiality or something.’

  ‘You know what went through my head last night?’

  ‘What?’

  Lance laughed bitterly. ‘I thought maybe he had a wife and kids, and had gone there with them.’

  ‘Oh, Lance, no! Peter wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Some men are.’

  ‘Not Peter. He adored you.’

  ‘So why was he always so discreet? Why won’t his family communicate with me?’

  This was the moment of decision she had been dreading. What was the quote that was always used about the Cambridge spy ring? If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. Well, did she have the guts to tell Colin – and the security services – and the whole top-heavy hierarchy that her job had sworn her to uphold – to go to hell? Besides, could it really matter? Whatever Peter was investigating, surely it hadn’t been some dire terrorist threat?

  Up to now she’d managed to reassure herself that even if she told Lance the truth, it might not necessarily help him through his grief. Now she had to face the full hatefulness of her lies. She couldn’t do it. She must give him the truth. Even if it meant him despising her for not having told him sooner.

  ‘And you’re absolutely sure it’s him?’ she asked, opening the magazine once more to give herself a moment in which to decide. But it was unquestionably Peter, wearing smart navy trousers and a short-sleeved shirt and not quite looking directly at the camera. A much older, heavier man stood beside him, leaning on his golf club, in tailored navy shorts, white polo shirt and green baseball cap; the other two were around Peter’s age and undistinguished, although something about the one in cargo pants and a red shirt seemed familiar. The caption did not identify the players, only the match. ‘Did you find out who these guys were?’ she asked.

  ‘Only him,’ said Lance, pointing at the older man. ‘A local property developer. Everybody knows him, apparently. The others were visitors like Peter.’

  ‘Did you speak to this older guy?’

  ‘Not directly. But I asked everyone I could. Told them Peter was dead.’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

  Told them he was dead. A memory jumped into Grace’s mind: she’d met the man in the red top! It was Adam Kirkby, who’d been with his father on Christmas Day when she’d broken the news that Mark had been shot. Her mind whirred into overdrive. Hadn’t Curtis told her he’d been drinking with Adam and his brother in the Blue Bar the night Lance and Peter decided to go home early? Curtis had been the first officer on the scene when Peter was killed. Adam’s brother Mark had been in possession of an illegal firearm. Her shoulder gave a twinge of pain and she rubbed it. She had to think all this through properly before blurting it out to Lance. If the hoodie’s attack had been specifically directed at her, then she didn’t want to place Lance in danger too. Even though none of it added up to anything that made sense.

  ‘Have you got any leads on Peter’s murder yet?’

  Lance’s question broke into her alarm, and she strove to answer calmly. ‘I’m sorry, no. Nothing. We’ve tried everything. I’m afraid it’s going to be one of those where we may have to wait for the killer to make a mistake.’

  ‘That’s not good enough!’

  ‘No, I know. And I couldn’t be more sorry.’ She took a deep breath. ‘While you were away, the case was transferred to the London coroner’s jurisdiction. It’s out of our hands now.’

  Lance was about to protest, but then covered his face with his hands. ‘What do I care?’ he said despairingly. ‘Why should I bother about some shit who lied to me about where he was? He was probably cheating on me. He probably he went to that alley with someone, thinking they were going to fuck, and got himself killed instead.’

  ‘He didn’t go with anyone from the bar,’ said Grace gently. ‘He had one beer and left. Alone.’

  ‘What about the people he’d had dinner with?’

  Grace had been over this with Lance several times already, but understood his need to repeat and repeat. ‘I spoke to them myself,’ she said patiently. ‘They were all from the Colchester office of a large wealth-management company. In fact the company advises a lot of police officers on their financial affairs nationwide. It was straightforward business, with them schmoozing a financial adviser in the hope he’d recommend their company to his clients.’ Except, thought Grace, Peter wasn’t a financial adviser.

  ‘What about some army connection? There’s a squaddies’ pub not too far away.’

  ‘Lance, I promise you, we’ve covered everything.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to keep digging. I have to.’

