Find Them Dead

21 Friday 3 May

Roy Grace’s last day in his post as Acting Commander of the Metropolitan Police Violent Crime Task Force, began much the same as his first day had. With his job phone ringing in the middle of the night.

Grabbing it and hitting ‘answer’ as quickly as he could, to try to avoid disturbing Cleo, he slipped out of bed and went through into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. ‘Roy Grace,’ he said, instantly awake and alert.

‘Sorry to disturb you, boss,’ said the familiar voice of the on-call SIO, Detective Inspector Davey. ‘We’ve a fatal stabbing in north Croydon.’

‘Thanks, Paul. What details do you have?’

‘Sketchy at the moment, but it sounds like a wrong-time, wrong-place. A young lad walking his girlfriend home. From what we have from her, so far, they were surrounded by a bunch of youths making sexual innuendos and he answered them back. The next thing she knew, he was lying on the ground, bleeding heavily from the neck, and they all ran off. She phoned in hysterics and stayed with him whilst the operator talked her through staunching the blood loss and CPR, but he died at the scene. I know it’s your last day, but I thought you might want to attend as usual, so I’ve dispatched a car to collect you. It can be with you in thirty minutes, if you want to come up?’

‘I do. Where’s the girl now?’

‘Being treated for shock at the hospital, but she’s a plucky kid and has given us some good descriptions. We’ve a pretty good idea who one of the offenders is. I know it’s early, but I’ve already got uniform officers there doing house-to-house and we are sitting on the suspect’s home.’

Despite the tragedy of the situation, Roy Grace knew that when he returned to Sussex, one thing he would miss was the sheer number of officers the Metropolitan Police were able to deploy to a crime scene — and the speed at which they could do it.

Another thing he would miss was having a driver at times like these, he thought. Especially after last night, when he’d had farewell drinks at a pub with his team. He’d grown fond of them all in the short time he’d been in London and would miss them.

Thanking Davey, he started collecting his thoughts about this murder and the day ahead, as he showered and shaved. He needed to be looking sharp for an 8 a.m. breakfast meeting with Alison Vosper — which she had requested, somewhat to his surprise.

He waited downstairs, dressed in his uniform, sipping a strong coffee as he was eyed by a half-awake Humphrey, licking his paws. When he heard the sound of a car pulling up outside, he went upstairs, finding Cleo awake now and sleepily putting on a T-shirt. He apologized for waking her, held her head in his hands and gave her a big kiss. Then he hurried back down, grabbing his laptop and go-bag, and climbed into the back of an unmarked Audi.

Too wired to go back to sleep, he spent the thirty-minute, high-speed, blue-light journey on his laptop, going through the case files of the trial of Dr Edward Crisp.

‘This is as close as we can get, sir,’ his driver announced, bringing the car to a halt.

Grace looked up, surprised they were here already. A street-lit residential road. A couple of low-rise apartment blocks and post-war semis on both sides. Ahead, through the windscreen, he could see a blaze of blue flashing lights, and just beyond, with a uniform scene guard, police tape sealing off the road. It was a hive of activity. A large number of police vehicles, including a marked Transit van and a Crime Scene Investigation truck.

Leaving his laptop on the rear seat, he climbed out with a heavy heart. Every knife-crime murder that happened under his watch he considered to be a failure. A failure down to him.

Opening the boot of the car, he pulled out a protective oversuit, shoes and gloves from his go-bag, wrestled into them, then walked towards the cluster of vehicles and a group of people, mostly youths, hanging around the outer cordon. He showed his warrant card to the scene guard, signed the crime scene log and ducked under the tape.

A short distance ahead was a group of people similarly attired to himself, standing in the glare of temporary floodlights around a tent, the generator powering them rumbling close by. Several POLSA, in blue gloves, were on their hands and knees on the pavement doing a fingertip search, taking advantage of the so-called ‘golden hour’.

The words of the Murder Manual were ingrained in his brain, if not his soul, playing to him as he approached.

Who? What? Why? When? Where? And very importantly — How?

Davey turned to greet him as he approached.

‘What do you have, Paul?’

‘Only what I told you, boss. Nothing more at this stage, I’m afraid. Pathologist is on his way.’ He opened a flap in the tent and stepped aside to give Grace a view of the victim.

A black kid, eighteen years or so old, with a massive wound in his neck. Vacant eyes wide open. Short, bleached dreadlocks. A white, blood-soaked tank top. Dark tracksuit bottoms. Brand-new trainers. A large stain of pooled, drying blood on the pavement.

‘He wanted to be a doctor, his girlfriend told the first officers who attended,’ Davey said.

Anger flared in Roy Grace. Anger against the perpetrators, whoever the hell they were. The same anger he had felt so many times during the past six months. Anger at his impotence. Yes, he had made a difference. During his time here in this role the number of knife-crime deaths had reduced. But there were still far too many.

Just one was too many.

It was easy to look at statistics and feel smug about them. Hide behind them. Much harder to look at a dead teenager who had wanted to be a doctor, murdered for trying to walk his girlfriend home. Murdered, most likely, by a group of youths so dispossessed by society that this was their vile, pathetic way of achieving some kind of status.

Murdered, by default, by a succession of governments whose politicians were just not interested in understanding the different strata of society they were responsible for.

The pooled blood was black beneath the harsh glare of the lights.

Black like the dead youth’s skin.

Black would give the politicians all kinds of mealy-mouthed excuses to explain about divided communities.

Bollocks.

This dead young person, with his £200 trainers and his ambition to be a doctor, deserved better than the hand he’d been dealt.

Failure. He looked at the boy, thinking, Failure by all of us to create a society that recognized your ambition and talent.

Shit. Grace knew how awful it was to tell a parent that their child would never come home again. A dreadful thing.

He turned away, his eyes stinging with salty tears.