Death Watch

by Unknown

‘Can you tell us again, John William?’ asked Lau, putting a hand on his shoulder. Shaw looked into his green eyes, the colour of lichen, floating in watery sockets, like lily-pads. It was the only colour left on him: his skin and thin hair were like parchment and his shirt, which had been washed to destruction, was handkerchief-grey.

  ‘I slept,’ he said. ‘I was tired, like she says. And the food was good.’ He opened his hands and Shaw saw the pale band where a ring had once encircled his wedding finger. ‘Liver and bacon. But I had to pee in the night, I always do. ’Bout ten.’ His mind disengaged from his story for a second, then clicked back into gear. ‘When I came back in I saw a match flare – someone smoking. That’s against the rules. He didn’t see me – and there was noise outside, so he didn’t hear. I thought, something’s up.’ He searched their faces, checking that this was what they wanted to hear. ‘So I got close – in the shadows.’

  He grinned, showing wrecked teeth.

  ‘What did you see, John William?’ said Shaw patiently.

  ‘There was a man, standing beside one of us – one I’d seen at the meal, everyone called him Blanket because he had this old grey thing, like a horse blanket, but he wore it, like a poncho.’ He shook his head, still scandalized by the impropriety. ‘He had long hair, so you could hardly see his face. That’s against the rules too – so I don’t know what’s going on.’

  It was Valentine’s turn to act as prompt. ‘And did they talk, these two?’

  ‘Yes. He was sat hunched, Blanket, smoking too. And then this stranger, the outsider, he said…’

  John William looked into the middle distance, trying to get the words just right. ‘He said, “That’s the deal – take it or leave it. Like you’ll get better.”’

  ‘Then?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘This Blanket smoked the fag, and then when he was done he looked away and said, “I’ll leave it.” – No. “I’ll leave it – so should you…” Yeah, that was it. And he started to get back in his bedroll, but then I saw the other man lift something out of his jacket – a spanner? I don’t know. Anyway, he hit him. Not hard, but enough…’ He touched the back of his head. ‘Then he got him under the arm and he took him out, through the side door, into the dark.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘I was scared,’ he said. ‘Really scared. I went back to the loo and hid. I thought he might come back – and Liam, the warden, he’s always…’ He leant forward, lowering his voice. ‘He’s on stuff…’ he said, making small ‘mad’ circles with one finger at his temple. ‘He’s always asleep, so I just went back to bed – but this morning, at breakfast, I told him then.’

  He looked at Shaw, the lily-pads floating. ‘I should have done something last night – I’m sorry now I didn’t.’

  Shaw stood. ‘Show me, show me where you saw the torchlight.’

  John William shuffled out into the nave, holding his trousers up with one hand even though he had a belt. He took them up the aisle and then to one side, where a small altar held an alabaster Virgin. On the floor was one of the church’s standard bedrolls.

  ‘Here,’ he said.

  Shaw could see his hands were shaking, and his body above the waist swung rhythmically from side to side.

  ‘Thank you, John William. Is there anything else you can tell us about what you saw – anything unusual, perhaps, about the outsider?’ he asked. ‘Height? Age?’

  The tramp shook his head. ‘I didn’t see him – just a shape in the shadows. He had the torch in his hand so all the light kind of went away from him.’

  ‘Clothes?’ prompted Valentine.

  ‘There was a noise,’ said John William, ignoring the question, suddenly animated by the realization he might, after all, be of some use. ‘His shoes – I noticed that because he did everything else so quietly. But when he dragged Blanket out I could hear them, on the wooden floor, like a tap-dancer’s.’

  ‘Metallic?’ asked Shaw, almost in a whisper.

  ‘That’s it. Yes – drive me mad, shoes like that, like you were being followed everywhere by yourself.’

  Shaw and Valentine stood back, both trying to see if it was possible, trying to see if the man who had killed Bryan Judd at the hospital had time to get back to Erebus Street and abduct the homeless Blanket. And if it was possible, which it was, then why?

