One of Us Is Dead

22 Saturday 1 October 2022

Glenn Branson opened the 9 a.m. briefing of Operation Meadow with some news Roy Grace had received this morning from the forensic gait analyst, Haydn Kelly. He informed the team of the bad news that Kelly was certain the former supermarket blackmailer, Bruce Knaggs, was not the man on the CCTV in the Organica supermarket — the man to whom Norman Potting had given the moniker the Phantom Mushroom Switcher. Then he handed over to Roy Grace.

‘The potential good news is...’ Grace announced, somewhat cryptically, ‘also bad news. Although it’s a massive coincidence, Kelly swears that he has seen this man in another case, although he didn’t have the file to hand, he was pretty sure his name was Rufus Rorke. I’ve also spoken at length to DS Jackson at the Met’s Central Image Investigation Unit. His findings are much less conclusive, but they do possibly point to the same person.’ He turned to the three whiteboards behind him.

One was pinned with photographs taken from the CCTV inside the Organica supermarket, as well as individual high-res blown-up photographs of both an edible field mushroom and a potentially fatal death cap mushroom.

The top of the second whiteboard was pinned with photographs of Barnie Wallace, with an association chart below. The largest image of Wallace was full length. Hands behind his back in a confrontational stance, he was dressed in baggy jeans, loafers, and a white, collarless, shapeless shirt. A bunch of gelled fair hair rose vertically from the top of his head, like a small clump of trees on a hill. His face was sallow and his eyes, small and piggy, seemed to be glaring at the world with anger.

A smaller photograph, from his Instagram account, showed him wearing a chef’s tunic and white toque and smiling this time, arms outspread expansively, with pride, at his création-du-jour as he labelled it, a sumptuously laid-out lobster, avocado and mango salad.

The third whiteboard, a new association chart, begun earlier this morning, had photographs of Rufus Rorke at the top.

‘The problem with Kelly’s hypothesis is that the man in the CCTV — the prime suspect who he has identified from his gait, the person JJ Jackson at the Met’s Central Image Investigation Unit has recognized — is dead and has been for over two years. So either they are both wrong or...’

‘Or we have a killer ghost?’ suggested Potting. ‘Hamlet’s father walking the aisles of a supermarket?’

‘Is he definitely dead, sir?’ Jack Alexander asked.

Branson replied. ‘He was declared missing, presumed dead, after going overboard from a yacht, in shark-infested waters in the Caribbean, on September the twenty-third, 2020.’

‘You’re talking about someone called Rufus Rorke?’ Potting asked.

‘I am, yes,’ Branson replied.

‘I was on Op Stenographer,’ Potting said. ‘Detective Superintendent Sloane was the SIO. I interviewed Rorke under caution about a month before he died, with DI Branson, although he doesn’t recall the exact details this far on. As you can see, Rorke had a funny right eye that always seemed to be looking at you — his skull got misshapen in a car accident back in his youth, I was told.’

Everyone turned to look at the photographs of Rorke. Potting continued. ‘An arrogant bastard, that’s what I remember most of all. One of those people who believe they hold all the cards. Well, he didn’t this time, we were on the verge of arresting him, then he went and died on us.’

‘What was Op Stenographer, Norman?’ Jack Alexander asked.

‘You never read about it?’ Potting asked him.

‘You forget that a lot of stuff you dealt with happened before I was born,’ the young DS replied, only a tad cheekily.

‘Don’t push your luck, laddie,’ Potting admonished. ‘But, OK, for the benefit of those who arrived on this planet after the age of steam carriages, the invention of electricity and the telephone, and the first heavier-than-air flight, let me bring you up to date on Op Stenographer.’

He paused for some laughs to stop before continuing.

‘It was a big story — made the front pages of the nation’s tabloids. A fifty-five-year-old brewery worker — a drayman, name of Orville Ormonde — won over £160 million on the EuroMillions on a shared ticket with his wife, Pauline. We’re not talking the fairy-tale and they lived happily ever after here. We’re talking a heavy drinker, a big, ugly bloke who humped beer barrels for a living, with past form for GBH and a long history of violence towards his wife — who was also on the sauce. They lived on a rough estate in Worthing. After the amount was confirmed, they did everything they say you shouldn’t if you win big — quit their jobs, went on a wild spree, splurged on a fuck-off mansion and a fleet of high-end wheels. They enjoyed showing off, letting themselves be splashed all over the national press lying together in a huge bathtub filled with Champagne — and it wasn’t a pretty sight, I can tell you. He was not exactly Mr Universe and she was no Miss World.’

