Death Watch

by Unknown

  Trance’s torch beam shone directly ahead, not strong enough to reach the distant sharp turn. The rats, uncannily, were always on the edge of the light, a faint shimmering movement, retreating as the men advanced. But the noise was there if you listened for it, a feral, high-pitched chorus, just on the borderline of the inaudible. Trance used the pick-up stick to bag a few dead rats, a supermarket bag, and the shreds of a shell-suit. They trudged on, all of them smoking now, the turning in the tunnel coming into view, a graceful 90-degree angle in arched brick. They regrouped and Beadle poured coffee – black – because the milk always went off in the summer and anyway the acrid, unadulterated caffeine helped take away the taste of salt on their lips.

  Now they were at the elbow-turn they could see the tidal grid, a perfect half moon exactly the same shape as the tunnel, beyond it the pale glow of daylight in the channel of the Purfleet. But it wasn’t a perfect grid, it never was, because the tide brought flotsam in, which stuck in the metal grating, so that the little squares of light were often fogged. One day they’d found the rotting carcass of a dog on the grid, and there’d been mattresses, and fishing buoys, and the flesh of a basking shark. Jessop – the supervisor back at the depot – had worked on the SDM crew in the seventies, and he said once a coaster had gone down on the sands in the Wash and the cargo had clogged the grids all along the Cut – women’s knickers, bras, sexy stuff. But they’d never been that lucky.

  They trudged forward and the rats funnelled away into the channels which fed the main sewer, giving up the ground to the crabs which scuttled out of the mud of the Purfleet. For the crew this was the worst bit, and the main reason they wore the heavy boots, so that when the shells cracked with every step it didn’t feel so immediate, so like a killing. But even then they avoided the larger specimens: green-shelled shore crabs a foot across which made an odd hollow tumping sound when they scuttled, the carapace rocking on the brick floor. Trance began to sing, something tuneless and angry. Beadle smoked manically, chalking up a code on the wall to prove they’d been down.

  Trance waded through the clicking, snapping crabs until they were twenty feet from the grid. But it was Freeman who made them look. ‘Well,’ he said, loosening the bandanna he always wore around his neck. ‘It was bound to happen one day.’

  Almost exactly at the centre of the semi-circle of the grid was a human body, spread-eagled like a sky-jumper, left hanging by the tide.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Beadle, fumbling for his mobile. He looked round, then unfolded a map. They all shuffled forward to get a better look. It was a man, in jogging pants and a T-shirt that looked too big. The face had been pressed up to the grid and by chance the mouth filled one of the open squares so that they could see teeth, and a dark gullet, but the lips were colourless. He was hanging there because he had something round his wrist, like a charity bracelet, white, strong, and caught on one of the grid’s metal edges. And one of his legs had gone through the grid, and broken below the knee, so that a bone showed, but again the flesh was colourless even where the muscle and flesh were exposed.

  ‘Weird,’ said Trance, a smile widening as he imagined himself telling his mates that night at the Globe.

  But they couldn’t really see any detail because the body was up against the light, a silhouette, the light beyond blinding now that the sun had risen, and was bouncing off the water. Outside, on the distant quayside, they could hear the sounds of everyday life: a car alarm, seagulls, a buzz of muzak.

  ‘Why’s it moving?’ said Beadle, stepping back, catching his heel and falling. It was a nightmare, to be down there in the crabs, thrashing, feeling their shells and legs, unable to get a hand down to the brick floor. He felt a fool but he screamed, and went on screaming, until Freeman and Trance helped him up, hauling him by the arm, laughing.

  Then they all looked again. And it was moving, because the crabs had latched onto the skin as the water level fell, and now they were stranded up there, although every second or two a few would fall. It was like when they’d been kids, and you dangled rotten bacon over the dockside and waited for the crabs to latch on, but when you pulled it clear of the water you always lost some, dropping off, plopping into the water.

  So many crabs had clung on that the edges of the man were moving against the light, like he was an animated sketch, shivering in the light.

