Page 88 of Vengeance is Mine

‘Jesus,’ he said, his head falling to his chest.

Kyra reached across and placed her hand on his. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to upset you. I know how close you are to them.’

‘I’m too close to this.’ He looked up. There were tears in his eyes. ‘If Harry and Barbara…’ He couldn’t finish his sentence.

‘I’m sure it’s not them,’ Kyra said quickly. ‘I was just playing devil’s avocado.’ She winked. ‘Look, I’ll go back to Dawn and check on her alibi. We need to solve this as quickly as possible, before it eats away at you. And, no offence, you can’t afford to lose any more weight.’

He smiled and remained seated as Kyra walked out of the canteen. He looked around him. Others were giving him sidelong glances. They’d all read the papers. They all knew what case he was working on. He couldn’t stand the sympathetic looks. He needed to get out of the station.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Dr Jamie Glendenning was in his office eating his long-delayed lunch of an egg mayo sandwich and a packet of ready salted crisps. He looked up when he heard a tap on his door.

‘Detective Inspector Braithwaite, I expected you here at nine o’clock.’

‘Yes. Sorry. I?—’

‘You ask me to make Dominic Griffiths a priority, put him to the head of the very long queue, and then don’t bother to turn up? You certainly know how to make a man feel worthless.’

‘I gave you an expensive bottle of whisky at Christmas.’

‘Which my wife thoroughly enjoyed,’ he said, looking at Terry over the top of his glasses. ‘Anyway, I’m not one to hold grudges. Pull up a chair, and I’ll give you all the gory details you missed out on.’

‘The highlights will do.’

‘Look at the name on the door. Does it say Gary Lineker? I do not give highlights, Detective Inspector.’

‘You really hate your routine messed around with, don’t you?’

‘I do. Especially when today was supposed to be my day off. I was called out on Christmas Day to a suspicious death in Cramlington and on Boxing Day to Ogle. I’ve had exactly six hours with my family this festive season.’

‘Ah.’

‘Indeed. Now, your chap Dominic Griffiths,’ he began, selecting the file on his laptop and opening it. ‘He certainly made my start to the year an interesting one. Every single one of his ribs was broken.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘I’m aware of the police’s penchant for gallows humour at a crime scene, but it does not enter my autopsy suite. I never joke,’ he said flatly, his face emotionless.

‘Sorry. Go on.’

‘His nose was broken, as were several of his teeth, a number of which we found in his stomach. His last meal, by the way, was a chip sandwich. His body was covered in contusions, abrasions, and he was hit around the trunk of his body with something long, narrow and cylindrical.’

‘Like a pipe?’

‘More like a baseball bat, I’d say. His liver, by the way, was a couple of punches short of exploding. It was almost treble the size it should have been. He also suffered a fractured skull and a subdural haematoma. To you that’s?—’

‘Bleeding on the brain,’ Terry interrupted.

‘You’re learning! Well done.’

‘So, what actually killed him?

‘Unsurprisingly, it was one of the stab wounds. He was stabbed four times in the chest. A direct hit to the heart. It wouldn’t have taken long for him to die. He was already badly beaten by then. I would’ve thought it was a blessing for his body.’

‘If he hadn’t been stabbed, would he have survived?’

‘Highly unlikely.’