The Truth About Murder

by Chris Collett

  ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘Flooding,’ I said. ‘You might have noticed it’s raining, again. What’s the panic?’

  ‘A body’s been found on the riverbank by a couple of water company surveyors, a mile or so downstream of the town.’ He broke off briefly to give me directions. ‘Our involvement will be a formality, so I want to get it over with.’ This last was said with authority, as we idled in a traffic queue where temporary lights had been set up around a flooded stretch of road.

  ‘Why a formality?’ I didn’t doubt him for a second. Even with his years of experience, he’d never struck me as one to race to judgements.

  ‘It’ll be a jumper.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘We haven’t had one for a while and we generally get one every few months. Short of the likes of Beachy Head or Clifton Suspension Bridge, the Charn is the next best thing, especially at this time of year when it’s in full spate. There are some fierce currents.’ He stared out at the rain running down the gutters. ‘Bet you a tenner.’ I wasn’t going to take him on, but once again felt a twinge of regret that I’d been somehow cheated of the benefits of his knowledge. It explained why Bowers was so keen to keep Denny close. The lights changed to green and I drove cautiously through a puddle that must have come halfway up the wheel arches.

  ‘What were you doing at Meridian Crescent, anyway?’ Denny asked. I sensed he was passing the time rather than genuinely interested.

  ‘I was at Stefan Greaves’ place.’

  There followed a pause, after which he asked, ‘What for?’

  ‘I thought I’d see if he could pick anyone out.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted with some irritation. ‘And it’s unfortunate,’ I went on. ‘Even if we had DNA on file for the perpetrators, we didn’t get Greaves’ clothing, so there’s nothing to compare it with.’ I let it hang for a moment.

  ‘You didn’t take his clothes?’ Denny asked, innocently.

  ‘I wasn’t the first at the hospital,’ I reminded him, doing my best not to make it an accusation. ‘I guess I thought they’d already been processed.’

  ‘Ah well, it’s unlikely we’d have got anything anyway,’ said Denny, finding a renewed interest in what lay beyond the window. ‘You want my advice, you’ll spend your time on other cases. That one isn’t worth pursuing.’

  ‘Why not?’ There were so many things wrong with that statement that I didn’t know where to start. Mostly, I was angered by the implications of the word ‘worth’. Did Denny really believe that for whatever reason, Stefan Greaves wasn’t a ‘worthwhile’ cause?

  ‘You’re never going to get a conviction without material evidence, are you?’ Denny said. ‘Not in a million years, and no one’s going to thank you for wasting your time on it. You’d be better off focusing your energy on something that will get you a result.’

  ‘But surely . . .’ I tailed off. I wanted to say that we ought to try anyway, that no victim was of any less value than another, but he was right about the politics. There was always pressure to solve the more serious crimes and — though nobody said it out loud — the ones we were sure to get a conviction on. With budgets tied tightly to results, as they had been the last ten years, it was all anyone upstairs was really interested in. I could have pointed out that had Stefan Greaves’ clothes been sent straight to forensics as they should have, getting DNA might have given us our material evidence. But my feeling was that Denny had simply forgotten and that this casual dismissal was to cover his embarrassment. Although his attitude was infuriating, perhaps it was inevitable. He was starting to wind down, his mind elsewhere, and I didn’t want to get into an argument with him, so that was the matter effectively closed.

  ‘I bet you won’t be sorry to leave this behind,’ I said to change the subject.

  ‘What, the traffic or the weather? You can say that again.’ Then he answered my real question. ‘I can’t imagine I’ll be sitting on my sun lounger thinking longingly of cadavers either.’

  ‘Has the paperwork all gone through?’ The purchase of his villa on the Algarve, I knew, had not been a straightforward one.

  ‘At long last. And we’ve got a date to hand over the keys to the house here, so there’s no stopping Sheila now. She’s throwing stuff out like the world’s about to end. If I sit in the same place too long, she’ll probably have me carted off to the charity shop too,’ he chuckled. It was good to see his spirits lift and glimpse the Denny everyone had told me about when I first arrived.

