Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  ‘This is Kath – Kath Robinson,’ said Bea. ‘She drove me down. She knows us – she’s always known us.’ They watched Robinson kiss Lizzie’s hair, but all the emotion of the moment seemed to be lop-sided, as if only Kath actually felt it.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Lizzie as her aunt sat beside her and took her hand.

  Bea studied the image, her brown eyes softening, but free of any hint of a tear. ‘I knew he must be dead. Even if I never said,’ she looked at Lizzie and Kath. ‘It’s been too long, hasn’t it? Nearly thirty years. He’s just faded away for me, like an old photo.’ She shook her head, putting the sketch back on the table, letting Lizzie’s hand fall free.

  Bea looked at Shaw. ‘I’ll tell the story. It’s my story in a way, as much as Lizzie’s, as much as anyone’s.’

  John Joe came into the room. Bea looked at him. ‘Stay with Ian, John Joe. He’s young, the words won’t mean anything.’ Shaw noted her easy authority in this house, the almost casual power of the true matriarch.

  He nodded, leaving, as if he recognized the wisdom of her words. But Shaw couldn’t entirely disregard the idea that he’d been dismissed, as if he was outside some privileged female circle.

  Bea went to the bay window.

  ‘So what is the story?’ said Shaw, his tone softer, because he knew now that these women held the truth, and that if he was going to get to it quickly, it would be only with their help.

  ‘I married here in Lynn in 1959,’ she said. ‘Latrell Garrison – a US GI. I was just a teenager. He was older – twenty years older. He’d been in Lynn ahead of D-Day. After the war he went home, but stayed in the army, then got a posting back here – up at the airfield at Bircham. He was lonely – so he worked his way through his old girlfriends, and then he got to me.’ It was said as a joke, but even she didn’t laugh. ‘We went to the Free together, too – that was his kind of church.’

  Bea looked Shaw straight in his blind eye. ‘I didn’t love him. But I hated …’ She looked around the room. ‘This. Nora got the pub after Dad died, and whatever he’d said about this always being our home I knew Nora better than that. No – this was hers. I knew she’d never wanted it, so that helped.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing quite like the hatred between sisters.’

  She turned, taking a deep breath, rearranging the pashmina. ‘Alby was on the scene by the end of the war. He loved the place. I liked Alby – we all did. But we knew why he’d married Nora, and love didn’t come into that, either. He’d take her money, take all this, then live his life the way he wanted too. But then the child came – Mary – and they lost her, and he never really got over it – did he, Lizzie?’

  Lizzie’s head was down, but she shook it.

  ‘So he went back to sea. And that left the two of us, sisters, here, together. Latrell was good-looking – you can see that in Ian. So we got married at the register office one afternoon. It’s crazy – you think your life gets changed by the big events, the big decisions. Then you do something like that – on a whim, just because it feels right.’

  Bea was quite calm – at ease, even – and Shaw thought she had a rare gift of being truthful to strangers about her own life. She touched her bottom lip and Shaw saw he’d been wrong, that there was lipstick, but just the subtlest of touches.

  ‘When Nora found out she said she’d never talk to me again, and that was one virtue she had, Inspector: she kept her promises. And you know – this is difficult to believe – I don’t think then it was about the colour of Latrell’s skin. I think it was the fact that he was going to take me away. And she wanted me here – in my place.’

  Bea turned her back on them. Kath picked up the coffee pot, swilled what was left around. ‘I’ll get a fresh one,’ she said, and went to the kitchen.

  ‘Latrell applied for a posting back home. We flew to the States on a military transport,’ continued Bea. ‘I wasn’t going to be able to live here anyway, was I? Not with a black man. During the war it might have been OK – people like Latrell were considered exotic, exciting. But when the local men came back, things changed. What had happened was forgotten. So we had to go.’

  She held out her hands so that they could see her silver rings more clearly.

  ‘Latrell took me home – to Hartsville, North Dakota. Small-town America’s smallest town.’ She laughed, but caught sight of the sketch on the coffee table and turned away again.

  ‘Latrell’s father ran the town drugstore. Latrell trained up as a pharmacist – there was a programme for GIs – and I just helped out in the shop. We tried for kids, but it didn’t work. I’d pretty much given up, and then Pat was born – in 1962.’ She stopped for a few seconds, and Shaw knew what she was doing – working out how old he would have been now, if he’d lived.

