Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  They followed Jean Walker through a narrow side entrance, down an alley and into a service yard. The medieval elegance of the Shipwrights’ Hall’s façade extended to medieval squalor at the back: food bins overflowing, an outdoor staff toilet giving off a powerful stench of stale urine despite the cold air, and a pile of empty catering-size cans of vegetables, all empty, all rusting.

  ‘Nice,’ said Shaw.

  Jean laughed. ‘I wouldn’t eat here.’ She patted her raincoat. ‘I’ve brought sandwiches. If I was you, Georgie, I’d give it a miss.’

  Valentine shrugged. ‘I’ll stick to fluids.’ As he said it, though, he felt the stirrings of real hunger. He hadn’t had a proper Christmas dinner in years. Perhaps he’d look at the turkey after all. Or the soup he’d ordered when he’d bought the ticket – he fancied something hot, nourishing. What had it said on Freddie Fletcher’s menu – Olde Lynn Fish Soup?

  She led the way through a fire exit and down a narrow set of stairs to the kitchens. Preparations for lunch, they could see, had been under way for hours. Two cauldrons in brushed aluminium bubbled: sprouts bobbing in one, sliced carrots in the other. A man in stained cook’s whites hauled up an industrial oven door to reveal a line of half a dozen roasting turkeys, the sudden wave of heat reaching them from twenty feet. At a long metal table three women were arranging bread rolls and moulded pats of butter, each bearing the Shipwrights’ crest.

  On a set of open gas burners soup simmered in three pots, the scent on the air something fishy, with a bite.

  ‘I’m serving,’ said Jean, shrugging off the raincoat to reveal the uniform underneath, black with white cuffs, a white ruff. ‘Latest fashion,’ she said, pulling the skirt straight. ‘Like I said – I’ve just got five minutes.’ She took them to a small room set off the kitchen where there was a machine to dispense drinks.

  ‘I wouldn’t touch that, either,’ she said, sitting, smiling again at Valentine.

  ‘Just tell Peter what you know, Jean.’

  They heard a plate crash to the stone floor outside, the curse that followed greeted with a chorus of cheering.

  ‘George asked if I remembered Nora Melville’s wake. Sorry – Nora Tilden. It’s just that I grew up with the Melvilles, so it’s difficult to let the name go. I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t glad to see the back of her, frankly. And of course, with the murder, everyone gossiped, everyone wanted to be there, at the wake. Place was heaving. I’d done catering for the Flask at weekends when I was at school – washing up, mainly. So I knew they’d ask. I was in the kitchen most of the night, although we came through a couple of times for a fag and to listen to the choir sing, and once to set up the buffet.

  ‘Anyway, I was standing there listening when Freddie Fletcher came up. This was by the arch – between the bar and the dining room where the choir was singing. I was at school with Freddie. He knew I worked in the kitchens – I think he thought I knew the family, although to be honest Nora treated everyone like a stranger so I didn’t know anything that wasn’t common knowledge. Freddie had been drinking. He tried a bit of conversation but I could see straight off he wanted something. I let him burble on till he got to it.’

  In the kitchen something sizzled in fat.

  ‘He wanted to know if I could tell him where the black kid lived.’

  ‘Pat Garrison?’

  ‘Yes. I had no idea, but I didn’t tell him that. I asked him why he wanted to know. He smirked a bit, said there was something they wanted to give him. A present.’

  ‘What did you think he meant?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Freddie was a cruel kid – the girls always thought he picked on other kids to make sure no one had time to pick on him. When he got older he picked on blacks, him and his mates.’

  Shaw just let her go on, because he knew she wanted to tell him. He had a sudden insight into life in South Lynn. A life accompanied by the commentary of neighbours, an endless litany of whispers, just on the edge of hearing.

  ‘Freddie’s mum left home when he was a kid, she found herself a new man down at the bus station where she worked. Freddie’s dad never got over it – let the house go to ruin. And the kids – Freddie had a sister – they just ran wild. This was when we was at school, so Freddie would only have been a teenager – just. His sister …’ she searched her memory for the name, ‘Milly – that was it – she was still in junior school. Those days people just stepped in and helped in situations like that – before the council stuck their oar in. An uncle, I think it was, over at West Lynn took them in, but it didn’t last. So the worst happened – they both went into care, and the council split them up. Milly went miles away – can’t remember where; Freddie was fostered in Lynn, but he moved about, nothing permanent. It’s not an excuse, is it, for what he turned out like, but it’s an explanation.’

