Not Dead Enough

120

Norman Jecks stared up sullenly at Grace. He lay in the bed, in the small room, his right arm bandaged from the elbow down to the covered stump where his hand should have been. An orange hospital ID tag was clipped around his left wrist. His pallid face was covered in bruises and grazes.

Glenn Branson was standing behind Grace, and two constables sat in the corridor outside the door.

‘Norman Jecks?’ Grace asked. He was finding it bizarre talking to this man who was such a complete clone of Brian Bishop, even down to his hairstyle. It was as if Bishop was playing some prank on him, and really was in two places at the same time.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Is that your full name?’

‘It’s Norman John Jecks.’

Grace wrote it down on his pad. ‘Norman John Jecks, I’m Detective Superintendent Grace and this is Detective Sergeant Branson. Evidence has come to light, as a result of which I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Ms Sophie Harrington and Mrs Katherine Bishop. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?’

Jecks raised his left arm a few inches and, with a humourless smile, said, ‘You’re going to have a problem handcuffing me, aren’t you, Detective Superintendent Grace?’

Taken aback by his defiance, Grace retorted, ‘Good point. But at least we’ll now be able to distinguish you from your brother.’

‘The whole world’s always been able to distinguish me from my brother,’ Norman Jecks said bitterly. ‘What’s your particular problem?’

‘Are you prepared to talk to us, or do you wish to have a solicitor present?’ Grace asked.

He smiled. ‘I’ll talk to you. Why not? I’ve got all the time in the world. How much of it would you like?’

‘As much as you can spare.’

Jecks shook his head. ‘No, Detective Superintendent Grace, I don’t think you want that. You don’t want the kind of time I’ve got banked away, believe me, you really don’t.’

Grace limped over towards the empty chair beside the bed and sat down. ‘What did you mean just now when you said the whole world’s always been able to distinguish you from your brother?’

Jecks gave him the same, chilling, lopsided grin that he had given him last night, coming down the stairs in Cleo’s house, after him. ‘Because he was the one born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and me – you know what I was born with? A plastic breathing tube down my throat.’

‘How does that make you physically distinguishable from each other?’

‘Brian had everything, didn’t he, right from the start. Good health, well-off parents, a private-school education. Me? I had underdeveloped lungs and spent the first months of my life in an incubator, here in this hospital! That’s ironic, isn’t it? I had chest problems for years. And I had pretty crap parents. You know what I’m saying?’

‘Actually no, I don’t,’ Grace said. ‘They seemed pleasant enough people to me.’

Jecks stared at him hard. ‘Oh yes? Just what do you know about them?’

‘I saw them today.’

Jecks grinned again. ‘I don’t think so, Detective Superintendent. Is this some kind of a trick question? My father died in 1998, God rot his soul, and my mother died two years later.’

Grace was silent for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, there’s something I don’t understand.’

‘What’s not to understand?’ Jecks shot back. ‘Bishop got a beautiful home, a good education, every possible start in life you could have, and last year his company – the idea he stole from me – made the Sunday Times list of the hundred fastest-growing companies in the UK. He’s a big man! A rich man! You’re a detective, and you can’t spot the difference?’

‘What idea did he steal from you?’

Jecks shook his head. ‘Forget it. It’s not important.’

‘Really? Why do I get the sense that it is?’

Jecks lay back against his pillows suddenly and closed his eyes. ‘I don’t think I want to say any more, not now, not without my solicitor. See, there’s another difference. Brian’s got himself a fancy brief, the best that money can buy! All I’m going to end up with is some second-rate tosser courtesy of Legal Aid. Right?’

‘There are some very good solicitors available at no cost to you,’ Grace assured him.

‘Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda yadda,’ Jecks responded, without opening his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about me, Detective Superintendent, no one ever has. Not even God. He pretended He loved me, but it’s Brian He loved all along. You go off and cherish your Cleo Morey.’ Then, his voice suddenly icy, he opened his eyes and gave Grace a broad wink. ‘Because you love her.’

There was an air of expectancy in the packed conference room for the Friday morning briefing meeting.

