by Jim Kelly
As he waited for the call to be put through, he picked up a lurid seaside postcard lying on his desktop.
A slogan in blue read: BUDE FROM THE BREAKWATER.
He’d rung Julia Fortis after hearing Nano Heaney’s confession and told her he would not need to use the Coldshaw letter in the on-going inquiry. The postcard had arrived three days later. A neat hand in blue ink said simply: ‘A break with Mum. She loves the place. The job’s mine pending the court case, so we’ll see. Local barefoot ski club needs new members! Best. J.’
He finished his calls, adding one, with the chief constable’s blessing, to ACPO – the chief constables’ organization – requesting that their international secretary ring Madrid to put extra pressure on the senior officers in north Spain.
It was all he could do. It wasn’t, unfortunately, going to be enough.
The final call made he sat looking out over the rooftops, the window ledge crowded with dusty pigeons.
Valentine, knotting a tie, appeared at the door. ‘Peter. If you want to go it’s time.’
Shaw had put the Porsche through the St James’ car wash and was admiring the reflection of his charcoal grey suit in the paintwork when he heard his name called: Tom Hadden stood at the door of the Ark, one hand beckoning them inside.
‘Peter, George. A few loose ends. And maybe, a new beginning …’
In the centre of the old nave of the Ark stood the hospital drip stand retrieved from 32 Hartington Street, bagged in cellophane and labelled as a forensic exhibit. From a metal filing cabinet Hadden produced another bagged item, a hard plastic paint gun.
‘We needed to cross-match the prints on the gun with Parry’s, which was fine. Positive. There’s no doubt he pulled the trigger.’
He slid the cellophane off the drip stand and showed them the small aluminium tap which had been used to administer the lethal drug.
‘There was a print on this tap, a nice clear crisp one. The tap is lodged in the “on” position, by the way. We could surmise, although it would only be a surmise, that this print belongs to the person who precipitated the death of the last of the Parkwood Six victims, by allowing pentobarbital to flow into their bloodstream … You turn this tap, walk away, and your patient is dead in twenty-five minutes.
‘The hand that turned this tap, gentlemen, was Nano Heaney’s. We took her print under warrant when she was admitted to intensive care at the QE2. There’s no doubt, I’m afraid.’
Which, subtly, changed everything. Shaw still hoped that one day a court would deal with Javi Copon. Apportioning guilt, or blame, in the six Parkwood Springs’ killings required the wisdom of Solomon. He’d always imagined Copon as the enforcer, Dr Roy as the technician, capable of the coldest of cold-blooded killing. And Nano Heaney? He’d seen her as aloof, the creative force, striving for what she thought was merciful, working in the background to provide organization and finance. She’d denied ever being in the house at all. The fact that she’d been there, at the moment of death, transformed the crime.
FORTY-SIX
Nano Heaney had been transferred overnight from the QE2 hospital at Lynn to a private clinic near Sandringham. A prominent, wealthy campaigner for the legalization of euthanasia had stepped forward, publicly, to pay the bill for her care. The police were secretly delighted to be offered a chance to increase security around Heaney, who had been arrested and charged in connection with the six Parkwood Springs deaths. A large crowd had mounted a vigil of support at Lynn from the moment the story broke, occasionally taunted by Pro-Life counter protestors. Fleet Street had, largely, portrayed Heaney as a hero, who’d tried to bring peace to tortured souls, her good intentions corrupted by Dr Roy and Javi Copon: a view reinforced by casual racism. The quality press had devoted feature pages to the problems faced by doctors in the wake of the Shipman scandal, too nervous of prosecution to provide the kind of palliative care which had allowed so many in the past to die peacefully in their sleep.
Shaw let the Porsche swing past the photographers at the gates of Orchid Lodge Hospital, and Valentine adjusted his tie for the TV cameras. The BBC news that morning on Radio 4 had suggested that there was now a majority in the House of Commons, across all parties, for a change in legislation to approve euthanasia and assisted dying. There was also growing support to enact, immediately, changes to the law suggested after Shipman’s arrest which would create a new post – of Medical Examiner, a kind of investigative coroner’s officer. An un-named source in Downing Street had indicated that a vote might take place in the new year. The case of Nano Heaney was cited, and indeed credited, with sparking a wider public debate. The BBC’s Moral Maze would tackle the subject in its next edition.
