[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand

by Jim Kelly

  Lynn’s Vancouver Centre shopping complex, refurbished this year in vibrant pastel shades, had been re-designed to incorporate a small block of ‘luxury’ flats, behind a gated car-bay. Planners, caustic about the deserted shopping malls of the 1980s, wanted people like Gokak Roy – young, salaried, single – to reinvigorate the town. He was only inside the flat for ten minutes: time enough for a shower, clean jeans, T-shirt and trainers. Then he was dancing down the stairs, his ankles sending little jolts of joy through his bones.

  His uncle’s restaurant was three streets away and empty when he put his head in, so he said he’d eaten at work. Then he ran, laughing, down Eastman Street, to Ja-Ja’s – a basement bar, full of friends. He had four shots of vodka with a pint of lager and Sean, the barman, said he was on a roll, although the words seemed to float into his head as if they were falling leaves. At one point a girl, in white shorts and a ripped T-shirt, had licked his ear and he’d said something and she’d simply walked away. The disappointment, the frustration, felt like it might bloom into anger so he went to the toilet and popped two more diazepam. When he got back to the bar Sean had lined up three shots, each a kind of petroleum blue in colour, which he downed to the sound of applause.

  Back in the flat, in the small hours, he forced himself to re-engage with his daily routine, setting up a saline drip by the bedside which would rehydrate his body overnight, so that when he woke up he might feel physically as if he’d been hit by a truck, but there’d be no actual pain, no headache, no nausea. The headlong chaos of his interior life could continue, masked by its crisp, carefully nurtured, facade.

  Sitting on the bedside, naked, he’d seen the envelope on the distant mat at the end of the corridor. He must have walked straight over it a few minutes earlier.

  On the outside it said simply GOKAK in an eccentric curling script he’d come to know well. Inside, he would find a date, a time, but no indication of place, because that was always the same. Sitting on the floor, he began to cry, the envelope on his knees. He knew that if he failed to rip open the letter his life would be over, but that if he did rip it open this simple action would set in motion a lethal series of events, which would begin in earnest after he parked the BMW under a street light as he always did, and slipped into the shadows beneath the Lister Tunnel.

  NINE

  The desktop PC glowed in the suburban dark of midnight. Nothing moved in the silent cul-de-sac outside the curtainless window as DC Mark Birley stretched until his bones cracked. Pushing the heel of his right hand into an eye-socket, he massaged the muscles, seeing a kaleidoscope of colours dance across the darkness, before forcing himself to re-focus on the screen’s six mini-images.

  CAMERA A: looking west, showed the ‘tradesman’s’ entrance to Marsh House, consisting of a tarmac parking area, surrounded by hydrangeas, reaching up more than fifteen feet. A bird-feeder, with fat balls, took up part of the foreground in sharp focus. There was an exterior light, which lit the scene in a bleak monotone.

  CAMERA B: mounted over the original front door, facing inland, covered the drive, the turning circle, the gardens and offered a brief glimpse of the coast road beyond the closed iron gates, all lit by a single floodlight in a flowerbed.

  CAMERA C: one of three cameras mounted on the north-facing, seaward side of the building. This door was for the kitchen and served as an emergency exit. The view consisted largely of a close-up of an extractor unit, a series of three wheelie bins and a small iron bench. The scene was lit by an emergency-lighting, low-voltage bulb.

  CAMERA D: mounted over the French windows, showed the view from the main lounge on to the terrace. Tables, chairs – all ironwork, and a fire pit of steel, the lawn stretching down to the edge of the marsh grass. Also, bone white, the stone bench: the whole scene illuminated by the only floodlight on the rear of the property.

  CAMERA E: set over a back door, accessed from a corridor leading back to the stairwell and the nurses’ station, showed a limited view north; the edge of the terrace and the lawn, including the pole for a large parasol. Unlit.

  CAMERA F: showed the main entrance, to the side of the building, crazy-paving, the narrow path and surrounding shrubs. A mock-Georgian gas lantern hung in the top right of the picture and was sensor controlled, giving light during darkness.

