It was growing lighter now and he switched off the head torch. He turned and looked back at the house, which was little more than a speck in the distance. A small, rectangular farm cottage, sitting up on a slight ridge. It was very secluded, almost half a mile down a rutted driveway from the lane, and ten minutes’ drive from the centre of the village of Henfield.
In many ways the house was an ugly duckling, with tiny windows, each a different shape and size, looking as if it had been designed by an infant playing with bricks. Much of it was clad in unruly ivy and – at this time of year – skeletal wisteria. But he loved it, and Cleo loved it, too. This was their first proper home together. He felt that his family was safe here, away from the city, and that it would be a paradise for their son – and for any future children who came along. Cleo said she would be happy to have two more and hoped at least one would be a girl, not that she really minded. He didn’t care whether it was one, two or three more. He was pretty happy with his lot, right now.
But with it came the feeling that this couldn’t last. There were dark clouds on the horizon. One of these was his boss, his old adversary Cassian Pewe, ACC with responsibility for Major Crime. During his month at home with his family, Grace had had the chance to rethink his values. He wasn’t going to let Pewe stress him. He did his job to the best of his ability – and always had. He cared about the victims of all the crimes he had to investigate and did everything he could for the families.
Another dark cloud was Dr Edward Crisp. The knowledge that he’d had him in his grasp, and then the serial killer had escaped, had been eating him up. But at least Crisp was now once again behind bars, albeit in France. And as soon as the French police had completed their enquiries, he would be brought home to face justice. That reminded Grace he needed to contact the police in Lyon for an update.
With the stack of evidence they had against the creepy doctor, the man would spend the rest of his life rotting in jail, with no chance – not even with today’s absurdly lenient legal system – of ever being released.
But the darkest cloud of all was his missing first wife, Sandy. Something that he’d kept to himself since early January, which was when he’d flown to Munich at the request of a German police officer friend of his, Marcel Kullen. Kullen believed a woman lying in a coma in a hospital ward there after being run over by a taxi might just be Sandy.
Looking down at her damaged and intubated body in the private room at the Klinikum Schwabing, her face covered in scars, scabs and bandages, it had been hard to tell for sure one way or the other. However, he believed in his heart of hearts that it was her. But the major issue was her ten-year-old son. He had no idea who the father was, and he didn’t want to think about the possibility of it being him, and of having responsibility for the boy.
Sandy had made her choice, ten years ago, to walk out on him and disappear. At some point, he had learned many years later, she had become a drug addict, although she had apparently managed to come through that. There was too much history, too much baggage.
So he had walked away, denying it was her.
A few days after his visit to Munich, Marcel Kullen had phoned him, asking if he could send some item from Sandy – if he still had anything – that they might get DNA from, to make one hundred per cent sure she could be eliminated.
It had placed Grace in a dilemma. He had promised to see if he could find anything, but told Kullen a small lie, that he didn’t think he had anything left of hers. The truth was he had kept some of their things. A week later, aware he would never have closure unless he knew the truth for sure, he mailed Kullen one of Sandy’s old hairbrushes. But he already knew what the outcome would be. And that he would have to tell Cleo.
Now he waited on tenterhooks for another communication from Kullen, one that would change his life dramatically and not in a good way.
Next weekend, on Saturday, he and Cleo were going on a date night. Dinner at the Cat Inn at West Hoathly, one of their favourite country restaurants. They’d booked the romantic Grand Suite for the night and arranged for the nanny to stay over in the house with Noah. They were both really looking forward to having an evening together away from everything.
He looked at his watch. At 6 a.m., he would be handing over to a new duty Senior Investigating Officer. Sussex and Surrey normally had around twenty-four homicides a year between them. So far this year, Sussex was enjoying a below-average rate. The odds had been badly stacked against him for this weekend, and although homicides were his meat and drink – there was nothing he loved better than to investigate a murder – he was glad to have had a quiet period.