  ‘When do you leave England?’ I had a good idea but wanted to prolong the bonhomie.

  ‘End of next month. About six weeks. We’re going to have to lodge with Sheila’s mum for a couple of weeks, but even that will be worth it. I can’t wait.’ It was the most heartfelt statement I’d ever heard him make.

  * * *

  Our time in attendance at the deposition site was, by some margin, in inverse proportion to the time we took to get there. The strobing lights of the response vehicles, parked higgledy-piggledy along the grass verge, cast an icy flicker over the gloomy scene. The SOCOs (scenes of crime officers) seemed to have beaten us to it. Denny wouldn’t be happy about that. I pulled in at the back of the row and, donning waterproof jackets, we set off on foot — or at least tried to. There was no real path through the undergrowth, just a narrow corridor of flattened and broken greenery sitting atop a quagmire. Slipping and sliding with each step, it was as much as we could do to stay on two feet, while wet foliage slapped at us from all directions. Before we even got within sight of the body, we were met at the makeshift cordon by the police surgeon, Dr Shea, who advised against going any further. At this point, he more or less had to shout at us over the combined sound of the rain and the rushing river, and I didn’t catch everything, but we got the gist. Deposition site unstable . . . chunks of riverbank breaking away . . . too close to the fast-flowing river . . . impossible to construct a tent . . . any physical evidence almost certainly compromised. ‘We’re going to have to move him as soon as the SOCOs have finished filming and photographing!’ he yelled in conclusion.

  Denny nodded. ‘Suicide?’

  This time it was Shea’s turn to nod. ‘Most likely. He’s been in the water a while.’

  ‘Any ID?’ asked Denny.

  A shake of the head from Shea.

  So Denny’s assessment of the situation had been accurate. All we could do now was dry off and wait for the post-mortem for clues as to whom the deceased might be. It was a depressing end to the day.

  Chapter Twelve

  Opening the front door of our house, a three-floor modern build, I was greeted by the smell of frying onions and garlic. ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I called.

  Sonia popped her head out of the kitchen, where, from the sound of it, she was cooking some kind of stir-fry for supper, the radio chattering in the background. She was flushed from the cooking, her wayward hair pushed back, and she looked gorgeous. We’d been together seven years now and I still couldn’t really believe my luck.

  ‘You’re late,’ she said, though it was nothing more than an observation. ‘And wet,’ she added, taking in the slicked-down hair. ‘What kept you?’

  ‘A suspected suicide.’

  ‘How horrible. How did they—?’

  I gave her the bare facts such as I knew them and she was silent for a moment. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Aye.’ She wasn’t convinced. ‘Really.’ I added.

  ‘OK, well, go and get dried off. Dinner will be on the table in ten minutes.’

  * * *

  ‘Mum called earlier,’ Sonia told me as we sat down to eat.

  ‘Are they all right?’

  ‘They’re both fine. But it’ll be her birthday the week after next. I wondered if we could go up and see them sometime.’

  ‘Sure.’ It would mean a drive up the motorway to near Blackburn. ‘I’ll just need to see how my shifts are.’

  ‘OK, but soon, eh?’

>   ‘Yeah.’ I tried to sound keen. I had no objection to visiting Sonia’s parents in itself, but I knew that the minute we got there, her mum would start turning the screws (in her own subtle way, of course) about grandkids. Now that we’d actually made the decision to go ahead with that, I could do without the extra pressure.

  ‘How’s the rest of your day been?’ she asked. ‘With the lovely Denny?’

  ‘Och, he’s OK.’

  ‘Still not cutting you much slack?’ Perceptive as ever, my missus.

