Death Watch

by Unknown

  From the sideboard drawer he brought a box full of newspaper cuttings. He gave one to Shaw – the Lynn News for September 1980. Bluebell ‘Toy Library’ Silver Jubilee – the picture was a crowd of children’s faces, a younger Jan Orzsak in the background holding a giant teddy bear, a woman beside him with the same face – like a moon, with a ring of fat at the neck.

  Orzsak took the cutting back, went to put it in the box, then slowly tore it in half and went out of the room, returning with a set of keys attached to a ring in the shape of Mickey Mouse. He was crying, but he did it casually, as if it was of no note.

  ‘CRB checked?’ asked Valentine.

  He shook his head. ‘We began back in the eighties – no checks then. Then, when it was required, I was wary, because of Norma Jean. My arrest was on record – it may have been enough. And since my arrest there have always been those who gossip, build bricks from straw. So when the hospital asked I said I’d been cleared by the church – St Casimir.’ He glanced up at the oil painting. ‘I just never took them the paperwork and they didn’t require it of me. I…’ he thought carefully about the right words. ‘I support the unit – with my time, with some money.’

  He went to the window and leant on the TV – a flat-screen, latest technology.

  ‘So I lied. The last thing I wanted was the police here. Again.’ He cast a murderous look at Valentine. ‘An innocent lie,’ he said. ‘But it damns me. You will have to tell them. They will ask me the questions they must ask. And now I am condemned because I lied – and why did I lie, they will ask. They must not take risks. And I am a risk now. So – it’s over, that part of my life. Thank you for that.’ He was still looking at Valentine, but he handed the keys to Shaw. ‘Take these back for me – the Toy Library’s below Sunshine Ward, on Level One. This is all they need. Perhaps you could tell them I am unwell. But that is up to you. I was there on Sunday – as your picture shows – and there were several witnesses. I didn’t leave the library.’

  Valentine, frustrated by the neat confession, couldn’t keep a note of disgust out of his voice. ‘And you have no sexual interest in these children? How about Norma Jean?’ He felt a sudden duty to ask the questions Jack Shaw would have asked if he was still alive – because if Jack had crushed this man’s fingers to get to the truth then Valentine knew he’d had good cause. He’d looked in his eyes and seen something that night in 1992; something hooded, something cruel.

  Shaw felt sick, as if he was watching a blood sport. They should leave; Orzsak’s alibi was likely to be rock solid. They could charge him with obstruction for the lie, but they didn’t have the time to waste. And it wasn’t likely that Orzsak would change his story about Norma Jean after eighteen years of silence.

  ‘I didn’t hurt that child. I’ve never hurt a child.’ Orzsak stood back, rounding his slumped shoulders as if facing a bully in the street. ‘Your suggestion disgusts me.’

  ‘Why did you stay here, in this street?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘Leaving would be a confession.’ Orzsak’s eyes widened, and his chin came up, determined, despite Valentine’s aggression, to have his say. ‘I have nothing to confess. Have you asked him why he’s still here? Andy Judd? Asked him why he lives on this street? Asked him where he put his daughter’s body? I think he guards it.’ He dropped the torn picture into the cold grate. ‘He’ll rot in the hell I know God has made ready for him.’

  29

  On the doorstep they stood in the sun. Shaw thought the smell of heated pavements was the best thing about the city. Opposite, the Bentinck Launderette was open for business. He could see a woman working inside, on her knees, pulling sheets from a drier – but it wasn’t Ally Judd. He checked the tide watch: it was one o’clock. They had two hours before meeting Peploe at Theatre Seven. Time for a working lunch.

  ‘Let’s get a sandwich,’ he said, heading for the Crane.

  The pub was full, every table taken, mostly workmen off the dockside. One had his feet up on a stool, the soles of his boots showing. As Shaw ordered, Valentine touched his shoulder. ‘Check the boots,’ he said. ‘Must be pretty common on the quay.’

  Each boot sole was encrusted with blakeys, the steel plates used to protect the shoe from wear and tear. One of the dockers saw Shaw’s glance, and put one boot down, the sole cracking on the wooden floor.

  The landlord left the one-armed bandit in order to serve them: a pint for Valentine, a half of Guinness for Shaw. They left two cheese sandwiches under a glass dome and bought crisps and nuts instead.