Shaw and Valentine had interviewed Heaney twice under caution at the QE2, and established a clear picture of her role in the six Parkwood Springs deaths. She had never been to Marsh House, she had never been to Hartington Street. She had helped Dr Roy and Javi Copon identify possible candidates for euthanasia: those in chronic pain or mental anguish. She had never, personally, approached patients. She denied, point-blank, that any other health care officials were involved in the conspiracy. Her share of the financial proceeds had been transferred to the Causeway Trust. The price of euthanasia, in each case, had been set after a discussion with the patient and reflected their resources. However, in no case was it less than £9,000. In several cases, including Beatty Hood’s, it was in excess of £80,000. The victims were assured, Heaney said, that most of the proceeds would be used by the Causeway Trust to campaign for a change in British law.
Heaney had been allocated a room on the first floor, decked out with flowers, with a view over Castle Rising woods. A heart monitor beeped as they entered. Heaney herself was sitting up, cushioned by pillows, a laptop open. The duvet cover was littered with cards and letters, and a complete set of daily newspapers.
‘Shaw, Valentine …’
Shaw noted ice white pajamas, with thin blue stripes. Six days of medication had reduced her weight, so that her bones looked heavier, as if her skin was slightly wasted.
‘I always saw you as a NHS supporter, a stalwart …’ said Shaw, his eyes scanning the room: the coffee table with fresh fruit, a glass cafetière, an Indian rug, the faint echo of classical Musak.
‘The law needs to change, Shaw. The NHS is standing in the way, it represents the Establishment’s red line, across which we cannot step. The private sector’s got a lot to offer in radical, innovative procedures.’
‘Lucrative procedures,’ offered Shaw, taking a seat. ‘Not for your personal gain, for sure. But it was for the campaign, the cause. So it is difficult to argue that you did not profit at all …’
A silence followed. ‘Are we under caution?’ she asked. ‘The lawyers are downstairs in the conference room. A statement’s being drafted on today’s news from Parliament. I should ask for a representative to be present.’
According to that morning’s Daily Telegraph a London law practice had offered to act for Heaney, pro bono.
‘I just wanted to ask a question,’ said Shaw, as she reached for a bedside phone. ‘I wondered, really, if it was straightforward perjury, or if there was a degree of self-delusion, or even clinical delusion. My money, for what it is worth, is on a straightforward lie.’
She looked disappointed and the blood showed in her cheeks, but she said nothing as she slowly replaced the telephone receiver.
‘When I held your head up so that you could speak, in those few minutes which might have been your last in St Seraphim’s, why did you waste what time you had on a lie? Self-justification, perhaps, even so close to death?’
‘Riddles, Shaw. Valentine looks embarrassed. I hope there’s some factual basis to these allegations.’
Shaw tossed Hadden’s forensic report on to the duvet. ‘You can read that at your leisure. In summary your fingerprint was found on the drip stand by the deathbed in Hood’s front room. A clear, primary print. That means you were there, and you were the last to touch it. Which sugge
sts you were there for the whole procedure; there for the moments of final persuasion. Did you have to calm last-minute doubts? Ignore, perhaps, last-minute nerves and questions? The court, I’m sure, will want every detail.’
‘I really do think I need one of those lawyers present.’ Something like anger flooded her eyes. ‘But does it matter, I mean really matter? This is an idea, a principle, not a parlour game: this is about life and death, Shaw. It’s not Cluedo.’
‘I’m not sure the criminal law works that way. But you’ll find out soon enough. Matter? Yes, I think it does. I think a jury will think it matters. I’m pretty certain the chattering classes will think it matters. That’s the thing about a mercy killing, fine in principle, but someone has to do the deed. At the point of death it’s a very personal relationship, between victim and killer. People seem to think that euthanasia is simply a policy you can enact, and then the deed is miraculously done. It isn’t like that, is it? Did Gokak refuse to turn the tap? Is that why your prints are there?’
She picked up and dialled a single digit.