  Birley thought he heard his daughter cry out in the room next door, so he stood, carefully edging back the desk chair, and went out into the corridor. The neighbourhood, an estate on the edge of Castle Rising, was deep within its communal sleep, a spell-like slumber. Edging the bedroom door open he turned a dimmer switch to produce a thin white light; his daughter’s mouth hung open like a fish, her limbs splayed on top of the duvet as if she’d fallen into the bed from a parachute drop.

  Back at the desk he cradled a mug of lukewarm coffee and looked out into the street: all over again, absolutely nothing moved. They’d watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone the week before and Birley had noted how excited his children were that the adventure began in Privet Close, a cul-de-sac just like their own. A celestial motorbike might easily have appeared from the stars to touch down on the family driveway.

  Birley switched to a full-screen image of CAMERA A: the timer in the bottom left corner skipped along at thirty times its normal speed. He’d already watched all six CCTV digital downloads for the night of the murder, individually. This was the start of the second round.

  It was 1.35 a.m.

  His plan this time was to reduce the speed so that each camera download took an hour to view. The prospect was strangely comforting, because he knew he was good at this: the painstaking, the meticulous. Most of all he knew he was trusted with the task. A large man, who’d played rugby for the force, he stretched his arms and legs, joining fingers over his head to pull the joints to produce a satisfying series of clicks.

  Yawning, he heard his jaw bone crack, and simultaneously the bedroom door creaked open. His wife, Helen, shuffled past without looking into the spare room, en route to the bathroom. The word: ‘Tea?’ floated back to him before she closed the door. He was in the kitchen, filling a kettle, when he saw Shaw’s Porsche trundle into the drive. The DI shut the driver’s door with the softest of mechanical clicks.

  Birley opened the door in boxers and T-shirt, filling the doorframe like the Michelin man.

  ‘Mark, sorry. Thought I’d check for a light. Couldn’t sleep,’ Shaw said.

  This was only half a lie; he’d been ringing George Valentine’s mobile since early evening. Checking with Dr Scrutton, he’d confirmed that the diagnosis had been passed on to the patient. The CID team had logged their DS back in at the office in St James’ at five, and he’d left at seven, saying he was off to check out some background, a form of words which usually indicated he was heading for the Red House, CID’s boozer of choice. Since then he’d maintained radio silence. The only comfort was that Shaw couldn’t raise Jan Clay either, which suggested that they might be together.

  Birley made an extra mug of tea and grabbed a biscuit tin marked in homemade capitals: MITTS OFF!

  ‘Helen’s up, she’s in her winceyette nightie, so you’re in luck.’

  ‘I’ll look away.’

  But the landing was deserted.

  The spare room held the desk, a chair, a single bed and a dismantled fold-down cot. Shaw noted an exercise bike in the corner, a set of dumbbells on the carpet.

  Shaw’s theory was that Birley’s keep-fit regime, which included a daily 5K run, burned off excess tension and stress, leaving him able to collapse in on himself physically, freeing his brain to run a detached and unruffled computer-like programme of observation. The DC had an almost saint-like patience.

  CAMERA A was still running, the clock past 4.30 a.m., the little clock hands whirling.

  ‘I made a plan,’ said Birley. An A3 sheet held the outline of Marsh House expertly rendered, with each camera vista shown as a cone extending out from the building. If the view was finite, for example CAMERA B’s of the extract
or chute, then the cone’s open end was closed off, delineated in black. If the view was effectively unlimited, such as CAMERA D’s of the marsh, the cone extended on, bounded by increasingly feeble dotted lines.

  This was everything Shaw expected: organized, clear, focused.

  ‘You’ve watched all six?’

  ‘Yes, at times thirty normal speed.’

  ‘Over what period?’

  ‘The whole record, from eight to six, which is what the nursing staff refer to as “lockdown”, although I’m sure they don’t put that in the brochure. All six cameras film continuously, the image comes up in the nurses’ station, and then the digital record is stored. During the day the cameras are dormant, only activated by staff in emergencies. They want the residents to feel safe, not watched, apparently.’