  Then the wristband broke, the body swung to the left, then out, then down, into the mud. A few crabs were left on the mesh, like an outline at a murder scene, a surreal confirmation that they’d seen what they’d really seen.

  Freeman kicked one of the crabs up in the air so that it hit the wall with a crack. But Trance waded forward because he’d seen the wristband drop. He picked it up – and saw that it bore three stencilled letters…

  MVR.

  13

  Sergeant Ernest ‘Timber’ Woods had let George Valentine bring a bacon sandwich into the records room. They’d worked together in the seventies with Jack Shaw. But Timber was never in their league: he couldn’t catch a cold without uniformed assistance. He’d embraced early retirement and a nice little job to pay for his domino nights at the Institute – he was working the early shift that day: six till noon. West Norfolk had still to secure government funding to transfer all the force records to computer. Anything before 1995 was still on paper. So they needed Woods and the dusty box files which filled the old gunpowder magazines under St James’s – a Grade II listed relic of the barracks which had stood on the spot before the city walls had been demolished to make way for police headquarters.

  Valentine had got two hours’ sleep at his desk, his feet up, then he’d gone out to the bus station to get his breakfast. He’d brought Woods a tea and a round of toast and dripping wrapped in silver paper.

  ‘Missing person, you say?’ asked Woods, pulling himself up from behind the steel desk they’d given him. He was built like an armchair and walked like a fisherman, with a roll of the shoulders.

  ‘Not my case, Timber, but I think Jack was involved. And Erebus Street – I know that address.’ Valentine followed, the aisles of shelves opening up on the left and right. The room itself was as long as a Tube carriage, with a barrel roof in fine brick, spotlit, the side aisles leading off for a distance of about thirty feet. It was as quiet as libraries used to be, before banks of PCs introduced a patter of keystrokes.

  ‘It’s got to be the early nineties,’ said Valentine. ‘It’s before I teamed up with Jack – I know that. That was ’94. I’d have been a DI – so that’s after ’91.’

  Woods came to a halt. ‘Right – there’s one of these for each year; missing persons in alphabetical order.’ He tapped a printed sheet inside a metal frame holder. ‘Here’s 1990 – then go that way,’ he added, pointing down the room. ‘I’ll eat my toast,’ he said, hobbling away.

  Valentine didn’t know if he’d recognize the name. But he liked long shots, especially when he was this tired. It was like gambling, a kind of listless excitement. There was nothing on 1990 – from Brent to Wynch. Or 1991. He was at the bottom of the list for 1992 when he knew his concentration had gone. He pressed two fingers on either side of his nose, and read them again. And there it was: JUDD, N. J.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, the adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. ‘Family secrets.’

  He found the box file using the code provided. There was a table and chair at the end of the aisle. He set his packet of Silk Cut to one side, the lighter beside it, and opened the file in the box to the first page, a typed sheet with a single line…

  Investigating officer: DCI Jack Shaw.

  It took him an hour to read the file: thirty-two pages, including a Home Office forensics report. When he’d finished he gave it back to Timber Woods without comment – simply asking for a copy of the notes and enlargements of all the pictures – then got the lift to the canteen, which opened at seven. He ordered the full English, and a mug of tea, and methodically ate, reordering what he’d read into a coherent timeline. Then, out on the fire escap
e platform, he lit the long-delayed Silk Cut and rehearsed the whole story of Norma Jean Judd as the nicotine cut in, making his heart race and his vision suddenly sharpen. In his mind he formed a précis of the story ready to give Shaw.

