Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  He walked out to the edge of the cemetery and looked back at the Flask. Bea Garrison’s face was at the mullioned glass of the room above, and then it was gone.

  11

  Shaw parked the Porsche on the slipway beside the old lifeboat house at Hunstanton and walked down to the new building. Through the small observation portholes in the metal doors he could see the hovercraft within, the diffuse glow of the security lighting picking out the polished yellow and blue of the housing in the nest of the deflated skirt. He checked his RNLI pager, anxious that it was now more than a fortnight since the last ‘shout’, when they’d taken Flyer out over Holkham Sands to lift a two-man crew off a yacht foundering near the entrance to Wells at low tide. He thought about letting himself in, then thought about the rigmarole of resetting the security system, the safety gear, and how he should be home because he might just catch Fran before bedtime. And that was why he was here – why he’d made himself walk out of the incident room after the late-night briefing. But he sensed the silence within the boathouse, like a magnet, promising a space to think inside. It was irresistible.

  He used an electronic key to open the data pad and punched in the code, rolling up the door. He didn’t bother to roll it down. After dark, in winter, the beach was deserted, the white line of surf shifting, insubstantial in the gloom. He swung a leg over the side of the skirt and slipped into the pilot’s chair – his chair. He flicked on the power so that the sonar and radar screens filled the cockpit with a luminous green light. The radio automatically scanned the emergency bands. He heard a snatch of Dutch, then something else – possibly Russian. But nothing tense, nothing laced with the unmistakable edge of fear. He could recognize panic in any language.

  The summer had been busy for Flyer – nearly sixty callouts. They’d added twenty-six names to the list of the rescued which hung in the boathouse. The winter, in contrast, had been long and damp but until now free of storms. The last thing he wanted was a shout in the middle of a murder inquiry, but he missed the adrenaline rush, the sudden incontrovertible priority a rescue imposed on his other, more complex, responsibilities. It was like a release: permission to live for a few hours a simple, focused, life, uncomplicated by motive or concealment.

  Relaxing into the seat he tried to think straight. Not about the sea, but about the Flask that night in 1982. He didn’t want to think about suspects. There’d be enough of those. He didn’t want to think about murder. What he wanted to do was see – fix in his head the dramatis personae of the wake, the stage, the complex relationships between the principal characters, dominated by the two sisters who’d been brought up in the Flask – Nora Tilden and Bea Garrison. Nora – buried that day, murdered by her husband Alby. Bea – back from the US, a widow, to help Nora’s daughter Lizzie run the family business. But Bea hadn’t returned home alone. To Shaw, that fact underpinned the central image of the night: Pat, Bea’s son, at the bar, sliding his hand across to cover his cousin Lizzie’s – the first public betrayal of their secret. And the last. Had someone seen? Bea said she hadn’t known about the relationship between her son and her niece, but was that really credible? And Kath Robinson certainly knew – Lizzie said she’d told her that night. Kath: a childlike figure on the edge of this family tragedy, a woman they needed to know more about. That was one of the tasks he’d allotted the team during the briefing.

  He opened his eyes, aware he had achieved a sense of clarity. He swung himself out of the cockpit, rolled down the doors and reset the security code, turning to break into an easy loping run along the sands towards home.

  Ahead, a mile distant, he could see the Old Beach Café, the cottage behind, and lit sideways by the floodlight on the verandah the boathouse shop – the apex of the roof marked by a string of white festive lights. Within 500 yards he felt his bloodstream pumping, promising a narcotic flood of endorphins, so that he was tempted to run past the house, along to the distant point at Holme, and then back. But in the white light spilling from the verandah of the café he saw two figures. A couple, arm-in-arm, one leaning on the other. If they’d been walking he’d have felt no anxiety. But they were stock still, waiting, in the middle of a winter beach. He slowed and heard a dog, out of sight, chasing a shadow in the dunes. He had a powerful sense that these people were waiting for him.