  Lau led John William away, an arm under his elbow, keeping him on his feet, taking him down to sit with the other men. Then she came back, rattling a silver bracelet on her wrist, getting down on one knee by the bedroll. There was a Tesco bag under the bench, and she slipped on a driving glove and lifted it out. But she’d left something behind, so light it almost fluttered out when she moved the bag – a £50 note on the parquet floor.

  Shaw was down on his knees too, and Valentine stood back so he could see as well.

  ‘OK, let’s get Tom here,’ said Shaw. ‘Bag that for a start. I take it Blanket isn’t this character’s real name?’

  ‘It might as well be, sir,’ said Lau. ‘We just don’t know. To qualify for the doss they have to fill in a form. But Kennedy – the warden – is clearly no stickler for the rules. Blanket’s was pretty much, well, blank. He put thirty-six for age, Middlesbrough for place of birth, and as his former residence before here, Newcastle.’

  She looked inside the Tesco bag. There was a carpeted step in front of the small side-altar and on it she arranged the five objects in the bag.

  A picture in a wooden frame without glass. A child, pale with black hair, on a man’s knee. Blanket had clearly been touching the face of the man, because it was gone now, smudged into a pale, featureless oval.

  Lau nodded. ‘I reckon he’s ten, eleven years old – the kid. There’s a date on the back: April, 1984. So it could be our missing man.’ Next, a folding fisherman’s knife made by a French company – Opinel – the handle well worn. Then a National Express bus timetable; a packet of Nice biscuits, and a copy of Moby Dick. Inside was a library sticker, the due date a week away.

  The blanket-coat still hung from its impromptu hook. It was filthy, heavy with engrained dirt. Shaw took it down, twisted it, so that they could all see that there was a mark on the back; in chalk, a single vertical rectangle, narrowly drawn, with a wispy elliptical circle just over the top, like a fat dot on a wide letter ‘i’.

  ‘That’s odd too,’ said Shaw. ‘Someone’s drawn that.’

  ‘It’s a candle,’ said Valentine.

  Liam Kennedy walked up the aisle from the altar carrying a tray with mugs. He had on a fresh T-shirt, this one with a VSO logo.

  He took orders, then handed out teas, adding sugar and milk to taste. Then he stood, mug in one hand, the other tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. Shaw thought that now, in the daylight, after a night’s sleep, he looked younger, fresher. A teenager. He’d handed Shaw a tea – white with sugar. Shaw always took it black without. He sensed that Kennedy was one of those infuriating people who enjoy bouts of complete self-confidence without any justification.

  ‘You’re not exactly running a tight ship here, Mr Kennedy. No proper documentation for this man who’s gone missing. And his violent abduction unreported – largely because the men here seem to think they can’t wake you up at night. You were here?’

  Kennedy’s good humour froze on his face, but he seemed to fight back the inclination to meet Shaw’s accusations with anything other than humility.

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes. The paperwork’s never been my strong point, and Blanket was a difficult case. He wouldn’t tell us his name, so if I followed the rules I’d have to deny him a bed, or food, which seemed unfair.’

  Kennedy saw John William still sitting on the pew, waiting to give his statement, his head buried in his hands. Kennedy said he’d be a moment, and went to sit beside him, an arm along the shoulder. They heard sobbing and looked away. Shaw thought how often flawed people led flawless lives.

  When Kennedy returned Shaw got back to the question, but he couldn’t keep a note of conciliation out of his vo
ice. ‘This happened about ten – John William seems to think you were asleep then – but that’s not right, is it?’

  Kennedy looked at his trainers. ‘Not at all – although I would be most days. I take medication.’ The admission seemed to diminish him, and he looked younger still. ‘I was outside – by the abattoir actually, watching the street. You could tell, couldn’t you? That something might kick off. So I took a coffee outside, and just watched. There’s a low wall by the corner of the street – I often sit there, before bed. I’m usually asleep by nine – bit later; but yes, I stayed up. When I saw the flames at the hostel I went to see if I could help, and I popped into the presbytery because I knew Father Martin was in and he needed to know. He phoned the fire brigade. When the ambulance came I went up to the Queen Vic with Aidan. Then I came back and talked to you downstairs.’

  ‘How did you know Father Martin was in?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘I’d seen a light earlier, and I’d noticed, because of the power cut. Father Martin has this old lantern, oil fired. I think it’s a family heirloom. The light’s multicoloured.’

