A Twist of the Knife (13 page)

The man said, ‘Good boy, good boy!’

The dog barked again.

Then silence.

He waited. The air was chilly. After a while he checked his watch. Five minutes had passed. Another five minutes passed. He checked Facebook on his phone. Nothing. He sent a message.

I’m here!

Moments later a message came back.

So am I!

He looked around, then switched on the torch and shone the beam in every direction. It fell away into the darkness. He sent another message.

I can’t see you. Did I get the co-ordinates right? 51° 56’ 47.251” N 0° 17’ 41.938” W.

The reply came almost before he had posted it.

Spot on!

He felt a sudden swirl of cold air; it went, almost as fast as it had come. Then he felt something digging into his back – something hard and flat that felt different from the rest of the bench.

He turned around and shone the beam onto it. It was a small brass plaque. Engraved, in tiny lettering, were the words:
In memory of Teresa Saunders (1983–2011) who loved this heath. Tragically killed by lightning on this spot.

Another swirl of icy air engulfed him. Then he felt a touch, just the faintest touch, on his cheek. Like a kiss.

An instant later there was a crack, like a peal of thunder, directly above him. He looked up in shock to see a dark shape hurtling down towards him.

*

‘Poor bastard,’ the Police Sergeant said.

‘Must have been instant at least,’ the constable who had been first on the scene replied.

The fire brigade officers had rigged up some lights, and three of them were hurriedly attaching lifting gear from the rescue tender to the massive, blackened branch that pinned Jobe, by his crushed skull, to the ground.

The attending paramedic could find no pulse, and viewing the matter leaking from the unfortunate young man’s crushed head, was all too grimly aware that it was what he and his colleagues, with the gallows humour of their trade, called a ‘scoop-and-run job’
.
The Coroner’s Officer was on his way.

A man who had been walking his dog nearby was in shock. He had stood numbly watching, then several times had repeated crossly, almost shouting, to the attending officers beyond the police tape cordon, ‘They should have bloody cut it down – any fool could see it was an accident waiting to happen.’

Another police officer who had turned up, but had nothing to do, suddenly snapped on a pair of gloves, knelt and picked up an object. ‘iPhone,’ he said. ‘Might give us a clue who he is.’

He tapped the power key to wake it up, then studied the screen. ‘Looks like he was meeting someone here,’ he said. ‘Seems as if he had a date. Meant to be meeting her here at 10.35 p.m. – that’s half an hour ago. I haven’t seen any sign of a woman anywhere around.’

‘Not his night, is it?’ one of the fire officers replied. ‘Stood up, then this happens.’

‘Or maybe she broke it off and left,’ the Sergeant said.

A very short story based on a true incident

Roy Grace’s first case

The dog was a wuss, Crafty Cunningham always said. An adorable wuss, certainly, but a wuss nonetheless.

His wife, Caroline, agreed. He was a big dog, a lot of dog, especially when he jumped on you, wet and muddy from the garden, and tried to lick your face. It was like having a sheep fall off a cliff and land on you. His name was Fluff, which was a ruddy stupid name, they both knew, for a dog of this size. The animal was still unable to grasp the fact that after eleven years (a ripe seventy-seven in dog time) he was no longer a tiny, fluffy puppy, but was a very large, overweight and usually smelly golden retriever.

They both loved him, despite the fact they had been badly advised on their choice of a puppy. They’d originally wanted a guard dog that would be happy roaming a big garden in Brighton, and wouldn’t need too many walks beyond that. Fluff needed two long walks daily, which he did not often get, which was why he was overweight. And as a guard dog he was about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Crafty was fond of telling their friends that the hound might drown a burglar in slobber, but that would be about his limit.

Crafty’s real name was Dennis, but he’d acquired the nickname back in his school days and it had stuck. He’d always been one for a crafty dodge. He used to play truant from school; he was a crafty dodger around the football pitch, and equally crafty at dodging trouble. And he was always one for getting something for nothing. His father had once said of him, with a kind of grudging respect, ‘Dennis is a lad who could follow you in through a turnstile and come out in front of you without having paid.’

