Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  ‘You’re close?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘She’s my grandma. Of course we are. She’s had time for me, always.’ Shaw sensed it was the first thing he’d said that hadn’t been framed, designed to produce an effect.

  ‘Why’d you stop going?’

  Ian nodded, rhythmically, as if he’d finally decided to tell a truth.

  ‘I used to feel – perhaps Bea did too; I don’t know, I’ve never asked her – feel that we were welcome, but like it was a different kind of welcome to everyone else. They were big on slaves, right? The Free. They fought the good fight. But even back then the only black faces you saw were passing through. They were made welcome – but it was a kind of a temporary welcome. They overdid it, like it was a favour. Ask ’em how many blacks they’ve got in the congregation now. I’ll tell you the answer – the only black face on a Sunday’s hanging in that gold frame over the door.

  ‘Nothing was ever said,’ Murray continued, ‘but we knew we’d always be outsiders. Then one Sunday we went, Bea and me, for the service, and I sang in the choir – ’cos that’s something John Joe did teach me, I can hold a tune. Afterwards we had tea in the yard, like we always did, and I played with the other kids. There was a swing and stuff because the pastor had his own family – all girls. There was plenty of noise, as usual, and then it all kind of stopped. I could hear these two adult voices, raised in anger. And one of them was Bea’s. The pastor said one word – really clear. He said: “Please,” like you’d say to shush someone up. And Bea just said, “It’s ten years, for God’s sake. Ten years.”

  ‘She came and got me and we left. She never went back. She gave me this instead.’ He let the silver fish fall so that it swung on its chain. ‘We never said a word to each other, just walked home. I pestered Mum to tell me what was wrong – kept pestering, until she told me. There was this concert coming up at the Free and she’d wanted to come and listen ’cos I was going to sing. Bea had mentioned it to the pastor and he’d said Mum couldn’t set foot inside the church. Leviticus, see? They’re still the same today. Unbelievable. It’s the twenty-first century, not the seventeenth. But it’s a sin they don’t forgive. And do you know what that made me think? It made me think, what kind of people can keep that kind of hatred alive?’ He looked from Shaw to Valentine. ‘How damaged do you have to be – to hate like that?’

  16

  Wednesday, 15 December

  They found Freddie Fletcher in bed in the one-roomed flat above the PEN office, two floors above Tinos. He’d ignored the knocks on the door, the grit against the window. But they’d finally obtained a spare key from the Greek owner of the café, telling him they were worried Fletcher was ill – or worse. And when they found him in bed, he did look ill: his skin held a green tinge in the half light, and as he smoked his hand trembled, his fingers resting on the bedside table. The edge of the wood was marked with a line of small burns where, Shaw guessed, he’d fallen asleep over the years, a cigarette laid ready at his side. The façade of brisk good humour he’d managed to maintain in their first interview was threadbare here in this sad damp room. The original wallpaper had been for a child’s room – red and blue balloons – but now they were covered in posters, one showing Churchill’s face with the slogan DESERVE VICTORY.

  Fletcher lay on top of the covers, propped up against chair cushions in a white vest and jogging pants, his skin swirled with black hair at the shoulders. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ he said. ‘I’m not dying. Big Christmas bash tomorrow – so I’m just making sure I’m up for it. Can’t beat a plate of good British turkey.’

  Valentine stood with his back to the wall, promising himself that he’d never lie in a bed in a room like this. Shaw took the only seat, removing a pile of newspapers to the floor: all of them the BNP’s Voice of Freedom.

  ‘Seen a doctor?’ asked Valentine in a tone of voice which implied that he didn’t care either way.

  ‘Yeah.’ He thought about what he was going to say next, then went ahead. ‘Fucking Paki. Said it was something I ate. Well done, mate. Course it’s something I ate.’ He put his hand under his vest and massaged his stomach.

  ‘You were less than truthful, Mr Fletcher, when we first spoke,’ said Shaw. ‘You said there were only two black faces at Nora Tilden’s funeral – from the Free Church?’

  Fletcher avoided their eyes by shutting his. They heard something give in his guts, a deep-seated rumble of intestine buckling.

  ‘Fuck,’ was all he said, rubbing his fingers into his flesh.