  ‘Peter,’ said one of the figures, as he approached. The light was behind, so he couldn’t see the face. A woman’s voice, and one he knew, but her identity was elusive. Squinting, he came level, allowing the light to shine over his shoulder. With a start he recognized Justina Kazimierz. He’d so rarely seen the pathologist touching anyone living that her familiar voice had gone unrecognized. She’d always appeared so self-contained, solitary.

  ‘Justina?’ said Shaw. ‘What’s wrong?’ He’d often seen her on the beach, but always in daylight, and always alone.

  She laughed, and he realized how rare that was. She tugged at the arm of the man beside her. ‘Nothing’s wrong. This is Dawid,’ she said.

  Shaw smiled and extended his hand. They’d met once, a few years ago, at the Polish Club, the night he’d watched them dance – hands touching, nothing else. Justina had changed a little since then, but her husband had aged, and he leant into her, one shoulder held low, a coat collar turned up to cover his neck to the chin. Even then he’d seemed small beside her sturdy middle-European frame. Now he just seemed frail. Despite the soft background soundtrack of the sea Shaw could hear him wheezing, each breath a miniature labour.

  The couple’s Labrador joined them, sniffing Shaw’s boots.

  ‘This is wonderful …’ Justina turned to the sea, making a little drama out of filling her lungs. ‘I’m sorry – you’ll want to get home. This is for Fran, I was going to leave it on the stoop …’ She retrieved a brown paper parcel sticking out of her overcoat pocket and held it out for Shaw.

  ‘You can give it to her yourself,’ Shaw said. ‘You know you’re welcome anytime.’ He gathered them up and the three of them ascended the pine verandah steps into the café. Lena was working at the table by the windows, the account books spread out, a tape playing the Penguin Café Orchestra. The smile when she saw Justina was genuine, reminding Shaw how few friends his wife had. Shaw made coffee while Lena talked about the summer season – how the café had been packed some days, then deserted, but that the beach shop had kept their heads above water. Then they talked about Fran. On her last walk past the house Justina had brought her an old pair of binoculars because she’d started watching the horizon from the beach, just like her father, and she only had a plastic telescope.

  ‘We might as well get her a job with the Coastguard,’ said Lena. She refilled Shaw’s cup. ‘She’s as nosy as you are. And now she’s nosy at high magnification.’

  ‘Intellectual curiosity,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Actually,’ said Lena, considering whether she knew Justina well enough to embark on an argument with her own husband in public, ‘it’s a kind of arrogance, isn’t it? The idea that you’ve got a right to know, to find out how everything works.’

  Shaw laughed. ‘She’s eight – curiosity can’t be bad.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about her.’

  ‘Justina’s the same,’ said Dawid. He leant forward. ‘Always delving.’ His voice was low and rich, and very gentle. For a small man his head was big, rounded, benign, but Shaw sensed that he found other people a trial. He sipped his coffee, satisfied perhaps that he’d defused the subject. Shaw tried to recall his profession: something medical, he knew, but specialized. Cytology, or urology. Lena had switched tack, and was telling them how she’d sold three winter dry suits to three teenagers who planned to swim every day until March the following year as a charity stunt. When Dawid smiled Shaw saw a vivid splash of blood on his upper gum. He looked away, and tried not to look again.

  Shaw heard a footfall in the corridor that led up to the cottage and, catching Lena’s eye, he saw that she’d heard it too: his daughter, edging nearer, trying to hear. This close to Chr
istmas they’d become used to late-night appearances as the excitement began to build.

  The footsteps grew louder and faster as the little girl ran down the corridor. Then Fran was at the table, laughing, happy to see Justina. The old terrier padded in after her and barked once at the Labrador before laying down on the spot where the hot-water pipes ran beneath the floorboards.

  ‘I have something for you,’ Justina said, handing Fran the package.

  Fran tore open Justina’s present, suddenly an eight-year-old on Christmas morning. Shaw was always fascinated by the way her behaviour seemed to ricochet between adult and child – never a constant medium. Inside the package was a short illustrated guide to clouds – one of the many things she tracked from the beach. She said thank you, several times, but was still packed off to bed, Shaw leading her away down the shadowy corridor to the cottage.

