One of Us Is Dead

10 Saturday 24 September 2022

Roy Grace had been reluctant to go in to work today, wishing he could spend the whole of what promised to be a glorious weekend at home instead with his family. The weather forecast was brilliant, and he was planning to barbecue tomorrow. There were few things that brought a bigger smile to his five-year-old son Noah’s face than a barbecued sausage smothered in ketchup. Although actually pretty much anything that had ketchup on it made Noah very happy. He looked at the photo on his desk, of Cleo, Noah and Molly, who was coming up to her third birthday, and Humphrey, their dog, and just wanted to be home with them all.

But a major and complex trial was looming. Three particularly unpleasant specimens of the human race — members of a Sussex crime family, currently on remand in prison. They faced charges of murder, attempted murder and worst of all — from Grace’s perspective as a dog lover — conspiracy charges relating to illegal breeding and importation of puppies. Which was why, at 8 a.m. on this fine Saturday morning, he was sitting at his desk in his office in the Major Crime suite at Sussex House, staring at his computer screen, and surrounded by piles of paperwork he had to read through, and check word by word.

The public mostly only ever saw the headlines. The first announcing the bust and arrest of a criminal or a whole gang. Sometimes, the second, much later on, announcing their sentences. Guidelines stated that suspects should be brought to trial within eight months of their arrest, but in practice that time was often much longer.

What the public never saw was the tidal wave of paperwork that an arrest created, in building the case for the prosecution. It all ultimately landed on the Senior Investigating Officer’s shoulders. This paperwork contained minefield after minefield, which Roy had to navigate with great caution. He had to ensure every step of the way that there was nothing in the police prosecution case that a smart defence barrister could drive a coach and horses through. Timelines that matched the events. Chains of evidence that had no gaps that could be challenged. The correct cautions given to arrested suspects. The procedures followed at the labs. And much more.

Although some of the trial paperwork was now digitized, there were still a good eight piles of documents lined up on his office floor, each tied with a different-coloured tape to signify their relevance.

At this moment he was reviewing, on his screen, the process of obtaining search warrants for two farms, and the legality of the raids that were subsequently carried out, resulting in over eight arrests, including the two men and one woman currently in prison, when he was interrupted by a phone call. It was a DC he had worked with in the past, Jamie Carruthers, attached to the Digital Forensics Unit but working in the field, undercover, as part of a small team looking at criminal activity on the internet and particularly the dark web.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Carruthers came to the point. ‘Sir, we’ve become aware of some criminal activity where we believe the offenders to be based in Sussex, possibly in Brighton and Hove — relating to the supply of 3D printed handguns. We believe there may also be links to an individual offering their services as a contract killer with a guarantee that the death will be seen by the authorities as an accident or misadventure.’

‘How much hard information do you have at this stage, Jamie?’ Grace asked.

‘It’s early doors with our research, sir, but we are monitoring a number of sites. I wanted to give you a heads-up as this is an active investigation, and we may need the involvement of the Major Crime Team if we make substantial progress. But in the meantime we need to keep this very confidential and treat it in a sensitive manner.’

‘OK,’ Grace said. ‘I’ll have Polly Sweeney act as liaison with you, and all contact should be either through her or to me directly.’

As he ended the call, he heard the sound of his door opening, followed by Glenn Branson’s voice, far too breezy for this hour.

‘Hey, fun guy!’ Branson said.

Grace, dressed casually in jeans and a polo shirt, narrowed his eyes, looking suspiciously at his friend, who was fully suited and booted as ever. ‘What are you so damned perky about at this hour? And what are you doing in here on a Saturday instead of cherishing your wife?’

‘This!’ Branson fished in his pocket and produced a shiny USB memory stick, which he laid on the detective superintendent’s desk as delicately as if it were a priceless Fabergé egg.

‘What is it?’

‘Our ticket to that headline murder investigation I’ve been after. Perhaps?’

‘Seriously?’

‘Seriously. Take a look.’

Grace inserted the memory stick into the side of his computer, then opened the folder that appeared after a few moments on his desktop. It contained three files. He double-clicked on the first one, labelled Organica Exhibit 1 and it began to play; a digital time display in the top right-hand corner read: 3.25 p.m., Saturday 3 September.