‘Any pictures, Norman?’ Jack Alexander asked.

‘You do not want to see them, believe me. Not a tender youth like you.’

Several of the team grinned.

Potting nodded at the detective superintendent. ‘The chief knows the whole story better than me.’

Grace nodded. ‘Predictably,’ he said, ‘in less than a year it all started going wrong. Orville figured he’d trade Pauline in for a younger model, aged twenty-five — it’s amazing what a hundred and fifty million or so quid can do to a man’s sex appeal. Pauline was having none of it, and booted him out. Although she was a boozer too, she was a smart lady, and from the get-go had insisted on a joint bank account. Orville faced lengthy divorce proceedings, and meanwhile Pauline’s living in the house and he’s only been able to grab a couple of million for himself.’

‘It’s so tough for some people to get by,’ Velvet Wilde said.

‘Yeah, my heart bled for him,’ Potting replied. ‘Pauline was actually a nice person. I interviewed her several times and she told me — and her best friend — she’d had death threats from him.’

‘You didn’t find the money made her attractive, did you, Norm?’ Luke Stanstead jested.

‘It would take more than a hundred million, and then some, for me to go there, Luke,’ he said, and carried on. ‘So one night her eldest daughter, Sally Jane I think her name was, who spoke to her most days, was concerned when she couldn’t get hold of her on the phone.’ He turned to Grace. ‘Right, chief?’

‘Correct,’ Grace said.

Potting continued. ‘Sally Jane went to the house and found her mum at the bottom of the stairs with her head looking like it had been put on backwards. There was a broken glass and an upended bottle of whisky on the floor, and her two Westie dogs sitting faithfully beside her. The post-mortem showed a broken neck and other traumas to the body, commensurate with a fall down the stairs. And she had a blood alcohol of 220 — that’s close to three times the legal limit for driving. And we all know how difficult it is to prove guilt in a fall down stairs,’ he added.

‘Exactly,’ Grace said. ‘Sometimes forensic evidence may support a push, as well as the type, severity and angle of injuries, but it usually needs pretty compelling circumstantial evidence.’

‘Presumably the husband, Orville, was the prime suspect?’ Velvet Wilde asked.

‘He was,’ Grace replied. ‘But he had a cast-iron alibi. He was larging it in Marbella with his bimbo and a group of friends that night. We interviewed them all and obtained CCTV from the restaurant, confirming they were there. Which is where Rufus Rorke comes in.’ He paused to check his notes before continuing.

‘The National Crime Agency had him on their radar — they’d been monitoring the internet for links to serious criminals, and Rorke had popped up some while previously as a POI. Outwardly, he was a successful property developer, with a number of homes, one a palazzo near Florence in Italy, where the Italian police suspected he had links with organized crime there. He had both a fixed wing and chopper licences, and flew himself around in a five million quid Agusta helicopter. The National Crime Agency had been monitoring him because of his suspected links with international Organized Crime groups, which is what gave us our break.’

‘How come?’ Branson asked.

‘The house Orville and Pauline bought was quite isolated, on the edge of a hamlet a few miles north of Brighton. Pauline was paranoid about security — neither of them had ever lived in the countryside before, and on her insistence they’d installed state-of-the-art CCTV. But when she’d kicked her old man out, she became worried that if he did come back, intending to hurt her — again — he would know where the cameras were and would be able to dodge them. So she had new, concealed ones installed. Footage from these, date-stamped the day before her daughter found her dead, showed someone walking up the lawn, keeping well to the side of the driveway, obviously confident that they were out of range of the cameras, but still keeping their face concealed.

‘And that someone had a matching gait or facial image to Rufus Rorke?’ Branson asked.

‘Exactly, boss,’ Potting replied. ‘Kelly produced evidence, with over ninety per cent certainty, it was the same person the NCA had on their Persons of Interest list. DS Jackson’s team came up with less certainty running the image through the Met’s Facial Recognition System, but he says the team on the Met’s Central Image Investigation Unit think it is a viable match.’