  Perhaps, though not a good enough one, thought Shaw.

  ‘And for all the talk, d’you know what? Freddie was pretty much all mouth. I don’t know what I thought that night, when he asked about the Garrison kid, but I imagined, I s’pose – that they’d break his windows. Piss through the letterbox. They weren’t the Ku Klux Klan. And the kid was right up himself. I don’t care what colour he was, it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve a thump.’

  A woman in a suit appeared at the door. ‘Jean, you’re needed, please. Soup’s going up.’

  Jean mouthed a silent ‘cow’ and hauled herself to her feet. She said she’d be serving for twenty minutes, then there’d be a gap before the main course – but she didn’t know anything else that might help. Shaw said he’d wait, because he had a few more questions. Valentine stood, buttoned up his jacket. ‘Right. Lunchtime for me, then. I’ll see what I see.’

  Alone, Shaw listened to the staff in the kitchen plating up the soup. He tried to rationalize what they knew about Pat Garrison, and what Jean’s evidence, and that which had come to light at the inquest, told them about his death. Superficially, Shaw thought, the picture was clearer. They had three suspects – Fletcher, Venn and John Joe Murray – all with motives. They could have struck individually or collectively. The person who’d been heard typing at the victim’s flat that night could easily have been one of them. Whoever it was could have taken the key from Pat Garrison’s body, which would account for none being found in the grave, then gone back to his flat to type the notes designed to allay suspicion when he went missing. But Shaw was increasingly unhappy with the emerging picture. Garrison’s own character was as difficult to grasp as the winter fog lying in the streets – twisting, insinuating itself into the alleys and yards of the Old Town. Was he a devoted lover, determined to stay with his new child, the victim of prejudice for his colour, his nationality, his youth, his looks; or was he a cynical womanizer, arrogant and calculating? It was as if all the hatred which seemed to obscure Pat Garrison was obscuring something else as well.

  His mobile rang. It was Jacky Lau. In the background he could hear a wind, surf and an engine running.

  ‘Sir. I’m on Holkham Sands. There’s a club – strictly illegal – they run hot-rod cars on the sands after the tide’s gone out. I know someone who knows someone. They had a meet down here night before last. They ran a few cars, then called it all off because they saw lights in the woods, thought it might be traffic division. They’ve been busted before and they didn’t want a repeat. But I’ve checked with both Burnham and Hunstanton; they had nothing up here after dark.’

  ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘Paul’s got two cars on the way, sir. It won’t be an easy search – it’s got to be ten, fifteen square miles of woodland.’

  Shaw told her to start searching where the lights had been seen and work their way outwards, then he cut the line. He knew the spot – a mile west of the nature reserve, a stretch of pine woods where hardly anybody ever went in winter. There was a road in – a forest track, but part metalled. Voyce’s hire car had been dumped two miles away. It wasn’t good news, and the stench of roasting turkey flesh didn’t make him feel an
y better.

  Jean Walker was back. She washed her hands at a grimy sink, then looked at Shaw. ‘You can smoke in here,’ she said. ‘Nobody gives a damn.’

  ‘Don’t smoke,’ said Shaw.

  ‘No,’ she said, trying to push a fringe of untidy hair back under her waitress’s cap. ‘You’re not really like Jack at all, are you? Just the looks. He broke a few hearts, too.’

  She took a Silk Cut Valentine had left on the table for her, holding it as if it was the first cigarette she’d ever seen. She lit it with her eyes closed, and didn’t open them until she’d expelled the smoke from between her lips.

  ‘Who were Fletcher’s friends?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Will Stokes – he’s dead now, but they were thick as thieves. There was Sam Venn. Like I said, Freddie picked on kids at school and Sam was target number one from the start – but Sam’s a survivor: he’d take anything Freddie dished out, then come running back. In the end they were a bit of a double act. Sam could be cruel too. I guess that was the point for him – making sure someone else was the target. Just like Freddie.’

