AN ARTFUL MURDER an absolutely gripping crime thriller (Detective Sara Hirst Book 4), page 1
AN
ARTFUL
MURDER
An absolutely gripping crime thriller
JUDI DAYKIN
DS Sara Hirst Book 4
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
First published in Great Britain in 2022
© Judi Daykin 2022
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Judi Daykin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Cover art by Dee Dee Book Covers
ISBN: 978-1-80405-350-8
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Prologue
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
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Acknowledgements
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GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH USAGE FOR US READERS
Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
William Shakespeare, Cymbeline
Author’s Note
It has been my great delight to call Norfolk my home for the last forty years. As with all regions, we have our own way of doing and saying things here. The accent is lyrical and open, just like the countryside and skies. If you would like to pronounce some of the real place names in this book like a local, the following may help:
Happisburgh = Haze-bruh
Wymondham = Wind-am
Barnham = Barn-um
Norwich hides its ‘w’
The universities and the SCVA are all real places. The habit of using part of the name or the capital letters of the places mentioned interchangeably is engrained with locals. For the sake of clarity this is what we mean:
UEA = University of East Anglia, sometimes just ‘the university’
SCVA = Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, sometimes just the Sainsbury Centre
CRU = Climatic Research Unit, sometimes said as a single word, as in ‘crew’
NUA = Norwich University of the Arts
The SCVA has a wonderful collection of both modern art and ethnographic artefacts. The paintings and items mentioned in the story are all (usually) on display, apart from the Alec Clifton Urn, which is fictional. I undertook my MA in creative writing at the UEA and am proud to be an alumni of such a famous course.
Prologue
It was just after 6.30 p.m. on a miserable midwinter evening, and raining hard. The heavy clouds were obscuring any chance of moonlight. The wind drove the water into sheets, which swirled across the farmland in hammering waves. The road was greasy with diesel oil. There were no street lights on such a minor road this far out of the city. The driver had chosen well.
A small black car stood in the gateway to the field, invisible behind the untrimmed hedges on either side. From the driver’s seat, it was possible to watch the headlights of the few vehicles that used this narrow lane as a rat run to escape the post-work traffic, but only if you knew what you were doing. At irregular intervals, commuters turned down the lane towards the one tiny village that lay a couple of miles past the car. Beyond that, a tangle of minor roads eventually led to Wymondham. The number of vehicles diminished as the driver waited patiently.
The evening had been carefully chosen, just like the location. The weather forecast had been checked and checked again. The route the cyclist took home had been divined by following and overtaking at different points. It had taken a great deal of planning. There would be only one chance. Knowing the cyclist lived in the tiny village of Brampton, still with his parents, had been a bonus.
The driver snorted in disgust. The idiot was still living at home, spending all his income on racing bikes, stupid Lycra outfits and travelling to these triathlon events. Not for much longer.
The headlights of a late car swung in an arc at the top of the lane, hopefully overtaking the cyclist the driver was waiting for. It had to be the right rider — this was the same time he passed here every Tuesday night. The engine turned over comfortably. It idled in first gear the clutch depressed in anticipation.
The bike’s front light zigzagged a little as the rider adjusted for the passing draft of the car and the buffeting of the wind. The waiting driver wound the window down, listening for the sound of the vehicle diminishing and the swish of bike tyres approaching. It was hard, though not impossible, to hear both through the miserable weather. Besides, the cyclist was loudly cursing the overtaking driver, shouting his anger into the wind.
Oh, yes. This was the right man. The voice was all too familiar.
Double-checking that they were alone in the lane, the time had finally come. As the bike’s light flickered through the hedge, the driver engaged the clutch and depressed the accelerator hard. The car shot out of its hiding place. It clipped the front wheel of the bike, spinning it away towards the opposite hedge. Metal screeched on metal. The volume was shocking.
With a deep-throated scream, the cyclist smashed into the tangle of branches. The wind pounded rain into the driver’s face through the open window as they drove on towards the village without waiting, rounding the next corner before flicking on the headlights.
Damn! The impact had been a fraction too early. The damage to the cyclist might not have been enough.
The driver swung the car around and accelerated back to the cyclist, who stood swaying in the middle of the lane. Shaking his head and staggering, the rider held up his hand to flag the car down. Instead, headlights on full, the vehicle gathered speed.