  ‘What about Pat Garrison – Nora’s nephew? He was there. He’d been on the scene a few months. Why didn’t you mention him?’

  ‘It’s twenty-eight years ago,’ he said, keeping his eyes shut. ‘Not yesterday.’

  ‘Were you active then, in 1982, in the BNP?’

  ‘National Front. I’ll be on one of your files down at the nick, too. Couple of fights. I’ve spilt blood for the cause. Mine and theirs.’

  ‘Right. And you didn’t notice the black kid in your local pub?’

  He opened his eyes, then swung a foot off the bed, forcing himself to sit on the edge. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t notice him – did I? I said I didn’t see him at the funeral. It was a big do – you know, coupla hundred at the cemetery. I knew the kid – we all did.’

  ‘But back at the pub – you were at the wake? Not two hundred there, were there? What did you do – drink, eat, sing? And still no sign of Pat Garrison?’

  ‘Nora liked us playing games: dominoes, crib, darts, stuff like that. So when the hangers-on had gone we got stuck into that – bit of a competition, with the choir on too. Folk stuff, sea shanties – British music. I suppose he was there. Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. He used to hang around the bar with Lizzie, or his mum.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  Fletcher licked his lips and Shaw guessed he was thinking carefully about what to say.

  ‘I thought – we all thought – that he must be ashamed of his mother and what she’d done, you know, while the men were out there, fighting for King and Country. Men like my dad. Whatcha think they’d have thought if they could’ve seen her, Bea, walking out with a black in a uniform like she did, while the white lads were out there dying in the trenches?’

  Shaw found it almost impossible not to respond: to point out that the war had been over for years when Bea met Latrell, that trench warfare was a century old, and that the beaches of Normandy saw thousands of black GIs dead on the sands. But this wasn’t the place for that argument, however much he’d like to have it.

  Valentine coughed on to the back of his hand. ‘Trenches are the First World War, Mr Fletcher.’

  Fletcher froze, staring at Valentine, even as Shaw quickly asked the next question. ‘So Patrice wasn’t welcome. Or is that an understatement?’

  ‘He had a home – some place he was welcome,’ said Fletcher, tearing his eyes off Valentine. ‘He should have gone back to it. Then he wouldn’t have had a chance to do what he did – leaving Lizzie that child. The two-tone one. We didn’t know then what was going on. But he knew we wanted him to leave – walk away. It’s our country, not his.’

  ‘Anybody suggest that to him – that he should leave?’ asked Shaw, walking to the window.

  Opposite was the wall of the cemetery, beyond a single cypress tree in the mist.

  ‘Not me. Maybe one of the lads – you’d be surprised, even then we had plenty of members, and plenty of ’em went in the Flask.’

  ‘So he knew what you all felt? It was clear – no ambiguity?’

  Fletcher laughed, rubbing his stomach with energy. ‘It was fucking clear all right. If he missed the signals, he was blind. You think one of us put him in the ground?’ asked Fletcher. ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, someone murdered him, and almost certainly on the night of the wake. Dumped him in the open grave with a couple of feet of topsoil over him. Then you came along and filled it in. You’ve admitted that.’

  Valentine pushed himself away from the wal
l because the damp in it was making his shoulders ache.

  ‘So did you decide to give him a lesson, Mr Fletcher?’ asked Shaw. ‘Not just you – that’s a bit dodgy, bit risky: but what, one or two of you – three, even. ’Cos you wouldn’t want to give a black man an even chance. Things get out of hand?’

  Fletcher took a pill bottle from the side cabinet and downed two, with a glass of off-white milk. ‘That’s bollocks. You know it’s bollocks.’

  Shaw stood, zipping up his jacket. ‘How would you describe the relationship between Pat and Lizzie?’

  Fletcher shrugged. ‘They were fucking each other.’ He shook his head. ‘But like I said, we didn’t know, not then. There might have been rumours – I can’t remember. She certainly didn’t seem to mind the fact he was a black. Some of the girls are like that. Like father, like daughter, right?’

  Valentine saw his chance, the sudden vulnerability in his voice when Fletcher had said the word ‘daughter’, the contrast between that and the anger which seemed to permeate every other word he used. ‘You got kids, Mr Fletcher? Family?’