  ‘I understand. I do. But there’s no point driving yourself mad over this photograph.’ Grace had never felt like a bigger shit in all her life. But Lance looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He was in no fit state to handle the truth, especially a truth not only complicated by her own deep but unfocused suspicion of anything to do with the Kirkby family, but now also by Mark’s possible link to the Lion King. ‘You have to look after yourself,’ she ended lamely.

  ‘I’ll go mad if I do nothing,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s like he’s just vanished into thin air. I never got to see him – afterwards – to say goodbye. No funeral, nowhere to send flowers or a card, nothing. Even the locks at his flat have been changed. It’s unreal.’

  ‘I know.’ She squeezed his hand where it lay on the table beside the open magazine.

  ‘You will help me, won’t you, Grace?’

  ‘Of course.’ She glanced down at the magazine from where Adam Kirkby in his red shirt stared right back up at her.

  32

  Grace had not expected to be so thankful when Ivo called her from a public call box not long after Lance had left her house. ‘I’ve got something for you,’ was all he’d said, but it was enough, given how desperate she felt, to abandon her plan to go into work and head instead to the cafe in the ring-road superstore where they’d met last time.

  She caught sight of him before he spotted her, and she thought he seemed uncharacteristically on edge, glancing from side to side as if fearing an ambush. Her own rush of warmth on seeing him again also took her by surprise, although given the way her day had gone so far, perhaps she was just glad to see any friendly face. She slipped into the seat opposite him and returned his smile.

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said.

  ‘I’d been thinking about you, actually.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said, turning slightly pink.

  Grace reminded herself that this was the chief crime correspondent of the Daily Courier, and she mustn’t be naive about trusting him.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

  She took a look at the grey liquid in his untouched cup and shook her head. ‘I can live without, thanks.’

  ‘Don’t blame you. So, I’ve been keeping an eye on young Davey Fewell.’

  ‘Oh good,’ she said. ‘I’m so pleased.’

  Ivo looked a little embarrassed. ‘I just felt for the kid, you know? I didn’t like the idea of Mark Kirkby’s father being the only one to look out for the family and Davey having to be grateful to him.’

  ‘No,’ Grace agreed. ‘Nor me. So where is he?’


  ‘Weymouth. In a holiday apartment owned by the Police Federation.’

  Grace nodded. ‘I heard John Kirkby had fixed something up for them. How’s he getting on?’

  Ivo shrugged. ‘I caught him bunking off school.’

  ‘Poor kid,’ said Grace.

  ‘Anyway, we got chatting.’

  Grace wondered if she could guess what was coming next. ‘And?’

  ‘It’s worse than we thought, about Mark Kirkby.’

  ‘Davey told you?’ Grace asked the question before she could stop herself.

  ‘Told me what?’

  She recognized his look of professional cunning and smiled. ‘You go first.’

  Ivo grinned. ‘Fair enough.’ He checked around them to see if anyone was listening, then leaned across the table. ‘He said Mark Kirkby had a gun. A big one.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s what he told me too. But then immediately backtracked. Said he’d told his dad, but was so afraid there’d be a row he insisted he’d made it up.’

  Ivo looked relieved. ‘So you’re on it already,’ he said. ‘That’s good.’ He sat back. ‘I really do hope it turns out that Mark Kirkby was shot with his own weapon. Serve the creepy bastard right.’

  Grace bit her lip. ‘Davey told me nearly three weeks ago, and I’ve done nothing.’ She waited for Ivo’s expression to settle into contempt and found herself grateful when it didn’t.

  He sighed. ‘Nor me. It really went against the grain not to go front page with a story like that. Wouldn’t normally have given it a second thought.’

  ‘So why did you?’

  ‘Because it would blow that kid and what’s left of his family right out of the water. I must be going soft, but I just couldn’t do it to him.’

  ‘I can’t even use that as an excuse. I bottled it, pure and simple. My boss was making all the funeral arrangements for Mark Kirkby. You must’ve seen how elaborate it all got.’