  There was enough noise in the room to talk unheard.

  ‘Andy Judd not in?’ asked Shaw, not even bothering to flash the warrant card. The landlord was hairless, scrubbed, with a sovereign ring on the hand he used to pull the beer, a clean blue shirt with a white collar, open at the neck. An old-fashioned publican, keeping up appearances.

  ‘No. Maybe he saw you coming, which is bad news. He’s a bloody good customer. Best I’ve got.’

  ‘Dodgy liver,’ said Valentine.

  ‘Yeah. It’ll kill him. They won’t give him a new one either – not till he stops drinking. Day he does that he’ll be as stiff as this counter.’ He tapped it once, letting the ring crack against the wood.

  ‘You here when the kid went missing?’ asked Valentine, leaning familiarly on the bar, playing with a packet of Silk Cut. ‘In ’92? Mr…?’

  ‘Shannon. Patrick – it’s over the door.’ He poured himself a drink in a small glass which might have held a half-pint, but probably less. ‘I was here when she was born, mate. We had a party in the street. Twins. That was a bash. I’m Bry’s godfather – bugger all that means.’ He laughed, shaking his head.

  ‘And Sean – the eldest. What about him?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘You think it did for Andy, losing the kid, you should of seen what it did to Sean. He was at sea – but they got a message to him, flew him back from somewhere… Rosyth, maybe. Kept wandering the streets trying to find her. On the rough lots, looking in fridges, or down on the Fleet, poking around in the mud. It didn’t make sense, but he never forgave himself – he’d always looked out for her. Bryan – he was just close, like they were one person. But Sean, he’d been the big brother, the guardian. Then one day, six months after she’d gone, maybe a bit more, he just went. He couldn’t take it, all the reminders – and he couldn’t look at Bry.’ He served someone else, then came back, rearranging a bar towel. ‘Paper says he went in the furnace – that right?’

  Valentine nodded, pushing some coins over the counter for some pork scratchings.

  The landlord cleaned glasses manically, twisting a clean cloth.

  ‘Happy couple, right – Bryan and Ally?’ asked Shaw, leaning on the bar, timing the question to match a gush of silver coughed up by the one-armed bandit.

  The landlord leant over the bar, the cloth twisted between his fists like a ligature. ‘Fuck knows. You listen to the gossip round ’ere you’d think everyone’s got a secret. Life’s tough, they got through, so that’s pretty much a victory.’

  ‘Just asking,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Bry come in?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘Not really. Christmas. He and the old man were chalk and cheese. It happens. He drank down at the Retreat, by the dock.’

  ‘Neil?’

  ‘Oh yeah. Comes and gets his dad for meals. He’s like a sheepdog, that kid. Mummy’s boy.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s always one family that cops the shite in life – you’d think it’d be spread about a bit. Neil tries hard for his dad, all the time, but Andy’s not interested. He’s a bit bitter, is Andy. Toxic, more like. But Neil just keeps plodding away. Bit pathetic, really. I’d have left Andy to rot years ago.’

  ‘And the Organ Grinder,’ asked Shaw. ‘Ever heard of him?’

  The landlord worked a bar cloth over the woodwork. ‘You can try the jukebox if you like – might be one of those kids’ bands.’ He smiled, enjoying his own joke.

  They took their drinks outside. Valentine sat on the kerb, a place h
e’d loved since childhood. After a minute Shaw went back for more crisps and to refill his DS’s glass.

  ‘There’s a kid,’ said Shaw to the landlord. ‘In the street. Wears a cat mask sometimes. Bit of a snub nose,’ he added, pushing his own up, stretching the nostrils.

  ‘Yeah. That’s Joey, my grandson. They live upstairs, his mum and him. Father pissed off sharpish. Good riddance to the tosser.’ He pulled himself another drink and let it fall down his throat in one fluid movement.

  ‘He seems to know Andy Judd – that right?’

  ‘Sure. Like I said, I’m Bry’s godfather, and Andy did for Joey. He’s a good one, too – treats and that.’ He stopped polishing the counter, stopped playing the part while no one but Shaw was looking. ‘He’s a good man, Andy is. Like I said, he’s poison to touch, if you get near. And the booze’s got him – but in here…’ He hit a fist against his heart. ‘Loyal. No problem.’