  Norma Jean Judd was fifteen years old when she disappeared; fifteen years nine months. Her home address was number 14 Erebus Street – the house occupied by her twin brother until his violent death. Norma Jean was last seen alive on a summer’s afternoon in 1992. She was at Lynn Community College but on a day-release scheme in hairdressing – NVQ Level 2. She’d been at Fringe Benefits, the hairdressers on the London Road, from 10 o’clock that morning until 3.45 that afternoon. Colleagues said she’d always been tidy, dutiful, and polite. That day, however, she’d been unusually quiet – a trait which had been deepening for several weeks. She’d explained that she was worried about her exams. She’d walked home. A neighbour saw her in Erebus Street at 4.30, talking to a neighbour, a man called Jan Orzsak. The witness said their voices had been raised and that Norma Jean appeared upset by the encounter. She ran home to number 14. She was never seen again by anyone outside her family. To get home she’d run past the launderette where her mother – Marie – worked. Her father, Andy, was outside the Crane, drinking at one of the tables set on the pavement, having completed a shift working on the dockside. The gates had then offered direct access to the quayside. He saw she was upset, and followed her into the house.

  It was not a happy house. The problem was Norma Jean: attractive, precocious, and independent, and four months pregnant. The father was Ben Ruddle, of number 31 Erebus Street. He was nineteen at the time, in a young offenders’ centre up the coast at Boston, awaiting trial for burglary. Andy Judd wanted her to keep the baby. Marie, her mother, wanted her to have a termination. A brief note from Norma Jean’s doctor was included in the file; it confirmed that another GP had been asked to review the case notes on the grounds that a request had been made by the patient – on 1 September – for the doctors to consider a termination under the 1967 Abortion Act, on the grounds of the damage it would cause to the mental health of the mother.

  In his statement to police Andy Judd said he’d gone home, found Norma Jean crying on her bed, and had comforted her. Norma Jean said – according to her father – that she was upset and confused about what to do about the child. Andy said he’d run himself a bath because he and his wife were planning a night out at St Luke’s – the Catholic club in nearby Roseberry Street. While he was in the bathroom he heard Norma Jean going down the stairs – he said he presumed she was making herself a cup of tea. But when he came down he found her gone, the back door still open into the yard they shared with the launderette.

  Marie Judd, in her statement made that evening to DCI Jack Shaw, corroborated her husband’s version of events. She’d said she’d seen Norma Jean crossing the yard at about 5 o’clock – it had to be before that because one of her friends had come into the launderette to listen to the local weather forecast on the radio. They both wanted to hear it because they’d planned a trip to the beach at Heacham the next day – a Sunday.

  Andy Judd went back to the Crane. The landlord said he was certain he was back by 5.30 p.m. It was the mother who raised the alarm when she went home to get ready to go out at 7.30 p.m. There was no sign of her daughter. She rang friends, and – after dragging her husband out of the pub – they checked neighbours as well. At 9.30 p.m. they called the police.

  The prime suspect was Jan Orzsak. Aged forty-eight. An engineer. Polish. A bachelor whose mother had died two years previously. When she was much younger, he’d made friends with Norma Jean and a few of the other children in the street. They went to his house to see his tropical fish. Orzsak said he’d asked Norma Jean to feed the fish while he’d been out of the country on an assignment for the company he worked for – in Africa, installing a power plant in a village near Lagos. When he got back the fish were dead. She’d lost the key he’d given her. He admitted they’d argued in the street. Orzsak said he’d simply expressed his disappointment. CID had him in that first night while an extensive house-to-house search was conducted. He was released without charge the next morning. While a back alley did link Norma Jean’s yard to Orzsak’s house, there was no forensic evidence she’d been in his house that evening.

  Nothing was ever heard of her again.

  Jack Shaw had next hauled the father – Andy – into St James’s. Marie Judd, re-interviewed, admitted that there had been family arguments about the baby. The issue was deeply divisive. Marie Judd was from a sprawling Irish Catholic family. She’d watched her own mother worn down by bearing eleven children: three boys and eight girls. Her death at fifty-eight had been a release from grinding poverty. It was a fate Marie was determined her daughter would not share. Her father, a teetotal wages clerk at one of Dublin’s linen mills, had seen in the size of his family the only evidence that his life had been a success. Andy, as devout a worshipper at the Sacred Heart as his wife, could walk away from the consequences of childbirth; he considered all forms of abortion to be infanticide.

  The CID team asked themselves the obvious question: had Andy, on that last evening, discovered that his daughter had finally decided to take her mother’s advice? Had an argument turned to violence?

