[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand

by Jim Kelly

  She checked her watch; she’d been given two hours to write the report, then she was due back with the squad in the North End. Abandoning the chair, notebook in hand, she began to pace the map. It took her less than five minutes to discern one clear pattern: the South End was characterized by cheap trainers and out-of-date styles – Karrimor, Lonsdale, Slazenger, Everlast, Dunlop. Her iPhone gave a snapshot of a few prices – £22.99, £19.99 – the cheapest at £9.99.

  The reverse was true of the North End, where most pairs fell into the categories of expensive and nearly-new. Top of the range was a pair of Lanvin crystal-embellished leather sneakers, which new cost a whopping £505. There were two pairs of Balenciaga leather and fabric trainers, retail price £276. Other upmarket brands included Nike Air Max, Asos Domino, Vans SK8 and Ash. Furthermore, all the customized trainers were found in the North End – NikEid, Kapow, Vans R, Converse. (Unfortunately, none of them customized to the point of carrying their owner’s names.)

  The shoe squad was due to clear the shoe tree Valentine had reported on the Springs, but Jan doubted they would in any material way alter the clear pattern she’d identified. She used her laptop to knock out a summary report, based on an initial hypothesis, that whatever lay behind the outbreak of flying kicks had something to do with class. What jarred with this analysis was the geography: most of the expensive, new shoes had been found flung over wires in the North End and the docks, a traditional working class area; while those in the south were cheap and worn, despite the fact that most were found in the leafy suburbs beyond the town walls.

  Jan concluded with a possible explanation: the trainers marked ‘incursions’ by gang members into ‘hostile territory’ controlled by rival gangs. Was this what lay behind the jigsaw of footwear? A gang war? Or at least skirmishes. She printed out a copy of her report at the duty desk, pocketed it, and took a squad car out to the North End, where she found the shoe squad having a coffee break outside the North End Café, a greasy spoon famous – or notorious – for its duck egg sandwiches. The cherry picker stood idle, the council driver at the wheel, reading his latest issue of Mayfair.

  Jan was twenty feet away when DS Chalker announced her arrival. ‘Here she is, lads. Feminism’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. The woman who single-handedly tracked down the phantom rasher slayer of Lynn!’

  The squad, five strong, grinned, although she noted that Wolinski had the good grace to look at his highly polished black patent shoes.

  Chalker gave her Hadden’s SOCO report, formally identifying the blood stains as porcine, and got her a cup of tea – a real cup, with a saucer, not a mug like all the rest.

  ‘Hard luck, love. Let’s hope the chief constable doesn’t spot the four hundred and thirty pound bill for spectrograph analysis, eh?’ said Chalker, adjusting the tea cup just so.

  The DS didn’t say another word, but limited himself to whistling his signature tune: ‘Young Girl, Get Out Of My Life’.

  Jan gave him her report. ‘If you’re happy, it needs a signature.’

  As he read it, Jan watched his lips move.

  ‘Right. So it’s a pissing contest between kids. The rich go north and piss on lampposts, the poor go south and piss on theirs.’ He made eye contact with Jan – a rare glint of respect evident – and his voice was warmer, cosier. ‘Good job. I’ll get it to his office tonight. Any luck we’ll be back doing something useful by Monday.’ He beamed at his foot soldiers. ‘She’s done us a favour, boys. Someone’s going to have to buy her a drink. It might even be me.’

  Tea break over, they climbed aboard the police van and set off for the Springs, the cherry picker trundling behind. Chalker gave them chapter and verse. ‘Wonder of wonders, we have a shoe tree to strip. George Valentine found it last night. You can all ask yourselves the obvious question: what the fuck’s he doing wandering around Parkwood Springs, especially as the pub’s been closed for five years.’

  Jan had her face to the window, hiding a smile, so that as the van turned into Lister Tunnel, she saw two things: another pair of trainers under the arch hanging from the power cable and the skip full of rubble, still set on one side, half on the pavement. They pulled over and Chalker said that as she’d been skiving off writing reports, and as she’d spotted them, this pair was all hers.

  Two minutes later she was aloft, the extension arm juddering as it edged her upwards. The rest of the squad hadn’t bothered to get out of the police van.