  ‘Latrell died in 1980 – cancer of the liver. He was fifty-nine. He drank. Everyone drank in Hartsville because of the winters. You’ve never seen snow like it – and nobody moves, especially if they’re snowed in at the town bar. The thing that really got me in the end was the quietness of winter. It just sucks the life right out of the day, that blanket of suffocating snow.’

  She walked to the window again. Outside, big wet flakes were falling. ‘I tried to stay, I thought I wanted to stay, after he died. I kept the business going. There was someone new, someone I’d known but who’d kept their distance in those last years. Pat was at high school in Bushell – he was a bright kid. Journalism – that was the big thing. But suddenly, the second winter after Latrell died, I just couldn’t stand it any more. It’s such a mundane emotion, homesickness. I’d lived in Hartsville all those years and then woken up to find it was a foreign place – just like that. One moment home, the next minute somewhere I couldn’t stand to be.’

  She looked around the room. ‘Then I got a call from Alby. He was at Bedford, before the trial. He told me what had happened. He said he wanted to tell me the truth before someone else poured poison in my ear – that’s what he said – poured poison. He asked me to come home – just for a while – and look after Lizzie. She was only nineteen, she couldn’t run the pub on her own. A year, maybe three, she’d be OK. He couldn’t live with it, he said – the thought that she was on her own. I couldn’t say no – not to Alby.’

  Kath had been standing on the threshold unseen, holding a fresh pot of coffee.

  When Bea saw her she seemed to change tack. ‘She wasn’t on her own, of course – she had friends, people like Kath. But I came back and brought Pat with me. I told him it would be like a holiday, just a couple of years. An adventure. He was Lizzie’s age. But the tickets were one way. Pat resented the move – he didn’t really like Lynn. I got him a place at the college – on the media studies course. I got him his own flat – well, a bedsit. I sold up the drugstore in Hartsville, so I wasn’t short of money – Pat always had cash in his pocket.’

  She stopped at that, thinking about what to say next. ‘He was popular with the girls. I knew that.’

  Shaw looked at Lizzie but she, oddly, was looking at Kath Robinson, who’d sat down with the coffee pot. Lizzie pressed her hand and the other woman’s pale skin suddenly flushed.

  There was an awkward silence, then Bea went on. ‘He was growing up, he had a family around him, so it wasn’t such a bad life. Then, when he went missing, Lizzie told me what I hadn’t seen – what had been so obvious, but unnoticed.’

  Kath stood quickly, started moving things about on the table to set down the coffee. She didn’t seem able to create a space. Bea gently took over, taking the pot. Kath retreated, looking at her shoes, to stand at the window.

  ‘Pat and I fell in love,’ said Lizzie, then covered her mouth as if she wanted to claw back the words. ‘It was a secret.’ She touched the sketch. ‘We thought it was a secret.’

  ‘No one knew – absolutely no one?’ asked Campbell. She tried to keep a note of incredulity out of her voice but even she’d admit she’d failed.

  ‘I made a mistake,’ said Lizzie. ‘I told Dad – when we wen
t to see him at Lincoln after the trial. He still had lots of visitors then, so I suppose it got back.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Bea, and she even managed to keep a sour note out of her voice.

  Shaw was trying to imagine what life had been like for this family back in 1982 – conflicting, heated emotions crowded beneath this single roof.

  ‘Dad was happy for us,’ said Lizzie, and Shaw couldn’t help but think the remark was directed at her aunt. A flash of anger brought Lizzie’s eyes alive, the flashing green dominating the grey and brown. ‘Dad liked black girls. The girls he’d met in the ports. He’d tell his cronies about them in the bar.’ She looked at Shaw. ‘It wasn’t all about sex. He liked the life in them, black people, the joy. He met Pat in jail, on visiting days. He was fond of him. Pat liked a good time too – and he was always out to get it. Pat made him smile, even in jail.’ She looked down at her hands, suddenly ashamed.

  ‘When did you last see Pat?’ asked Shaw, but he’d guessed the answer.