Grace turned to the financial investigator, Emily Denyer, a serious-looking, smartly dressed woman in her thirties. ‘There’s something else that may be of significance. Perhaps you’d like to explain, Emily?’

‘Yes, sir. We had a look at Rufus Rorke’s bank accounts — those that we could find. Ten days before Pauline Ormonde fell down those stairs to her death, Rorke cashed in a quantity of Bitcoins, which are pretty much untraceable. This was a substantial amount — approximately half a million pounds. Two days after she was found dead, he sold more Bitcoins — an identical amount.’

‘Half now, half on completion,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Classic high-end hitman rates.’

Grace gave him a sideways look. ‘Been watching too many movies?’

Branson shook his head and with a cheeky grin said, ‘Maybe not enough.’

‘There’s another possibly significant aspect to this,’ Emily Denyer went on, ignoring the banter. ‘With the help of the Spanish police, we learned that three weeks before Rorke cashed in the first half a million pounds of Bitcoins, Orville Ormonde, over a short period of time, gambled around one million pounds at a casino in Marbella. It appears he was canny, starting out with a million and ending up with a million. We subsequently learned from the police there that while he was changing money into high denomination chips, he was actually playing with peanuts at the tables. A classic money-laundering ploy. I don’t think he’s the sharpest tack in the box, because I’m not sure what he thought it would achieve, but maybe he saw in some television programme on criminals that it was a smart thing to do.’

‘So what did Mr Mastermind do with his freshly laundered million quid?’ Glenn Branson asked. ‘Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess — he used it to purchase a million quid’s worth of Bitcoins, right? And now he doesn’t have them any more because he lost them gambling in the casino?’

‘And might there just be a connection between the one million in Bitcoins Rufus Rorke received, the one million that Orville Ormonde lost in the casino, and a dead Mrs Orville Ormonde at the bottom of her stairs?’ Nick Nicholl suggested.

‘We’re all cooking on gas this morning!’ Grace said. ‘We didn’t have enough evidence on Ormonde at that stage, but we were closing in on Rufus Rorke — preparing to arrest him.’

‘So what were the circumstances of his death, sir, because it sounds damned convenient?’ Velvet Wilde asked.

‘It did to me at the time, too,’ Grace said. ‘But there was an eyewitness and strong supporting evidence.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was a couple of weeks after Rorke had been interviewed,’ Potting said. ‘He and his wife, Fiona, chartered a yacht for a sailing trip around the Caribbean, as you do. Not just any old tub, this was an eighty-grand a week superyacht with a crew of ten.’

‘Mostly underpaid, probably,’ interjected Velvet Wilde.

‘I can’t comment on that,’ Potting said dismissively. ‘Anyhow, when I interviewed Fiona Rorke — incidentally, a very nice lady who I did really feel was grieving her husband — she told me that Rufus had seemed very troubled in the weeks before he died, but wouldn’t talk about why.’

‘Perhaps he hadn’t told her he was a POI in a murder case, and had been interviewed by the police under caution,’ Grace said.

‘No, he hadn’t. It was a complete surprise to her when I told her. She said that could explain something. Apparently, shortly before his death he had started drinking a lot — which wasn’t normal for him because he always wanted to be in control. On the night in question, the yacht, Eloise III, had just sailed from Barbados. According to the captain, they were five nautical miles out of Bridgetown, in quite a heavy sea, heading on a night passage to Grenada, when the man overboard alarm was given at 1.45 a.m.’

Potting paused to slurp some coffee, then continued. ‘A crew member had gone to the stern of the ship for a fag at around 1.40 a.m. He said Rorke, who seemed very drunk, wearing a white tuxedo, had barged into him as the ship lurched in the swell. Rorke had then stood some distance from him, propped against the deck-rail, and lit a cigarette. At some point shortly after, Rorke leaned over the rail and began retching. The crew member turned away, then he heard a splash and a yell — a yell for help. He instantly threw a lifebelt into the sea, raised the alarm, and tried desperately to locate him with a flashlight. They turned the boat around and spent five hours searching. The Barbados coastguard sent a patrol boat, as well as a helicopter at first light, but nothing was found.’

‘Where was his wife?’ DC Nicholl asked.

‘She was asleep. At around 2 a.m., she woke and noticed her husband wasn’t in their suite; she was then visited by a crew member who told her what had happened,’ he said.

