all started back in July last year. Ian started getting headaches. We put it down to stress, the law firm that he co-owns had just taken on a couple of big new clients and Ian was putting in really long hours. When they didn’t get any better after a few weeks, I tried to get him to see a doctor. When he hadn’t got around to it after a few weeks, I booked him an appointment myself. I even placed it in his diary, but he completely forgot about it and couldn’t even remember having the conversation.
‘I phoned his partner and he said that he was concerned too; apparently, they’d almost lost a case the previous week, when he misplaced some key papers. It’s so unlike him, I was worried that maybe he was ill. I went to see his partner privately to discuss what we were going to do and it was then that we got the phone call.’
Her voice caught.
‘Sorry, it’s still a bit hard to talk about it.’ She cleared her throat a couple of times and took a long sip of her cold tea.
‘He just keeled over in the conference room and had a massive seizure. They rushed him to Addenbrookes and gave him an MRI scan; he had a huge brain tumour.’
She blew her nose.
‘Addenbrookes were really good. He saw a specialist immediately and within a week he was having the tumour removed. But that was only the beginning. In the weeks after surgery, he had up to three seizures a day. Some were quite small, but others put him in Casualty; he knocked two teeth out and he’s bit the tip of his tongue off several times. It took months to find an anticonvulsant that worked but didn’t cause unacceptable side effects.’
‘And what happened to him during that time?’
‘He had to take a leave of absence from work. His partners have been really good about it. It took three months in total for the medication to stop the seizures, and they left him exhausted. But the end of August was the six-month anniversary of his final seizure – it’s why we went on holiday in September; a week in a B and B in Devon. The journey took it out of him, and he slept most of the way, but it was lovely.’ She smiled. ‘By the time we got back it was as if the last year had never happened. He was even due to start back at the firm a couple of days a week.’
The smiled faded.
‘Until we got back and found we’d been burgled.’
‘He didn’t take it well?’
She shook her head. ‘After everything else, it was just too much. The jewellery they took from me wasn’t anything valuable. I wear my wedding ring, and I’d taken the necklace he bought me for our twentieth wedding anniversary with us. Unfortunately, they stole his father’s watch and his mother’s wedding ring. Ian’s dad passed away suddenly when he was a student up in Liverpool and he couldn’t get back to Norwich in time. Then his mum died just after he first got ill and, again, he never got to say goodbye properly.’
‘And the jewellery was never found?’
Now there was anger in her eyes.
‘No. They arrested the bastard that burgled us less than forty-eight hours after we reported the break-in, but it was too late.’ Her hand shook as she poured herself more tea,
‘You know, they reckon he’ll have got less than a hundred pounds for the stuff he stole.’ She shook her head. ‘Less than a hundred pounds for the only link my husband still had to his dead parents. For what? A nose full of cocaine? An armful of heroin?’
* * *
Hastings made his excuses shortly after Ian Bedford came downstairs. To look at him, Mr Bedford could have been the far side of sixty, yet, according to his wife, he was twenty years younger. The central heating in the house was turned too high for Hasting’s tastes, nevertheless Bedford wore a chunky cardigan over a knitted shirt and thick woollen socks inside his slippers.
The saggy skin around his jowls spoke of sudden and dramatic weight loss, whilst the fine fuzz of hair on his skull did little to hide the vivid pink scar that crossed the right side of his temple. A recently healed cut on the bridge of his nose came from his first seizure in months, when he’d collapsed barely an hour after Scenes of Crime had completed their investigations. He’d had a half-dozen since.
The man’s opening question left Hastings in no doubt as to the impact of the burglary on the couple.
‘Have you found Dad’s watch? It’s his anniversary next week.’
* * *
‘According to the PNC check, Aaron Wallace is well known for burglary and handling stolen goods, but there’s nothing of a violent or sexual nature in his record. He did six months in 2011 and he’s looking at a lot longer for these offences.’ Karen Hardwick had printed out the record for Wallace from the Police National Computer and was highlighting sections of it with a fluorescent green pen.
‘Which is presumably why he put his hands up this time – he’s savvy enough to realize he’s definitely going down and he’ll get a reduction in sentence for admitting it,’ she continued.
‘What about accomplices?’ asked Sutton.
‘Two that we know of, both of whom were convicted alongside him for the 2011 offence but obviously they are both already in the system.’
‘Well, keep on digging. Gary has confirmed that the shoes don’t belong to the homeowners. Let’s also see what the attending officer has to say, before we go and speak to Mr Wallace about what happened the night of the burglary.’
* * *
PC Keith Stibbald was just about to head out on patrol when he answered Warren’s call.
Warren could hear the click of a mouse in the background as Stibbald accessed the HOLMES2 database to refresh his memory.
‘Yes, I do remember this one. Abbey View Terrace; middle-aged couple back off holiday found the French windows around the rear smashed. The exact timing of the break-in was unclear, since they had been away for a week. In theory, the best we’ve got is sometime prior to about 9 p.m. on Sunday the eighth of September, when they returned.’
Warren heard the creak of a seat as Stibbald settled back in it.
‘A neighbour says the burglar alarm went off on the Wednesday evening of that week, but she walked around and saw that the house was secure, with no sign of a forced entry. She didn’t have keys and didn’t want to call them back off holiday for a fault, so she just put up with the flashing light and periodic ringing until they got back.’
‘I assume the burglar was checking to see that they wouldn’t be disturbed?’
‘Yeah, we’re seeing that more and more these days. Thieves see that the driveway is empty and figure the owners are probably on holiday. But they don’t want to run the risk of some overzealous neighbour coming around to see what’s going on and catching them inside, so they sneak around the back and set off the motion detectors.
‘If the blue light is still flashing twenty-four hours later, then obviously the owners are away and nobody has any keys. Then they come back that night and break in. Even if the alarm goes off again, it doesn’t matter since nobody bothered to investigate before. It clearly isn’t linked to a security company and you know what response times are like for us; it’s unlikely
