Peter James: Not Dead Enough

It was shortly after midnight when Jecks came out of the operating theatre. The hospital had not been able to contact the one local orthopaedic surgeon who had had some success in reattaching severed limbs, and the general surgeon who was in the hospital, and had just finished patching up a motorcycle rider, decided the hand looked too badly damaged.

It was the hand with the hospital dressing on, Grace noticed, and requested it be kept in a refrigerator, to preserve it forensically if nothing else. Then he ensured that Jecks was in a private room, on the fourth floor, with a tiny window and no fire escape, and organized a rota of two police constables to guard him around the clock.

Finally, no longer exhausted but wide awake, wired, relieved and exhilarated, he drove back to Cleo’s house, his ankle hurting like hell every time he depressed the clutch. He was pleased to see the empty police car in the street outside and that the window had already been repaired. As he limped up to the front door, he heard the roar of a vacuum cleaner. Then he rang the bell.

Cleo answered. She had a sticking plaster on the side of her forehead and the surround of one eye was black and swollen. The two constables were sitting on a sofa, drinking coffee, and the Hoover lay on its side on the floor.

She gave him a wan smile, then looked shocked. ‘Roy, darling, you’re injured.’

He realized he was still covered in Jecks’s blood. ‘It’s OK – I’m not injured, I just need to get my clothes off.’

Behind her, the two officers grinned. But for the next moments he was oblivious of them. He stared back at her, so desperately grateful that she was OK. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips, then hugged her, holding her tightly, so tightly, never, ever wanting to let go.

‘God, I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I love you so much.’

‘I love you too.’ Her voice was hoarse and small; she sounded like a child.

‘I was so scared,’ he said. ‘So scared that something had—’

‘Did you get him?’

‘Most of him.’

120

Norman Jecks stared up sullenly at Grace. He lay in the bed, in the small room, his right arm bandaged from the elbow down to the covered stump where his hand should have been. An orange hospital ID tag was clipped around his left wrist. His pallid face was covered in bruises and grazes.

Glenn Branson was standing behind Grace, and two constables sat in the corridor outside the door.

‘Norman Jecks?’ Grace asked. He was finding it bizarre talking to this man who was such a complete clone of Brian Bishop, even down to his hairstyle. It was as if Bishop was playing some prank on him, and really was in two places at the same time.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Is that your full name?’

‘It’s Norman John Jecks.’

Grace wrote it down on his pad. ‘Norman John Jecks, I’m Detective Superintendent Grace and this is Detective Sergeant Branson. Evidence has come to light, as a result of which I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Ms Sophie Harrington and Mrs Katherine Bishop. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?’

Jecks raised his left arm a few inches and, with a humourless smile, said, ‘You’re going to have a problem handcuffing me, aren’t you, Detective Superintendent Grace?’

Taken aback by his defiance, Grace retorted, ‘Good point. But at least we’ll now be able to distinguish you from your brother.’

‘The whole world’s always been able to distinguish me from my brother,’ Norman Jecks said bitterly. ‘What’s your particular problem?’

‘Are you prepared to talk to us, or do you wish to have a solicitor present?’ Grace asked.

He smiled. ‘I’ll talk to you. Why not? I’ve got all the time in the world. How much of it would you like?’

‘As much as you can spare.’

Jecks shook his head. ‘No, Detective Superintendent Grace, I don’t think you want that. You don’t want the kind of time I’ve got banked away, believe me, you really don’t.’

Grace limped over towards the empty chair beside the bed and sat down. ‘What did you mean just now when you said the whole world’s always been able to distinguish you from your brother?’

Jecks gave him the same, chilling, lopsided grin that he had given him last night, coming down the stairs in Cleo’s house, after him. ‘Because he was the one born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and me – you know what I was born with? A plastic breathing tube down my throat.’

‘How does that make you physically distinguishable from each other?’

‘Brian had everything, didn’t he, right from the start. Good health, well-off parents, a private-school education. Me? I had underdeveloped lungs and spent the first months of my life in an incubator, here in this hospital! That’s ironic, isn’t it? I had chest problems for years. And I had pretty crap parents. You know what I’m saying?’

‘Actually no, I don’t,’ Grace said. ‘They seemed pleasant enough people to me.’

Jecks stared at him hard. ‘Oh yes? Just what do you know about them?’

‘I saw them today.’

Jecks grinned again. ‘I don’t think so, Detective Superintendent. Is this some kind of a trick question? My father died in 1998, God rot his soul, and my mother died two years later.’

Grace was silent for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, there’s something I don’t understand.’

‘What’s not to understand?’ Jecks shot back. ‘Bishop got a beautiful home, a good education, every possible start in life you could have, and last year his company – the idea he stole from me – made the Sunday Times list of the hundred fastest-growing companies in the UK. He’s a big man! A rich man! You’re a detective, and you can’t spot the difference?’

‘What idea did he steal from you?’

Jecks shook his head. ‘Forget it. It’s not important.’

‘Really? Why do I get the sense that it is?’

Jecks lay back against his pillows suddenly and closed his eyes. ‘I don’t think I want to say any more, not now, not without my solicitor. See, there’s another difference. Brian’s got himself a fancy brief, the best that money can buy! All I’m going to end up with is some second-rate tosser courtesy of Legal Aid. Right?’

‘There are some very good solicitors available at no cost to you,’ Grace assured him.

‘Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda yadda,’ Jecks responded, without opening his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about me, Detective Superintendent, no one ever has. Not even God. He pretended He loved me, but it’s Brian He loved all along. You go off and cherish your Cleo Morey.’ Then, his voice suddenly icy, he opened his eyes and gave Grace a broad wink. ‘ Because you love her .’

There was an air of expectancy in the packed conference room for the Friday morning briefing meeting.

Reading from his notes, Roy Grace said, ‘I will now summarize the principal events that occurred during the course of yesterday, following the arrest of Norman John Jecks.’ He glanced down at his notes. ‘One major item in our investigation into the murder of Katie Bishop is conclusive evidence provided this morning by the forensic odontologist, Christopher Ghent, that the human bite mark found on Norman Jecks’s severed right hand was made by Katie.’

He paused to let the significance sink in, then continued. ‘DS Batchelor has discovered that for two years, until March of this year, a Norman Jecks, matching our man’s description, worked in the software engineering department of the Southern Star Assurance Company as a computer programmer. That timing is significant, in that he left approximately four weeks after Bishop allegedly took out a three-million-pound life insurance policy on his wife with this company. We have now requisitioned all Bishop’s bank records to see if any premium was in fact ever paid. I suspect we may find he did genuinely have no knowledge of this.’ He sipped some coffee.