  Shaw went back outside, told Valentine what he’d heard, and then they were silent, standing together. ‘It’s this street, George,’ said Shaw eventually. ‘It all comes back to this street. It’s not just Bryan Judd. Or Blanket. Or what’s been going on at the hospital. There’s something else. Something we’re missing.’

  Standing in the middle of the road, on the old railway lines, he did a 360-degree turn. A minibus swung into Erebus Street and pulled up by the launderette. On the side was a branded motif: LYNN PRIMARY CARE TRUST – A COMMUNITY COMING TOGETHER.

  Andy Judd got out, running a hand through the shock of white hair. He didn’t pay the driver, who pulled a U-turn and left. He took a few steps towards the Crane, saw them, and turned instead into the launderette. Shaw didn’t have to ask Valentine to make the call. He got through to Twine, told him to get Andy Judd’s medical history and a contact number for his GP. One priority question: did he have a regular appointment at the Queen Vic? As the DS made the call Shaw saw Ally Judd come out of the church, closing the little lancet door behind her, then walking down the side of the nave towards the bench by the Victorian semi-circular apse, the seat Blanket had sought out on that first afternoon he’d come to Erebus Street. She walked quickly to it, head down, as if hurrying from a painful encounter. They saw her find the bench, sink down, and then cover her face in her hands.

  ‘Martin’ll be in the church,’ said Shaw. ‘Keep him busy for ten minutes, George. I’m going to see if I can get a private word with Ally Judd.’

  Shaw cut through the graveyard, where the noon sun had left the stones without shadows. If she’d come here to get out of the heat it was a poor choice; the church walls shimmered with it, and a cypress sapling beside the bench seemed to wilt with the effort of staying green. Shaw paused by a memorial; an angel on a plinth, giving her a few more moments of peace. He thought he could hear her crying, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He looked up at the grey-silver leaves of the cypress. There was a reason, he thought, that they always planted such trees in graveyards. It was evergreen, of course – a symbol of life uninterrupted by death – but there was a specific reason, he was sure. The detail eluded him, and so it was with just a little shock of recognition that he did recall something else, consciously, for the first time, something retrieved from some distant half-baked lesson on Greek mythology: that hell’s waiting room, the entrance to Hades, was Erebus – the personification of darkness and shadow.

  A breeze stirred and he forced himself to take a step forward, his boot crunching on a broken beer bottle, so that she looked up, and he saw her eyes were red rimmed, her flesh puffy and without shape, as if it had been hastily fashioned out of Plasticine. He sat easily on the hot grass, leaving her the space on the bench alone, his legs crossed like a Buddha.

  ‘Father Martin is in the vestry,’ she said. ‘There’s a meeting, about rebuilding the hostel. It’s going to be thousands, but the insurance will pay.’ She tried a smile that went horribly wrong.

  ‘If you’re not telling us the truth it will unravel – lies always do,’ said Shaw. A blackbird flew into the dust which had collected in the ditch at the root of the wall, flapping, shrieking as it took a bath.

  She looked straight ahead, focused on the mid-distance.

  ‘Neil doesn’t know, I’m sure of that,’ said Shaw. ‘That’s because he’s an outsider. And an innocent, in an odd way, despite the tattoos and the martial arts. And he’s all about holding the family together, so he’d be angry, really angry, wouldn’t he? If he thought you’d cheated on Bryan.’

  They heard a klaxon sound on the distant docks, marking a change of shift. The noise made her jump, so that she had to rearrange her hands on her knees, then curl one of her feet up and under herself. Shaw noticed that on her lap was an apple, green, with a single ice-white bite mark.

  ‘But Bryan? That’s the real question,’ said Shaw. ‘Did Bryan know you were having an affair with Thiago Martin?’

  She stood then, and looked around, trying to see if there was a way out, not just out of the sun but away from the question. She turned and walked to the graveyard wall, within which were set some headstones. With her back to Shaw she picked up a cypress leaf, examined it, then turned.

