Grave Decisions Read online

  “You should try a bit of meditation, Dale. Might make you more at one with your fellow man, or woman.”

  “I dunno what you mean.” He grinned as his finger pressed the doorbell.

  The door opened moments later. The unamused face of Jewel Benson stared back at them. “What now!” she huffed belligerently. “We are trying to save them, and it really doesn’t help being interrupted like this during the essential flow of the existential universe.”

  “Yeah, I am sorry about that. Maybe we can wait somewhere until you’re done?” Whitton suggested as she stepped forward and over the threshold, her palm pushing the door open a little wider. She could see a room to the left. The door was ajar, and the soft music they could hear from outside was now louder and clearer; meditation music for sure. Several bewildered faces stared at them.

  Jewel looked a little unsettled, flustered even at their presence, but she nodded and stepped aside. “Just don’t touch anything,” she demanded as she led the way towards a room opposite the meditation. “I don’t want your imprint. My things are cleansed and free from the negativity that people like you carry.”

  Dale shifted uncomfortably behind Sophie. “I think we can manage that,” Whitton said, her face unreadable as she stepped forward once again and entered the room. The door closed behind them with a bang.

  “She’s something else. People like us?” Dale grumbled. “Can we just arrest her for the fun of it? I am sure we can find some reason to lock her up for a night.”

  “Obnoxiousness isn’t a crime, sadly,” Whitton answered, her back to him still as she perused the room. It was a living room, of sorts. Large cushions were on the floor instead of sofas. A low coffee table made of dark wood sat in the middle of the room, the top covered with an inlay of porcelain decorative tiles depicting a scene of fairies and pixies that floated around a garden of exotic plants. Salt lamps and lava lamps dotted around on the surfaces of dark wooden shelving, interspersed with crystals of all shapes and sizes.

  Saint sniffed. “It stinks in here,” he complained. Whitton reached down and picked up a long, flat box and waved it at him.

  “Incense, I presume.”

  “Well, I am incensed by it.” He grinned as Whitton placed the box back where she found it. “And you’re not supposed to touch.”

  She raised a brow and lightly touched the nearest object to her. “Is that so?”

  The music from across the hall came to a halt. Muffled voices and shuffling of shoes alerted both officers to the fact that people were leaving. Whitton checked her watch. They’d been waiting just over 15 minutes. She heard Dale mutter that it was about time, and then the door swung open.

  Jewel entered, her kaftan flowing around her as she sauntered back into the room. She held her head high and stood there, poised and composed. “Well, I am sure you’re aware of just how much your negativity has soured the ambiance of this evening,” she stated. Saint looked to Whitton, who shrugged.

  “We wanted to ask you a few questions.” She noticed the eye roll and sagging shoulders, like a petulant teenager. Whitton reached into her inside pocket and produced a colour photo taken of the deceased woman at the morgue. “Anita Simmons?"

  Jewel huffed but took a step forward. Reaching for the photo, she took it between two fingers as though it were contaminated. Handing it back, she shook her head.

  Whitton held it up in front of her and snarled, “Try actually looking at it.”

  Jewel cut her eyes at Whitton. “I don’t need to look at a photograph to tell you that I knew Anita.” Whitton thought for a moment that she detected some actual sorrow towards the woman. “I can’t believe that she isn’t with us any longer. I don’t know how to open any of the files she organised on the computer. It’s really messed everything up, I’m all over the place,” she whined.

  “Yes, I can imagine her dying on you like that must be inconvenient.” Sarcasm dripped from Whitton like a melted candle, all of it lost on the woman.

  “Yes,” she sighed and ran her hand through her hair.

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  “Hold on.” Jewel held a finger up as she thought. “Wait a minute.” With that, she turned and dashed out of the room. Whitton raised an eyebrow at Saint, who shrugged in return. They could hear the woman mumbling to herself as she wandered back into the room holding a piece of paper in her hand. “Anita Simmons, that’s the official information I have.”