‘I can’t imagine a scarier way to go,’ EJ said. ‘Pitch-dark sea, watching the lights of the ship sailing away from you — and thinking about sharks. Ever since I saw Jaws I’ve never felt the same about swimming in the sea!’

‘Well, as a shark himself he’d have felt pretty at home,’ Potting said.

‘How does that saying go?’ Luke Stanstead added. ‘The lion may be king of the jungle, but throw him in the shark tank and he’s just another lunch.’

Grace nodded. ‘Seems like that’s what happened, Luke. A couple of days later a fisherman in Barbados noticed something tangled around one of his net ropes. It was a white linen jacket with one arm and part of the shoulder ripped off, and bloodstains on it despite its immersion. Fiona identified the jacket as her husband’s, from the label and from a Mont Blanc pen found within a zipped internal pocket. The jacket had a Savile Row label in it, upmarket — much like the tailors Glenn likes to frequent,’ he added with a smile.

‘You’re the one who told me a detective should always look smart,’ Branson retorted.

‘True! So Barbados Police sent the jacket to us for forensic analysis. What they did state in their report was that examination by a marine biologist identified multiple bite marks on the jacket that were compatible with a tiger shark attack. Apparently, sharks have rows of successional teeth they continually replace during their lives. This was confirmed by a forensic orthodontist in Sussex who also examined the cloth. DNA obtained from the blood was identified as Rorke’s along with further DNA obtained from Rorke’s skin cells in the jacket. I remember a long and very detailed report from James Stather of the Surrey and Sussex Forensic Services leaving little doubt this was Rufus Rorke’s — and his wife confirmed it was the jacket he had been wearing on the night he went overboard.’

DC Boutwood, frowning, asked Grace, ‘This may sound a bit gruesome, sir. They obviously wouldn’t be able to tell, from the blood on the jacket, whether he was taken by the shark when he was still alive or — hopefully — dead. Are we agreed?’

‘I think after immersion in seawater for two days, they weren’t able to tell that, mercifully, EJ.’

‘Thank you, sir, as I thought. I mean, not that Rorke sounds exactly a saint. But I don’t think I’d wish that on anyone.’

‘Oh, I can think of a few people,’ Norman Potting said, and chortled. ‘One or two of them within Sussex Police.’

‘So where does this leave us?’ Glenn Branson asked, rhetorically. ‘When we have a prime suspect who’s been deceased for two years?’

‘At a dead end?’ Potting said, and chuckled again. Then he looked at Branson. ‘Sorry, guv.’

‘Maybe,’ Grace suggested, ‘we need to start considering just how dead you need to be, to not be a suspect.’

‘Meaning what exactly, boss?’ DS Alexander asked.

‘Exactly that, Jack. In the absence of any other suspects, right now our best hope is a dead man. He was declared legally dead under the Presumption of Death Act. Now we have a ninety per cent positive sighting of this dead man, four weeks ago. No body or any human remains were ever found, we have just the word of a crew member on a yacht to go on, and the remains of a bloodstained jacket.’ He looked around at the team. ‘Anyone in this room who thinks that’s enough, raise your hand, given what we know now.’

No one did.

‘There’s something else,’ Grace said. He stood up and walked over to the whiteboards. ‘If we look at the association chart for Barnie Wallace, we see that he attended Brighton College here in the city from 1994 to 2001. Then if we look at the association chart for the late Rufus Rorke, guess where he went to school? That’s right, none other than Brighton College, and exactly the same years as Wallace. It could of course be just coincidence, and if it is, we need to eliminate this PDQ from our lines of enquiry. Glenn and I will formally interview both Wallace’s former girlfriend Angi Colman and his ex-wife, Debbie Martin. I will also speak to the Barbados police inspector who was in charge of the search for Rorke, and who organized the analysis of the jacket remains by a marine biologist in Barbados before sending it on to us — he was a helpful guy, his name’s Terry Stephens.’

He turned to DS Alexander. ‘Jack, I need you to find out where the Eloise III is currently, and who the crew member was who raised the man overboard alarm. I want to talk first to the yacht’s captain — from memory, his name was Richard Le Quesne — and then to the crew member.’

‘If they’re out in the Caribbean, shall I come with you, for protection, chief?’ Potting offered.

‘Thanks, Norman,’ Grace said with a grin. ‘Your altruism knows no bounds.’