  She looked into Shaw’s eyes and he was sure she was concentrating on the moon-like one, knowing it was blind. ‘Not until a few days before he died,’ she said. Her voice had become oddly formal, as if she was giving evidence from a witness box. ‘The water main burst up on the main road and we lost our supply. A woman comes in to help, she was there and didn’t know what to do. She rang me, but I’d left the mobile in the launderette. So she rang Bry. He got someone to take half a shift and he cycled back. He found me, us, together, upstairs at number 14. It was the end of everything.’

  ‘An end to the affair?’

  ‘Yes. Bry was in pieces. He was trying to put his life back together. Trying to stop the drugs.’ Shaw wondered if she really thought that was true – or was she forced to think well of the dead? ‘I had no right to wreck that. Thiago left. I said it was over, told Bry it was over – if he wanted it to be over. It was all I could do, and it’s what Thiago wanted too. Bry said, that night, if it was over he could forgive.’ She sat back on the bench and held one hand on top of another. ‘Promises were made.’

  ‘Which you broke on Sunday night?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘That was a mistake.’

  ‘What time was this “mistake”?’

  She bent her head back, and Shaw wondered if she was calculating.

  ‘At six. We always met at six. But not at the house – I came here. I left Martha in the launderette. She’s a friend,’ she added. ‘She’s there now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Shaw, standing. ‘Six until…?’

  ‘Until you saw me in the street.’ She sat back on the bench and pulled her legs up, embracing them for comfort. But Shaw thought the movement was oddly relaxed, and he wondered if she was better at concealing the truth than he’d thought. This woman was the still heart of the Judd family, around which the turbulent men seemed to revolve. Shaw could see that she was someone used to keeping secrets, and he wondered how many others she kept.

  ‘Do you have to speak to Thiago?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. I have to speak to Father Martin. Of course. And I have to ask you this: are you lying to me, to us, again? Did Father Martin really stay with you on Sunday night or did he go up to the hospital? Did he want to confront Bryan, perhaps? Because if Bryan had let you go…’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He’d never do that. He respected Bry’s decision – the commitment I’d made.’

  ‘No he didn’t,’ said Shaw, angry that he’d let his sympathy for this woman cloud his judgement of her. ‘You were – if we believe you both – in bed together when he died. What kind of respect is that?’

  She shrunk back at that, the eyes focusing again on the mid-distance. Valentine’s footsteps echoed down the tarmac path, and as Shaw turned to him the DS’s mobile rang. Valentine listened, mouthed the word ‘Twine’, then rang off, walking away
so that Shaw had to follow, out of earshot of Ally Judd.

  ‘Hospital says Andy Judd’s a regular outpatient at the liver unit; he’s on a programme of steroids and was diagnosed in the initial stages of cirrhosis last May. He’s on a dietary regime. He is not on the transplant waiting list because of his continuing alcohol abuse. He attends Mondays and Thursdays – 10.30 to noon. Twine had a word with the consultant. Between us and the gods, the prognosis is poor. He’ll be dead in a year – less, if he’s lucky.’

  Shaw thought about the gods, and the trip into the underworld of Erebus – a land of shadow on the banks of the river of the dead. To cross into Hell you had to pay the ferryman. But this was a dusty street on a summer’s day in Lynn, not a legend. Perhaps, in this world, you could pay to avoid the trip. ‘Unless,’ he said, looking up and down the street, at the paint peeling from the window frames, an ugly stain of damp on the side wall of the Crane. ‘Unless he can find a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. That was the price, right? If he had that kind of money he could buy himself a second life.’

  30

  The latticework of the old gasometer stood against the evening sky like the bones of a dinosaur, the neat criss-cross of the steel ribs framing the drifting moon. A star shone through as well, low over the rooftops of the town’s North End. Valentine left the Mazda in Adelaide Street behind a skip but under a street light, checked the car locks, then led the way through a gap in the fence, out onto the wasteland beyond, a few acres of shadowless abandoned concrete, stained with rust.

  Shaw followed. He didn’t like following, but this was Valentine’s big moment, the break that just might blow open the case. They’d put out a description of the man they’d found on the sands through TV and radio that afternoon. But George Valentine hadn’t just waited for someone to call in; he’d hit the phones, working his way through his old contact book, then gone out on the street, tracking low life down to the old haunts. On a street corner outside a pawn shop that had closed fifteen years ago he was approached by a tramp, offering a name. But not there, not then. He had to turn up in person to collect. And there’d be a payment. Not just cash.