  When Shaw got back they were talking about the village – how the little shop and post office might close, and whether the tourist pubs would be open during the Christmas break. Then the conversation began to lag, running out of steam, because they could all sense that Shaw wanted to talk about the case, but that he couldn’t break the house rule: that work and home shouldn’t mix.

  ‘So, it’s all very Gothic,’ said Lena, lifting the invisible barrier, cradling the coffee, letting the steam – Shaw noticed – wet her upper lip. ‘Bones on coffins, open graves …’ She glanced at Shaw, letting him know that she didn’t want the exclusion of work to become an obsession. She’d heard a report on the radio, so she knew the details. And anyway, they were stronger than that as a family – resilient to the reality of Shaw’s other world.

  ‘Anything new to report?’ asked Shaw. Justina hadn’t been present at the briefing.

  The pathologist was already ordering information in her head, focused intently on turning her coffee cup in its saucer.

  ‘I tracked down the original autopsy on the child – the one buried in the grave under the mother,’ she said. Lena winced, glad Fran wasn’t listening.

  ‘Looks like sudden infant death syndrome. Cot death,’ said Justina. ‘The mother was the principal witness. She said she’d put the child to sleep upstairs in the pub at about six on the evening she died. The husband was running the bar but she went down to help. She checked the child regularly – she said – although when questioned by the coroner she admitted the last time she’d seen her daughter alive was at seven o’clock – she knew that was the time because she’d taken the chance to make herself a cup of tea and listen to the news on the radio. She next checked at eight fifteen. The child wasn’t breathing. She started screaming, the husband went up, they called an ambulance which arrived at eight thirty-two p.m. The child was DOA at the Queen Victoria.’

  Lena covered her mouth at the appalling euphemism. DOA.

  ‘Awful,’ said Dawid. Shaw presumed they didn’t have children – certainly none were ever mentioned. He wondered if that had been their choice.

  ‘The child’s coffin contained something else,’ she said. The pathologist produced an iPhone and touched the pad to bring up a picture, then slid it across the table. A model ship, exquisite, made of wood and lovingly painted. It was clear this was a specific vessel, hand crafted. A cargo ship. The superstructure was oddly out of balance with the dimensions of the hull, a small double crane set on the deck and a single gun on the fo’c’s’le. Shaw recalled that Alby Tilden had been a war hero, Arctic convoys with the merchant navy. Perhaps this had been his ship. A touching last gift for his daughter.

  ‘How did it survive?’

  ‘Child’s coffin was lead lined – watertight, airtight. Most of the paint’s fallen off since we took the picture.’

  Lena stood abruptly and brought them more coffee, bringing the discussion to a close.

  Later they all stood on the verandah, despite the raw breeze. Justina and Shaw had broken open a bottle of malt, Lena had a glass of wine. The Labrador, anxious about smells it couldn’t locate, tried to force itself under the café into the space where the sand had blown. The heavy snow clouds had drifted on so that the sky was clear and moonless, and across it fell a meteor storm. They watched the sudden lines of light, gone almost before they could be seen. Shaw turned to see Justina’s face turned upwards, at the exact angle of Lena’s. But Dawid’s eyes looked out to sea.

  12

  Tuesday, 14 December

  The car park at St James’s was full so Shaw parked the Porsche behind the Ark on a narrow side-street behind the Vancouver Shopping Centre. When Shaw cut the engine he and Valentine could hear the tinny soundtrack of piped-in Christmas carols leaking from the back of Wilkinson’s. An inflatable Santa flew over the multi-storey car park. In the road two cats pulled at a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the snow. The clock on St Margaret’s chimed the quarter hour. Mid-afternoon, but the December light would soon be dwindling fast. They had fifteen minutes before the autopsy on Pat Garrison. It was the third day of the inquiry, and they were little nearer finding his killer. They knew so much about him, so much about his family and his life, but the truth about that night twenty-eight years earlier remained elusive. It was like having a family photo album from which the vital picture had been torn out.