Just as he thought this, bending down to tug the red tennis ball free from Humphrey’s jaws, his phone rang.
‘Roy Grace,’ he answered, and was immediately dismayed to hear the somewhat neurotic voice of Andy Anakin – known to his colleagues as ‘Panicking Anakin’ – one of the city’s duty inspectors. Anakin was known colloquially within the police as a shit magnet. Incidents happened whenever he was on duty. A nervous man, he frequently spoke in short, staccato sentences.
‘Oh, sir, good morning. Just wanted to give you a heads-up, sir. In case. You know?’
‘Heads-up on what? In case of what?’ Grace replied.
‘Well, the thing is, a major Brighton target died last night in suspicious circumstances.’
‘You’re talking in riddles, Andy. Who died?’
‘You didn’t hear? Shelby Stonor.’
‘Shelby Stonor?’ Grace quizzed him. ‘That scrote?’
‘Yep, the very one. DI Warner was called out and has looked at the circumstances and has asked that you be informed.’
Like any city, Brighton had its share of persistent offenders who were well known to the police. Shelby Stonor was up there on the A-list of the worst of them. Grace had first encountered him in his early days in the force, as a beat copper. Back then Stonor had been a frequent joyrider and a petty thief. He had graduated to becoming a house breaker – and a fairly rubbish one at that. During the past twenty years Stonor had spent more time in prison than out. And one of the crimes Grace hated, almost more than any other, was domestic burglary. In his view – and a view shared by both Sussex Police and all other forces – violating the sanctuary of people’s homes was up there amongst the vilest of offences. Currently, Grace knew, Stonor was a major target for Brighton Police who also believed he was connected to a gang stealing high-value cars.
‘That’s what you’re calling me at this hour to tell me? That Shelby Stonor’s dead?’ He added, cynically, ‘Are we going to have a whip-round for flowers or something?’
‘It’s how he’s died, Roy. That’s why I’m calling you.’
Does anyone care? That little bastard, he was tempted to reply. He took a deep breath. ‘Tell me.’
53
Monday 2 March
Rollo had gone to play a rubber of bridge with the couple who had been witnesses at their marriage, earlier. Kind of a strange way to spend the start of their honeymoon, she’d thought, and he’d offered to cancel, but she had insisted. He couldn’t let them down and ruin their game, not after they’d been so sweet.
He promised to be back by six for champagne, then a romantic wedding-night dinner à deux. She’d told him not to hurry, she was happy for him.
And she had work to do.
Luck was really going with her. Ever since she had changed her appearance all those years ago, luck had gone with her. It seemed she just had to think lucky to be lucky. Klein had been a hiccup along the way. She was now back on a roll. Even before setting foot on the ship she had been planning Rollo’s demise. The discovery that the ship’s captain was licensed to carry out marriages recognized in English law, and her plan to seduce Rowley into marrying her, had worked so brilliantly. No one would suspect a loved-up bride of just a few days of killing her husband. And the location was perfect, given to her on a plate, with plenty of dangerous creatures in addition to crocodiles.
She was thirty
-six and her body clock was ticking ever faster. She had very few years left to achieve her dream of a lifestyle to match that of her old school friend, Emira. Enough money to buy one of those villas on Lake Como, to have all the other luxuries she could ever want, to have a man she really loved and to bring up her own family. This opportunity with such a deadly combination of elements might take years to occur again. It was too good to miss – she had to grasp the moment.
Carpe diem!
The ship was rolling a little in a heavy swell. The captain had warned them in his 9 a.m. address that it would be a little rough for a few hours, and to make sure everyone held the handrails on the stairs. She walked unsteadily across to the door, opened it and peered out into the corridor. Rollo was forgetful and had a habit of returning to the cabin minutes after he had left, for his glasses, his phone, his wallet or his insulin pen. But all she could see was a liveried butler delivering drinks on a silver tray to another cabin.