  ‘The wake,’ said Lizzie. A whisper again. ‘He went to the funeral too, and stood at the graveside. Nora was his aunt, after all.’ She bit her lip, wrapping both her hands around Bea’s. ‘It was that evening, at the party, that I told him my news.’

  She looked at Shaw, the kind of look that made him ask himself again if this was a career he really wanted: a lifetime spent watching other people’s lives unwind.

  ‘I was pregnant – with Ian. He was really happy. We talked about what to do. We’d talked about getting married before, though never seriously. But now we had the business – the pub. And the funeral was over – finally over, after all those months. And the trial. I could sell up. Start a life somewhere else.’ Her voice had changed, become lighter, almost joyful, as if she was reading a line from a fairy tale.

  ‘The States?’ asked DC Campbell.

  ‘No. We couldn’t go back to Hartsville – North Dakota’s one of the states where …’ she tried to find the right word, ‘where it’s illegal. Still. Leviticus – that’s what they always say, isn’t it? Leviticus, chapter eighteen. They should read it sometime.’ Her thin mouth set murderously straight.

  ‘So …’ prompted Campbell. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘That night? I didn’t tell anyone else. Just Kath.’

  ‘I didn’t tell anyone,’ said Kath quickly. ‘You made me promise, didn’t you, Lizzie? I keep my promises.’ Again, thought Shaw, the childlike cadence of speech.

  ‘There were people who already hated Pat – for his colour,’ explained Lizzie. ‘But if they’d guessed …So we couldn’t touch each other, nothing, not in public.’ She looked at her hands, trying to focus. ‘The idea of a child – it was frightening. Wonderful, but frightening.’

  She looked squarely at Shaw. ‘When I told Pat that night, he was happy – like I said. But the wake was in full swing by then, so we couldn’t talk, not properly. We arranged to meet the next day. Then he left. He said we had so much to discuss, so much that was exciting, and if he couldn’t talk to me then he’d rather go home.’ She set her jaw again. ‘He said he hoped it was a boy, said we’d talk more tomorrow, then he walked out. I never saw him again.’ She looked at the sketch.

  ‘What time?’ asked Shaw. ‘When he left the bar.’

  ‘Ten – maybe later.’

  ‘The time’s important,’ said Shaw.

  She looked up at him, struggling to keep focused on the question. ‘We had a party licence and we had the choir in – the sea-shanty choir. It’s sort of their home, really – they’ve always sung here and Mum liked to hear them. Some of them sang at the Free too, so they’d all been close. We all listened to the first half of that, so …I don’t know. Ten fifteen, bit earlier. Ten thirty they’d start up again – so, before that.’

  ‘And he just walked out – didn’t speak to anyone else?’

  ‘No – he went and got his coat. That was behind the bar, upstairs. Then we talked a bit more. He held my hand.’ She brightened at the memory. ‘Just for a second, over the bar. In public. We’d never done that before. And then he did go.’

  She picked up Shaw’s sketch. ‘Can I keep this?’

  ‘What happened then – the following morning?’ asked Shaw, nodding.

  ‘When Pat didn’t show up, I just thought the worst of him …’

  Campbell held up a hand. ‘Sorry – just a detail, where did you arrange to meet?’

  Lizzie’s eyes glazed. ‘The Walks – we had a place, a bench, by the Red Tower, where we’d sit.’

  Lizzie folded the sketch, looking at Bea. ‘We thought he couldn’t face it. That now there’d be this child, it wasn’t a game any more. That we should marry. That it was up to us. He was very young, we both were, and I’ve always clung to that. That he couldn’t handle it – so he ran away.’

  She said it in a flat voice, without emotion. But Bea, who’d been looking through the window, suddenly buckled. Kath went to her, holding her up, bringing her back to the sofa.

  ‘And you didn’t report the fact that Pat was missing?’ asked Shaw. ‘Either of you?’

  ‘That was my fault,’ said Bea quickly, wiping tears from her eyes, talking over Lizzie, the Midwestern accent suddenly sharper. ‘Lizzie – she wanted to go to the police, didn’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t believe he’d gone – that he’d deserted us,’ said Lizzie. ‘I went to the park. I waited, and he didn’t come, so I went to the flat. But I never had a key. And there was no answer. So I came back here. I thought we should report it. If he wasn’t at home – where was he? Where was he?’ she repeated, almost shouting now, almost out of control.