Reading from his notes, Roy Grace said, ‘I will now summarize the principal events that occurred during the course of yesterday, following the arrest of Norman John Jecks.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘One major item in our investigation into the murder of Katie Bishop is conclusive evidence provided this morning by the forensic odontologist, Christopher Ghent, that the human bite mark found on Norman Jecks’s severed right hand was made by Katie.’

He paused to let the significance sink in, then continued. ‘DS Batchelor has discovered that for two years, until March of this year, a Norman Jecks, matching our man’s description, worked in the software engineering department of the Southern Star Assurance Company as a computer programmer. That timing is significant, in that he left approximately four weeks after Bishop allegedly took out a three-million-pound life insurance policy on his wife with this company. We have now requisitioned all Bishop’s bank records to see if any premium was in fact ever paid. I suspect we may find he did genuinely have no knowledge of this.’ He sipped some coffee.

‘Pamela and Alfonso have been checking further into the criminal record of Bishop. They have been unable to find any mention of either crimes in the local or national press around the times they allegedly occurred, or around the dates of the convictions.’

He turned another page. ‘Yesterday evening in a raid on garage premises rented by Jecks, we discovered a duplicate set of licence plates identical to those on Brian Bishop’s Bentley. In a raid on his flat in Sackville Road, Hove, at the same time, we discovered evidence of an unhealthy obsession Jecks had – or rather, would appear to have – with his twin brother, Brian Bishop. This included the discovery of video monitoring equipment linked, via an internet connection, to concealed surveillance cameras in the Bishops’ Brighton home and in their London flat. Jecks further admitted his hatred of his brother in a conversation Glenn Branson and I held with Jecks under caution this morning.’

Grace continued, listing what had been found at Jecks’s flat, although he held back the information about the three dialled numbers that he and Branson had found on the man’s pay-as-you-go phone, as they were not really supposed to have examined it, and it had now been passed to the Telecoms Unit.

When he had finished going through his notes, Norman Potting raised a hand. ‘Roy,’ he said, ‘I know it’s not strictly our case, but I did a ring around the Brighton and Hove travel agents this afternoon, asking if they had any record of a Janet McWhirter asking about flights to Australia back in April of this year. There’s a company called Aossa Travel. A lady there by the name of Lena found an inquiry form with the name of Janet McWhirter on it. She had put down her travelling companion as Norman Jecks.’

When the briefing meeting was complete, Grace went to his office. First he called the SIO on the Janet McWhirter inquiry and told him about Potting’s findings. Then he dialled Chris Binns, the Crown Prosecution Service solicitor for the Katie Bishop case, and brought him up to date on their findings.

Although the evidence seemed to be pointing increasingly away from Brian Bishop and towards his brother, it was still early days, and it would be reckless to move too quickly in freeing a suspect. Bishop was due to appear in court on Monday for his next remand hearing. The two men agreed on a strategy. Chris Binns would speak to Bishop’s solicitor and inform him that the Crown might be experiencing some difficulties with the prosecution as a result of new evidence coming to light. Provided Bishop would agree to keeping the police informed of his whereabouts, and to surrendering his passport, the bail application on Monday would not be contested by the CPS.

When Roy Grace finished the call, he sat in silence for a long time. There was one part of the puzzle still missing. One very big part. From one of the files on the pile on his desk, he removed Brian Bishop’s birth and adoption certificates, and those of his brother.

His door opened and Glenn Branson’s head appeared round. ‘I’m just off, old-timer,’ he said.

‘What you looking so happy about?’ Grace asked.

‘She’s letting me put the kids to bed tonight!’

‘Wow. Progress! Does that mean I get my house back soon?’

‘I dunno. One swallow doesn’t make a summer.’

Grace looked back down at the adoption certificates. Branson was right. One swallow did not indeed make a summer. Nor, it seemed, did two men under arrest make a solution to a puzzle.

Norman Jecks just said this morning that he spent the first months of his life in an incubator. And that his parents were dead. And according to his parents, he was dead.

Why were they lying about each other?