  This pair, acid white with silver motifs, was splattered with blood like the last, and hung in exactly the same spot. Despite herself she reached for the evidence bag in her back pocket and slipped on a pair of SOCO gloves. Safely collected, she attached the evidence bag to her belt, and as she did so broke her golden rule, looking down at the cherry picker and the flagstones below.

  She had a bird’s-eye view into the skip: bricks and hard core, shattered carpentry, steel rods … and, splayed out, star-shaped, the body of a young man. The angles of the limbs were set in the semaphore of death. Three blood-red circles ran across his white T-shirt like some ghoulish motif. Luckily, when her hand shot out in shock it attached itself to the cherry picker handrail, so she didn’t actually fall, although she swung out, a leg in mid-air, and she heard the echo of her own scream. Later, she told George that the one thing that stuck in her memory was not the wounds, but the feet, which were shoeless.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Rainbow Protestor lay anchored to the quay at Wells-next-the-Sea, north Norfolk’s miniature seaside resort. A seagoing Dutch barge, its wooden mast supported a cross-spar from which hung a sail the colour of ox blood. Brass gleamed in the sun. The forty-foot deck held a series of benches and tables, a herb garden in flower pots, a ‘gyro’ clothes drier and a tethered goat. Valentine walked the gangplank with all the enthusiasm of a doomed pirate; naturally averse to water of any kind, he found the concept of floating on it deeply unsettling. Once aboard, he looked up in the rigging, his eye catching a pair of trainers dangling from a cross-spa. Shaw, whistling, followed, his bones immediately seeking out the subtle movement of the vessel beneath his feet as the tide nudged it up against the stone quay.

  Shaw had one foot on board when he heard Valentine’s mobile pulse. The DS examined the screen. ‘It’s Jan,’ he said, holding up the message for Shaw. Murder. Lister Tunnel. Teenager.

  ‘Right. Let’s get this done and get back. Ring Twine, make sure we’re in on the ground floor. Beatty Hood died on Parkwood Springs. Now another victim turns up less than three hundred yards away.’

  The deckhouse of the Rainbow Protestor held a ship’s wheel fit for a trans-Atlantic crossing, but otherwise seemed deserted, except for a black-and-white collie which sat, erect and alert, in the captain’s battered chair. A hatch led down into a wide stairwell, a single flight descending in twenty wooden steps into a wardroom of dark polished teak. A bar had been built, with a rack for barrels, and Shaw guessed the boat’s usual trade was as a tourist tripper. Over the bar hung a banner:

  WAP

  THE WALSINGHAM ALTERNATIVE PILGRIMAGE

  A COALITION OF THE CIVILIZED

  A blackboard listed the day’s specials: Houmous, Vegetarian Lasagna, Green Salad. Two long corridors led away down the length of the ship towards the blunt prow. Piles of posters and pamphlets dotted the floorboards.

  Valentine, losing patience, keen to get on the road for Parkwood Springs, rang a brass bell mounted above the bar and shouted, ‘Shop!’

  Somewhere, through several wooden walls, they heard a dog bark in response.

  Shaw checked his watch.

  A man appeared, in swimming shorts, a towel round his neck. Radiating good health, his hair spikey but unwaxed, he looked like a sea creature who’d slipped aboard from beneath the Plimsoll line.

  ‘Hi. We’re in the right place?’ asked Shaw, indicating the banner. ‘DI Shaw,’ he added, showing his warrant card. ‘DS Valentine. Lynn CID. We’d like a word with Ms Heaney …’

  Drying his hair, the man turned on b
are feet and led the way down the portside passageway; neat high-arched footprints marking his path.

  Cabin doors held drawing-pinned signs: Gay Rights, Woman’s Right to Choose, Labour Party, REFORM, Right to Die, Lynn Womens’ Co-Op. They passed an open door and saw a gleaming photocopier producing colour posters, unattended.

  At the stern the original captain’s cabin had been requisitioned as THE OFFICE, the double doors propped open. A genuine oak table, scoured by a century’s worth of cutlery and knives, held several computer monitors and scattered laptops.

  At first they thought the room was empty but then Heaney’s head appeared; still make-up free, pale, with that guarded blankness, as if the clown’s tear was about to begin its downward path across her cheek.