  ‘I really hoped when I started the job that we could work well together, y’know? But it’s becoming more and more obvious that he’s just biding his time till retirement and doesn’t really give a toss about me. We seem to be having less and less to do with each other, and now the super’s got him working on preparations for an upcoming visit by some mysterious VIP.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s the point. Denny won’t say. I don’t think he even meant to tell me that much, though I definitely get the impression it’s someone important. God knows why he, or she, might be coming here.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Sonia. ‘Charnford’s as good as anywhere else, better than a lot of places, you might say. We moved here,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Yeah, but that was for other reasons, wasn’t it? And as I’ve learned over the last few days, it’s not exactly a crime-free zone.’

  ‘Have you made any progress on that mugging you attended?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. ‘I ran some potential suspects past the guy in the supermarket and he definitely reacted to a couple, but I’ll need more before I can bring them in.’

  ‘No DNA?’

  ‘There might be something on the National Database, but nothing to compare it with, thanks to a screw-up with collecting Greaves’ clothes.’

  ‘What kind of screw-up?’

  ‘I’m not exactly sure. I assumed Denny had taken them for forensics, so I didn’t bother asking at the hospital, but he hadn’t. I think he forgot.’

  ‘Have you tackled him about it?’

  ‘Sort of. But it’s too late to rectify, and all it would achieve is making Denny even more antagonistic towards me in his last couple of weeks in the job. What good would that do? I went back to talk to the victim, though, Stefan Greaves.’

  ‘Is it going all right with him?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You forget how well I know you, Michael Fraser,’ she said, with a smile. ‘You weren’t looking forward to that first interview, were you?’

  ‘I don’t know what I was worried about. It was stupid. He’s an all right bloke — of course he is.’

  ‘Does he know how you felt?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, no harm done, was there? He’s got to you though, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I’d like to find out who did him over, if that’s what you mean. But I’d feel that way about any victim. Although Denny’s made it clear that he doesn’t have much confidence in my ability to solve the case.’

  ‘All the more reason to prove him wrong, then. And isn’t it better that he trusts you and leaves you to get on with your job rather than breathing down your neck all the time?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose.’

  ‘And once he’s retired you might get a decent partner you can build a real relationship with.’

  ‘I know, but it still feels like a missed opportunity. I could have learned such a lot from him, if he’d let me.’

  ‘He hasn’t got much longer now, has he?’

  ‘Week after next. Tomorrow night’s the first of his leaving bashes. I’ll be late home. Naturally, I’ve got the job of babysitting him for the day so that they can organise it while he’s out of the way.’

  ‘Very subtle,’ she chuckled.

  ‘Yeah, well that’s the police for you.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Early that evening, the phone rang. It was Laura.

  ‘Are you checking up on me?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ she said, candidly. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m OK. Police came to see me again.’

  ‘Good. Anything?’

  ‘Not really. Unreliable witness.’

  ‘Just unreliable, you mean,’ she joked. ‘Listen, I meant to ask you earlier about supper on Saturday night. You were otherwise engaged last weekend. Want to come this week instead? Do you feel up to it?’

  ‘I might, just about.’

  ‘Great, we’ll see you at about seven then. And you’re sure you’re OK on your own tonight? It’s not too late to change your mind. Simon hasn’t left work yet, so he can quite easily—’

  ‘Really, I’ll be fine,’ I lied and she rang off.

  In the ordinary course of things, I would have been fine. I’d kind of got used to being on my own. Kind of.

  Did I fancy some company tonight? Nah, Keeley would probably be busy, and while some parts of my anatomy might be (quite literally) up to it, I wasn’t sure if the rest of my battered body could take it. Instead, I spent a restless night. I spent more than an hour or so gazing at the chessboard trying to work out Crusader’s strategy, but my mind kept wandering back to that Friday night. Nothing on TV held my attention for very long either, so in the end I settled on an early night. Once in bed, though, I started to think back to the doctor’s words and lay there for a long time wondering if I was about to have another seizure. I wished I hadn’t declined those sleeping pills.

