Peter James - Dead at First Sight

As the barrister rose to greet him, Grace clocked the uncomfortable expressions on both Emily Denyer’s and Rodney Higgs’s faces, and apologized for being late.

‘Detective Superintendent Grace,’ Carrington greeted him in a deep, bass voice. ‘Very good to meet you. Please take a seat.’

He pointed Grace to the third chair in front of him.

As he sat down, Roy Grace had the gut feeling this was not going to go well. He was right.

Carrington looked down for some moments at one of a pile of documents on his desk that were bound in coloured ribbon. ‘So, Detective Superintendent, this very charming young lady, Miss Jodie Bentley — at least that’s the name we are currently calling her, among many of her aliases — I believe you have given her the moniker of “Black Widow”?’ He gave Grace a long, hard look. ‘She’s a tricky character, I think you might agree?’

‘I’d say more than tricky, Mr Carrington,’ Grace replied. ‘Extremely well informed and cunning. She’s been operating under a string of aliases, with bank accounts set up in different names around the world. I believe she was responsible for the deaths of at least three previous lovers, as well as, very nearly, the murder of one of my finest detectives, DS Norman Potting. She’s a menace, a danger to society, and if there is any justice in the world, you’ll see to it that she’s locked behind bars for the rest of her life.’

Grace noted, uncomfortably, that both Denyer and Higgs were avoiding meeting his eye.

The QC steepled his hands. ‘I can well understand your sentiments, and there is no doubt in my mind, from your extremely well-prepared trial documents, that she is very probably guilty of all you say. The problem we are faced with is the gap between what you are certain to be the case and what we would be able to get a jury to believe. I’ve been looking at the evidence you and your team have put together and playing devil’s advocate with it.’

He tapped a pile of documents. ‘There is no certainty that we would be able to use similar facts in the evidence to connect the deaths of her first husband and of Walt Klein. She has only been charged with the murder of her second husband, Rowley Carmichael. The defence had indicated this was to be a not-guilty plea, but in the last couple of days new evidence has been submitted which puts a different complexion on matters. The psychiatric reports obtained by the experts working for both the defence and the prosecution agree that at the time of killing him, her mind was adversely affected to the extent of amounting to diminished responsibility.’

‘What?’ Roy Grace had to restrain himself from shouting at the pompous man. He looked at his two colleagues and again they avoided meeting his eye.

The barrister continued. ‘I’ve reviewed every salient detail of the evidence with the contents of the psychiatric reports and I have a number of concerns. But I also have a solution.’

‘Good to hear,’ Roy Grace said, barely masking his growing misgivings.

‘As you know, Detective Superintendent,’ Carrington continued, ‘Jodie Bentley is due to appear at Lewes Crown Court tomorrow morning for a plea and direction hearing. My proposal is that she will plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and be sectioned under Section 37 of the Mental Health Act. That means she can only ever be released under the orders of the Minister of Justice.’

Roy stared back at him in disbelief. ‘You can’t be serious?’

‘I am very serious. I appreciate this may not be the day-in-court result you would like to see, but trust me, this is the best outcome. With the findings from the psychiatric reports and the experts’ agreements on her mental state, there is no way the trial judge would proceed in any other way.’

‘She’s had everybody over, she’s a serial killer, for God’s sake!’ Grace was almost shouting with frustration.

Carrington gave him a patronizing look that merely served to make Roy Grace even more angry. ‘I appreciate all the work you and your team put into this case, and I’ve studied it long and hard. But I’ve been in front of juries for the best part of forty years and I know only too well just how unpredictable they can be. Too often it’s not about right and wrong, justice and injustice.’ He looked hard at the Detective Superintendent. ‘This really is the right course of action, in the circumstances.’

Grace looked hard back at him. The QC carried on.

‘To sum up, having reviewed all the evidence, Detective Superintendent, both from a prosecuting counsel point of view and from a defence counsel’s, manslaughter is appropriate in this case.’

‘And released in a few months by a well-meaning health worker?’ Grace retorted.

Carrington shook his head. ‘No, that’s not going to happen.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I can assure you,’ the barrister said. ‘This is a good result. Trust me.’

Roy Grace stared back at him, thinking, but not saying, Really? Trust you? Get real. Since when did letting a serial killer go free become a good result?

Roy stormed out of the meeting, fuming. He felt let down by his legal team. In all his career, so far, he had encountered only a handful of people who could come close to Jodie Bentley for sheer evil. Why the hell didn’t they get it?

Glancing up at the statue of Lady Justice, as he always did, he recalled that some other cultures depicted her holding a snake rather than a sword. Maybe along with her holding some dice, they were more appropriate, he thought. Justice so often seemed to be a slippery serpent. And that was never more apposite than with Jodie Bentley, who had used snake venom to kill at least one husband and possibly more.

As he headed back towards the tube station, his phone rang. It was Glenn Branson.

‘How’re you doing, boss?’

‘Not great, actually. Got anything to cheer me up?’

‘I’ve just heard back from your pal, Marcel Kullen. He organized a team to go to the house linked to one of the phone numbers in Germany. There is a young lady living there.’

‘What do we know about her?’

‘Not much — I’ll — hang on a sec, can you? Kevin Hall’s trying to get my attention, looks like something’s up. Call you back in two?’

‘Fine.’

It was nearly ten minutes later when Glenn called him back. ‘Boss, we have a development this end.’

‘Tell me?’

‘Donald Duck’s dead.’

‘What?’

‘He’s dead. Donald Duck.’

‘Awwwww, think about all the kids around the world.’

‘This is serious, Roy. Kevin had a call from a deputy governor at Lewes Prison. Okonjo’s been murdered.’

‘What details do you have?’

‘It sounds like he’s been stabbed — shanked. Good and proper — in the stomach and the chest.’

When murders happened in prisons — relatively rare occurrences — they were mostly as a result of disputes. But just occasionally, in Grace’s experience, there were contract killings to silence a potential witness. Okonjo hadn’t been there long enough to have got into a murderous dispute, he was still in the First Night Centre. Had he been targeted by someone anxious to stop him talking — perhaps to stop him squealing on his accomplice who was still at large? But how did they access the First Night Centre?

Had his murder been masterminded by someone outside who knew how the remand-in-custody system worked?

At the magistrates’ court hearing, such as the one Okonjo had attended yesterday, there would usually be more than one prisoner remanded in custody. Could someone, paid to kill Okonjo, have had themselves arrested deliberately for an offence serious enough to be remanded, so they would be in the same wing as Okonjo in the first few days?