Neither of them heard Fluff, early that April Tuesday morning, pad upstairs from the kitchen, where he usually slept, and flop down on their bedroom floor. Later, Crafty would tell the police he thought he had heard whimpering, around 5 a.m. he estimated, but because he wasn’t aware the dog was in the bedroom, he thought the sound was coming from Caroline, having a bad dream.

It was only when Crafty woke at 7 a.m., with that very distinct smell of damp dog in his nostrils, that he saw Fluff on the floor. To his surprise, the dog was shaking. ‘Fluff!’ he hissed, not wanting to wake Caroline, who never rose before 8.30. ‘What are you doing here, boy?’

The dog gave him a baleful look, stood up, still shaking, padded to the door, then turned back to him and gave a single bark that was much higher than his usual.

‘Ssshhhh, boy!’ Crafty said, but at the same time he thought the dog was behaving in a very strange way – almost as if he was trying to tell him something. Was he ill? ‘Need to go out, do you? What’s the matter? Why are you shaking?’ he whispered, then slipped out of bed, pushed his feet in his slippers, and unhooked his silk paisley dressing gown from the back of the door. It was cold in the room and he was covered in goosebumps, he realized. Spring was meant to be here, although there was still a wintry chill in the air. But that could not be why Fluff was shaking – he had too much fur on him to be cold, surely?

The dog barked again, trotted a short way down the stairs, then turned, looked up at his master and barked again.

‘You’re definitely trying to tell me something, aren’t you, boy?’

He was.

*

Detective Constable Roy Grace sat at his small desk in the detectives’ room, on the second floor of Brighton’s John Street police station, which was to be his home for the foreseeable future.

He put down his mug of coffee from the canteen, and removed his jacket. His desk, apart from a telephone, his radio next to it and a copy of yesterday’s briefing notes, was almost bare. He opened his attaché case and pulled out a few personal belongings, and started by pinning up in front of him a photograph of his fiancée, Sandy. She was smiling, leaning against a railing on the seafront, the wind blowing her long blonde hair. Next he placed in front of him a photograph of his parents. His father, Jack, stood proudly in his uniform bearing Sergeant stripes.

Roy had recently completed his two years as a probationer, walking the beat in Brighton as a Constable, and he had loved it. But right from his early teens he had dreamed of becoming a detective. He still could not really believe that he now was one.

This was his second day in his new role, and he loved the sound of his title. Detective Constable Grace.
Detective!
Sandy loved it too, and told him she was very proud of him. He sipped some coffee and stifled a yawn. He had been told he did not need to be in until 8 a.m., but he wanted to make a good impression – and perhaps bag an early worm – so he had arrived at the police station, in a smart blazer and slacks, at 7 a.m., hoping for a more challenging day than yesterday when, in truth, he’d felt a little bored. Wasn’t this supposed to be the second busiest police station in the UK? It had felt as quiet as a mortuary.

What he needed was a case to get his teeth into. Nothing had happened on his first day, apart from attending a briefing, some basic familiarization with the routines, and being given his shifts for the three months ahead. It had been a quiet Monday generally, blamed largely on the pelting rain. ‘Policeman Rain’ it was jokingly called, but it was true. Levels of crime fell dramatically when the weather was rubbish. Today looked better, an almost cloudless sky giving the promise of sunshine. And crime!

Yesterday, he reflected, had felt a bit like his first day at school, getting to know the ropes and his new colleagues. There had been a handful of follow-ups from crimes committed on the Sunday night – a string of break-ins, a couple of street robberies, several motor vehicle thefts, a racist attack on a group of Asians by one of the town’s nasty youth gangs, and a drugs bust on a private dwelling – but other detectives had been despatched to handle those. He had spent most of his first day chatting to colleagues, seeing what he could learn from them, and waiting for his Detective Sergeant, Bill Stoker, to give him an action; he hoped today would not be a repeat.

He did not have to wait long. The DS, a burly former boxer, ambled over, wearing a charcoal suit that looked a size too big for him and black shoes polished to a military shine. ‘Right, old son, need to send you out. Domestic burglary in Dyke Road Avenue. Sounds like a high-value haul. I’ll come with you – but I’ll let you lead. I’ve already got SOCO on standby.’