  ‘Hi. Give me a moment – these sodding cables are impossible … Chris, could you?’ The swimmer dived under the table to help her disconnect and reconnect a series of plugs from a long adapter. Chris, dismissed, scuttled away, followed by a small terrier they hadn’t noticed.

  Valentine told Heaney everything he’d been told by Gordon Lee about the threat delivered by the so-called Wolves.

  ‘And so you’ve come dutifully here,’ she said, dunking some kind of teabag in a wide china cup. ‘I told the man from the newspaper that it’s nothing to do with us.’

  ‘It’s hardly an unreasonable connection to make,’ said Shaw, speaking for the first time. ‘WAP is an umbrella organization, we understand that. You’re coordinating the counter pilgrimage, and liaising with uniformed branch on dispositions on the day itself, we’re grateful for that. But it’s still a perfectly valid question: do you know who might be involved in this group – the Wolves?’

  Valentine had a copy of the shorthand note taken at the newspaper office of the telephone threat.

  Heaney leant back in her chair, hitching a long leg up on the edge of the table as he read it out twice.

  ‘Charming,’ was her verdict, followed by: ‘Childish? It’s all a bit Brother Cadfael, don’t you think? Hooded monks slipping through the green forest. Wild boar in the undergrowth. WAP is many things, Inspector, but we’re not into fantasy, and there’s hardly time for playing games. Gale, in Woman’s Right to Choose, spends her time dealing with rape victims, some of whom end up pregnant as a result of the assault. Johnnie T in Gay Rights runs a helpline for victims of physical and verbal abuse out on the estates. He’s not here today; he’s at Lynn magistrates for a pre-trial hearing because one of his clients lost an eye, glassed, in a pub fracas over men wearing earrings. And me? This is my annual two-week holiday. The rest of the time I am the dullest of the dull, as I said before, an NHS administrator. I work with the palliative care unit, clearly the NHS’s version of Laugh a Minute. While WAP may look like a band of airheads, most of us have a pretty firm grip on reality.’

  In the silence that followed this speech Shaw could see she was fighting to keep her breathing under control, disguising the moment by unfolding her long bones, to stand and stretch; one hand reaching the beam above. She wore a white T-shirt again, but this one was decorated with a map of County Antrim.

  ‘We all live in the real world,’ offered Shaw. ‘We shouldn’t be here, but in Lynn, where the body of a murdered teenager has just been discovered. That’s why we’re in a hurry, Ms Heaney. So, to cut to the chase, is there an answer to my question? Can you tell us anything about the Wolves?’

  ‘No.’

  Shaw walked to the port side porthole. ‘It’s a bit of a fantasy boat. Must cost a fortune. There’s the bus as well up at Walsingham.’

  Heaney’s face had set, the eyes fixed on a point over the double doors. ‘A wealthy supporter, a benefactor. He hires the boat for two weeks, we change the name and it changes back when we’re done. She’s really called the Delpht. Last year, for the National, we rented a shop in Walsingham, but when the landlords found out who we were they reneged on the deal, entirely illegally, but there we are. We thought this was a smart way to avoid a repeat performance.’

  ‘What worries me,’ said Shaw, ‘is that most zealots fail to realize that the other side has its fanatics too. Last year I stood in the Friday Market at Walsingham and listened to a woman – maybe twenty-five, maybe not – telling a crowd what an aborted foetus looked like. She really put her heart and soul into it. It’s …’ He searched for the word. ‘Inflammable, isn’t it? This cocktail of emotions and politics and personal grudges. The National is bad enough, but there’s a sense of going through the motions. This time it all feels a bit less comfy. And d’you know what makes it look really dangerous to me?’

  Heaney looked down at her hands, stretching a charity band bracelet, then back at Shaw.

  ‘You see most criminals are stupid,’ continued Shaw. ‘They blunder. That’s what astute police work is all about, waiting for people to make a mistake. But all this …’ He indicated the Rainbow Protestor. ‘It’s got what we might call an intellectual underpinning. People on either side of these arguments are clever, erudite even, articulate. That’s dangerous, because people like that aren’t adept at the utilization of violence, its subtle gradations. If the veneer of robust dialogue cracks someone can get hurt very quickly. So, like I said, inflammable, but also poisonous.’

