One of Us Is Dead

15 Tuesday 27 September 2022

‘Shit!’ Glenn Branson said.

Grace squinted at him.

‘Don’t tell me, you walked into a door, right? Or you went five rounds with Eubank Junior?’

‘It was a door. A Cassian Pewe shaped one.’

Branson stopped in his tracks. ‘What?’

Grace shrugged, and immediately winced.

‘Man, you look like shit. You look like you walked into five different doors then fell down a staircase and hit a post at the bottom.’

‘Thanks, I feel like shit.’ He gave his friend a brief download of the fight in the graveyard.

Branson shook his head. ‘You might need to brush up your boxing skills.’

Grace cocked his head. ‘It’s ju-jitsu actually. Any more advice?’

‘Plenty, but you won’t listen, so what’s the point?’

Grace said nothing.

‘Are you OK? I mean, like seriously, are you OK? Have you been checked out by any medic?’

He grinned — and even that hurt. ‘You should see the other guy.’

‘I’d pay good money for that!’ Then he shook his head. ‘You really had fisticuffs — like proper fisticuffs?’

‘Long overdue.’

‘And you gave him a beating, right? You should have belled me, I’d have come over and given him a few kicks in the nuts, too, for old times’ sake.’ He shook his head again. ‘It must have been a big one if the most level-headed man I know threw punches. You really should go to hospital to get checked out — I’ll take you there.’

‘I’m fine, I’ll be OK, enough nagging. I’ve had it up to here from Cleo wanting me to go and sit for six hours in the A&E waiting room. But she cleaned me up well. Trust me, this is me looking good! Come on, we need to get out to the briefing. Would you please go in first and tell the team to ask no questions about this, we need to crack on with the investigation.’

Branson left Roy’s office and addressed the team. As Roy appeared, the room went embarrassingly quiet, with most trying to take a discreet look. It took Norman Potting to break the awkwardness. ‘The Phantom Mushroom Switcher strikes again,’ he announced.

Jack Alexander grinned and Roy Grace was grateful for the playful humour. Glenn Branson, who was now sitting centre stage at the oval table in the Major Crime suite conference room, didn’t react for some moments. He was focusing on his notes for his first briefing for what was now Operation Meadow. And on his desk was a copy of this morning’s Argus with an alarmist headline.

On the wide screen behind Roy Grace’s head was a photograph of a mushroom. It rose on a long stalk out of what seemed to be woodland brambles and had a flat top.

‘Amanita phalloides,’ Branson announced. ‘Otherwise known as the death cap mushroom, is the deadliest of all poisonous mushrooms. After consuming one, there’s a latency period of six to twenty-four hours with no symptoms. This is followed by severe abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea. Signs of liver failure follow, such as jaundice, confusion and internal bleeding. Kidney damage also occurs concurrently. Without major medical intervention, anyone poisoned will fall into a coma and die — normally within a week but can be quicker.’

‘Well, I know what to cook the missus for dinner tonight!’ quipped Norman Potting.

Several of the team laughed.

Although Roy Grace was the overall SIO, he was letting Glenn Branson head the investigation, giving him much more responsibility as his deputy.

So far it was just a small group: DS Potting; DS Alexander, who was acting as office manager; DCs Nick Nicholl, Emma-Jane Boutwood, Velvet Wilde, Polly Sweeney and Will Glover (the most recent and youngest member of the team); a researcher, Luke Stanstead; financial investigator Emily Denyer; an indexer; and a computer supervisor for HOLMES — the Home Office Large Major Crime Enquiry System.

They had all just watched the replay of the three recordings of Barnie Wallace in the Organica supermarket on the large wall-mounted screen behind Roy Grace.

‘We don’t know that this person has struck before, Norman,’ Branson cautioned. ‘We need to establish whether there is any link between Barnie Wallace, who died nearly three weeks ago from poisoning by death cap mushroom, and a Stephan Pfeiffer, who died from death cap mushroom poisoning last Thursday. On the surface they appear very different circumstances — from the CCTV evidence we have seen, Barnie Wallace was targeted, but from the information I have currently available, Stephan Pfeiffer was poisoned by his wife, who it seems innocently mistook poison cap — or death cap as they are better known — for common edible field mushrooms.’

Potting raised an eyebrow. ‘How long had the Pfeiffers been married, boss?’

‘I don’t have that information, yet.’