Shaw carried on speaking. ‘People, most people, will see you in a different light. I think that’s going to have repercussions for what we can now call your public persona. Angel of mercy, angel of death. The debate goes on. Let’s see what a jury thinks.’
FORTY-SEVEN
Did they see Javi Copon die? They certainly saw the precise moment when he was lost to view, which might, in Shaw’s opinion, not be quite the same thing. The Policia de Seguranca Publica in Lisbon alerted New Scotland Yard to the website film, having briefed the GNR – the local gendarmerie at Nazare – to take statements at the scene. Emails from the Portuguese resort began to arrive at St James’ early that morning, so the facts were clear enough. Javi Copon had arrived the day before the film was shot and slept in a beachside house with three friends, having completed the purchase of two jet skis from a local supplier – a Yamaha Waverunner, at 13,500 Euro and a Seadoo Rxt at 11,200 Euro. New winter suits and four locally made ‘long boards’ came in at a further 12,000 Euro. All transactions were made in cash, from Copon’s wallet.
The Atlantic sea state was perfect for an attempt on the world record, set by Garrett McNamara exactly a year earlier, at precisely this spot. A swell of fifty-two feet was building to sets of waves in excess of seventy-five feet off Nazare’s North Point. A fresh offshore wind was due to peak at dusk, creating perfect conditions to hold waves up, like glass walls, waiting to trip over the rocks of the continental shelf, and fall – headlong – on to Nazare’s sands. Copon and his three comrades took to the water at 6.35 a.m. from the Old Port. A woman in the beachside chapel, frequented by surfers, said all three had prayed and lit candles, leaving twenty Euro notes in the collection box. Her statement included an odd addition, the observation that surfers seemed to require more holy water than other visitors, splashing it on to the forehead like a fresh, daily baptism.
During the first hour Copon piloted the jet ski, towing his friend along the crest of the brewing waves, darting forward at speed to release the surfer into the path of the breaking water, hurling them down the glassy front of the great waves; recorded by officials from the Nazare Surf Observatory, stationed in the old lighthouse on the point. During those first few hours, in which they took alternate shifts at the controls of the jet ski, they rode waves measured at seventy-seven feet, along with dozens below the seventy foot mark. Their twin pair recorded seventy-six feet and seventy-six-and-a-half feet. Despite higher off-shore wind speeds and a persistent Atlantic swell, afternoon heights declined as the weather deteriorated, a heavy sea mist creating dangerous conditions in the rock-strewn approaches off the point.
At 3.30 p.m., as a premature dusk began to gather, safety marshals called surfers in using a fog horn on the lighthouse. Copon, noting a series of deepening wave troughs, persuaded his comrade to make one last run in the jet ski. This run, with Copon on his long board, was put up on the website and remained captured in thirty-one seconds of film. It showed the grey towering wave front, the plunging white wake of the surf board, Copon’s angled body, the accelerating foam crest, descending under the weight of millions of tonnes of seawater, curling over the frail figure, then obliterating him. For two seconds he reappears, a fleeting image of the arms outstretched, arrow-like, hurtling down the glassy ‘tube’ of the wave, speeding desperately for safety. The tube closes, the wave breaks, the water explodes in plumes and geysers as it runs through the rocks.
The wave height was recorded at eighty feet – a new unofficial world record – because Copon’s body was not found, sucked out by the undertow, plucked free by the coastal drift which no doubt took him north out into the vast expanses of the Bay of Biscay.
A verbatim account of an interview undertaken with Cheyne O’Brien, Copon’s partner, by the local GNR officer, surname Barroso, was forwarded to St James’ via Lisbon.
BARROSO: Why did Copon ignore the marshal’s signal – why did you ignore it?
O’BRIEN: Javi said there was a chance of the record. He said his time had come. God offers you this opportunity, he said this often but he meant it today. The swell of the ocean, the wind off the cliffs, the last few great waves before the darkness falls. He asked me to do this for him, and then wait out at sea. We gave him to fate – yes. Fate did not give him back.
BARROSO: There was no sign of his body once the wave broke?
O’BRIEN: None. I used the searchlight on the jet ski, but the sea then was in shadow, and his body must have slipped past. It was a risk but we always talk about this risk. In the chapel on the beach there is a motto, carved on the door. It is not when you want, it is when God decides.
