Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  19

  The inquest into the death of Patrice Garrison was not the first to be held in the Flask. Stan Glover, the coroner’s officer, a former DS from Cromer, was an old friend of Shaw’s father. He’d been back through the records and found one in 1958. A child, a two-year-old girl, found strangled on waste ground down by Blubber Creek. They’d opened the inquest in the pub for the same reason they’d chosen to do it for Pat Garrison – to get the community involved, appeal for witnesses, and to give the coroner a chance to view the scene of the crime. A place like South Lynn had few secrets from its own people. In the nineteenth century they’d have had the body there on the first day as well, laid out on a couple of floorboards. Putting Pat Garrison’s bones on show would have achieved little, but Glover had arranged for a large-scale picture of the victim from a snapshot of 1982 to be mounted over a desk set aside for the coroner. On the desk was a glass water pitcher, an upturned tumbler and a bible. To one side was a seat for witnesses.

  Glover’s close-shaved hair was greying, but the stubble on his face was still black. He came through the door marked staff carrying a bundle of documents.

  ‘Please rise for Her Majesty’s Coroner,’ said Glover.

  The coroner, Dr Leslie Shute, followed him into the room. He wore a tweed jacket with leather patches, shirt and tie. Shaw always thought he looked like he’d been scrubbed with wire wool – his cheeks so flushed they might bleed, his ruddiness accentuated by a shaving regime which seemed to involve a machete. Shute ran a medical practice in Burnham Market. He was known widely as a breeder of greyhounds, which he ran at Mildenhall Stadium. Shaw sometimes saw him on the beach in the winter, the dogs circling him at speed as if on invisible gyres.

  The dining room was packed, the round tables removed and replaced with rows of single chairs. Alby Tilden’s gold Buddha looked down on proceedings with an enigmatic smile.

  Glover took a chair beside the coroner. ‘Mobiles off, please – all of them.’

  Shute smiled inappropriately.

  ‘Thank you all for coming.’ He had a light clear voice that Shaw had heard him use to call the dogs. ‘I’m going to formally open the inquest into the death of Patrice Eugene Garrison and will presently adjourn those proceedings to enable the police to complete their inquiries and for any criminal prosecution to take its proper course.’ Shute began to search inside his jacket pockets for something he’d mislaid, and Shaw noted that he could do so without breaking the thread of his preamble. ‘What I need to do today,’ he continued, ‘is to confirm the identity of the deceased, the cause of death, and then my officer here will give us a brief summary of the details, the circumstances, so far as we can ascertain them, of the death in question. I’ve visited the spot where this young man’s bones were found, and I hope that opening the inquest here will encourage as many people as possible to come forward and help this court – and the police – to find the person or persons responsible for his death.’

  Shaw was standing at the back and he noticed that Lizzie Murray had joined him, together with a young woman with blonde hair cut savagely short whom he recognized as a reporter with the local paper. She leant close to Shaw. ‘This isn’t worth my time, is it?’ she asked. She looked skywards, didn’t wait for an answer and slipped between rows to a desk set at one side for the press, already occupied by an elderly man who Shaw knew worked for Hospital Radio. Shaw thought the reporter’s doubts over the news value of the proceedings were probably justified. The powers of the coroner were a pale imitation of the office’s traditional authority – he could no longer name suspects or accuse the guilty. And while Shaw had agreed it was worth calling for witnesses to come forward, he wondered how many of the locals would have the courage to tell the court anything it didn’t know already.

  ‘We already have a list of six witnesses who have indicated they wish to speak – but anyone may do so, even at this stage. In fact, especially at this stage,’ said Dr Shute. He flicked open the single file he had before him. ‘First of all, I am able to confirm that a DNA analysis to be undertaken by the Forensic Science Service is expected to provide conclusive evidence of the identity of the victim. However, I am able to accept a preliminary identification based on a facial reconstruction of the remains together with forensic evidence from the scene and corroborating dental records. The deceased was an American citizen and the US Embassy has been notified of these proceedings. I can also report that a postmortem examination was completed here in Lynn and that the cause of death is understood to have been a single traumatic blow to the back of the skull with a pointed weapon – probably the billhook that was found with the remains. I have examined the medical notes in this case and discussed it with the pathologist – Dr Justina Kazimierz.’ He surveyed the ‘court’. ‘I am entirely confident this finding is the correct one. Given that the deceased had been dead for many years there is no likelihood of any forensic evidence being recovered from tissue. But the bones tell us enough.’