He saw an overhead view of a supermarket checkout till. A young woman, distracted by a bawling baby in her trolley, was lifting various items from the trolley onto the conveyor, finishing with a bagged bunch of bananas. She put the ‘next customer’ board up and wheeled a buggy and her trolley forward, in front of the cashier.

A rather shapeless man, in his late thirties, with fair, threadbare hair, chinos, a big jumper and poor posture was queuing behind her, his back to the camera.

‘That’s Barnie Wallace,’ Branson said. ‘His partner’s confirmed it.’

Behind Wallace was a tall figure in a bulky black jacket, hoodie, jeans and trainers, with a very confident, erect posture. As Wallace began placing items from his heavily stacked trolley onto the conveyor, the hooded person behind him glanced around, shiftily, his face further obscured by a scarf and dark glasses, then lifted a pack of what looked like mushrooms out of Wallace’s trolley and replaced them with an apparently identical, shrink-wrapped pack. Wallace had not noticed.

The hooded person dropped the pack into his own trolley, which contained just a handful of items.

‘What’s going on?’ Grace said. ‘Does hoodie think the other pack of mushrooms looks better?’

‘I don’t think so, boss.’ Branson paused the recording. ‘This is the supermarket Organica, where Barnie Wallace’s ex, Angi Colman, who was still friends with him at the time, said he may have bought the mushrooms. She also said he likes to forage for mushrooms because he’s too mean to buy them. Organica is a new all-organic place in Western Road. Doing a roaring trade, apparently.’

‘This Angi didn’t eat any of the mushrooms herself?’

Branson shook his head. ‘She’s allergic to them.’

‘So, it seems, was Barnie Wallace.’

‘Hummm,’ the DI said softly.

Grace gave a thin smile, then indicated for him to continue.

‘There’s not much else worth seeing.’ Branson ran the rest of the recording, which showed the hooded man paying cash for his items after Barnie Wallace had left, and exiting into the busy street. They watched two more short clips, marked Exhibit 2 and Exhibit 3, showing the hooded man, face always obscured by the scarf and dark glasses, in a couple of aisles of the supermarket, always closely following Barnie Wallace.

‘OK,’ Roy Grace said. ‘We know there are a lot of CCTV cameras in that area — both our own and the ones owned by the shops.’

‘I’m on it,’ Branson said. ‘I’ve got an outside inquiry team collecting all the footage to see if we can plot our hooded friend’s movements after leaving the place.’

‘Creepy-looking — he’s like a crow,’ Grace said. Then he frowned. ‘So, whoever the Crow is, he seemingly swapped the harmless, edible field mushrooms that Barnie Wallace bought in the supermarket for the highly toxic death cap mushrooms, in identical packaging. Which gives me a number of questions. The first is, if the Crow did this swap deliberately, and I think we hypothesize that he did, was he targeting Barnie Wallace, or did he have another agenda?’

‘Another agenda? It’s been over two weeks since he died, boss. Don’t you think if there was going to be a ransom demand to Organica it would have happened by now? And we’ve checked back with the supermarket and they’ve had no other issues with any of their mushrooms at the time or since.’

Grace nodded. ‘Yes, it makes it unlikely. But, if he was targeting Barnie Wallace, how did he know he was going to be at this supermarket, at this exact time, and buying field mushrooms? We could just be dealing with a random nutter.’

‘I can answer that, boss.’ He held up his phone, opened Instagram and took them to @barniewallacegourmetdinners.

Grace was surprised to see he had 12,500 followers.

‘It looks like he’s been posting a recipe every day, and where he’s going to buy his ingredients. His last post was Saturday, September the third.’

‘The night he died?’ Grace quizzed.

‘Technically he didn’t die until the early hours of the sixth, never having regained consciousness, but I’ll give you that one.’

‘You’re all heart.’

Branson raised a finger. ‘You learned me, boss, that every detail counts.’

‘I did, yadda, yadda. Can we move on? It’s the weekend and I’d quite like to get home to my family and show them I’m capable of having a life. Just like you should be going home.’

‘Even though we’re in a murder inquiry?’

‘We’re in slow time, matey — if we have a murder at all. We’ve just watched a man swap a box of mushrooms in a supermarket. We don’t have enough yet to launch a full-on inquiry — we’re not yet at that level you’re hot to trot for. This is a suspicious death at best, so let’s continue with our enquiries first.’

