The Case of the Broken Doll (An Inspector David Graham Cozy Mystery Book 4)

by Alison Golden

  The wailing showed no signs of stopping. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Roach muttered under his breath. “Calm down, will you?”

  Ann Leach was going through the unimaginable. Just after breakfast, she’d found herself arrested for fraud. An hour later, she’d been shown a picture of her daughter, smiling and confident with sparkling blue eyes and multi-colored hair. From the fragments of speech that Sergeant Harding had managed to understand, what had most upset Mrs. Leach was this second cruel loss of her daughter; that she was alive but refused to see her mother.

  Harding left the interview room, unable to bear another moment. It had been a lengthy and genuine outpouring of emotion from Ann Leach.

  Initially, Janice had managed some sympathy for her, but after an hour’s solid wailing, even her patience was wearing thin.

  “I don’t mean to be unkind,” Roach began.

  “But she needs to get a grip?” Janice said. “You’re telling me. Who’ve we got in reception?”

  “Couple whose dog wandered off and was growling at school kids at the bus stop. The animal unit from Bouley Bay picked it up. They’ll be reunited shortly.”

  Janice gave him a smile. “Pretty mundane after all this, isn’t it?” she said, nodding toward the interview room.

  DI Graham emerged from his office and stretched. He looked tired. After picking up Grant, they’d moved on Ann, and by ten o’clock that morning, she was in custody.

  Ann had found herself, all in the same hour, charged with fraud, informed that her daughter was alive, and told that Beth would not be visiting. Not today. Not ever.

  Graham paused at the desk. “Everything alright?”

  Another wail of grief and sadness erupted from the interview room.

  Graham winced. “Yeah,” he said simply, answering his own question. “What’s the name of the psychologist chap we called in after that death at the castle?”

  “I’ll call him,” Janice said.

  “Any more news about Lyon?” Roach asked his boss.

  “Well, his transfer to the mainland went off without a hitch, and the CPS thinks we’ve got a winner. They reckon they can put together enough to get him eight years, maybe ten, for the Internet stuff.”

  While Roach and Graham had been in Denmark, Jack Wentworth had completed a forensic examination of Lyon’s hard drive. On it, he’d recovered deleted files that proved conclusively that Lyon had received, downloaded, and viewed illegal images.

  “Serves him bloody well right,” Roach said.

  “I have to tell you though, his face was a picture when I told him he was no longer a murder suspect,” Graham said. “Sutton looked so relieved that you’d have thought he’d been facing jail time himself.”

  “Maybe he should,” Janice opined, the phone to her ear as she waited for the psychologist’s office to pick up.

  “He was just doing his job,” Graham reminded her.

  Roach noticed a vehicle pulling up outside. “Third transfer van of the day. You don’t see that very often around here.”

  Together, the three of them ushered Ann Leach to the waiting vehicle. They eschewed handcuffs. She was visibly too weak and distressed to do anything other than what she was told. As Graham made to close the doors, she said, “I’m sorry. Really. I know I’ve done wrong. But you’ve got to let me see my daughter!”

  Graham closed the first of the two doors. “Not our decision to make, Mrs. Leach.” He closed the second door and knocked on the van’s chassis to let the driver know he could head out.

  Graham went inside and spent half an hour simply sitting at his desk. With the dog emergency resolved, he, Roach and Harding found themselves with little to do.

  “Have we heard from Grace Darling this morning?” Graham asked. Janice caught the reference, but Roach had to quickly Google it.

  “He’s taken the day off,” Janice reported. “Said he’d never been so cold in all his life. The lifeboat captain said he nearly drowned, sir.”

  Roach scratched his chin. “I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, sir, but do you think it’d be entirely out of line for… well, you know…”

  “An official commendation?” Graham finished arching an eyebrow. “Seems appropriate to me. What do you think, Janice?”

  She gave Roach’s shoulder a squeeze. “A couple of those are in order, if you ask me,” she smiled. “Just don’t let it go to your head, Roachie.”