This time there was no mistake. This impact sounded more shocking than the first, the crunch of bones piercing the squall.
The car halted a few yards further on. A glance in the rear-view mirror confirmed that the cyclist was lying motionless on the tarmac.
The driver wound up the window. Now the job was done.
Chapter 1
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At the sound of a cake tin being opened, Detective Sergeant Sara Hirst leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. She didn’t bother to silence her yawn. The mid-week blues and the rain outside had combined to make the morning dreary. Nothing had happened for the Serious Crimes Unit team to investigate for weeks. The last outing of note had been their participation in a county lines drug swoop, organised by the National Crime Agency and run across eleven counties. Despite this, she still thought that her move to the Norfolk Constabulary had been her best decision for years. Wild horses couldn’t drag her back to her old job in the Met.
Of course, Sara kept her connections with her home city. Hard not to when her mother still lived and worked in Tower Hamlets. Jamaican-born Tegan ran a specialist hairdresser, which Sara regularly visited to keep her braids neat. It gave her an excuse to keep an eye on her mum.
‘Might have known it was you.’ She smiled at her colleague DC Mike Bowen. ‘As if you don’t get enough of Aggie’s cakes at home.’
Bowen’s hand paused in the tin. He and Sara had history when it came to banter. They hadn’t always got on. During her first months in the team, she’d considered him an unreconstructed male chauvinist and had told him so. Although that was a long time ago, Sara still wasn’t always sure he knew when she was teasing him, or vice versa.
Bowen narrowed his eyes. ‘Keep it down, Sarge. No one is supposed to know.’
‘Worst kept secret in the nick, mate.’ Sara grinned. ‘Everyone knows. What’s the flavour today?’
‘Carrot cake,’ he said through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’
‘Is it common knowledge, then?’ Aggie, their civilian admin, asked while Bowen headed off to fetch water for the machine. She pulled the hand-knitted cardigan tightly around her generous waist. April was still too cold for Aggie’s liking.
Sara carefully selected a piece of cake and placed it on a tissue on her desk. She’d eat it when the coffee was ready. ‘Pretty much. It isn’t a problem, surely?’
‘Mike thought that the bosses might not like it.’ Aggie fiddled with her computer mouse, her fingers twitching the central wheel so that her screen scrolled up and down. She sounded embarrassed. ‘Besides, at our age.’
‘Nobody else’s business,’ said Sara. ‘As long as you two are happy.’
‘I never expected to find a new chap.’ Aggie looked down at her ample figure, then, letting go of the mouse, fiddled for a moment with her hair. ‘I thought those days were over for me.’
‘Did it worry you?’
‘Maybe a little bit,’ sighed Aggie. ‘You just get used to being on your own. And baking is my only skill.’
‘Hardly!’ Sara thought of Aggie’s facility with the internet and the police databases. ‘Aggie, I don’t think you’re breaking any workplace rules. But why don’t you ask someone in personnel, if it bothers you so much?’
Aggie hesitated. ‘If we are — breaking the rules, I mean — then if we asked, it would be out in the open. I can’t afford to lose my job, and Mike is still three years away from his pension.’
Bowen had divorced years ago and had been a bachelor ever since. Aggie was a widow with a grown-up son who lived somewhere in Manchester. Both were in their early fifties and single. Sara didn’t see how that could cause an issue for the force, but there were some arcane rules that had never been rescinded, just like some old-fashioned laws.
She nodded in sympathy with Aggie. Life as a police officer could be complicated on a personal level. For Sara, it was more than a job. It wasn’t just about the wages. She knew she was lucky, in as much as she already owned a home, a pretty terraced cottage in the coastal village of Happisburgh, left to her by her father in his will. Searching for her absent cockney dad had cost Sara in a lot of ways. Finding out that he had been a decent copper and a well-liked member of his adopted community in Norfolk had changed her attitude towards him. These days, she was proud of her mixed heritage, not to mention following in his footsteps career-wise. She was coming to love living in Norfolk as much as he had.
‘What about your boyfriend?’ Aggie was moving into mother hen mode. Sara recognised the vibe. She got it from her mother too. If I’m happy in love, you have to be happy too, which means a partner in your life. ‘You don’t mention him much these days.’