  Valentine scuffed his slip-ons across the parquet flooring. ‘Where was the light?’

  Kennedy swallowed hard. ‘Bedroom.’ He stirred his tea, adding sugars from little paper packages that he’d collected in a dish.

  ‘We need to find this man – the one called Blanket – Mr Kennedy,’ said Shaw. ‘Can you tell us anything more about him, anything that wasn’t on his form?’

  Kennedy sat, composed himself, as if he were a prisoner in the dock. ‘Most of these men are short on words, Inspector. I doubt I heard him string three together. He wouldn’t give us a name, as I said, which is why he got the label he did. Alcohol he didn’t touch, that was clear. His mind was good and he read a lot of the time – we get a travelling library. Good stuff, too. I always try to notice so that there’s something to talk about – Buchan, Innes, Greene. It’s odd: if they do read, these men, then it’s often the best.’ He laughed, shrugging his shoulders.

  ‘And he’d been here how long?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘Two weeks – I can check the record. But about that.’

  ‘Description?’

  Kennedy laughed. ‘Well, that’s a sore point. Once the men have been here a few days we insist they get their hair cut – it’s a health issue. Most of them have been on the streets for years so there are various skin complaints, lice, that kind of thing. But Blanket said he wasn’t having that – that he’d leave if we made him. We just agreed to differ. I hoped he’d come round. And he was pretty clean – he used the showers at the town baths. But the hair stayed, and the beard. He looked like Ben Gunn.’

  Another hidden face, thought Shaw.

  ‘But Middlesbrough – so an accent?’ said Valentine.

  ‘Not really. Ask the men – they’ll say the same. One or two are from up north and they said no way was he from Teesside, or Tyneside, for that matter. And there was something else. It was weird.’ He pressed his narrow knees together. ‘The first day he arrived it was mid-morning and we lock the church between ten and four – usually, anyway. But he rang, and I came out. I said he could come back at four, but he could fill in the form now – it saves time, and people get upset when all they want is to grab a bed and some food and they have to fill in a questionnaire. I watched him walk off. He went down the gravel path round the back of the church, there’s a bench there – wrought iron, Victorian. Anyway, the point is you can’t see it from the street. But he went straight there. Sat in the shadows, filled in his form, then stretched out for a sleep. He knew, you see. But he said he’d never been here before. He said that a lot.’

  22

  Shaw was standing by the Land Rover, a polystyrene cup of coffee balanced on the roof, when his mobile buzzed; he looked at the incoming ID – it was Tom Hadden, calling on the landline from the Ark. He picked up the call, watching Valentine in the distance briefing the door-to-door teams on what they’d discovered at the Sacred Heart.

  ‘Peter. Look, I’ve got some tests back on the waste bag found under Judd’s body.’

  Shaw didn’t speak, trying to refocus his mind on the scene in the Queen Victoria’s incinerator room, the blackened corpse shivering as it trundled out of the furnace.

  ‘It’s a human kidney, Peter – or at least what’s left of one.’

  Shaw’s hand moved involuntarily to his back.

  ‘But the real conundrum is that, as far as Justina and I can be sure, this kidney is in no way diseased. It should be working away keeping someone alive. But it isn’t. It’s been discarded – and I don’t think that makes much sense.’

  ‘Unless…’

  ‘Well. Let’s take it step by step, backwards. Someone has deliberately falsified the documentation on the waste bag to slip this organ into the incinerator. Either that or they opened a bag on the belt and switched the contents. This organ has been surgically removed, and the only possible reason that would happen – if it is a healthy organ – is that it was being readied for transplant. A transplant that didn’t happen.’

  The words echoed in Shaw’s head. Organ transplant. He felt they’d crossed a Rubicon; but the image was in colour, the river red.

  ‘Bryan Judd died with this thing under his body,’ said Shaw. ‘He was either holding it, and didn’t let go, or it was deliberately put with the body.’ It was a statement, not a question, and Hadden greeted it in silence.

