Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  Poole took a note. ‘So – the numbers again?’

  Valentine had the details. The DS’s skin was still a subtle shade of puce. He might not have had the soup, but the sight of fifty-odd people throwing up in concert had turned his stomach, and the smell was on the air – the sea-spray scent of oyster mixed with Parmesan cheese.

  A uniformed PC delivered a tray of coffees from Starbucks and they took them over to one of the round dining tables. ‘There were a hundred and three for lunch,’ said Valentine. ‘Forty-two had the melon, sixty-one the soup – most of whom report nausea, vomiting, or just plain stomach pains. Three with no symptoms. Of those who had the melon, two reported feeling sick – but that was probably the sight of the rest of ’em chucking up. Dead man is a Charles Anthony Clarke – known as Charlie. Aged eighty-two. Granddaughter was with him – says he’s had a history of heart trouble.’ He paused, removed the lid from his coffee, took a micro-sip and got his breathing back under control. ‘Ex-serviceman, was Charlie – the whole table was old soldiers, sponsored by the Co-op, who coughed up for their tickets. As of an hour ago sixteen of the soup drinkers were still in the Queen Victoria – eight in intensive care, and most of those are OAPs.’ He flipped the notebook shut. ‘Otherwise, it’s a happy Christmas to one and all.’

  Poole stood and walked away, speaking quickly into a mobile phone.

  ‘Fletcher and Venn?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Fletcher’s not good – but we know his guts were shot anyway, it was only being a greedy pig that got him here,’ said Valentine. ‘Surprised he made it – but then he’d paid for his ticket, and there’s no motivation like getting your money’s worth. He’s one of the worst – but he’s not in danger. Venn was sick but went home under his own steam.’

  The manageress came to the still-open double doors. She looked a generation older than she had done two hours ago. Jean had left after confirming that she would be paid for a full shift.

  ‘Local paper’s got someone on the doorstep, Mr Poole – and the Press Association’s on the line in the office.’

  Poole pocketed his mobile, slumped back in his seat, then leant forward and picked up the can. ‘Right. Well, I think we can safely drop the makers of this stuff in the shite without further ado.’ He turned the can. ‘West Lynn Foodstuffs: Clockcase Cannery, West Lynn. Hmmm.’

  ‘What?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Nothing – the place is closing down. Planning commit tee gave change-of-use permission a few months ago. Maybe their health-and-safety rules have gone by the board – who knows? People losing their jobs aren’t the best placed to run a tight ship.’

  ‘“Local fare for local people,”’ said Shaw, standing. ‘What do you think? Definitely the cans?’

  ‘My prime suspect,’ said Poole, smiling, turning the can, reading the small print. ‘Certainly sufficient grounds to shut them down while we do the tests. It’s a stroke of luck, having the unopened can. Manager says they ordered just enough – people were asked to indicate what they wanted when they bought their tickets – but on the day a few changed their minds and asked for melon, so they had this one spare. We can look at the empties, of course – but this way there’s no argument: if there’s something nasty in the can, there’s no wriggle room.

  ‘And seafood’s always tricky – packed with dodgy critters – oysters, prawns, scallops, you name it. Then there’s the can. We’ll get this one back to the lab for a once over. You do get the odd dodgy batch; maybe the seal’s rusted, maybe the vacuum’s failed.’

  Poole stood, bracing himself for the press call.

  ‘Good luck with the reptiles,’ said Shaw.

  All the windows were open now and they could hear the electronic whirr of cameras. The gloomy fogbound light filtering through the stained-glass windows was boosted by a TV arc lamp.

  Poole walked to the door, can of soup under his arm, whistling.

  Shaw and Valentine faced each other across the round table, listening to his footsteps fade on the grand staircase. The table had been cleared of cutlery, glasses and crackers but a reservation sign remained on a metal spike: THE FLASK.

  Shaw covered his eyes with his hands and tried to refocus. He seemed to spend his life refocusing, and for the first time he thought how tiring that was.