  He readied a fountain pen over a blank notepad. ‘Anyone giving testimony will be speaking under oath and may subsequently be required to make a formal statement to the police. Mr Glover?’

  Glover then gave an outline of the bare facts of the case: Garrison’s family background, the death of his aunt Nora Tilden, his journey to the UK, her burial, his disappearance. He then described the uncovering of the bones. He sat while he read in a dull monotone, but the room remained silent, watchful. Shaw indulged in a childhood fantasy – the idea that he could read people’s thoughts in bubbles which hung over their heads. He wondered what he would have read now. It was particularly difficult in Lizzie Murray’s case because she gave so few hints of an interior life behind her brittle exterior.

  ‘Before we get to the events of 1982,’ said Shute when Glover had finished, ‘I’d like to ask briefly whether anyone has information regarding an attempt, in June this year the police believe, to reopen the grave in which the remains of this young man were discovered. This was on the night of the eighteenth. We have already a statement from a resident of Gladstone Street who says she saw lights in the cemetery that evening and called the police. They attended but found the cemetery empty.’

  Four of the six witnesses who had already contacted the coroner’s office then gave evidence. They all reported that the cemetery was used by young people, late at night, for the purchase of drugs. One witness was a council workman from South Lynn who said that syringes and other detritus were often found, especially in the area down by the riverside, close to two breaks in the iron fencing and the part of the cemetery most distant from local housing. While that corner of the graveyard was also closest to the riverside path, all the witnesses pointed out that the walkway was rarely used after dark, and that the council lighting was often vandalized. Shaw noted the timings of the witness accounts of sightings in the cemetery – all before midnight – whereas the woman who had seen lights from her window that night in June had reported them to the police at 3.15 a.m.

  Shute moved on to the night of Nora Tilden’s wake. He said that anyone who had already given evidence to the police did not need to repeat it here. They had two further witnesses listed: the first, a woman who lived less than fifty yards from the pub, said that noise from the wake had continued until well into the small hours. She said it was a regular problem, and had been since she’d moved to the area in 1975. She said she had reported the nuisance to both the police and the local council and they had failed to take action. Dr Shute thanked her for her time.

  The second witness was a man who said he had seen Pat Garrison on the night of the wake walking away from the Flask towards the cemetery. The man, now in his sixties, was a night-shift worker at the old jam-processing factory in West Lynn and always went to the pub in the evening during his break – which was supposed to be between 10.30 p.m. and 11.30 p.m. but which he always ‘stretched’ by a quarter of an hour each side. The man said he knew Pat Garrison, though only by sight. The only things he noticed, or could remember
, were that the time was 10.15 or just before, because he usually heard All Saints chime the quarter-past before he went into the pub, and that Garrison was carrying two glasses in one hand, the rims held together between thumb and forefinger.

  Shaw nodded to DC Birley to intercept the witness as he left the stand and fix an interview at St James’s.

  Dr Shute then asked for new witnesses to come forward. Seven merely added detail to the picture Shaw and his team had so far constructed of the evening of the wake. Three had been at the graveside for the funeral and recalled Pat Garrison standing with the family. Prompted, they also confirmed the presence of the two black men from the Free, Jesse and Emmanuel Rogers, standing with a group of the Elect, including the pastor. Shaw caught the young reporter’s eye and she pulled a face, then gave in to the urge to yawn.