  Even in the noonday sun Shaw shivered, the hairs on his neck bristling, because his mind had only just made the big leap. He thought about the stifling smoke in the upstairs bedroom at number 6 Erebus Street, the fumes pouring through the gaps in the bare floorboards, the figure of Pete Hendre, curled in a foetal ball under the window ledge, and his whispered plea to make sure his face stayed hidden; hidden for ever, from the Organ Grinder.

  He thanked Hadden, briefed him on what they’d found in the church, and asked if he could get a team on the scene as soon as resources allowed.

  Twenty minutes later he was in a lift rising to the eighth floor of the main block of the Queen Victoria. He stepped out when a bell pinged, escaping the piped-in Bach and a trolley on which lay a man heading for theatre, his face mirroring the helpless fear he must have been feeling within. Shaw thought just how trusting you had to be to lie on a stretcher, to let strangers decide where to take you, and then to let them put you to sleep – the definition, surely, of ‘defenceless’. And that awful double-edged euphemism: ‘put to sleep’.

  Mrs Jofranka Phillips, head of surgical services, had an office in the executive suite. The whole floor was air-conditioned, and the sudden chill made Shaw feel uneasy. The door was open, the office an uncluttered glass box empty but for a desk, a filing cabinet, and a full-sized skeleton hanging from an aluminium stand. Phillips stood five foot two in – Shaw noticed – her stockinged feet. She shook his hand and he thought that surgeons always had hands like that – the fingers preternaturally long, slender. And that stillness, an ability to remain calm at the very moment when ordinary people would begin to shake, as they made the first incision.

  Shaw took a seat, noticing the skeleton had hands like that too.

  ‘Thanks for seeing me so quickly,’ he said. ‘My CSI team have passed on the details…?’

  She nodded. ‘I thought we should talk,’ she said. She looked him squarely in the face and saw the dead eye for the first time, her familiarity with trauma reducing her reaction to the merest flicker of her eyelids.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Shaw raised a hand. ‘I realize you have responsibilities in the hospital but we’re dealing with a murder scene here – and now with the discovery of a human organ without the relevant documentation. I’ve talked to my superior at St James’s – Superintendent Warren – and to the chairman of the primary care trust…’

  He flipped through his notes but she didn’t have the patience for that.

  ‘Sir John Falcon,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Him. And we’re all agreed th
at these two issues are now inextricably entwined.’

  Phillips looked shocked, and she couldn’t stop a hand rising to cover her mouth.

  ‘So I’m going to investigate all of these issues in the round, as it were – with your help. I can rely on your assistance?’

  He’d been brutal, but it was the only way. There was no point pretending anyone was in charge of this inquiry except him. What he hadn’t said was that Sir John Falcon had made it clear that any inquiry within the hospital would have to involve clinical experts brought in from other hospitals. Phillips would be answering questions, not asking them – although he’d added an encomium to the effect that she was one of the finest surgeons in the NHS and that they were very lucky to have her on the staff. Don’t be fooled by the ‘Mrs’, he’d added – it didn’t mean she was married, it meant she was a surgeon. ‘So don’t call her doctor,’ he’d warned, laughing, ‘because that is an insult.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Phillips. She touched the phone on her desk and Shaw guessed she’d thought about arguing the toss with Falcon, but decided it was a lost cause. ‘I’ll do anything I can.’ Her accent was heavy – Cypriot, perhaps. Luxuriant black hair was swept back off her face, a contrast to the white clinical coat and pale-olive skin. Her jewellery was black too, a jet stone bracelet, and a black pendant necklace. Black and white, light and darkness – Shaw sensed this was a person who dealt in certainties, or sought them out. But the eyes, an extraordinary luminous grey, made sure that light was the dominant force, and it was in her eyes that Shaw could see a fine intelligence.

  ‘What have you done already?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve notified the Human Tissue Authority, Lynn Primary Care Trust, and the Department of Health. A team from HTA will undertake an audit of our tissue and organ bank within the next forty-eight hours. In the meantime I’ve had it closed. The locks are sealed. No one is to enter without my written approval. The press office have prepared a release, but it won’t go out until I say so.’

  Any note of resentment at Shaw’s hijacking of the inquiry had disappeared from her voice. He sensed a woman whose self-confidence was robust, and anything but fragile.