She closed the door and locked it. Then she went to the fridge where she kept the freezer pack that, she had told Rollo, contained the drops she needed for her dry eyes, and where his insulin pens were stored. Inside was a tiny rubber-stoppered vial of amber-coloured crystals she had brought with her, from a small stash she kept in her freezer at home. It lay among the sachets of eye drops that she did not need. She removed it and one of his grey Lantus twenty-four-hour pens, and placed both items on the dressing table.
Next, from a compartment inside her handbag, she took out the hypodermic syringe, a small bottle of sterile water and surgical gloves from the kit she always travelled with. She liked to be prepared, never knowing when an opportunity might present itself, although she’d had a feeling from the start, with Rollo, that the cruise might provide too good an opportunity to miss. And with his rocky health, she wanted to do it sooner rather than later – which might be too late. Happily, events were panning out much faster than she had expected. With luck, this would more than make up for all those precious months she had wasted with Walt Klein.
For protection she snapped on the gloves and firstly rehydrated the vial of freeze-dried crystals with the sterile water. She had studied the way Rollo took his insulin, by screwing a fresh needle into the base of his throwaway insulin pen. Whilst the crystals were dissolving, she took the empty syringe and pressed the needle against the base of the pen, pushing it firmly and carefully up inside. Then, glancing nervously at the door, she withdrew the plunger, drawing out the clear insulin until the pen was empty. She went over to the washbasin and, pressing the plunger firmly, squirted the insulin down the plughole, breathing in its distinct, clinical reek.
Her hands were trembling, she realized. Again she looked at the door. Don’t come back, please don’t come back.
Then there was a knock.
Shit!
She looked down in panic, wondering where to hide everything. ‘Hello?’ she called out.
‘Canapés!’ a sing-song voice replied. Their regular afternoon delivery of caviar, smoked salmon and prawns, with a glass of champagne, that Rollo had ordered for them.
Relief surged through her. ‘Can you come back later, please. Half an hour?’
‘No problem! Sorry to disturb you!’
Shaking, she returned to her task. She picked up the vial and the syringe and carefully drew up the rehydrated venom, watching carefully, hoping to hell she had not miscalculated. Then she smiled. Perfect! The pen’s clear-plastic barrel was full and the faint yellow tinge was barely discernible!
She marked the pen, to be sure she could identify it, with three careful scratches from her nail scissors, then placed it with her eye drops back in the opaque freezer pack and put it back in the fridge. Picking up the syringe and the empty vial, she stepped out onto their secluded balcony, in the warm late-afternoon sunshine, leaned over the rail and carefully looked around for anyone who might notice her, but there was no one about. Then she tossed the syringe and vial overboard into the deep blue ocean.
Returning to the cabin, she checked carefully that she hadn’t left any evidence. Then she unlocked the door, showered, washed her hair, put on her make-up and perfume, and slipped into the black lace underwear and camisole she’d bought especially for this trip. She picked up the novel that she was reading, and lay back on the bed to wait for her husband of just a few hours to return.
54
Monday 2 March
Thirty minutes later and Shelby Stonor might have been someone else’s case in the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team. But after a long period, first of convalescence, then of quiet, Roy Grace was suddenly fired up. The first possible murder of the year on his watch might just have fallen into his lap. Albeit this was the kind of murder enquiry he and all his colleagues liked least – that of a known low-life scumbag. There was no specific evidence at this stage that it was murder, but the death was definitely suspicious.
Given the choice, like all other detectives, he would have preferred a more classy homicide investigation. But he wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass him by and, with an offender like Stonor, there was every likelihood of a quick resolution. It appeared that Stonor had been killed by a snake, but how and where did that happen? One possibility was his links to crime in Brighton – burglary, drug dealing and, more recently, car theft. But, equally, Grace knew from his long experience never to prejudge any situation.
ABC.