Branson shrugged. ‘Siobhan’s off up in Birmingham chasing a story.’

‘And your kids?’

‘My sister’s with them. I’m taking them to the skate park this afternoon.’

‘OK.’

‘Trust me, Roy, Barnie Wallace was murdered.’

‘That’s what you really think?’

Branson touched the side of his nose. ‘Copper’s nose!’

Grace grinned, and scanned the recent Instagram posts from Barnie Wallace. ‘So, if our Crow followed Barnie Wallace on Instagram, he would have seen the post that he would be buying his mushrooms at Organica on Western Road, Brighton. That post was on Thursday, September the first. The footage of him buying them is at 3.25 p.m. Saturday, September the third. That gives our killer, if he is a killer at all, very little time to pick the death cap mushrooms and then put them into identical packaging to the ones on display in Organica. That’s a pretty big ask, don’t you think?’

Branson nodded pensively. ‘You’ve a point.’

‘And here’s another point. Wallace, a professional chef, cooked these mushrooms as part of his menu for a dinner for a group of friends. If he was a trained chef, how on earth did he not realize these were deadly? Was he a total idiot?’

‘I’ve done a bit of digging into Barnie Wallace’s background,’ Branson said. ‘He wasn’t a trained anything, he was what you’d call a proper dilettante. Seems like he has gone from one career to another. He started out as a failed actor, then got sacked as a chef in a gastropub — the Three Horseshoes in Rottingdean — after a whole bunch of diners went down with salmonella poisoning. At the time of his death he was working in telesales for a company in Newhaven, but trying to build up his following as a cookery expert on social media in the hope of monetizing it.’

Grace nodded. ‘OK, so let’s go for a moment with Barnie Wallace being a total plonker who thinks he’s a chef. Who is this guy who is switching the mushrooms and why?’

‘You’ve still got all three lifelines left, boss. Want to ask the audience, phone a friend or go fifty-fifty?’

‘I’ll go fifty-fifty. Did the Crow target Barnie Wallace because he wanted to harm — or maybe kill — him, or, as I said, are we dealing with a highly dangerous nutter who is randomly targeting people?’

‘I’m going with the first part of your question,’ Branson said. ‘EJ and Norman interviewed the golfer, Susie Pfeiffer, who is still in a bad way but lucid enough to talk. She said she often picks mushrooms when she’s on the golf course. She did think these particular ones looked a little different to the normal field mushrooms, but she checked them on an app on her phone and decided they were OK to eat.’

‘They were in her possession all the time, from the moment she picked them to when she cooked them?’ Grace asked beadily.

‘So it would appear, boss.’

‘OK, let’s park her for now and focus on Barnie Wallace. Have you done an association chart on him?’

‘It’s on a whiteboard in the conference room. He’s got a pretty wide circle of friends or acquaintances. We’re working through them. He’s divorced with a long trail of people he owes money to. We’ve interviewed this ex-girlfriend of his, Angi Colman. She said that in the weeks before he died, Barnie was acting a bit mysteriously. Said he told her he had a deal brewing that was about to make him a great amount of money.’

‘Did he tell her what that was?’

Branson shook his head. ‘But then we interviewed Barnie’s ex-wife, Debbie Martin, and it gets more interesting. She said Barnie was making a hard play to try to win her back. She said part of the reason they’d broken up in the first place was Barnie never sticking to anything, and always in debt, always promising the next thing would work out. He told her this time that he really was on the verge of making a fortune. That he had the goods on someone — an old school friend or former work colleague, possibly, she thought. She said it sounded like some kind of blackmail.’

‘Sexual blackmail?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get that impression.’

‘Did she speculate who it might be?’ Grace pressed.

‘No. But Barnie Wallace’s debts had mounted up significantly in the months before his death. We’ve requested copies of his bank statements from our financial investigators and should have them early next week.’

‘What about his phone and computer?’

‘The laptop’s gone to Aiden Gilbert and the phone to Charlotte Mckee at Digital Forensics.’

‘You’re not letting the grass grow under your feet, are you?’ Grace said, impressed. ‘Any bones you can throw me for what I brief the ACC on this? Do you have a hypothesis?’

Branson nodded. ‘Yeah, the butler did it.’