  ‘What have we got?’

  Birley’s stubby fingers moved over the keyboard and CAMERA C came up, scrolling forward automatically to 2.21 a.m. Birley pressed PLAY and the film rolled at normal speed, in time to reveal the arrival of a small fox, which circled the bins, carrying what looked like a rat in its jaws. The eyes, catching the moonlight, were alien, unblinking.

  ‘Supermoon,’ said Shaw, tapping the screen where the white light caught the metallic surface of the aluminium extractor.

  ‘Yup. The emergency lighting is on too, but it’s just very weak,’ said Birley.

  The fox ambled away and Birley switched to CAMERA B at 4.09 a.m. On the distant coast road a car swept past, the headlights picking out trees and telegraph poles, and briefly the stone walls of St Peter’s church.

  ‘Traffic picks up after that on a regular basis, but there’s nothing up the drive at all until Curtis arrives on foot, his squad car up on the road.’

  Birley put his arms behind his head. ‘And that’s it, Peter. Nothing.’

  ‘How can that be?’ asked Shaw, immediately holding up a hand in apology; these were the facts, if Shaw didn’t like them it wasn’t Birley’s fault.

  The problem was that other facts didn’t fit these facts. ‘Someone got into Marsh House and pushed Ruby Bright down to the waterside. Or someone in Marsh House pushed her down to the waterside. Either way she went through one of these six doors …’

  Birley nodded. ‘Yeah. Tricky …’

  Shaw sipped his tea. ‘Pathologist confirms Tom’s estimate of the time of death and has narrowed it slightly to between ten p.m. and two a.m. We’d like it narrower still, but Justina won’t play ball. Outside, at night, under a cloudless sky it was fifty Fahrenheit, inside it was a torrid seventy. That makes calculating the time of death an art. Justina does science. So, if Ruby’s not on the cameras, we have a problem, because she was in her room at eight p.m. and dead by two a.m. Either she got out (with her wheelchair) without using any of the six doors, or, both her and her killer got out without using the doors, with the added probability that the killer got in without using the doors.’

  Shaw stood, looking out at the amber-lit street. ‘Tomorrow we need to crawl over every inch of the place: cellars, windows … the garage? Can you get into the garage direct from the house?’

  Birley shrugged. ‘It was her wheelchair?’ he asked.

  ‘Good question. We may have assumed that, I’ll check …’ Shaw got out his iPhone and typed himself a message.

  ‘Or …’ offered Shaw, ‘she’s on the film and we’ve missed her?’

  Somewhere in the house there was a single cough, then a bedspring creaked.

  Birley considered the question: could he have missed her? ‘If the killer got a door open and pushed her quickly away from – say CAMERA D – she’d be gone in thirty seconds. So that’s roughly a second viewed at this speed. I might have missed it. I’ll check – now. But I didn’t, Peter. You can take it from me, she’s not on any of these tapes.’

  ‘We’re missing something,’ said Shaw, thinking now, too late, that he should have slept when he had the chance. This puzzle would be just as intractable by daylight. Now the concept of oblivion, of resting his mind, seemed impossibly remote. His sense of unease was not helped by the near certainty that he’d seen something today, on his arrival at Marsh House, that he should have questioned. Something out of place, something incidental …

  ‘One question,’ said Birley. ‘Why is it necessary to mount six security cameras on an old people’s home on the north Norfolk coast? There’s only twenty-two residents max – they might as well put them all under twenty-four-hour surveillance. They’ve got keypad doors. A nurse on duty. Two more on the premises. What’s that all about?’

  Shaw stood and felt the cool air closer to the curtain-less window playing on his skin. ‘I suspect it’s about a woman called Irene Coldshaw, Mark. Two years ago, when you were on traffic and in a uniform, she went missing from Marsh House, at night. George remembered; he’s got what the top brass like to call an institutional memory, although that never gets mentioned during the salary round. Anyway, Irene was seventy-three years old, and she’d been in Marsh House for two years, ever since her husband had died and she’d suffered a stroke. Her medical notes recorded rising levels of anxiety, the emergence of some kind of internal tension. She lost weight, couldn’t sleep, and became irritable. She decided to take back control of her life.