Although her boss, DI Edwards, knew, Sara had not told anyone else at work that Chris had proposed to her the previous summer. She had turned him down, saying she wasn’t ready for the commitment and wanted to carry on as before. To her considerable surprise, Chris had agreed to this.
‘He’s in yet another play,’ said Sara, unable to keep the low-level annoyance out of her voice. ‘Another Shakespeare thing. He’s grown this little goatee for it.’
‘Sounds ravishing,’ said Aggie. ‘Does it suit him?’
Sara nodded. Even if his beards came and went as the acting parts at the Maddermarket Theatre demanded it, Chris was a handsome man.
‘I thought you liked seeing him in these shows.’
‘I do. It just takes up so much of his time, and we don’t get to see much of each other.’
‘Whereas Mike and I see each other every day of the week.’ Aggie shrugged. ‘Sometimes you can get too much of a good thing.’
The office door swung open. Mike carried the coffee jug to the percolator, speaking over his shoulder to the other two members of the team following him in. ‘No joy, then?’
‘Waste of time,’ said DI Edwards. ‘These things usually are.’ He dumped his coat in his office and came back to sit in the main room.
The percolator glugged as everyone selected and munched on their carrot cake.
‘I hate these jobs,’ Edwards said between mouthfuls. ‘We can’t prove anything if we can’t get the evidence, which is inside these buggers’ houses or businesses. We can’t get a warrant to search because we don’t have enough suspicious circumstances to merit one yet.’
The team was currently trying to find evidence against a car reselling racket. Stolen vehicles were being taken to one of a group of garages, where all identifying markings were removed or changed. They were then sold, often at the roadside, to make it look like a private deal. Edwards and DC Noble, the youngest team member, had been trying to interview a suspect.
Noble flopped into his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Sara was tall by most standards, but Noble was taller than she was. He was thin, with long legs and arms that looked almost overstretched. ‘He looked shifty, though. Kept biting his lip.’
‘I know.’ Edwards nodded at Noble. ‘Your observation skills are coming along nicely. Notice anything else?’
Before Noble could answer, the phone in Edwards’s office rang. Bowen doled out mugs of coffee as they listened through the open door.
‘I see.’ Edwards reached for a pen and began to scribble on a notepad. ‘When was this?’
‘Looks like something new,’ suggested Sara. She popped some carrot cake into her mouth.
‘Who’s been alerted so far? Forensics? Pathologist?’ Edwards scribbled the answers furiously. ‘Tell them not to touch anything until the teams arrive. Especially the body. We’re on our way.’
Sara forced hot coffee down her throat to clear the cake crumbs. It sounded as if something interesting might be happening at last.
Chapter 2
Of the few things in her life that Rose Crawford still managed to be grateful for, living in an out-of-the-way country cottage was one of them. It was larger inside than it appeared from the lane that ran past the two semi-detached homes. The pair stood down a twenty-metre bumpy dirt track, with small gardens guarding their privacy at the front and larger gardens at the back. A small copse shielded the rear, and high hedges prevented the neighbours or farmworkers in the field beyond from looking in. Rose hadn’t been much of a gardener when she and her husband had bought the cottage soon after their marriage. She had been forced to learn when he had become too ill to deal with it himself.
It was one of those April mornings when the sun first breaks through with the promise of better weather, and it seems to most people that the dark of winter is finally being driven out. Not to Rose. She was angrily cutting back the spent daffodils that had grown through the lawn and across the borders. She threw the browning heads and floppy leaves into the plastic waste carrier next to where she was kneeling. ‘Bugger those gardening experts,’ she muttered. Pulling a clump of greenery tight into her fist, she snipped at the bases until they were all cut away. ‘I don’t care if I’m doing it wrong.’
Another fistful of rubbish hit the pile, and she sat back on her heels to survey the work still to be done. With a deep and resentful sigh, she struggled to stand up, stretching her back out to ease the ache settling just above her hips. Being tall and well built, she had begun to have trouble with her back during her menopause. Not to mention the searing hot flushes, uncontrollable temper outbursts and lack of sleep that had sent her to the doctor’s for HRT within weeks of the symptoms setting in. Another mercy Rose was prepared to acknowledge was that the tablets had cured most of her symptoms in days, and five years later, she still took the things religiously every day.