  ‘Venn was in with the skinheads?’ asked Shaw, worried at an image that jarred.

  ‘No. No – after school, they weren’t so close, and Sam was in with the church and everything, and Freddie hardly fitted in there. But in an odd way Freddie was family for Sam – what passed for it, anyway. They all kept in touch, all of his mates did, from school, and there’s some club the boys are still in – they all meet for lunch at the Flask, raise a bit for charity, that kind of thing. Masons without the aprons. They’ll be upstairs now, hitting the bottle.’ She looked skywards. ‘Yeah – family. It was all Sam had, and Freddie. Like I said, Freddie went into care. And Sam’s aunt brought him up – the house is in Palmerston Terrace – and she was in the church, one of Nora’s cronies.’

  Shaw had another question ready but there was something about the way Valentine’s sister licked her lips that told him she had something else to say first, but that, being a good woman, she wanted someone to drag it out of her.

  ‘The church …’ Shaw shook his head, searching. Then he had it. ‘Damn. I meant to ask – that’s right, isn’t it? Venn’s father was in the Elect, we were told that by Abney, the pastor. So where were his parents? Why was he being brought up by an aunt?’

  She ground the cigarette under her black shoe.

  ‘Bit of a local scandal,’ she wriggled slightly in her seat. ‘Surprised George didn’t remember – but he was probably playing cops and robbers with his mates from school.’ She laughed bitterly, as if she too had wanted escape.

  ‘Thing is, Arthur Venn – Sam’s dad – was a bachelor, in his fifties. Then he discovered sex and along came Sam. Problem was, the woman he discovered sex with was a Venn too – his dead brother’s daughter. Uncle and niece, see? So they threw him out of the church – her too. And boy were they smug when they saw young Sammy.’ She shook her head, still appalled, at the distance of nearly fifty years, at how cruel the righteous could be. ‘It’s cerebral palsy, but you know what these people are like. God’s judgement – the face, the arm. It did for Arthur – and the niece – they left town. Rumour was they shacked up together in London – because they don’t care down there, do they? Anything goes in London. Up here we’re still burning witches. So that left Sam and the aunt. And she was a sour-faced cow as well – same pod as Nora.’

  They heard plates being set out in the kitchen.

  Shaw let this new image of Sam Venn take shape in his head. ‘Did you know, back in 1982, that Patrice and Lizzie were having an affair?’ he asked.

  ‘Not till the baby came – then we worked it out pretty damn quick, like everyone else. No, I don’t think people knew – not to talk about, anyway. But that’s different, isn’t it – so maybe they did know. I wasn’t really in the in-crowd back then – marrying a copper tends to put the frost on things. And Don thought the place was worth avoiding. He never drank on the manor – just like your dad, Peter. They’d go out of town – or use the Red House, the coppers’ pub.’

  Shaw was rerunning the cine film of the wake in his head. ‘And John Joe Murray – he’d been keen on Lizzie, but she didn’t want to know?’

  ‘Everyone loved Lizzie,’ she said. ‘John Joe tried his luck – sure. But she could pick and chose, could Lizzie, and she chose not.’

  ‘Bad blood?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘No – just the opposite, really. Kind of a joke, you know? They’d play up to it with people around – flirting with each other, turning each other down, making out they’d be meeting up later. It’s just that she didn’t want anyone from here – from the town. She always said she’d marry someone who’d take her away. Knight on a charger – that kind of rubbish.’

  The radio, which had been blaring out KL.FM from the kitchen, went silent. The manageress appeared at the door with a mobile open.

  ‘Either of you know first aid?’ she asked. ‘We need an ambulance – for upstairs. I need them now. Really. People are being sick. Jesus!’ She covered her mouth. ‘It’s like they’ve been poisoned.’

  22

  Shaw told Jean to ring 999 and went out into the kitchen. Most of the staff were standing in a huddle, heads together, but two of the men were already cleaning surfaces, sweeping floors, manically scrubbing pots. The oven door stood open, the meat cooling, turkey fat congealing on the metal roasting trays. A woman emerged from the store cupboard and put a large catering bottle of disinfectant on a worktop.