  I was determined to make it into work on Thursday morning. I’d go stir-crazy if I had to spend any more time cooped up in the flat on my own. A gang of teenagers got on the bus at the stop after mine, loud and jostling for space. They were school kids, that was all, but I made sure I steered clear of them. A couple of them eyed me up as they walked up the aisle to the back seats, and again it was hard to deflect the unwanted attention. Suddenly I was fearful of provocation.

  As I walked into reception, Jake looked up from the wad of letters he was flicking through.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, with a hint of accusation.

  ‘I still have a job, don’t I?’

  ‘But shouldn’t you be resting or something?’

  ‘Staring at four walls, you mean? Not really for me.’

  ‘How are you?’ Beneath her stiffly coiffed hair, Barbara was all sympathy, which was the last thing I needed. She’d got used to having me around now, Barbara, but she was of the generation who still thought I was ‘terribly brave’ to venture into the outside world and try to earn a living.

  ‘Walk this way,’ said Jake, leading into his office. Still preoccupied with the mail, he waited until I was inside, kicking the door shut behind us in a deft manoeuvre that I envied. ‘Have the police been in touch? Are they looking at anyone?’ he asked. He flopped down behind his desk, casting aside the pile of post. It landed in the miniscule space between the blocks of files that covered the rest of its surface. Even though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock, his tie had slipped a couple of inches below his unfastened top button and I wondered what time he’d left the office last night.

  ‘They’ve been to see me a couple of times,’ I said, lowering myself carefully into the chair opposite, my ribs protesting all the way. ‘A Scot called Fraser.’ His slight incline of the head indicated that Jake didn’t know him, although he was acquainted with many of the local police. ‘But I can’t give them much. It all happened pretty fast, and it was dark, so I still can’t remember enough to give a clear description.’

  ‘Well, it might come back to you.’

  ‘That’s what Fraser said. You came to see me in the hospital too?’

  He looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Yeah, you were a bit out of it.’

  ‘Sorry about that. I’d have made more of an effort if I’d known. You made an impression, though.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘One of the nurses. I think she took a shine to you.’

  ‘My natural charisma,’
he said. The remark might have been tongue-in-cheek coming from anyone else, but not from Jake. He frowned. ‘And you’re sure you’re OK to be here?’

  ‘I need to be.’

  ‘One condition then: that you start with short days today and tomorrow and go home if you need to.’

  ‘All right.’

  A brief nod. Jake trusted me to make my own decision and accepted it. In a nutshell, he treated me like a grown-up and always had. In the months after I graduated with first class honours, I’d sat in front of numerous interview panels that had ranged from the mildly condescending to the downright offensive, and discovered in a few short weeks what a pile of crap all the 1990s’ equal rights legislation had been. Out of desperation, I’d ended up taking a low-level administrative job working for a voluntary organisation. My qualifications seemed to count for nothing. I’d set out with high ideals about being honest right from the start, but that didn’t last long. Even though I hadn’t explicitly disclosed anything on my application form for PGW, Jake had displayed absolutely no reaction when I’d shown up for the interview. Throughout the meeting, he’d allowed me plenty of time to speak, and from his responses I could tell he’d had surprisingly few problems with understanding me. When he did miss something, he’d simply asked me to repeat what I’d said. At the end, when he'd asked me the standard ‘anything else you’d like to tell us’ question, I’d felt compelled to mention the elephant in the room.

  ‘OK,’ he’d said, so deadpan that I had been convinced he was taking the piss. ‘How does that affect your work?’

  To indulge him, I'd stated the obvious: speed and communication.

  ‘Well, thank you for pointing that out,’ he’d said. Then had come the blow. ‘I should warn you that we’re interviewing another strong, highly qualified candidate this afternoon.’ So he’d put me through all that just to give me the brush off right at the end, probably just so that he could feel good about doing his bit for equal opportunities, I’d thought. I’d left the offices seething. That evening, Jake rang to offer me the job.

  ‘What about the other strong candidate?’ I’d asked. ‘Qualifications not stand up?’