  “She came here for how long?”

  Jewel shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know, it’s in there.” She pointed at the piece of paper. “Thank goodness we kept the old records.”

  “Guess,” Dale said, ignoring her selfish grumblings.

  “Six months?”

  “Six months? Is that all?”

  She rolled her eyes at him and hissed. “Yes, are you calling me a liar?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Well, they might lie to you, but they know that I am here to help them and as such…” Her face reddened and she pursed her lips in anger at him.

  “Okay, okay,” Whitton said, her palms up. “Anita came here for what reason?

  Jewel Benson moved her gaze from Saint and back to Whitton. “Initially she said she wanted to stop drinking. It had become a habit to take a secret drink and she was scared that it might get worse after the…accident. So, we worked with her on that and after a while, she began to mentor some of our other clients.” She sighed. “She was very good with them, especially the younger ones.”

  “Is it possible that she was still drinking?”

  “What are you getting at?” Her face scrunched as she contemplated the question. “No, definitely not. She had come to terms with everything that happened. She understood that Constance Martin’s death wasn’t her fault.”

  Whitton’s gaze intensified. “She talked about Ms. Martin? Her client?”

  “Of course, it’s part of the therapy. To discuss, explain, and understand your circumstances. Anita was very open to it. It was Connie who told her about us.”

  “Constance came here too?”

  “Yes, for support.”

  “She didn’t want to see a professional?” Dale asked, a hint of snide in his voice.

  “I don’t like your tone. These people come here for help, and we give it to them. Anita was doing fine, we—”

  “We?”

  The woman hesitated before answering. “Yes, my husband and I, we were very proud of her.”

  “Ah yes, Galahad, right? Where is he? Can we speak with him?” Whitton asked, looking over the woman’s shoulder towards the partially open door.

  Jewel stiffened. It was almost imperceptible, but Whitton noticed it. “He isn’t here right now. So, no.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Away…he is on a business trip.” She shuffled from side to side. The piece of paper in her hand rustled as she moved it from one hand to the other.

  “Right, well I want to talk to him. So, make sure that he calls me the moment he is back in town.” Whitton reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card with her number on it. “The minute he is back in town,” she reiterated before looking at Dale and nodding her head towards the door to indicate they were leaving.

  ~Grave~

  Outside, she pulled her cigarettes from her pocket and lit one. Dale loosened his tie. “Is it me or does she give off an air of not quite all there?” They were standing by the car, so he leant against it. Darker skies were moving in, another sultry night in store for them all.

  Nodding in agreement, Whitton took a long drag and blew the white smoke up and into the air; the only cloud in view.

  “I don’t like her.”

  “Not so sure she likes you much either,” Whitton deadpanned before smirking at him and continuing to smoke. “You wanna drive?” She tossed the keys at him. Grinning, Saint hit the fob buttons for the car alarm and opened the door, fanning himself as the heat escaped. Whitton finished her cigarette and opened the passenger d
oor, climbing in in unison with Saint. He turned the engine over and then fiddled with the aircon until he had a warm breeze blowing out from the vents. It didn’t take long for cooler air to start coming through.

  “Thank you, aircon!” He fist-pumped the air and smacked the steering wheel. “Back to base then?” he asked, turning towards Whitton. She was focused on a message on her phone.

  “Nah, drop me home then get off, we can pick up again in the morning.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Jeff Branson. He had gained a reputation for two things since joining the team: his genius with computers and CCTV, and being the team hunk. He looked like Idris Elba’s twin brother, only a decade younger.

  “Start with Anita and work backwards. See if you can spot anything suspicious on any of the CCTV that she would have come into contact with. The chances of there still being anything much we can find in the other two is slim, but if anyone is going to find it, it’s you,” Whitton praised, and he grinned back at her.

  “You know it. If it’s there, I will find it.”