  “And in the meantime, dinner?” Graham asked. “Seven o’clock? Bangkok Palace?”

  “As long as you’re buying,” Janice said.

  “I’m in,” Roach added.

  “Great. Now, go and find some police work to do. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  Graham thought for a long moment before dialing the number. In every investigation, there were red herrings and missteps, but he felt the need to apologize.

  “Mrs. Updike? I’m so sorry to bother you again. This is DI Graham from Gorey Constabulary, down in Jersey… Yes, that’s right… No, please don’t worry. Is your husband there? I’d like you both to hear this, you see… No, there’s no trouble at all, I assure you. Quite the opposite, actually. I have some very good news for you both.”

  The waiter gave Graham a worried look. “Sir, please. The chef uses Thai chilies. Extremely hot.” The waiter was new.

  Graham folded up the menu and handed it back. “Yes, I understand.”

  “He adds a small pile of them to the pan, sir. Not just one or two.”

  “And I’m saying that I’d like it just the way he’d make it for himself,” Graham specified once more.

  The waiter dithered but couldn’t leave the table without dispensing another warning. “Sir… Management can’t be held responsible for any—”

  “Don’t worry, son, honestly. I won’t sue if I explode.”

  The waiter made a note on his pad. He trotted back to the kitchen, muttering to himself in his native language.

  Janice stared at him. “This isn’t some weird, macho competition, is it?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, Constable Barnwell nearly loses his life saving a drowning teenager, so you feel the need to prove your manhood by eating fatal levels of Thai spice.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Graham said. “I just like a bit of zing in my Asian food, that’s all.”

  Marcus Tomlinson shared their concern, but he’d at least watched Graham handle what the chef called the “five-chili special” variant of his chicken with holy basil, and that unforgettable red curry, which a stunned reviewer from the Gorey Herald later memorably described as “part traditional curry, part nuclear treaty violation.”

  Graham raised his glass. “I have some people to thank,” he said. “First, Constable Barnwell, the hero of the hour…”

  The whole table – Harding, Roach, Tomlinson, Jack Wentworth, and the RNLI lifeboat captain, Will Ryan – warmly applauded the slightly red-faced constable.

  “… for his devotion to duty, selflessness in the face of danger, and successful rescue of a very reckless, very…”

  “Stupid,” Ryan chipped in, good-naturedly.

  “… lucky,” Graham continued, “young man. I’d also like to thank the perceptive and persistent Constable Roach…”

  More applause and table-thumping were his reward.

  “… for his remarkably keen eye, especially when it comes to young women long since thought lost to us.” Everyone got a kick out of that, but for Roach, it was bittersweet.

  “And, not to be outdone, the potent new team of Harding and Wentworth for their sterling work in tracking down a dangerous predator and then uncovering a decade of fraud. I thank you all, most sincerely. It’s a privilege to work with such able and dedicated professionals.”

  Dishes arrived with steaming platters of fried rice. Graham found himself in a debate with Wentworth about the “Snooper’s Charter,” while Barnwell was forced yet again to recount the story of his remarkable journey on the George Sullivan, complete with Captain Ryan’s dero
gatory remarks about the erstwhile crew of the Sea Witch.

  “What in the seven hells were they doing in that old wreck of a boat, anyway?” Ryan wanted to know. “They’d have both died in that cold water if we’d taken much longer to get there.”

  Barnwell had heard the boys’ story from Charlie as they’d sat under warm blankets in the ambulance that had picked them up upon their return to dry land. “They were skipping their exams,” he explained, “and planned to sail to the French coast. There they’d ditch the boat and hitchhike their way to the South of France and on to Spain. They thought they’d get work in bars down in one of the resorts.”

  Ryan guffawed at this. “Silly buggers. They’d have been recruited as drug mules as soon as they got short of money. Are they going to pay for all those thefts, then?”

