The TV Detective (5 page)

Chapter Four

I
T
'
S KNOWN IN THE
trade as the Death Knock and is widely dreaded. A journalist calling to talk to a bereaved relative about the loss of a loved one. Of all the range of possible outcomes, one thing alone was certain. You never left feeling better about life.

The most common reaction was anger and abuse and a straightforward and often creatively obscene request that you should leave. In a way, that was the easiest to take. You could accept it, understand the hurt and upset and know you were merely a target for the venting of emotion. It was fair enough.

Surprisingly often though, the mother or father, sister or brother, son or daughter or husband or wife would be happy to talk, perhaps even keen to do so. They wanted to pay tribute to the wonderful person they had lost, needed the world to know what a fine and special individual had been taken, and explain the cold void which would be left behindin so many lives.

They were the hardest of all. They were unfailingly tearful, upsetting and moving, and lived long in the memory.

Dan had done them before, in his days as a general news reporter, years ago before he became the environment correspondent, largely insulated from such distress. And each he could recall and in exact detail, the soft, crumpled faces, blurred with misery, and the endless tears.

Well, he'd better start getting used to them once more. The demons of his new job demanded it.

Nigel drove them, north, out of the city and into the great natural wilderness of Dartmoor. The rain of last night had at least blown through,to be replaced by a grey and glowering sky. The last time Dan had been on the moor was the week before, covering a story about the endless intrusion of bracken into the sacred landscape and the increasingly desperate efforts to stop it.

His previous life. Safe from shotgun murders and death knocks.

Dan noticed he'd begun thinking about the plastic bottle of tablets hidden in the bathroom cabinet again.

‘You OK?' Nigel asked. ‘You've gone quiet.'

‘Just thinking.'

‘About the interview?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Know what you mean. I dread them too. They're like having your soul slowly put through a mangle.'

The cameraman found a CD of 70's music, all chirpy disco beats. Dan managed to tolerate almost a whole song before he reached out and turned down the volume. Nigel didn't protest. It was hardly a fitting symphony for what they were about to go through.

Arthur Bray lived in Yelverton, a village on the edge of Dartmoor, only twenty minutes drive from Plymouth city centre. It was popular with commuters, had a shop, a couple of pubs, even a petrol station and a butcher's. His house was on the fringes of the village, detached and large, a long gravel drive leading to the door.

Nigel parked beside a black jeepand turned to Dan. ‘How do we play it?'

‘What?' he replied, distractedly.

‘Come on, get with it. You'll need to be sharp for this. I said – how do we play it?'

‘Good question. Well, you set up the kit and I'll try to get him talking, do my best to break the ice.'

They got out of the car. Dan suffered a vision of himself at the north pole, kneeling down and trying to chip away at the polar cap with a small hammer. Such was the task of breaking the ice in a death knock.

He hesitated, then rang the bell.

Arthur Bray clearly hadn't read the script.

He was supposed to move slowly, laboured with the burden of grief in all that he did. His eyes should have been red, inflamed with the countless tears, his posture hunched with the weight of sorrow and his words stumbling and stuttered as he tried to force them to form through his suffering.

To none of this did he conform.

He opened the door briskly, shook their hands with a firm grip and ushered them into a large and light living room. He was a small man, with thinning white hair, wearing a navy cardigan and open-necked shirt, but he had a certain strength, as though the years were yet to do their insidious work.

‘Best we get on with this, eh?'

‘I'm sorry?' Dan replied, taken aback.

‘I'm sure we've all got better things to do. I want to get some shopping in this morning, then perhaps play a round of golf later, if the bloody weather permits. No doubt you want to make it all into some sort of broadcast, like you people do.'

‘Err, Mr Bray …'

‘Arthur, please.'

‘Arthur, we are talking about your son here. Edward. And …' Dan struggled to find the words, before ending lamely, ‘what happened to him.'

‘Yes. Dreadful business. But hardly unexpected, eh?'