  Shaw pushed through a pair of swing doors and found himself at the bottom of a wide wooden staircase, sagging slightly to one side, which led up to the banqueting hall. Here the double serving doors had been hooked back. The hall had a magnificent hammer-beam roof, a complex puzzle of gracefully curving oak beams from which hung six crystal chandeliers festooned with candle bulbs. The room was dominated by a statue in stone of a merchant, larger than life, set in a niche in the end wall, so that he could look towards the great west window which faced the river, as if waiting for one of his ships to come into sight.

  The room was in chaos. About twenty circular tables dotted the oak floor, set for the festive charity lunch. But many of the guests were wandering from table to table, or kneeling beside others who were slumped in their seats. A Christmas tree at one end glittered with white fairy lights. The tables were crowded with unpulled crackers. Loudspeakers were still feeding in carols at a discreet if insistent volume, but over that background Shaw could hear a persistent groaning. Several of the guests were either clutching their stomachs or leaning forward, their heads in their hands. Others pressed napkins to their mouths. Several had vomited. One elderly woman was fussing, clearly distressed, telling a waitress she’d clean the mess up herself.

  Shaw knelt beside her and took her hand. ‘A doctor’s on the way,’ he said. She must have heard because she tried to smile but then there was a spasm of pain and she doubled up. When she lifted her head again her skin had taken on a green tint and her eyes were bloodshot.

  ‘Soon,’ said Shaw, pressing her shoulder.

  He surveyed the room, trying to see Valentine. A small crowd had gathered between two of the tables. Shaw pushed his way through, holding up his warrant card.

  At the centre of the crowd was a man lying on the floor. He was glistening with sweat and fingering a silver chain around his neck.

  ‘It’s the mayor,’ said a woman in a hat. She looked around the room. ‘What on earth has happened?’

  ‘Give him water – actually, fresh water.’ Shaw turned and beckoned to a waitress. ‘Get fresh water – don’t let them drink this lot …’ He picked up a carafe, held it to the light. ‘Bring bottled.’

  They heard a distant siren and the sound of someone retching by the Christmas tree. A waiter threw open the window and the sound of the siren swelled.

  Shaw jumped as someone put a hand on his shoulder. It was George Valentine. ‘I reckon the soup’s the culprit. I gave it a miss in the end. Shellfish – always a bad id
ea.’

  ‘What have you eaten?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Melon. White wine. Bread – that’s all fine. Believe me, it’s the soup.’

  Shaw nodded towards a table in the far corner by the tree, around which sat some of the locals from the Flask, including Freddie Fletcher and Sam Venn. Both were slumped forward. ‘Soups all round, by the look of it,’ he said. ‘So much for “good local fare”. Check ’em out, George.’

  But before he could move they heard a scream, a woman’s voice, mangling a word.

  Shaw picked his way through the tight-packed tables to get to her. She was young, about twenty, with blonde hair in a neat bob. She held an elderly man’s head against her shoulder, heedless of the bib of vomit that covered his shirt, tie and waistcoat.

  She looked at Shaw. ‘It’s my grandad. I think he’s dead,’ she said, brushing hair back from the man’s face. Despite the red blotches on the old man’s cheeks, and the tear which welled and then spilt into his mouth from one of his closed eyes, the line of the lips was already lifeless, parted unevenly to show tobacco-stained teeth. Shaw had no doubt she was right: the last seconds of life, he thought, were as ugly as death itself.

  23

  A catering can of Olde Lynn Fish Soup stood on the long refectory table. In front of the table stood the council’s Chief Environmental Health Officer, Guy Poole. The can was unopened, a wraparound label showing a trawler of the Fisher Fleet. Shaw pushed it towards him. ‘It’s all yours, Guy, but I don’t advise cooking it up for the family.’

  Poole was not the clichéd pen-pushing bureaucrat of popular legend. Shaw knew him because he’d led a campaign group to save the dunes south of Old Hunstanton from erosion. He lived with his wife and three children in a houseboat at Brancaster Staithe. Like Shaw he never wore a tie, and like Shaw he loved his job. He had a reputation at St James’s for using the law flexibly, and avoiding legal proceedings if he could. But if he caught the scent of something genuinely rotten he’d spare no expense to get the culprit in front of a judge.