  The eighth and last witness to come forward was a woman in her mid-fifties, Shaw judged, wearing cleaner’s overalls. She gave her name as Jayne Flowers of West Lynn, her age as fifty-nine and her occupation as hospital cleaner. She said that at the time of Patrice Garrison’s disappearance she had a part-time job as a caretaker at a block of private flats in Snettisham Road. Mrs Bea Garrison, the victim’s mother, paid a weekly rent, she recalled, of £25 for a bedsit in the block for her son – the deceased.

  ‘What can you tell us?’ asked Shute, leaning back, and Shaw noted – not for the first time – the coroner’s skill at setting an informal tone in the court.

  ‘I went to the funeral because I knew Nora, and I wanted to pay my respects.’ Shaw realized that giving evidence for this woman was an ordeal, because her voice buzzed, vibrating with a stress she didn’t show in her face. ‘But I couldn’t go back to the wake. I had to work that afternoon, at the hospital, then get back to the flats to cook tea. We had the bottom flat, you see – that was part of the deal. And when I’d done – the tea, I mean – I had to start cleaning. All the stairs, and do the rubbish.’

  She looked at her hands. ‘I heard Pat come home – but late, about one o’clock.’

  Shute stopped her there, trying to make sure of the time. Did she wait up for tenants to come home? No, never. But she was a light sleeper and she heard the door open, and Pat’s flat was above theirs. So she heard his door open and close. And because she was a light sleeper she always had a clock – right there – that she could see without moving her head. And she knew for certain that it was one o’clock.

  But how did she know it was Garrison? Shute asked.

  ‘Well I didn’t, not then. But I was sure, because I heard him typing. It’s showing my age, isn’t it? These days it’d be a computer and you wouldn’t hear it, but back then everyone used a typewriter. It was portable, but you still needed a sledge hammer to hit the keys. We often heard him typing – he was at the college, doing journalism, and he did bits for the paper even then. Sport and stuff. But this – he’d never done this, not at that time. I couldn’t sleep. I just lay there. Then – after about an hour, he stopped. I knew something was up because I heard his door open again. I thought he was off out so I got up to get my dressing gown because I was going to have words. ’Cos it wasn’t right.’

  Out of the corner of his eye Shaw saw Lizzie sidling across the room to the far wall, to stand beside one of the red velvet curtains. Her hand played with the gold buttons on her black formal jacket, then touched the single diamond pin in her ear lobe.

  ‘And I’d had problems before,’ she said, hesitating. ‘With girls – Pat brought girls back, and that was a problem. Not that I’d mind, but the landlords said if people wanted a flat for two the rent was higher. So no double occupancy. I should have said something earlier, but I let it drag. He was just a kid, and I didn’t hear the girls complain. Quite the opposite.’

  There was nervous laughter. Shute was nodding and Shaw guessed he was trying to work out what he should ask next. As coroner he had certain duties – to fix the time and place of death, for example. But he also had a duty to probe the cause and circumstances of that death.

  ‘Girls?’ he said. He checked the file. ‘The deceased was only in Lynn for a few months before his disappearance – but in that time he had several girlfriends?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘I see. I expect the police will want to ask you more questions about that, Mrs Flowers.’

  Shaw watched as Lizzie took a seat.

  ‘But back to that night – so you went to the door?’

  ‘Yes. But I couldn’t put the light on because that wakes Frank up, so it took me a minute to get my things. I heard him come down the stairs and go out the door. I followed – right out in the street. It was a cold night, but there was a moon, and so I could see that he’d gone. He must have cut down Jenkyns Street to the river. But I tell you what I heard – one of those suitcase things on wheels, like a trolley. That’s what I heard. So I thought, he’s done a moonlight flit, even though that didn’t make any sense because his mother paid the rent and it was paid a month in advance. So I didn’t call out or anything. I just let him go.’

  ‘But you didn’t see anyone – how can you be sure it was Pat Garrison?’

  ‘He left me a note – typed. I saw it when I went back in our flat by the hall light, under our door. Just saying he was leaving, and thanking us for being kind. And that’s what really made me remember it – Frank laughed when he saw it – because we hadn’t been kind. Frank doesn’t like ’em …’ She shrugged, looked around. ‘You know, the blacks.’