Dan realised he was floundering badly. He'd been caught so far off balance it was a wonder he didn't fall over. Arthur Bray's reaction felt as surreal as going to a funeral service, when a stripper suddenly arrives and begins her act.

‘Hardly unexpected? Your son being murdered?'

‘It was bound to happen sooner or later, given the way he conducted himself. I tell you what, I'll make some tea, then I'll explain.'

Arthur Bray disappeared into the kitchen. Dan looked at Nigel, who just shrugged.

‘Well, we're going to get quite a story,' the cameraman said. ‘But I don't think it's exactly the one we were expecting.'

They sat on the sofa in silenceand accepted the mugs Bray handed them.

‘I've got all the fine tea-set stuff,' he said. ‘But I only get it out when the vicar comes round. You strike me as more the mug type.'

‘I think that might just about sum up my life,' Dan replied, with feeling.

Arthur offered them sugar, which they both refused. He sat back, crossing his legs.

‘Look, I think I'd better make one thing clear here. I'm doing this interview because the police asked me to. They think it might help bring some witnesses forward. I'm not doing it for Edward, or anything like that. My son and I no longer have – had, sorry – a relationship. We effectively agreed on a divorce several years ago, and since then have had nothing to do with each other.'

Dan set down his mug, couldn't keep the disbelief from his voice. ‘A divorce?'

‘I can think of no other way to describe it. We reached a financial settlement, and said we would not contact each other again. We both preferred it that way. Look, perhaps it's easier if I tell you the story. Then we can do this interview thing, and we can all get on with our lives.'

Arthur Bray fumbled in his pocket, lit up a large cigar, puffed out a cloud of blue-grey smoke, and began.

He was a self-made man, who had built up the business from a standing start. Going back thirty years or more he had been left a substantial legacy by a relative, which he'd invested in property. It was just before prices started their breathless rise. The company's income grew, more houses and flats were purchased, and soon Arthur Bray was very well-off, bordering on simply rich.

‘I was a good businessman though,' he told them, through puffs on the cigar. ‘Not like this modern lot who just take the money and run. I looked after my tenants. I made sure their homes were smart and comfortable. I never ripped them off. And I helped with social housing too, and community projects. I'd done well, and I thought it was right that others should share my fortune.'

Time rolled on, Edward had grown up and decided to follow his dad into the family business.

‘I was delighted,' Bray explained. ‘I was planning to take early retirement. I could hand it all on to Edward. He would be looked after, as would my tenants, and the business could continue to flourish and carry out its charitable work. It all seemed ideal. But it didn't quite work out that way.'

Now, for the first time, his voice changed. It grew quieter, more reflective and rueful. Bray got up from his chairand pointed to a picture of a woman on the windowsill. She was standing by a river, smiling, a little self-conscious in the way many have when faced with a camera, but nonetheless she looked kind and attractive.

‘My wife, Elizabeth. This is my favourite picture of her. It's from just after we were married. I won't go into the details, but she developed lung cancer. It was quick, mercifully. After her death, the relationship between Edward and me … well, it – changed.'

In that one word was a world of repressed emotion. It was buried deep, long hidden, but so obviously still there, in the tone of the man's voice, the way he winced as he spoke.

‘We stopped getting on. Well, that's an understatement, in fact. He was very close to his mother, and seemed to take her death out on me. As if losing her wasn't enough.'

The man's voice faltered again, and he sat back in his chair.

‘Edward didn't just take it out on me. He wanted vengeance against anything to do with me. He started persecuting the company's tenants, pushing up their rents, evicting them when they couldn't pay. He stopped all the charitable work. He retreated into himself, just cut the world off. All he was interested in was making money. I tried to talk to him, but we only ended up having dreadful rows.'

Another hesitation, longer this time, then, ‘In one … well, I think we both said some things we shouldn't have. That was where it ended. He'd already taken over the business by that point. I still had a minority holding, but it wasn't enough to stop him. He paid me off and we agreed we wouldn't speak again. It was as simple as that. And then he just got worse and worse. You've probably seen some of the stories. Evicting tenants, just because they'd have rights to ask for their homes to be redecorated. It's sad to say, but from then on I felt rather glad I didn't have to speak to him again. He did nothing but ill for the world.'