ASSUME NOTHING, BELIEVE NO ONE, CHECK EVERYTHING was the mantra drummed into every detective in the country when they started. The first place to look, in a suspicious death, was the victim’s home. Eighty per cent of victims were killed by a loved one or by someone they knew. His first task was to establish where Stonor lived and who, if anyone, he lived with. Perhaps they had killed him. Or, alternatively, he could easily have been killed by a competitor or through some other crime connection.
Cutting short his early-morning walk with Humphrey, he started to notify the on-call enquiry team, and already information was starting to come in.
Kaitlynn arrived to take care of Noah, and Cleo left shortly after. The working day at the mortuary began early, with Cleo and her team starting at 7 a.m. to prepare the bodies that required post-mortems.
An average of three bodies a day were processed through the city’s mortuary. The good thing about the early start, from Cleo’s perspective as the mother of a young baby, was that on most days she would be home by 4 p.m. After the brutal intrusion of a post-mortem, her next duty, with the help of her assistants, was to make the body look presentable for viewing and formal identification if it was required. That meant replacing all the internal organs, stitching the body up, washing it, doing the hair and applying make-up. Then receiving and treating the loved ones with sympathy and respect in the non-denominational chapel.
The moment any human being died, their body became, in law, the property of the Coroner. If someone, already ill, had died of natural causes and their doctor was happy to sign off the death, the body could go straight to the funeral director.
In most circumstances where the cause of death was not suspicious, such as when someone in poor health had died more than twenty-eight days since they last saw a doctor or as the result of an accident, one of the team of three local pathologists would perform the post-mortem. But on deaths where the Coroner had reason to believe there were suspicious circumstances, then a highly trained Home Office pathologist – of which there were just thirty-two covering the whole of the UK – would be called in. A standard post-mortem took less than an hour. A Home Office one could sometimes take all day – or even longer.
Roy always found it hard to see Cleo when she was at work, with the constantly grim duties she carried out every day, in contrast to her home life. And he admired her all the more for it. She’d often told him her greatest satisfaction came from helping bereaved loved ones through one of the most difficult tasks they ever had to face in their lives.
He knew all too well from some of the narrow escapes he’d had in his own care
er – and the dangers which all police officers faced – that there was the constant possibility that one day he could end up on one of those post-mortem tables himself.
It was something Cleo knew only too well, also. The elephant in the room that they rarely talked about. Regardless of the size of its shadow. He respected her enormously for her work, and her attitude.
He hurriedly showered and shaved, and went down to the kitchen. He put some porridge into the microwave, then went over to Marlon’s tank and dropped in some food flakes. ‘Morning, old chap, had a good night? What you been up to?’
The goldfish’s response was the same as ever. It opened and shut its mouth a few times, then swam to the surface and gulped down some of the food. Strange to think, Grace considered, but this was probably the highlight of Marlon’s day.
He carried his porridge over to the breakfast table, sat down and began to eat, flipping through the pages of Sussex Life magazine. But after only a few moments, his mobile phone rang.
‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.
‘Good morning, Roy.’
He recognized instantly the voice of the Coroner of Brighton and Hove. ‘Good morning,’ he replied. ‘Inspector Anakin said you would be calling.’ All their conversations were straight down to business; she was not one, normally, for pleasantries or small talk.
‘Roy, I’ve been informed about a Brighton resident, Mr Shelby Stonor, who died following a road traffic accident in Marine Parade in Brighton. There are serious concerns about the nature of his death.’
‘Yes, I have questions about his death, too.’
‘As you know, those who treated him don’t believe the injuries he sustained in the accident were sufficient to be fatal. They think he might have been poisoned – possibly bitten by a venomous snake – or he had a tropical disease. One of the paramedics worked in Africa some years back – she says that Stonor had puncture marks on his right ankle that could have been a snake bite. We need to bring in a Home Office pathologist who has experience in this field. There’s one, Dr Nick Best. I’ve contacted him and he could be available later today or tomorrow. They’re going to carry out toxicology tests – I will have more information later, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up.’