  “What are we doing?” Dale asked, eager to get stuck into something. She didn’t reply. Instead she unpinned the photograph of Anita Simmons’ body lying serenely on top of the grave.

  “Fuck,” she muttered. “How did I miss that?” A flash of Rachel’s face told her exactly why she had missed it; her mind wasn’t focusing. She was losing her touch.

  “What? What is it?” Dale said, moving the short space from his desk to where she stood. She handed him the picture and pointed at the grave’s headstone.

  It was white marble, pristine and carved perfectly with small letters that read:

  Here lies

  Adam Michael Whitman

  Taken too soon into the arms of our Lord.

  2006-2018

  “We’re going to speak to the parents of Adam Whitman,” Whitton said, striding away.

  ~Grave~

  Farmland wasn’t somewhere Whitton had ventured much in her life so far. Judging by the mud and the smell, it wasn’t somewhere she planned to visit again if she could avoid it. Her boots were already caked, and the stench of animals’ manure reeked. This kind of summer heat was doing nothing to lessen its impact on her nasal cavities.

  “Jesus, who the fuck can live with this?” she asked Saint as they both walked towards the only building that looked like a house.

  “Becky reckons having a small holding would be the perfect retirement,” he answered, scrunching up his nose. “Not a fucking chance!”

  “Somehow I don’t see you in a flat cap and wellies.” She smirked at him and almost slipped in a patch of mud.

  The house was a little rundown. Windows needed repainting, and the door looked as though it was the original and dated 200 years. The distant growl of a tractor somewhere to the left, at the back of a field, drew their attention for a moment. When they looked back, the front door was open and a short, stout woman in navy overalls stood wiping her hands on an oily rag. “Are you lost?”

  “Uh, no,” Whitton said, treading carefully until she reached the makings of what she thought might be a path. “We wanted to speak to Mr. & Mrs. Whitman. DI Whitton and DS Saint.” She held out her warrant card. The woman’s face drained.

  “What’s happened? Is my Kenny alright?”

  “Yes, sorry, I don’t know who Kenny is. We just have some questions we thought you might be able to help with.”

  The woman looked them up and down, as though she were making a decision, colour returning to her cheeks. “You’d best come in then.” Eyeing their shoes, she added, “You can leave those outside.”

  ~Grave~

  There was no offer of tea. No welcome or invitation to sit. Audrey Whitman shoved the rag into her pocket and got straight to it.

  “What do you want?”

  Whitton considered how best to broach the subject. There was no easy way to bring up the death of a child with a grieving parent. “We are investigating the murder of Anita Simmons.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. “She’s dead? Someone killed her?”

  Whitton nodded. “Yes, and then they placed her body on Adam’s grave.”

  The ashen, pinched features now turned beet red as anger came to the fore. “They did what? Why would they do that?”

  “We don’t know. Right now, we are investigating every lead and…”

  “You think we had something to do with it?”

  Shaking her head, Whitton stepped forward. “What we know is that Anita Simmons was forced to swallow vodka and then killed. She was then placed, as I said, on top of Adam’s grave.”

  “And you want to know if we had anything to do with it?”

  “It’s a line of inquiry that we are duty-bound to investigate,” Whitton said. “I don’t think that’s the case, but we would be negligent if we didn’t ask the questions.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t…”

  “When was she murdered?”

  “Friday afternoon.”

  The woman snorted derisorily. “Ya know, it’s funny. Last week was the anniversary of Adam…you know, I could have sworn I heard it. I was out in the field and there was a loud scream and then squealing tyres. I put it down to my imagination, I’d been thinking about Adam of course, but now…”

  Saint turned his attention to Whitton and raised a brow. “Are you saying that you think you heard someone being run over last week? Outside the farm?”

  Slowly, Audrey Whitman nodded.

  Chapter Twelve

  The walk back up the drive towards the road was treacherous, and Whitton cursed as she almost slid once more on the mud. “For fuck’s sake. It’s 80 degrees and everywhere else is baked half to death. How does this stay so bloody wet?”