  Shaw felt thwarted, frustrated, and worried that despite setting in train a textbook murder inquiry he was missing something obvious. For now all he could do was stick to his basic rules: keep it simple, check everything and share everything. He’d spent the morning getting everyone up to speed on the tangled history of the Melville family – including Tom Hadden and Max Warren. Then he’d organized a trawl through the list of guests Lizzie Murray had given them of all those she could recall being at her mother’s wake. They needed witnesses, and after twenty-eight years that was going to be their biggest hurdle. Every name had to be tracked down, even if some of the trails led only to the cemetery. So far DC Lau’s door-to-door operation had yielded little: a couple of people had been at the wake but memories were shaky, detail scant.

  Valentine had contacted the secretary of the Whitefriars Choir and they had a volunteer trawling through old cine-film tins to see if they still had the one filmed on the night of Nora’s wake. A few members of the choir remembered the evening and they’d be giving statements – but so far they’d uncovered nothing substantial, nothing new.

  Overnight, Twine had made contact with the FBI and the state police department in North Dakota, based in the capital, Bismarck. He’d requested the paperwork on Pat Garrison – including his birth certificate and medical records. Shaw obtained clearance from Warren for DNA tests to be undertaken by the Forensic Science Service on the bones they’d found in the grave on top of the coffin and on a saliva sample provided by Bea Garrison. That was one relationship they needed to nail. Formal statements had been made by Bea, Lizzie Murray and Kath Robinson. Valentine had taken all three and reported that Robinson appeared to have learning difficulties – she seemed often confused and was unable to read her own statement. She was nervous and disorientated before being reunited with Bea, who had driven her home.

  Shaw had talked to the coroner, who’d agreed to open an inquest, using Bea Garrison’s identification of Shaw’s forensic reconstruction as the basis for a preliminary identification of the victim. The brief hearing, scheduled for the following day, would be used as an appeal for witnesses to come forward, then adjourned until the police inquiry was over. To maximize publicity the opening hearing would be held at the Flask – which would also allow the coroner to visit the scene of the crime. It was a rare example of the coroner using an ancient power – to call an inquest close to the place of death, rather than in the characterless surroundings of the courts. The rarer the better, thought Shaw, because it would guarantee coverage in the local media and possibly even make the national newspapers. It was a long shot, but it was just possible, in a tight-knit community like South Lynn, that it would encourage witnesses to step forward whom they’d otherwise have missed.

  Shaw checked his w
atch: 2.30 p.m. Low tide.

  Valentine worked a finger into the hole on the dashboard that had once held a cigarette lighter. His mind constantly drifted from the case in hand to the Tessier case. He briefed Shaw on the surveillance units he’d set up for the scheduled evening meeting between Robert Mosse and Jimmy Voyce: a textbook operation – three mobile units, a back-up on standby and the police helicopter on call.

  ‘Anyone farts, we’ll have it in triplicate,’ said Valentine.

  Shaw left the heater running. He was aware that through the chassis of the car he could feel the gentle rumble of cars queuing on the ramps of the multi-storey car park, busy with less than nine full shopping days to Christmas. He made an effort to focus on Pat Garrison’s death, trying to file away any anxieties he had about that coming night’s operation at Hunstanton. There was nothing more he could do until the two men met. Meanwhile, any real progress in the hunt for Pat Garrison’s killer remained elusive. As cold cases went it was beginning to feel icy. They needed to breathe life into the dead.

  ‘So what do you see, George – that night, in the Flask? In here,’ said Shaw, tapping a finger to his temple. ‘Was the killer there?’

  Valentine’s stomach rumbled. Breakfast had been a single round of toast and a mug of tea in the canteen at six that morning, the brew laden with enough tannin to keep a shoe factory supplied for a month. He didn’t really do lunch in terms of solids. His main meal of the day was usually administered after the pubs closed – a tray of chips and curry sauce, or a Chinese takeaway, noodles crammed into a silver-foil container. He played with his packet of Silk Cut, setting it at 90 degrees on the dashboard, then 180, then back to 90. He wanted to get a smoke in before the autopsy, but he forced himself to concentrate on Shaw’s question. He knew the DI didn’t ask questions unless he wanted answers. This was team-work, and as much as neither of them wanted to be in a team, they had to make it work.