  ‘OK. So Jean’s changed the game a bit,’ he said. ‘We’ve got suspects. They’re not new – but the picture’s getting clearer, sharper,’ said Shaw, his voice echoing under the hammer-beam roof. ‘Maybe,’ he added, still worried by all the details that didn’t quite fit.

  ‘Fletcher,’ said Valentine, helping himself to a glass of white wine from a bottle that had been left on a side table, running a paper napkin round the rim. ‘On the night of the wake he’s going around asking people where Pat Garrison lives. Maybe nobody knows, or they won’t tell him. So he waits, sees the kid leave early, decides to follow him home. Maybe that’s all he wanted to do – get the address that way, then plan a little surprise. Something nasty through the letterbox.

  ‘But once he’s out in the night anything could happen – the kid sees him, confronts him in the cemetery. Fletcher’s beered up – perhaps he’s not alone. There was a table full of skinheads in that room, although most were still there for the choir’s second session. They give him a kicking, cosh him with the hook, then chuck him in the grave.’

  ‘And where’d the billhook come from?’ asked Shaw. ‘It’s not as though it’s a Swiss Army knife that you can slip in your back pocket.’ He leant forward and, overcome by a sudden weariness, surprised himself by pouring a glass of wine for himself. They seemed to be circling this case without being able to reach its heart.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Valentine, refilling his own glass. ‘I can’t see him doing it on his own. People like that, I’ve seen ’em on the street: BNP, National Front, British Party – never one-on-one, always in a crowd. That’s the way they work. No way he’d have gone after Pat without back-up.’

  Shaw told his DS everything his sister had remembered about the night of Nora’s wake, and about Freddie Fletcher and Sam Venn. Valentine looked up at the intricate oak roof. ‘Venn, then – it’s a motive. They’re cousins, first cousins, Pat and Lizzie. It’s not …’ Valentine paused, assembling the right words. ‘It’s not some biblical debate for him, is it? It’s his life – it’s what he’s like, because of what it did to him.’ He took a third refill from the bottle. ‘What he thought it had done to him. I’m not saying he’d kill for that, but if his mate Fletcher was on a mission, perhaps he joined in. Cowards killed that kid – we know there’s more than one of them. Venn and Fletcher fit the bill – nothing on their own, but together they’re dangerous. That’s where my money is.’

  ‘Don’t forget John Joe Murray,’ said Shaw. ‘He says he didn’t know about Pat and Lizzie, but we’ve seen the film, and I think we can say that’s a lie. Why lie? Well, it’s a sensible thing to do if you want to avoid being a suspect in a murder inquiry. He doesn’t know we’ve got the film. Perhaps he saw them at the bar that night talking? A bit too close, a bit too knowing. Had he really given up on Lizzie? He admits he thought Lizzie was pregnant, so perhaps he was on the lookout for the father. Perhaps he wanted to scare Pat off, make it crystal clear he wasn’t going to get his feet under the table at the Flask. Murray says he stayed until midnight – so get Twine to check that out with our witnesses.’

  Shaw stood. ‘That’s the problem with this crime, George. It’s all motive – you can’t move for motives. What we haven’t got enough of is evidence. Even if we could put all of them in the cemetery that night, at the right time, could we prove which of them struck the fatal blow? I doubt it. Unless one of them breaks down and gives us a nice neat confession I can’t see any way forward. One fact hasn’t changed right from the start – this is a twenty-eight-year-old crime. Not many of those get solved.’

  Valentine rubbed his stomach under his raincoat. ‘’Cept we know someone was out there trying to dig up the grave this year. Six months
ago. That’s not a cold case.’

  Shaw took a menu off the neighbouring table, turned it over and began to make a list.

  ‘OK – let’s concentrate on that. What do we know? Either someone dug the hole and found what they were looking for, or they dug the hole and didn’t find what they were looking for. The second scenario seems marginally more likely as we know they were probably spotted and that the police turned up – and went on turning up on a nightly basis, so they couldn’t go back. So that implies that what they were looking for was still in the grave when we opened it up.’

