One of Us Is Dead

64 Tuesday 11 October 2022

‘Are you going to tell me exactly what we are doing?’ Glenn Branson asked.

‘It’s a scientific experiment,’ Grace replied glibly.

‘You dragged me out of a nice cosy post-mortem to stand in the middle of a cart track in pissing rain and falling darkness, in the cause of science?’

‘Welcome to the real world of being a detective, matey.’

They were standing part way around a bend in the cart track that led to Roy Grace’s cottage, a quarter of a mile on. It was 7 p.m. and almost fully dark. Rain that had begun as a light drizzle was now falling steadily. Jack Alexander had been delegated to stand in for them at the post-mortem, for the rest of the procedure.

It quietly amused Grace that his friend, colleague and protégé was so totally baffled, as between them, ignoring the rain, they unspooled the roll of four-foot-wide mirror foil across the cart track. Using two lengths of baler twine, Grace secured one side to a tall sapling on the left. There was no convenient tree, but to their right was the open-sided barn with the rusted tractor that had not moved in all the time Grace and Cleo had lived here, and looked like it never would. But finally it served a purpose, as he and Branson, struggling with some difficulty against the wind, finally got this end of the foil, again using baler twine, attached to the sub-frame at the bottom, and higher up around the steering wheel, and pulled it tight, being careful not to tear it.

‘Oh, I get it,’ Branson said. ‘We’re going to play moonlit reflective tennis, right?’

Grace grinned. Branson was right, it did look rather like a shiny tennis net strung across the track. He walked back across and checked again that it was secure against the sapling.

‘When are you going to tell me what the hell you are doing?’

‘You’re a detective, you figure it out.’

‘I didn’t join the police to stand getting sodding soaked in the middle of farmland with my lunatic senior officer farting around with Bacofoil.’

Grace started striding back towards his Alfa, parked a hundred yards or so back. Branson trudged after him, conscious of his polished shoes getting increasingly sodden as he splashed through mud and then stubbed his foot on a rut. When they reached the car both of them climbed in. Grace started the engine. ‘Put your phone on record and hold it on the dash — imagine it’s a dashcam, pointing forward.’

Branson frowned, and then clicked. ‘I think I just got what you’re doing!’

‘No shit, Sherlock.’

As Branson complied, Grace put the car in gear, the headlights on full beam, and accelerated hard. He continued accelerating as they began rounding the bend. Then his colleague suddenly cried out, ‘Jesus!’

The lights of an oncoming vehicle were coming straight at them, head-on.

‘Wow!’ Branson yelled, excited.

Grace continued accelerating as the lights came closer, larger, closer, larger. He swerved just a little, to the left then to the right, and each time the lights came at them.

‘This is crazy, Roy!’

There was a blaze of white and a burst of flashes like fireworks exploding, then, as Grace braked hard, there was no longer anything in front of them except darkness, and a startled rabbit hopping across the track some yards ahead. He brought the car to a halt.

Branson looked at him, shaking his head. ‘Shit. I could easily have thought it was some vehicle coming right at us.’

‘Exactly, you’d never know it was our own reflection.’

‘That’s a smart experiment. All those bits of foil on the road around the Ferrari. I hadn’t sussed.’

Grace raised a finger. ‘Remember one of the first rules at a crime scene?’

‘Clear the ground under your feet?’

Grace nodded. ‘What are little bits of foil doing on a country lane? Are they there by coincidence, or could they just be connected to the crash?’

‘So Biggsy’s instincts are right.’

‘This is just a hypothesis, but it fits with what we saw on the Ferrari’s dashcam. You and I just saw oncoming headlights, but no advance flare of light before we rounded the bend, right? Which we would have seen, even if an oncoming vehicle had its lights on low beam.’

Branson nodded.

‘Dermot Bryson had a handgun in his glove box. You only carry a handgun if you are planning to kill someone, or if you have an enemy you are afraid of. Someone who wants to kill you.’

Branson nodded again.

‘Looks to me like someone wanted to kill Dermot Bryson but make it appear an accident. Whose MO might that be?’

‘Rufus Rorke, possibly?’

‘Rufus Rorke indeed. His funeral was held two years ago. But he’s been identified by the Met Police Facial Imaging team walking along Western Road in Brighton with a white stick and a guide dog, a few weeks ago. Blind, but with good enough vision to tell a death cap mushroom from a field mushroom.’ He shrugged. ‘Of course, this is all hypothesis.’

‘Nothing so far from surveillance on his supposed widow?’

Grace shook his head. ‘No. But what I don’t get is, if it is Rorke, what the hell is he doing back on this turf? At the time he supposedly went overboard from the boat, he knew he was about to be nicked on a raft of serious charges, murder, conspiracy to murder and the rest. He was facing twenty-plus years in jail. It doesn’t make sense that he would come back to Brighton. That’s what makes me unsure it really is him. He’d have to be nuts to think he could start operating here, under our noses, and not get spotted by someone — and potted.’

‘Hubris,’ Branson said. ‘How many criminals have you potted over the years who would have got away with it if it hadn’t been for their hubris? Their smug confidence that all cops are thick as shit, and they’re the smart ones?’

Grace nodded. ‘You’re right. A lot.’

‘So let’s go find this guy. See if it really is Rufus Rorke, and let him see who’s really the smart one.’

Grace grinned. ‘I like your style.’

‘There’s something I’ve been thinking about. The association chart.’

‘Tell me?’ Grace frowned, looking distractedly at his phone screen.

‘OK, so we know Barnie Wallace and Rufus Rorke were at school together. If Rorke has come back from the dead and murdered Wallace, in addition to Dermot Bryson and his girlfriend, what was the motive? Are they all connected?’

‘I think we may have some answers.’ Grace held up his phone so Branson could read the message on it. A text from Aiden Gilbert.

‘Sounds promising,’ Branson replied. ‘Sounds like they’re in the rest of his devices.’

‘Meanwhile, we’ve got some foil to clear up. We don’t want to be litter louts in the countryside.’