  ‘He’d only been gone a few hours,’ said Bea. ‘You’d have laughed at us if we’d panicked. Lizzie told me then – what she’d told him, about the baby. I said he’d be confused. I knew Pat better than he knew himself. He was like his father. Neither of them ever grew up. I thought he’d be frightened too. That he might want me with him – to talk about it. This was what? Noon, Lizzie? So I went home – I had a flat on Explorer Street, where we’d both lodged when we came over. There was a note on the mat, addressed to Lizzie. I took it back to her.’

  ‘He said he was sorry,’ said Lizzie. ‘That’s what it said. A lot more words, but that’s what it boiled down to. I’m sorry. Poor Ian – when he was growing up he’d say that, too. I’m sorry, Mommy. And I’d scream at him all the more. Because it’s such an empty thing to say.’

  ‘No explanation?’ prompted Campbell.

  ‘Just that he couldn’t stay – that this wasn’t his home, and he didn’t belong here. That he wouldn’t be back. I burnt it …’

  ‘But you recognized the handwriting?’ asked Shaw.

  She didn’t seem to understand the question, looking from Campbell to Shaw and back again. ‘Handwriting? No. Pat typed everything – didn’t he, Bea? But the signature was his – it looked like his? Next day I went round to the flat again – there was a woman who cleaned the place and she let me in. Everything was gone – including the typewriter.’

  She seemed to weigh the folded sketch. ‘I’ve always thought he didn’t want our child, that he had that in him – to just walk away from me.’ She smiled. ‘And now I know none of that’s true, is it? For nearly thirty years I’ve thought about his other life – the life he had without us. I thought he was out there, loving other people. I used to think, in those first few years, that he might be thinking of me, and that if I did the same, at exactly the same moment, we’d connect.’ She smiled at the picture, and Shaw noted that her fingers had tightened on the paper. ‘I know now he loved us.’ She looked at Shaw. ‘But someone hated him – hated him enough to kill him.’

  ‘Someone like Freddie Fletcher?’ asked Shaw.

  Lizzie’s eyes widened and Shaw sensed she was seeing something again, an image from the past.

  Then she shook her head. ‘Freddie’s harmless. Nasty. Bigoted. Ignorant. But harmless. They chucked him out of the BNP because he wouldn’t shut up about the black
s. Loose cannon. But it was all talk – always has been.’

  ‘People like Freddie? Back then – Freddie wasn’t alone, was he? Who did he used to hang around with? Can you give us the names?’ Shaw glanced at Bea. ‘Can you?’

  Both women nodded, apparently eager to help, but perhaps just eager to be left alone.

  ‘My DC here will organize statements – I want you both to try to put a list together for us. We need to piece together what happened that night: minute by minute.’

  Fiona Campbell had been thinking about the choir, the packed back room, the music.

  ‘Didn’t the Whitefriars Choir record itself? I thought I’d heard them on a CD or something – at the folk festival?’

  Bea was nodding, suddenly animated, but Lizzie examined a tissue she’d been shredding in her hands.

  ‘That’s right. In fact, that night there was a camera. A cine camera, on a tripod – remember?’ Bea asked.

  Lizzie’s shook her head, neither yes or no.

  ‘That must be right because we asked people not to move around between the songs,’ said Bea. ‘It was special that night, because Nora had been good to them. They always sang in that room, and I don’t think she charged them, did she, Lizzie?’

  Lizzie shrugged.

  ‘A film? There’s a film of the night of Nora’s wake?’ pressed Shaw.

  ‘Somewhere,’ said Bea.

  They left them then, the three women huddled on the sofa, and let themselves out, down the narrow wooden stairs and through the coffin-like door into the bar. Outside, Shaw buttoned up his overcoat and considered the eccentric façade of the Flask – the crazy angle of the tortured beams, the 1970s steel buttresses holding up the gable end. He’d left Campbell inside, trying to fix a time to take statements from John Joe and Ian, and picking up a contact for the Whitefriars Choir. If that recording had survived, they needed to see it. But Shaw doubted their luck would stretch that far.