‘Could be relevant,’ Potting said and gave a sly tap on his nose. ‘The longer people are married, the more likely one of them is to want to off the other.’

There were several sniggers. ‘Speaking from experience are we, Norman?’ Velvet Wilde asked in her rich Belfast accent.

‘Exactly that, young lady,’ he replied. ‘Any one of my ex-wives would have murdered me if they’d had the chance.’

Cutting through the frivolity, Roy Grace interjected. ‘It’s highly unlikely this is a murder — suicide by mushroom poisoning, Norman. I think we can discount that completely.’

‘I agree,’ Branson said. ‘Norman and Velvet, I’ll still give you the action of doing the victimology on the Pfeiffers. She’s currently Lady Captain at the Dyke Golf Club. I gather she’s still in the High Dependency Unit and the staff are reluctant to let us speak to her for too long, so while we wait for her to recover, go to the golf club and see what people have to say about her and about their relationship — and if there are any innuendos about any kind of animosity between them or chinks in their marriage. Anything that might give her reason to have, as Norman so elegantly puts it, offed her hubby.’

Then he addressed the team again. ‘Something we need to establish, which is very important for this investigation, is just how easy — or difficult — it is to mistake a death cap mushroom for an ordinary edible field mushroom. From the limited research I’ve done so far on the internet it seems they are dangerously similar. Anyone here a forager?’

They all shook their heads. No one was.

‘Wouldn’t it be part of a professional chef’s training, boss?’ DC Nick Nicholl asked.

‘I’d like to think so, Nick,’ Branson replied.

‘On the briefing notes it says that Barnie Wallace worked as a chef for eighteen months at the Three Horseshoes pub in Rottingdean,’ Nicholl continued. ‘I’ve been there a few times — it’s a proper decent gastropub with a good local reputation. Barnie Wallace can’t have been a totally rubbish chef to have survived there that long.’

‘Go and have a word with the landlord and see what he has to say about Wallace, Nick,’ the DI said. Then he turned to Stanstead. ‘Luke, I need you to work on association charts for Barnie Wallace and for the Pfeiffers — see if we can either find anything that links them, or establish conclusively there is no connection between them at all.’

‘Yes, boss,’ Stanstead acknowledged.

‘Nick,’ Branson said, addressing the detective. ‘I need you to run mushroom poisoning, all types of mushrooms, on national crime databases — see what other recorded instances there have been in the past couple of years.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Branson then held up the newspaper, showing everyone in the room the front page. The splash headline read: SHOULD ALL MUSHROOMS BE WITHDRAWN FROM SALE IN THE CITY?

The only good news Roy Grace could take from it was that the by-line for the piece was Patrick Barlow and not Siobhan Sheldrake — Branson’s wife. He interjected. ‘We will be holding a press conference later this morning, at the request of ACC Downing, to reassure the public that we believe these two instances of mushroom poisoning are isolated.’

‘Are you confident, chief?’ Potting asked.

‘I am, Norman, yes,’ Grace replied.

Branson continued. ‘We have every supermarket, every greengrocer and every market stall in the city, not to mention all the local mushroom farmers, looking at us to provide reassurance to the public, particularly as we are just coming into peak mushroom season,’ he said.

‘That headline puts a new meaning on the word fungicide,’ Potting quipped.

‘Thanks, Norman, I think we’re done with all the mushroom jokes,’ Branson said.

He continued. ‘We need to establish extremely quickly if this is a one-off — an enemy of Barnie Wallace who wanted him dead — or a random, very dangerous nutter with an axe to grind against God knows what. Organic produce? Vegetarians or vegans? Supermarkets? Or society in general?’

He addressed DC Boutwood. ‘EJ, I’d like you and Will Glover to check all the premises either side of the Organica supermarket and across the road, for any CCTV they may have that would show us our hooded friend. We need to try to establish where he came from and where he was heading.’ He smiled wryly at Potting. ‘I sent this footage over to the Control Room CCTV yesterday to see if they can get any sightings of either Barnie Wallace or our hooded friend, the Phantom Mushroom Switcher.’ He looked around the table. ‘Any other considerations?’

Jack Alexander raised his hand. ‘Just a thought, boss — to make sure we’re not missing anything. These two poisonings have come to our attention because they were fatal. Would it be worth doing a trawl of hospital Emergency Departments for any mushroom poisonings they’ve had where the victims survived?’

‘Good point,’ Branson said. ‘Will, I’ll give you that as a further action.’