*

Grace hoped his excitement didn’t show on his face too much. He drove the unmarked Metro up past Brighton railway station, carefully sticking to the speed limit, across the Seven Dials roundabout and on up Dyke Road, then into Dyke Road Avenue, lined on both sides with some of the town’s swankiest houses.

‘Not many coppers living on this street,’ his Sergeant observed wryly. ‘Not many honest ones at any rate.’

There had been a big police corruption scandal some years back, which Roy Grace’s father had talked about, and which had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth – police and public alike. He decided, from the Sergeant’s slightly bitter tone, not to probe. Just as he was about to make a non-committal comment, his colleague said, ‘Here, that’s it, over on the left, on that corner!’

Grace pulled over. There was a narrow driveway with in-and-out gates; both sets were open – and from their poor state of repair, it did not look as if they had been closed in years. ‘I think if I lived on this street, I’d keep my gates shut – open like that is an invitation,’ he said.

‘Most people don’t have a bloody clue about security,’ the Detective Sergeant said. ‘All right, before we get out of the car, what’s this place tell you at first glance?’

Roy Grace stared at the house. It was secluded from the street by a wooden fence badly in need of repair, rising above which, on the other side, was a tall, neatly trimmed privet hedge. The house itself was an Edwardian mansion, with window frames that, he could see from here, looked in poor condition. ‘Elderly people live here,’ Grace said. ‘They’ve probably owned the property for several decades, and never bothered with an alarm. There’s no box on the outside of the house.’

The Detective Sergeant raised his eyebrows. ‘What makes you think the occupants are elderly?’ He looked down at his notepad. ‘Mr and Mrs Cunningham.’

‘Old people get worried about money, sir. They don’t like to spend anything they don’t have to. So they haven’t done maintenance on the exterior for a very long time. But I suspect they are keen gardeners – and they have the time, which means they are retired. Look at the condition of the hedge. It’s immaculate – trimmed by a perfectionist.’

‘Let’s see if you’re right,’ Bill Stoker said, climbing out.

Grace looked at him. ‘Is there something you know about these people that I don’t?’

Stoker gave a non-committal shrug and a wry smile. The two men walked up the threadbare gravel of the driveway. An elderly Honda saloon was parked near the front door. From what they could see of the garden from their position, all the shrubbery was neatly tended, but close up, Grace could see the exterior of the house was in an even worse state of repair than he had first assessed, with large chunks of the pebbledash rendering missing and a few ominous patches of damp on the walls.

They entered the porch and rang the bell. Instantly, they heard the half-hearted bark of a dog, and a few moments later the door was opened by a wiry, energetic-looking man in his early seventies, Grace estimated. Grace shot Bill Stoker a quick glance; Stoker gave a small grin of approval.

‘Mr Cunningham?’

‘Yes?’

Grace pulled out his warrant card holder and flipped it open, to show his card and the Sussex Police badge. It was the first time he had used it, and he felt a deep thrill. ‘Detective Constable Grace and Detective Sergeant Stoker, from Brighton CID, sir. We understand you’ve had a break-in?’

The old man, dressed in a plaid shirt with a cravat, chinos and monogrammed velvet slippers, looked distinctly on edge and a tad lost. His hair was a little long and unkempt, giving him the air of an absent-minded professor. He did not look to Roy Grace like a man who had ever held a staid office job – possibly a former antiques dealer or someone in the arts world, perhaps. Definitely some kind of wheeler-dealer.

‘Yes, that’s right. Bloody awful. Thank you for coming. I’m so sorry to have troubled you.’

‘No trouble at all, sir,’ Bill Stoker said. ‘That’s what we’re here for.’

‘It’s shaken us up, I can tell you. Please come in. My wife and I have tried to be careful not to touch anything, but the ruddy dog’s trampled all over – I suppose what you fellows call – the
crime scene
.’

‘We’ll have SOCO take some paw prints, so we can rule him out as a suspect, sir,’ Bill Stoker said, entering the rather grand panelled hallway. Several fine-looking oil paintings were hung along the walls, and it was furnished with tasteful antiques. He knelt to stroke the dog which had padded over towards him, tongue out. ‘Hello, fellow!’ He rubbed the dog’s chest gently. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, looking at the collar tag. ‘Fluff. You’re Fluff, are you?’ Then he heard a female voice.