Dan sipped at his tea, then said quietly, ‘Apart from the hospice.'

Arthur looked at him sharply and drew his cardigan around his chest. ‘I'd rather not talk about that, if you don't mind,' he replied. ‘Now, is it time for this interview?'

Nigel took the hintand began setting up the camera. Dan tapped a pen on his notepad, thought through what he'd just heard. Arthur's story had answered some of his questions, but raised many more.

Nigel's phone rang, and he walked outside to answer it. ‘Lizzie,' he explained, when he returned. ‘She's lined up an interview with the police for the lunchtime news. At the lay-by. She wants you to do it as part of your live report.'

The grandmother clock in the corner said it was just past eleven. The lunchtime bulletin was on air at half past one. Time to get a move on. All the questions spinning in Dan's mind would have to wait. All except one.

‘Arthur, what you had to tell us was interesting background, don't get me wrong, but when it comes to the interview …'

‘I understand,' he said. ‘I know the media drill. You don't need all that family strife nonsense. It just complicates things. You want a nice, emotional soundbite. I think I can manage that.'

After the interview they declined the offer of more tea, pleading the pressing deadline. As they walked back along the corridor to the front doorand said their goodbyes, Dan couldn't help but notice the large shotgun cabinet, and the shiny, well-tended array of weapons arranged within it.

The daylight made the lay-by no more attractive. But Dan found himself studying it with an unexpected interest.

It was effectively just a slip road off the dual carriageway, a widening of the tarmac where cars and lorries could pull up. But the parking area was hidden from the main road by a mound of grass, covered with a thicket of trees.

The police cordon was gone, the forensic investigations completed. Dan took a few paces towards where Bray would have been shot, kicked thoughtfully at the ground and turned towards the main road.

‘Interesting,' he said.

‘What?' Nigel asked. ‘And don't you think we should be getting on with the story? It's almost noon.'

‘Yep, in a sec. I was just thinking. Where I'm standing I can't be seen from the main road at all.'

‘And?'

‘And it's very noisy here, with all the traffic zipping past.'

‘So?'

‘So, if there are no other cars or lorries here, as there doubtless wouldn't be on a very wet night, and if for example, I chose to shoot you …' Dan shaped his fingers like a gun, pointed them at his friend, ‘No one would see, and no one would hear.'

‘You're talking about how Bray was killed.'

‘Yep. Lure him here on a pretext, say some kind of secret meeting, be waiting when he arrives, and bang! That's it. A perfect place for a murder. No witnesses, and an easy get away, straight onto the dual carriageway. It was a well planned killing.'

Nigel gave him a look. ‘You're not getting into this new job a little too much, are you?'

‘No, no, just thinking. But – what are the odds we've just met a prime suspect for the murder?'

Nigel looked puzzled, quickly followed by appalled. ‘His dad?'

‘Yep. He told you about their estrangement – or divorce, as he put it. What if it wasn't as clear-cut as he says? And he's got a cabinet full of shotguns.'

Nigel shook his head. ‘Maybe you should be thinking about cutting this report?'

‘I'm just about to get on with it. But there is one question I would like the answer to, before we finish with this story.'

‘Which is?'

‘Why did it change?'

‘The relationship between father and son?'

‘Exactly. The way he said it. It made me shiver.'

‘I know what you mean. Families normally pull together after a death. We certainly did.'

Dan patted his friend's shoulder. Nigel had lost his wife, Jayne, to breast cancer, and was bringing up his two young sons James and Andrew on his own. It wasn't easy with the hours the cameraman had to keep, and the boys approaching the difficult adolescent years too. His family had rallied around, helping out as much as they could, and they managed. But knowing Nigel as well as he now did, Dan could sometimes feel the void in his friend's life.