‘Yes, sir!’ The young officer, who had been ambitious to join the Major Crime Team and was now in his first week with them, looked delighted to be given sole responsibility for this task. ‘I’ll be on it, sir!’

‘Any other thoughts at this stage?’ Branson asked the team.

Grace said, ‘I remember we had a charmer some years ago trying to extort money from supermarkets around Sussex — he was swapping tins of tuna with identically branded ones he’d poisoned with botulism. He thought by targeting all the different major supermarkets he’d make a fortune. Fortunately he got potted before anyone died, but several people were extremely ill.’

‘Bruce Knaggs,’ Potting said. ‘That was his name. Caused a lot of panic at the time. I think it was Nick May who caught him.’

‘Do you remember how long he got, Norman?’ Grace asked.

‘I’m pretty sure it was seven years, boss. I remember thinking it wasn’t nearly enough for what was effectively attempted murder.’

‘Does anyone get long enough?’ Grace retorted, with a trace of bitterness.

‘Only Russell Bishop,’ Potting replied, ‘then he went and cheated the system.’

He was referring to a double child killer who received one of the longest sentences ever handed out. But within three years he was dead, still in his fifties, from cancer.

‘So,’ Grace said pensively, ‘Knaggs will almost certainly be out by now.’ He turned to Stanstead. ‘Can you check?’

The researcher immediately tapped on his keyboard. While he was doing so, DC Boutwood raised a hand. ‘Sir, are you thinking it could be the same person?’

‘Offenders have a habit of sticking to their tradecraft, EJ.’

‘Bruce Knaggs has been out nearly four years, boss,’ Stanstead announced. ‘Released from Ford in December 2018. Last I heard, he moved to London straight after release.’

‘Can you pull up his mugshots?’ Grace asked him.

They all watched as, a minute later, the face of a sly-looking man in his late fifties, with lank grey hair a little too long, appeared on the monitor. His left arm was in a cast.

‘Bet his mother said he never did anyone any ’arm,’ Nick Nicholl quipped. There were several laughs.

Grace studied the screen. ‘He bears a resemblance to our suspect in the supermarket footage we’ve just seen. There must have been quite a lot of CCTV history of Knaggs from the supermarkets. They’ll be in the Archives somewhere. Nick May retired a few years ago but I meet up with him from time to time — I can ask him if we can’t find anything.’

‘Operation Newtimber,’ Potting supplied, helpfully.

‘You should go on Mastermind, Norman,’ Velvet Wilde said.

He turned to her with a conceited look. ‘Nah, I wouldn’t want to ruin it for the other contestants.’

Grace looked at Branson, as if to cue him, but Branson merely frowned back a what?

‘OK, Norman,’ Grace temporarily taking over. ‘Since you’re our resident Memory Man, I’ll give you the action of, as quickly as possible, retrieving CCTV footage of Knaggs. Then ping it, together with what we’ve just seen, to DS Jonathan Jackson at the Met’s Central Image Investigation Unit. I’m not convinced we will get a warrant for him based on the footage and the old custody image. Get JJ to circulate the image and moving footage onto the Met’s Forensic Image Management System and see if anyone has dealt with Knaggs recently while he’s been living in London.’ Jonathan Jackson was formerly a detective on Grace’s Major Crime Team before moving to the Metropolitan Police in London. ‘I’ll alert JJ.’

‘Yes, guv.’

Will Glover raised his arm. ‘Sir, I’m happy to help.’

Grace smiled, remembering first coming across this sparky detective a number of years ago when he’d been a PC and had told Grace his ambition in life was to be a detective. ‘I’ll leave it to DI Branson to make that call, Will.’ He glanced back at the DI.

‘That would be very helpful, I’m sure,’ Branson said.

As soon as Branson ended the meeting, Grace headed back to his office. The DI followed him in. ‘How did I do?’ he asked anxiously.

‘You were complete crap.’

Branson looked crestfallen. ‘Seriously?’

Grace grinned. ‘Nope! You did OK, but you forgot a few things I’ve always found important.’

‘Like?’

‘Right from the get-go on every investigation, I want to see whiteboards up with photographs of the victims. It gives the team an instant focus and connection.’

‘I was going to do that — for this evening’s briefing,’ he said defensively. ‘What else?’

Grace shook his head. ‘Photographs always from the very start. But nothing else, you did good, you were word perfect.’

‘Really?’

‘You don’t believe me? Ask the audience or phone a friend?’