  Barnwell swallowed his massaman curry before answering. “I’m thinking of recommending to the magistrate that they be given community service down at the marina,” he reported. “Helping paint the older boats, clean up after the seagulls, that kind of thing.” Ryan seemed content with this.

  “You know,” Roach said, “it’s impossible to ignore how important computers were in this whole business. But I think I really learned something about police work, too.”

  “Oh?” Graham asked. The red curry had brought him to the point of sweating but not yet to the acute discomfort he secretly feared.

  “Well, I wouldn’t have spotted Beth if I hadn’t been prepared to put the time in,” he noted. “No software could have found her. Just someone who was looking for the right things.”

  Janice nodded. “And while we used the Internet a lot, we had to know what we were looking for. That required a human brain.”

  “So,” Graham summed up, dabbing his mouth with his napkin, “I need not worry, quite yet, that police officers are about to be replaced with heartless robots?”

  “Not quite yet,” Harding agreed. “A good pair of eyes and a thoughtful mind can do an awful lot, still.”

  “Doesn’t hurt to have a decent mentor, either,” Roach observed.

  Graham just smiled. The arrests were his reward, along with the knowledge that they’d done the right thing in a case that had been too long ignored. He felt pride, too. In his officers and in his methods. And there was no harm, he decided, in letting that show just a little.

  Later after they’d all finished their food, chattered, and laughed themselves hoarse, the events of the last forty-eight hours began to take their toll.

  “Right, then,” Graham said, finishing his drink and rising. “I’m going to head off before things get out of hand here. Marcus? Can I give you a lift?” He signaled for the check. When it arrived, the waiter inquired three separate times about Graham’s health. “Really, I’m fine. I think the chef went easy on me.”

  “Please, sir. Call us tomorrow, and let us know you’re okay.”

  Barnwell left next, offering Captain Ryan a ride to his coastal cottage, and Roach headed for his bicycle, chained to the railing outside the restaurant. Janice and Jack were left alone at the table.

  “Last pair standing,” Jack observed. “Would you like anything else? Maybe we could share some dessert?”

  Janice felt herself blush a little and glanced away for a moment. Then she smiled at Wentworth, and realized just how much she was beginning to enjoy his honesty and that friendly, expressive face of his. “Sure,” she said finally, her eyes meeting his. “That sounds nice.”

  EPILOGUE

  AFTER HER DEFENSE successfully cited Ann Leach’s emotional distress as a factor in her crimes, she was convicted of fraud but received a suspended prison sentence. Leach was also ordered never to attempt to travel to Denmark, where she was blacklisted by the immigration authorities. She had no contact with her daughter. After her trial Ann moved away from Gorey and to Wiltshire, where she took work in a small hotel.

  The members of the Gorey community were shocked, saddened, and in some cases angered by the revelations resulting from the police investigation into the Beth Ridley Foundation. A committee was set up by a local council member to discover whether any of the funds could be recovered, but after ten months of rancor and no progress, the matter was quietly dropped.

  Andrew Lyon was sentenced to seven years and three months for possessing, distributing, and financially benefiting from the distribution of indecent images of minors. His time in prison has been marked by a campaign of intimidation and violence toward him by other inmates. His repeated requests to be moved to a different prison have been ignored. He is on constant suicide watch. On his release, he will be placed on the Violent and Sex Offenders Register (ViSOR) and never allowed to work with children again.

  Despite a confession, the Crown Prosecution Service felt the evidence to support a conviction in the case against Liam Grant for the kidnapping and trafficking of Beth Ridley was not conclusive. The case was never brought to trial. Grant resigned from his post at Gorey Grammar and moved back to his native Ireland. He died in a car crash six months later.

  Mr. and Mrs. Updike received a Royal Mail Special Delivery three weeks after Andrew Lyon’s arrest. It was a rare and much sought-after invitation card from 1868, sent to a noted politician of the day, requesting the pleasure of his company for a late supper with Queen Victoria. The invitation immediately took pride of place in the Updikes’ collection. The card accompanying the gift said simply, “Best regards, DG.”