  ‘She left one morning before dawn and walked to Burnham Deepdale. It’s what? A mile? She let herself out at six o’clock in the morning, no CCTV then, although there were security pad exits and twenty-four-hour nursing cover. Next thing we know, she’s hiring a car, a Volvo estate, at the garage at Deepdale, paying by credit card.

  ‘The coroner presumed she was heading back to Scunthorpe which is where she’d been born, and where she still had a niece. She was fine until she got to Lincoln, but then she hit the motorway system. Problem was the last time she’d driven was 1962, the day after she passed her test. She’d jumped a red light and knocked down a pedestrian, causing him serious injuries. There were plenty of witnesses and she was banned for two years. She never got back behind the wheel again until the day she fled Marsh House. So motorways were a mystery to her.

  ‘She took the A1(M) north, but for some reason got syphoned into the M62 and ended up circling Manchester. By this time fatigue had set in. Spaghetti Junction sucked her in and then spat her out on the M6 heading for the West Country. By now the petrol tank was low and she’d started to panic. When she came off the motorway she went down an up slip road – back on to the motorway but travelling the wrong way. By now it was dark and traffic was light. She clipped two cars, then caught an oil tanker head-on. The explosion actually melted the tarmac; she died instantly, the driver of the lorry badly burned.’

  ‘I remember now,’ said Birley. ‘But like, that’s a freak accident.’

  ‘West Norfolk social services ran an inquiry. Marsh House found itself severely criticized. Don’t be fooled by all this talk about “the trust” – it’s not a charity. The Starlight Trust is owned by a listed company that runs nearly 200 homes, and operates under more than thirty NHS trusts. The inquiry report wiped thirty million quid off the company’s share value. They promised an overhaul of security. That’s why there’s six cameras, Mark.’

  Birley swilled the cold coffee in his mug. ‘Makes you wonder what was suddenly so bad about Marsh House that she was prepared to take the risks. That age, I’ll need a good reason to get out of an armchair.’

  Shaw filed that thought away, because it was a good question: what had driven Irene Coldshaw to escape from the warm comfort of Marsh House?

  TEN

  Shaw found Valentine in the alley behind the Ark, actually a stretch of long-forgotten street, a hundred yards of city-centre tarmac overshadowed by the back of Iceland, a multi-storey car park and an electricity sub-station. The sign said Clennam Street. Valentine sat on the kerb, a favourite perch, his knees up, facing the rising sun, a single cigarette stub in the gutter. He found the forensic lab, and the morgue beyond, unsettling on a good day. Today wasn’t a good day.

  Shaw let th
e fire door clang behind him. ‘George. Tom’s ready.’

  Valentine didn’t move.

  ‘Scrutton said you knew the diagnosis. You and the CC.’

  Shaw walked out into the middle of the street, his feet set as far apart as his shoulders. ‘I thought you’d want to hear first from the doc. Get the facts. It’s what I would have wanted.’

  Valentine began to stand, twisting slightly to take the pressure of his knees. ‘Good call. Thanks. I’ve certainly got the facts. And it’s hardly a surprise, is it, Peter. Or a mystery. Pretty much an open-and-shut case. Lung cancer; a particular kind of lung cancer by the way, which is common in non-smokers. Scrutton seemed to think the irony would cheer me up.’

  ‘Self-pity’s understandable, but you might like to think of Jan,’ said Shaw. ‘She’s probably had enough of it given her first husband’s death. Least the booze didn’t get you.’

  ‘I knew there was an upside. It was only a matter of time until some fucker found it.’

  Shaw refused to rise to the bait. ‘You don’t have to do this, George. Take control of what you can control. Take leave, right now. Think about surgery – chemo, radiotherapy. Tackle it, deal with it. What did Jan say?’