  There was a brittle silence.

  Shute thanked her for her evidence, asked for any more witnesses to step forward and, when none did so, adjourned the inquest.

  DC Birley waylaid Jayne Flowers, taking her to a table to fix a time for a formal statement. The room emptied quickly, many people staying out in the bar. Ian Murray appeared, helping two waitresses quickly set out the tables for lunch.

  Shaw took a chair and walked over to Lizzie. ‘A quick word,’ he said, and sat beside her. She shook out her hair, then ran a hand through it. Over their heads was a loudspeaker and they heard the opening piano chords of ‘Oliver’s Army’ from the juke box. There was a wire hanging loose from the speaker, within reach, and she took it and with one abrupt tug pulled it out, cutting the music dead.

  Shaw waited for her to speak but the figurehead face remained immobile, the piercing green eyes locked on Shaw’s.

  ‘Pat saw other girls, then?’ he said.

  ‘I need a smoke – so can we keep this short?’ she asked. She knocked out a cigarette and held it in her lips, and Shaw thought that was one of the reasons her beauty had diminished over the years, that she’d taken on the manners of men, living and working in a man’s world.

  ‘Kath Robinson?’ Shaw suggested. ‘Was she one of the others?’

  Lizzie smiled. ‘Yup – she was the first. Nothing happened. Kath’s always been a bit slow, a bit trusting. These days they’d have a word for it. But we just looked out for her. She fell for Pat. Pat should have walked away, but he didn’t. She tried to play him along a bit. Not clever. She was just looking forward to a first kiss, I think – but Pat had other ideas. Like I said, nothing happened. But Kath was upset. Confused.’

  ‘She told you this?’

  ‘She’s always told me everything – we were best friends at school. She spent more time here as a kid than she did at home. Mind you, her old man was in the bar most of his life.’ She took the cigarette out of her mouth. ‘Yes, she told me. This wasn’t long after Pat had arrived. We hadn’t started seeing each other then. I had words. Pat was sorry – he said he hadn’t understood.’

  ‘She’s a quiet girl,’ said Shaw, offering her the chance to paint a fuller picture.

  ‘Cursed with beauty,’ she said bitterly, and Shaw thought Lizzie’s abrupt and tetchy manner might hide a fine mind. ‘She wants someone to love her – always has. But men can’t see past the boobs and the Barbie-doll looks. Married a couple of times but she’s not interested any more – she’s taken refuge as Bea
’s housekeeper up at the B&B, does most of the cleaning, cooking and stuff. She wears a wedding ring – it’s like mosquito repellent. Works, too.’

  ‘So, despite Pat’s reputation – I presume there were others if Mrs Flowers’s statement is true – you became lovers?’

  ‘He didn’t cheat on me, if that’s what you’re after,’ she said. ‘Once we were together, that was it. When he went, disappeared, I thought he had found someone else. I admit that. But it turns out we were all wrong. He didn’t run away, did he? He would have stayed if someone hadn’t killed him. So perhaps I was right to trust him.’ She took in a ragged breath, her fingers working at the skin of her neck.

  Through the door marked staff her son Ian appeared in his chef’s whites, using his back to push through, with three plates effortlessly held. ‘Three daily specials,’ he announced before heading across the room in response to a waved arm.

  The place had filled up quickly with lunch tables and diners. At one of the tables Shaw recognized Pastor Abney from the Free Church, and at another Michael Brindle, the chargehand from the cemetery labour gang who’d walked him to Freddie Fletcher’s office that first morning of the investigation. Shaw was struck again by the claustrophobic intimacy of this small community, even now, in the first years of the twenty-first century, as incestuous as it had been, perhaps, when the whaling fleet was still coming home.

  Lizzie’s eyes followed her son across the room.

  ‘Presumably Pat carried keys, Mrs Murray? A key ring?’

  ‘Yes. Flashy – like fake gold, in the shape of that mountain with the presidents’ heads on it …’