  ‘No,’ he said, almost in a whisper.

  ‘Never been married?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘No.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘But I don’t go short. Never have done.’

  ‘But you like children – your nephews, nieces?’ Valentine walked to the mantelpiece over the blocked-off fireplace. There was a picture there of Fletcher and a woman. He had his arm round her shoulders but her hands hung limp. She was in her fifties, poorly dressed in a tracksuit top and joggers, her hair permed to destruction.

  Fletcher glared at Valentine. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  Shaw looked at a spot right between Fletcher’s eyes.

  ‘Did you kill Pat Garrison, Mr Fletcher?’

  Fletcher removed something imaginary from his lip. ‘No. I didn’t kill him. If I had I’d deserve a medal – but I didn’t.’

  ‘You ever dig graves at night?’

  Fletcher’s eyes narrowed with what Shaw thought was genuine surprise. ‘What? Why would I do that?’

  ‘Six months ago someone opened up Nora Tilden’s grave. Was it you?’

  ‘No. That’s crazy.’

  ‘And you didn’t notice – no one noticed, that a grave had been opened, then refilled?’

  ‘Summer you get that – bare earth. Relatives plant flowers, tidy up. Seriously, you wouldn’t notice. No one would.’ Fletcher closed his eyes and stretched back on the bed, the springs creaking.

  ‘The night of the wake, Mr Fletcher. Can you tell us your movements?’

  ‘I went to the Flask from the graveside – we all did. Church mob went upstairs to the function room for cucumber sandwiches. We stayed in the back room. Choir got there about eight. That’s it. I left when they kicked us out …’ He shook his head on the pillow. ‘No. No – I left about eleven. I hadn’t done her grave so I knew I had to get up and do it next morning before anyone was about. I was pretty much pissed. It was a decent job – I didn’t want to lose it. So I made sure I got to sleep. Set the alarm.’

  ‘Anyone verify that – anyone who’s alive?’

  Fletcher blew air out between his lips in a steady stream, like a balloon deflating.

  Shaw stood. ‘We may need you to answer these questions formally, under caution at St James’s. I’d like you to stay in Lynn – and inform my sergeant here if you have any plans to leave the town. Do you understand?’

  Valentine put his card on the bedside table.

  ‘I’m not giving you any names,’ said Fletcher. ‘But there’s plenty of people who wanted that piece of shit wiped off the floor. Dead – maybe not. But gone? Oh yeah – plenty.’

  As they went to leave Fletcher stood for the first time, grabbed a copy of Voice of Freedom and thrust it at Shaw.

  Shaw looked at the front-page headline:

  MIGRANT WORKERS BLAMED FOR CRIME WAVE

  ‘No thanks, Mr Fletcher. There’s only one crime I’m interested in at the moment.’

  Fletcher shrugged. ‘What about the wife? We get a lot of women now, in the party, on the streets for us. And there’s the lunch tomorrow – still a few tickets on our table. Fifty quid – three courses. Local fare.’

  Shaw nodded, looking at the paper. ‘It’s only a guess, Mr Fletcher. But you know, I don’t think it’s really her kind of thing.’

  17

  The incident room at the Flensing Meadow chapel was dark within, each of the Gothic windows shuttered, the only illumination coming from the bulb inside a digital projector. The room was damp, despite the antiquated heating system, which they could hear pumping steaming water around creaking radiators. Outside the early morning mist had coalesced into a solid wall of earthbound fog, the pale disc of the sun which had briefly shone now lost, Shaw guessed, for the day. The fog muffled the whisper of traffic on the ring road, leaving the cackle of the cemetery crows to provide the only clear soundtrack.

  DC Twine flipped open a laptop on the desk beside the projector and the cool blue glow showed a tidy desktop.

  Shaw sat on one of the pews cradling a double espresso, trying hard to relax, picking at a sandwich. He checked his mobile, as if the mere action would spark it into life. He hadn’t heard from George Valentine for three hours. After their interview with Fletcher the DS had taken personal charge of the hunt for Jimmy Voyce, who had failed to return to his hotel overnight. Mosse’s BMW had got back to his street at eleven the previous evening. It was impossible to tell if he had a passenger. He’d left for work at six. His wife at eight. But there was a light on in the house. Shaw was worried, more than worried, and he’d stay that way until he had a positive sighting of Voyce – alive. In a few hours’ time he’d have no choice but to confront Mosse and report Voyce’s disappearance to Warren: a double hit which could indeed signal the end of his career.