FORTY-EIGHT
Jan and Lena walked in the shallows, towing Fran on an inflatable raft. Shaw and Valentine sat at one of the picnic tables, a barbecue sizzling a few feet away, across which had been set a dozen kebabs: scallops, prawns, hake and artichoke, sprinkled with olive oil. Shaw tended it before refilling Valentine’s glass with Sancerre.
‘There’s been a series of unfortunate events,’ said Valentine.
‘OK,’ said Shaw, sitting down, facing him across the table. There was something in the tone, and the rehearsed phrase, which made his blood run cold.
‘Not for me, for others,’ said Valentine. ‘Death makes you see things differently. Makes you think,’ he added, heaving in some air. ‘But I’d never thought about my name – the surname. From valere apparently, Jan looked it up, means strong and healthy. There’s loads of saints, of course, droves, going back to God knows when. The romance thing’s modern, well, Chaucer. One of that crowd. Apparently it’s all about the day – February the fourteenth. It’s when birds pair up.’
He looked Shaw in his good eye. ‘Anyway. Point is I didn’t want to lose Jan in the end so I rang the Great Eastern and said I’d like to go for the op after all. Could they get me in under the knife. They had to check the paperwork, see if it was still possible, and I had to hang on. I hung on, like I’ve got a choice. I thought, I’ve missed the slot. One chance, and I’ve just ballsed it up, all because I just wanted to curl up and die. This nurse came on and I had to repeat my details, spell it all out, and then he said he’d call back if I could just sit tight for a few minutes.’
Valentine shook his head, the narrow skull going from sunlight to shadow and back again. ‘I aged, Peter. Right then. I sat on a public bench and watched the clock on the Customs House: eight minutes it took them. A doctor, this time – no, a surgeon, a mister – and he says he’s sorry but there’s been a mistake.
‘I knew then, but I didn’t know if it was good or bad. I remembered the day of the scan, how I’d met the man next to me on the appointment schedule: Juan Roberto Valenciana. I told you about him. I thought then I’d never forget the name, now I’m sure I won’t. The scan that showed the carcinoma, you see, that’s his lung, not mine. I’ve got chronic emphysema, but I knew that. So I said, “I’m all right then.” And this surgeon says, “Yes. You can wa
lk free,” like a joke. “But I have to ring Mr Valenciana and tell him the bad news.”’
Valentine’s facial features struggled to represent a single emotion. ‘Which means that if I hadn’t changed my mind I’d have gone on thinking it was over, and I’d have just waited to die, and Jan would have walked out, because she’s not a quitter, is she? And Juan Roberto would have struggled with the symptoms – the nausea, the vomiting, the fatigue. So it wasn’t bad news at all, because now he’s got a chance, and even if it fails there’ll be palliative care. Although that’s a euphemism I don’t like the sound of anymore. But overall I’m glad I rang. What do those two Aussie’s say on the Foster’s XXXX ad? Good call.’
Shaw turned, watching Jan kicking a splash at Fran.
‘Does Jan know?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She knew I’d made my mind up to go for the op, which is important, at least it feels like it’s important, that she knew I was up for the fight. But the rest, no. I don’t know where to start. I’ll tell her now. She might have a drink. Only she doesn’t usually, but if not now, when?’
Valentine smiled, the full hundred-watt version, which was so rare Shaw decided that this was the moment he’d been waiting for ever since he’d returned to the coast from London and the Met. They had unfinished business, and it couldn’t wait any longer.
He refilled the DS’s glass. ‘I’d come back for the weekend to the house,’ he said, knowing Valentine knew the street well; a playful Victorian villa, on a hill going down to the pier head at Hunstanton, built like the rest to be a guest house, the house he’d been brought up in, the house Jack Shaw died in. The window opposite held its little hanging sign: VACANCIES.
‘It’s hard to recall precisely …’ Valentine was looking out to sea, his face set hard. ‘Dad was in the final stretch, and so what weight there was seemed to pin him down in that bed in the front room upstairs, like he was made of lead, sinking. Mum said you’d stayed with him at night, so she could rest. I tried to help but I got in the way.