Moment of Truth, page 1
Moment of Truth
Adam Croft
First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This edition published in 2022 by Black Cannon Publishing.
ISBN: 978-1-912599-78-3
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Copyright © Adam Croft 2022
The right of Adam Croft to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
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Acknowledgements
A special thank you to my members
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Adam Croft
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For more information, visit my website: adamcroft.net
More books by Adam Croft
RUTLAND CRIME SERIES
What Lies Beneath
On Borrowed Time
In Cold Blood
Kiss of Death
Moment of Truth
KNIGHT & CULVERHOUSE CRIME THRILLERS
Too Close for Comfort
Guilty as Sin
Jack Be Nimble
Rough Justice
In Too Deep
In The Name of the Father
With A Vengeance
Dead & Buried
In Plain Sight
Snakes & Ladders
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS
Her Last Tomorrow
Only The Truth
In Her Image
Tell Me I’m Wrong
The Perfect Lie
Closer To You
KEMPSTON HARDWICK MYSTERIES
Exit Stage Left
The Westerlea House Mystery
Death Under the Sun
The Thirteenth Room
The Wrong Man
All titles are available to order from all good book shops.
Signed and personalised editions available at adamcroft.net.
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Foreign language editions of some titles are available in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Korean. These are available online and in book shops in their native countries.
EBOOK-ONLY SHORT STORIES
Gone
The Harder They Fall
Love You To Death
The Defender
Thick as Thieves
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To find out more, visit adamcroft.net.
Have you listened to the Rutland audiobooks?
The Rutland crime series is now available in audiobook format, narrated by Leicester-born Andy Nyman (Peaky Blinders, Unforgotten, Star Wars) and Mathew Horne (Gavin & Stacey, The Catherine Tate Show, Horne & Corden).
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The series is available from all good audiobook retailers and libraries now, published by W.F. Howes on their QUEST and Clipper imprints.
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W.F. Howes are one of the world’s largest audiobook publishers and have been based in Leicestershire since their inception.
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For me this time.
1
Felicia Cooke was used to unlocking other people’s doors, but this was the first time she’d ever been tasked with letting herself into a castle.
She willed her frozen fingers to turn the key more quickly, keen to get inside and away from the biting December chill. It had been a bitterly cold day, and the evening wasn’t getting any warmer.
She felt glad they’d provided her with a key. ‘Just in case,’ they’d said. They’d assured her someone would be here to meet her, even though the castle had been closed to the public for over an hour. She wondered what she would have done without the ‘just in case’ key.
Grabbing a nearby chair, she propped the door open, allowing a little of the artificial light from outside to spill in, relieving some of the pitch darkness inside.
She fumbled her way through the castle and into the back rooms, desperately searching for a light switch and wishing she’d taken the time to find out how to use her phone as a torch.
Although Felicia was a relative latecomer to the events management industry, she felt she’d taken to it like a duck to water. It had proven tricky to get her business off the ground, especially in such a crowded market. Sometimes she wondered if she should have got on this particular bandwagon a little earlier. Then again, she hadn’t anticipated it might involve groping her way around castles in search of light switches.
Eventually, she entered another room and found a switch on the wall next to the door. She flicked it on and off four times, but nothing happened. Fuse must have blown, she thought. Sighing, she took her phone from her pocket and Googled iphone torch mode. Moments later, she gave a small smile as the room lit up in front of her.
‘Right,’ she said to no-one but herself. ‘Ah-ha.’
The fusebox sat boldly on the wall in front of her, as if having led her here itself. She strode over and lifted the cover, immediately spotting the master lever set to the ‘off’ position. She flicked it on, wincing as the lights sputtered into action overhead, bathing the room in an offensive glare.
She squinted and let herself back out of the room, keen to find a slightly darker area of the castle in which she could gradually allow her eyes to adjust to the light.
A few moments later, she found herself back in the main belly of the castle. She supposed it likely had a proper name. She doubted even the Normans would have called it a belly. In any case, Oakham Castle wasn’t what she would have called a castle. It was more like a big hall, or a village church. She didn’t suppose many invading armies would have been put off by the sight of it. Then again, the client was paying for the event, and the client wanted it to be held here.
She was aware of a little about the history of the castle — mostly that it had something to do with horseshoes — a fact she recalled as she found herself faced with an entire wall of them. Each one carried the name of a Lord or Duke of some sort, who’d presumably chosen to give an oversized horseshoe to the castle for whatever reason.
With her eyes now fully adjusted to the light, she turned and started to scout out the room, growing slightly annoyed that the space hadn’t been cleared for her as promised. She’d have to have a word.
‘Oh!’ she squealed, feeling immediately embarrassed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t see you over there.’
The man didn’t reply. She couldn’t quite make it out from where she was, but he seemed to just be sitting, staring at her. She wished she’d brought her glasses.
‘Are you the chap I’m meant to be meeting?’ she asked, but got no response.
He was sitting in what appeared to be a judge’s chair, high on a platform, behind a large desk with raised benches to either side of it, where she supposed a jury might sit.
First the locked door, then the power failure, not to mention the time she was going to have to spend clearing away before she could get started. And now this rudeness.
She tutted and strode over to him, ready to give him a piece of her mind. But as she approached, the picture in front of her became ever clearer.
Her bold stride gradually slowed into a heavy saunter as her jaw began to fall.
‘Oh my,’ she said as she took in the scene.
The man hadn’t been staring at her at all. And he certainly hadn’t been ignoring her. Despite her confident exterior, Felicia Cooke was sure about very little in life. But there was now one thing about which she could be absolutely positive: this man was quite dead.