  ‘I’ve answered the question three times. I have no idea who these … Wolves are,’ said Heaney.

  ‘I hope, in retrospect, that your answer does not turn out to be less than the truth,’ Shaw said. ‘The pilgrimage is now only a few days away. I know you are busy, but this is a priority. Ring me, please, if you hear anything that might help us track these people down before they do something we might all regret. You might, as a favour to me, make it known to everyone that the police presence on the day will be considerable, and that any breach of public order will be dealt with by the courts. Given the high risks involved in crowd control, any magistrate – or indeed judge – is very likely to conclude that a custodial sentence is appropriate.’

  ‘Got it,’ said Heaney. ‘But you need to look for your mythical wolves elsewhere, Inspector, believe me.’

  ‘We’ll show ourselves out,’ said Shaw.

  They took the starboard side corridor this time, passing the Socialist Workers’ Party office. Several others were empty, until they had almost got back to the stairwell leading up to the deck. There was one last office, door open, but clearly marked ITUC, the International Trade Union Confederation. As Shaw passed by he glanced in and saw a wall festooned with banners. The largest was white, with a red box in outline around the compact stylized letters CCOO, and a strapline in English: ‘Spain’s biggest trade union: working for a fairer life for all’. The last time he’d seen the motif had been on a badge, set against the crisp white nurse’s uniform of Javi Copon.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The CID loos, on floor five, comprised six ‘traps’ and the usual rank of wall-mounted urinal bowls. Kieran Joyce, Chief Constable, was at the pissoir, legs braced, his five-hundred-pound suit stretched across a broad back. Looking over his shoulder he considered Shaw, leaning against a wash basin, sipping from a Costa coffee cup.

  ‘I want this sorted now before I face the press,’ he said, his Irish accent slightly stronger than Shaw remembered. The Norfolk Suite – the CID conference room – was packed with local media, regional TV and a couple of reporters from the nationals. ‘We all need to be on the same page, all of us.’

  The other occupant of the loos was DI Joseph Carney, recently of Belfast CID, now Lynn’s newest detective. Carney was twenty-nine years old, jet-black hair, with a face like a whippet. His thin lips seemed to hold an almost permanent half-smile which Shaw was trying hard not to dislike.

  The door swung in but hit Shaw’s boot. It was DC Twine. ‘Paul – can you use admin’s? We’ll be ten.’

  Twine saw the chief constable fumbling with his fly, and fled.

  ‘Right,’ said Joyce. ‘Let’s sort this out now. We’ve got a stiff in a skip. Stabbed to death. Looks like a teenage gang killing. Peter, on the oth
er hand, thinks there may be a link to the Marsh House killing. I don’t want a turf war. So let’s spit it all out now. Peter – you first.’

  Shaw filled his lungs, the air laced with the stench of the urinals and the little lemon-yellow deodorants in the bowls.

  ‘Our Marsh House victim, Ruby Bright, thought that a friend, Beatty Hood, was a murder victim, and she had a copy of her death certificate hidden in her room. Hood lived on Hartington Street, less than two hundred yards from the Lister Tunnel. The doctor who attended her deathbed insists she died of natural causes, but there is a paper trail in records of complaints about vandals, petty thieves, teenagers targeting her house. Splitting the inquiry could be a fatal mistake.’

  Joyce lit a cigarette, opened the window and leant on the tiled ledge, blowing the smoke out of the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Joe?’

  Carney put his hands on his hips and his feet apart, staring down at the space between. ‘This is a street killing, totally different. Kid has been identified by his father as Lewis Gunnel, sixteen, student at the tech college. Pathologist says he was held down and stabbed three times in the chest with something very sharp, a narrow knife, viciously sharp.

  ‘Less than twenty-four hours earlier the shoe squad retrieved a pair of trainers from the same spot, daubed in pig’s blood. A classic warning, obviously ignored, with the inevitable consequences. The shoe squad’s picked up more than a hundred trainers in the last ten days and there’s a clear pattern. Two gangs: North End, South End. This is about neighbourhoods, boundaries, territory. It’s the Falls Road writ small. The link to Ruby Bright is tenuous at best. Coincidences do happen. That’s what this is, a coincidence.’