  “See, you’re assuming it’s mud.” Saint grinned.

  “Don’t even joke. And make sure you take your shoes off before you get back in my car.”

  The road was quiet, a typical country lane that didn’t get much traffic. Clumps of dried mud littered the tarmac where tractors and off-road vehicles had traversed. This side of the road had a long stretch of bushes six feet tall, maybe higher. They were taller than Whitton. Further along it became a wooden fence with chicken wire and then a wall. On the opposite side it was just trees all the way down in both directions. They arched over and across the road in parts, shaped by the height of HGVs that drove through. The nearest house wasn’t in sight.

  She kicked the mud from her shoes and looked left. “Okay I’ll wander this way; you go that way. See if there is anything noteworthy.” Taking the cigarettes from her pocket, she slid one from the packet and lit it as she walked, keeping to the right and facing any potential oncoming traffic. It was shadier on this side at least, and she covered almost half a mile before turning back.

  When the farm came into sight, she could see Saint running back and waving at her. She kicked off and started running towards him.

  “Fuck,” he panted. “I couldn’t get any signal.” He waved his phone at her as he bent over to catch his breath. “I found her car. There’s blood in it.”

  ~Grave~

  Both of them sat by the side of the road, watching as the white forensic vehicle finally pulled in. Uniform had closed off the road in both directions, a car stationed at each end. Saint groaned. “Bloody hell, it’s Perkins.”

  “Just grin and bear it. We can leave now they’re here.”

  They both stood and wandered over to the van as Dr. Clive Perkins jumped out from the passenger side, followed by Barry, his sidekick. “Good timing, DI Whitton.” Perkins smirked. “I quite fancied a little jaunt today.”

  She stretched her neck from side to side and stood silently waiting as both men pulled on white Tyvek suits. She chuckled to herself as Perkins pulled the booties on over his dapper little shoes. Tiny feet. Now, she was looking at two slightly overweight, short, underwhelming men with clipboards. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, she thought.

  �
�Think you found blood, eh?” Barry said with a wink and a little click of his tongue. “It’s probably engine oil, or horse piss.” He chuckled and she rolled her eyes.

  “Yeah, you know us coppers, always dragging you guys out to investigate horse urine inside cars,” she deadpanned and stared him down. She really didn’t like these idiots much. She walked them over to the car, a 4 x 4 registered to Duncan Simmons, and they all stood looking at the blood-stained white leather seat. “I suppose it shouldn’t take much to discover yay or nay, right?”

  Perkins coughed to clear his throat before bending down and pulling a swab free of its packaging. He wiped it across the stained seat and stood up, holding it in the air as though this was his best magic trick. His magician’s assistant, Barry the Pillock, pulled a small spray bottle of Luminol from his pocket and presented it like a rabbit coming out of a hat.

  Whitton continued to glare. He smiled, the kind of smile that curdled milk, and then he pressed the spray and a fine mist covered the swab, turning it bright pink.

  “Right, so we’ll leave you to get on with sweeping this potential crime scene then, shall we?” Saint said, following Whitton, who had already turned and walked away.

  “Like the tyre prints just here,” she said, pointing out the obvious.

  “No need to be quite so sarcastic, is there Whitton? We don’t tell you how to do your job,” Perkins retorted with a huff.

  “True,” she acknowledged. “But then, we know how to do our job.” She didn’t wait for a reply.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So, what we know is this. Our suspect somehow comes into contact with the victim on Ashton Lane. Now, it’s the same place where the Whitman farm is located. Not a coincidence, seeing as their son, Adam, was the boy Anita killed last year. Although a positive alcohol reading was taken at the time, it was never taken to court due to a technicality with the equipment, and Anita Simmons was never charged. If you study the crime scene photos, you’ll also notice that it’s Adam’s grave that the killer has left the body on,” Whitton explained to the team as the sound of gasps and muttered conversations ended the silence.