  Constable Barnwell was presented with the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his sea rescue of Charlie Hodgson. He remains friends with the teen’s parents, for whom he has become something of a mentor. Since his experience on the George Sullivan, Barnwell has signed up for lifesaving lessons.

  Charlie Hodgson and Rob Boyle were arrested upon their return to Gorey in the George Sullivan. The jury heard an honest recounting of the boys’ plans to skip three “terrifying” school exams scheduled for the following week and instead sail to the French coast and from there head to Spain. They were found guilty of eight offenses and sentenced to sixty hours of Community Service at the Gorey Marina. Having impressed Captain Smith with his attention to detail and punctuality, Rob was offered an apprenticeship on Smith’s fishing trawler and spent three weeks in the mid-Atlantic. Charlie returned to school and was later accepted onto a vocational college course to learn boat restoration.

  For his work on the Ridley case, Mrs. Taylor decided to give DI Graham a generous discount on the next month’s rent of his room at the White House Inn. She also continued, with a quiet determination, to have his path somehow cross with that of an eligible young woman.

  Jim Roach received a police commendation for diligence and persistence in the Beth Ridley case. His framed certificate sits on the mantelpiece above the fireplace in his mother’s home. He now regularly starts for the Jersey Police five-a-side squad. There are high hopes that the team will win the league this year.

  Bettina Nisted got married in the summer. She and her husband Johann are expecting their first child early next year.

  Janice and Jack shared a leisurely dessert and sat talking for well over an hour after the last diners had departed the Bangkok Palace. They were seen strolling slowly down the road, hand in hand, talking together as though neither wanted the evening to end. As he locked up and cleared their table, the headwaiter was delighted to find a generous tip. As he pocketed it, he reflected on the fact that unlike their older dining companion, he would not need to consider the young couple’s wellbeing when he woke the following morning.

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  INSPECTOR DAVID GRAHAM WILL RETURN…

  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT for our intrepid team in the Bailiwick of Jersey? Find out in the next book in the Inspector Graham cozy mystery se
ries, The Case of the Missing Letter. You’ll find an excerpt on the following pages.

  THE CASE OF THE MISSING LETTER

  PROLOGUE

  DON ENGLISH WOKE to the sound of his mother softly singing along with the radio. The room’s blinds were open, and bright afternoon sunshine gave a warm luster to the daffodils by Susannah’s bed. Don shifted in the armchair and rubbed his eyes, then watched for a moment as his mother sang quietly, mumbling most of the words, her eyes closed, and a happy little smile on her face. It was something by the Beatles, but he didn’t know the name.

  “How are you feeling, Mum?” he asked. He pushed his heavy, soft bulk out of the chair with a groan and stood by her bed, flexing his left foot, which had gone to sleep during his half-hour nap. “You’ve always liked this song, haven’t you?”

  Susannah was smiling contentedly to herself, and then her eyes opened. She seemed not to take in her surroundings for a long moment, and when she turned to Don, there was a visible struggle in her eyes. Finally, she asked, “Play it again?”

  Don sat on the bed and took her hand in his. He was finding it remarkably slight and cool these days, her skin mottled with age and soft like an old parchment. “It’s on the radio, Mum,” he reminded her. “What’s the name of the song?”

  But the thought had left her, and now she was focused on the daffodils by her bed. “Who brought those?” she asked, gazing at them. “They’re lovely.”

  “I did, Mum,” Don replied. It could not have been anyone else.

  “Oh, thank you, sweetheart,” she said. Just as she had an hour ago and twice yesterday. “You’re always so good to me.”

  Another song came on, something from the sixties that she recognized, and she had her eyes closed again, humming to the chorus. Don held her hand, feeling the tiny tapping of her fingers on his palm as she followed the beat. As the song ended, Susannah’s eyes stayed closed, and her hand was still once more. He listened closely and found that her breathing was regular and slow. “You have another little nap, Mum,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Going to find some coffee. I’ll be right back.”