  DC Twine tapped the keys on the laptop. ‘Our luck was in, sir,’ he said. ‘The choir’s archive is in a mess – hundreds of recordings, mixed up with cine tins. Most of them are unmarked. This one just said “Tilden”. One of the conductors was a film buff – but it’s not Zeffirelli or anything. Strictly a one-tripod shot, although they do move it. We’ve had it transferred to DVD.’ Twine spoke for the audience he couldn’t see: Shaw’s squad – eight DCs, two PCs from uniform branch and the three civilian admin/phone bank operators. ‘Here we go …’

  The screen was set perfectly to catch the rectangle of projected light. They saw a room, beamed, people crowded round tables, and the choir on the higher step, about forty men in three lines. Shaw recognized the dining room in the Flask. In the corner, on a plinth, sat Alby Tilden’s gold Buddha.

  Twine let the first sea shanty get under way – ‘The Captain’s Chair’, a Lynn favourite. A few faces in the audience on film turned inquisitively to the camera.

  ‘I’ll run the whole thing for you if anyone wants, but there were just three things I’ve spotted I wanted to flag up.’ He’d bookmarked the relevant frames so that the film jumped to a new image, then froze. Twine stepped forward and used his finger’s shadow to point out one of the singers in the back row. ‘I got one of the old guys at the choir to name this lot. That’s Sam Venn, from the church.’

  He magnified the image so that Venn’s distinctively lop-sided face almost filled the screen. Shaw thought he’d grown into his disability, accommodated it, because as a younger man the disfigurement was more obvious.

  ‘Now,’ said Twine, ‘that image was taken at eight thirty. Venn stays in the back row the whole of the first session until nine thirty-five. This next image is the first song of the second session – there’s no digital time on the film but the clock in the room says it was ten thirty. There …’ he used his finger again to trace the whole of the back line. ‘He’s gone. He doesn’t appear again.’

  Shaw stared at the image. He’d had Sam Venn down in his book as many things, but outright liar hadn’t been one of them.

  ‘Anyone else step out?’ asked DC La
u, coming in with a Starbucks coffee in her hand, unzipping her leather jacket.

  ‘No. Absolutely not,’ said Twine. ‘The rest of the choir are all still there.’

  Another image flashed up. The camera had moved slightly so that they could now see the doorway into the main bar – a Moorish arch, a kitsch 1950s addition. But there was another door visible, a side door, marked STAFF. As Twine let the image roll forward in slow motion the door opened and a man came out: early twenties, black, in a yellow silk shirt and jeans. He stood in the half-open doorway, as if protecting his escape route.

  ‘This is earlier. I think that’s Patrice Garrison – our victim,’ said Twine. ‘I’ve got a grab of the image, so we can get it to his mother for a formal ID. But that’s him, got to be.’

  Shaw stood and walked to the screen, keeping the cone of light from the projector to his left. He should be proud of his forensic reconstruction, because the likeness was near perfect. The figure didn’t smile, but his lips were parted, and Shaw could see the tell-tale gap between the front teeth. The structure of the face was very close to that of his son Ian’s – less fine, the skin tone darker. In the background the clock read 9.10 p.m.

  ‘This is the only time he comes into shot,’ said Twine.

  ‘Right,’ said Shaw. ‘And Lizzie said they talked at about ten. So at this point he doesn’t know he’s about to become a father.’

  They watched him drink from a small shot glass he held easily in his hand. Shaw noted that no one in the room had greeted him, and that he made no eye contact with anyone.

  But he’d been noticed, even if he appeared not to notice anyone else. There was a table to the right crowded with five or six men, their hair uniformly and aggressively short. As Pat Garrison opened the door one of them watched him, nudged his neighbour, and they all looked, their heads edging closer, as if conspiring. One, in a T-shirt, had bare arms covered in tattoos: a Union Flag conspicuous. ‘Him,’ said Shaw, touching the screen on the face of a man at the back of the group. ‘Can you blow that image up?’