  It wouldn’t have been the first time. Andy Judd had a violent criminal record; often linked to alcohol abuse. In 1984 he’d been convicted on a charge of ABH – he’d coshed a workmate from the docks with an empty beer bottle after an argument over a card game in one of the North End pubs. In 1993 he’d been before the magistrates court on three counts of breaching the peace – all in the Crane. Each time excessive alcohol consumption had reduced his ability to inflict serious injuries on those he’d attacked. He’d been fined, and placed on community service orders. More than one neighbour was prepared to go on the record to say that the sounds of a fight had been heard in the Judds’ house two days before Norma Jean had gone missing: a scream, glass breaking.

  But despite an extensive forensic sweep of the house no evidence could be found of a violent struggle, let alone murder. If he had killed his daughter, where had he put the body in the few minutes during which he’d an opportunity to cover his tracks? And there was Marie Judd’s eyewitness account of seeing Norma Jean alive leaving the house. She insisted her husband was not capable of hurting their daughter and had never struck her, despite the bitter family row over the unborn child. Jack Shaw had believed Marie Judd’s statement, although the suspicion would always linger that she might have been persuaded to lie to protect her husband.

  If they couldn’t find a killer perhaps there was another possibility: had Norma Jean simply left home? She’d talked to at least one school friend about running away. But extensive checks on buses, trains, and the major roads out of Lynn drew a blank. The Garda visited relatives in Dublin to make sure she had not fled across the Irish Sea. The file on Norma Jean Judd remained open for almost two years. There was a single sighting of the teenager in 1993 after an extensive poster campaign in eastern England. She was ‘seen’ buying Hello! in Peterborough by a woman who ran a newsagent’s. Hello! was Norma Jean’s favourite magazine. The woman said she was ‘nearly certain’ it was the girl in the poster. Lynn police set up a mobile unit outside the cathedral for two weeks, and a leaflet campaign was mounted in the city, but no other sighting – however tenuous – was ever reported. Belated checks on the witness uncovered the fact that her own daughter had gone missing in 1981. She had received a single card, postmarked Canterbury, asking her not to worry. She had been receiving intermittent treatment ever since for depression.

  Valentine finished his cigarette and threw it from the metal fire escape outside the canteen, watching it corkscrew down five floors to the St James’s car park. What did Norma Jean’s story tell him about the dead man – her twin brother Bryan? What did it tell him about the Judds? Only, perhaps, that they were a family who lived with a secret and a question: if Norma Jean was dead, did her killer live amongst t
hem? Or just a few doors away?

  He asked himself how many families could withstand that kind of distrust, that intensity of internal tension, before blowing itself apart. And he knew the answer was none.

  14

  Shaw had slept fitfully until six, then, relishing the cool air, he’d left Lena in bed, running to the Land Rover along the high-tide mark. The team would be in place at the murder incident room at the Queen Vic at seven. He had an hour. He’d considered a swim, but a single image made him hesitate – the lights going out at the presbytery beside the Sacred Heart of Mary the night before. He’d found the interview with Liam Kennedy unsettling; he sensed he’d been told less than the whole truth, worse – that Kennedy was an unreliable witness, someone unable to see the difference between reality and the world in his own head. He wanted to get to the parish priest before he’d had an opportunity to discuss with the hostel warden what had happened in Erebus Street. Shaw closed his blind eye, massaging the lid. He wanted two views of Aidan Holme, not one, merged.

  In the dawn light Erebus Street was desolate, the blackened ruins of number 6 no longer smouldering, the debris cleared from the road, the light outside the launderette, thrown out of sequence by the power cut, flashing now despite the low sun slanting in as it rose above the slaughterhouse on the corner. Shaw picked his way through the headstones in the small walled graveyard to the front door of the presbytery, which was painted locomotive green, and stood open.

  Shaw called down the hall. A light spilt from a doorway showing piles of newspapers, magazines, and food supplies – tins of Fanta, baked beans, tomato soup, and toilet rolls.

  He could hear a voice, just one half of a conversation.