2
Dexter Antoine parked his car in the market square and walked up to the castle gate. By now it had been cordoned off, and he showed his identity badge to the officer who was guarding it.
‘Let’s designate this the outer cordon,’ Dexter said, carrying out his first duty as bronze commander. ‘Carry it on right round the edge of the castle grounds. Inner cordon on the castle itself.’
The officer nodded. ‘Sarge. PCs Harding and Coulter are inside.’
‘Lovely, thanks.’
Dexter walked across the car park towards the front door of the castle. It was the first time he’d visited in a work capacity, and it’d been a few years since he’d visited for leisure.
As he entered the castle, he greeted PC Ian Harding, who gave him a brief run-down of what they knew so far.
‘We’ve got a male, late sixties, found sitting in the judge’s chair with blunt force trauma to the skull. Discovered by that lady over there,’ Harding said, nodding towards a woman in her forties who was being comforted by PC Coulter. ‘She’s an events organiser of some sort, and was coming in to set up. She said she arrived just before six, and the doors were locked so she had to let herself in. The power was off, so she stumbled around trying to put that back on, and then she came through to here, where she found the deceased in situ. She dialled the nines, but only requested ambo for some reason.’
‘Oh?’ Dexter asked, feeling his eyebrow rise. Under the circumstances, he would have expected someone uncovering this scene to have asked for the police, and not just an ambulance.
‘Shock, apparently. She didn’t know what to do.’
‘Any idea what happened?’
‘Not as yet. I did notice some evidence of marks on the top of the deceased’s wrists, as if there’d been a struggle of some sort, but not much of one.’
‘Show me?’
PC Harding led Dexter over to the body. ‘Here,’ he said.
Dexter looked more closely at the marks. ‘Almost as if his wrists had been tied to the arms of the chair. No sign of any rope or anything?’
‘No, nothing that we’ve found.’
Dexter took in the scene around him. ‘Do we know where that is?’ he said, pointing to a space on the wall where a horseshoe had been. All that remained in its place was a hook and chain.
‘No idea. Taken down for cleaning or restoration, maybe? Looks like it’s been taken off properly. Doesn’t seem like the chain’s snapped or anything. Plus we didn’t find anything near the body, which I’d expect if it’d fallen down and killed him.’
‘I’d also expect to find one dent in his skull rather than several, and for him to have probably not untied his arms and hidden the rope before coming back to finish dying.’
‘Good point,’ Harding replied, chastened, as Dexter took out his phone and snapped a photograph of the gap on the wall.
The officer who’d been manning the outer cordon stepped into the room. ‘Sarge, you got a minute?’
Dexter followed him.
‘The manager of the castle is here. Man by the name of Rupert Allard.’
‘Ah, just the man I wanted to see,’ Dexter called, before introducing himself to Allard. ‘Probably best if we stay out here for the time being. Just while we wait for forensics.’
‘What’s happened? The woman on the phone said something about a body.’
‘That’s correct. We’re still trying to ascertain what’s happened. What time did the castle close today?’
‘Four o’clock, same as always.’
Dexter did the mental maths. That meant there’d been less than two hours between the castle closing to the public and the body being discovered.
‘And who was in charge of closing, do you know?’
‘That’d be Clive. Clive Thornton. He does Mondays.’
‘Okay. What does Clive look like? Age, that sort of thing.’
‘Uh, past retirement age, but not by much. Sixty-seven or sixty-eight, perhaps? I think he retired early. Probably about six feet tall, dark hair fighting the losing battle against grey, clean shaven. I’ve probably got a photo on here, as it happens,’ Allard said. ‘The council were thinking of giving the castle website a bit of a makeover and wanted photos of the volunteers, so I’ve been popping in every now and again to take some. Ah yes, here we go,’ he added, handing his phone to Dexter. ‘That’s Clive.’
Dexter pursed his lips and handed the phone back to Allard.
‘Is there anywhere we might be able to go and have a sit down?’ he said.
3
Dexter and Rupert Allard watched as Clive Thornton’s bagged body was removed from the castle and loaded carefully into the waiting vehicle.
‘It’s just all so surreal,’ Allard said as he unlocked the door to the Castle Cottage Café, recently relocated to the castle grounds itself.
‘At least it’ll be a little warmer in here,’ Dexter replied, pleased that the café was locked off separately from the rest of the castle. At least this way he could argue it being outside of the inner cordon. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I do need to ask you a few routine questions,’ he added, taking a seat opposite Allard at one of the café’s tables.
‘No, I understand,’ Allard replied. ‘I suppose you want to know where I was earlier on, and whether anyone was with me.’
Dexter smiled. ‘That’d be a good start. Sorry to have to ask, especially at a time like this.’
‘It’s fine, don’t worry. I had a meeting with the council at five-thirty, which lasted just over an hour. Before that, I left home at about ten past five, and went straight there. My wife was at home with me.’
‘And where’s home?’
‘Cottesmore.‘
Dexter nodded as he wrote this down in his notebook. He’d need to verify Allard’s account, but on the face of it he seemed to be out of the picture.
‘There is something else I wanted to ask you,’ Dexter said, changing the subject. ‘The horseshoes on the wall in the Great Hall. Are they all meant to be there?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Allard replied, looking a little confused. ‘No-one quite knows why, other than it being a tradition that goes back well over five hundred years. We’ve got over two-hundred-and-thirty of them, all donated by Peers of the Realm who’ve visited Rutland or passed through it. The oldest one was given by King Edward IV in 1470.’