  Shaw completed the note, aware that outside they could still hear the electronic crackle from the mobile TV unit. He turned the napkin round for Valentine to check. On it was a list with three headings:

  ‘Have I missed anything?’ asked Shaw.

  The DS studied the list for a full minute, then shook his head.

  ‘One of these items means more than we realize,’ said Shaw. ‘It means a lot to someone – someone close, someone we know.’

  ‘The glasses?’

  ‘We checked that out. The pub was presented with a set of a dozen etched glasses by the brewery before the war. There’s just three left behind the bar – Lizzie uses them. So – they came from the pub, that’s all we know.’

  Valentine leant back in his chair, his neck bones clicking together like billiard balls.

  Shaw thought about the model boat, the tiny shrouded bundle of Mary Tilden. ‘Alby Tilden – the father, what’s the latest?’ asked Shaw, clutching at the one piece of the jigsaw that was still missing from the family picture.

  ‘He’s been out for eleven years. Had some psychiatric problems, apparently – agoraphobia. Fear of the outside. They had to drag him out. In 2003 he was on some out-reach network run from Lincoln. Living on benefits. After that he slips off the radar. We know Lizzie Murray writes regularly, and was getting replies until a year ago; her letters to Alby go via Bea Garrison to an address in Retford. That’s been checked out, by the way – dead-end. The flat number we’ve got matches one that’s empty. Has been for a year. Tenant died. He was an old lag from Lincoln. And Twine’s having a real job getting the pension details as well. Latest promise is sometime today – but who knows?’

  Shaw stood, the chair scraping horribly. He was struggling to think straight, haunted by the dead face of Charlie Clarke, who’d survived a world war only to be struck down by a can of rancid soup.

  ‘So that would explain why Alby hasn’t written for a year – Lizzie’s letters weren’t being passed on,’ said Shaw.

  Valentine continued to stare at his notepad. ‘Well, you’d think so, but there’s an odd detail,’ he said. ‘When the Nottingham boys checked out the address in Retford they found that a neighbour’s been keeping the post. Twine asked them to check through, and there was nothing there from Lynn.’ He straightened his arm so that he could see his counterfeit Rolex. ‘I’ll get back to Bea Garrison – see what should be there.’

  Shaw picked up the list of forensic exhibits from the opened grave.

  ‘Bea. The victim’s mother. Perhaps the only person in the world who really knew him. Lizzie had known him for, what, five months? Bea’d seen it all – twenty years of growing up. Get over to the Ark, George; sign out the forensics that were on Pat – the knife, the billhook, the sketch, the lot. Tom’s got copies of the sketches. Let’s see what she has to say about the contents of her son’s pockets.’

  ‘And Warren? We still haven’t told him about Jimmy Voyce.’

  Shaw closed his eyes. Monocularism put a strain on his good eye, which gave him headaches. He rubbed the temple beside the pain.

  ‘Leave that to me.’

  24

  On a good day Morston House looked out over the harbour at Wells-next-the-Sea. This wasn’t a good day. The mist on land ran hard here into a sea fret, a thick broiling band of fog that tracked the coast. Visibility was fifty yards and falling, light leaching away, ushering in a premature dusk. They’d crawled along the seafront in the Porsche, past a Dutch barge which was always moored at the spot – a floating pub with fairy lights strung up the rigging and along a gangplank peppered with snow. They could just see the chocolate-coloured seawater – a wide channel at full tide choked with ghostly white yachts moored to orange buoys. The quayside was reserved for the little fleet which trawled for scallops, mussels and crabs. Just beyond was the edge of the wide marsh which protected the harbour from the sea, the reeds clogged with ice.

  The little kiss-me-quick seafront had lost its daily battle with the bleak winter landscape. From every lamp post hung a gaudy poster for Christmastide, the annual festival in which thousands of children crowded the water’s edge to see Santa Claus drift in by boat under a sky full of fireworks. Shaw had taken Fran last year and had promised a return. He noted the date: Saturday, with the evening high tide. The posters were almost the only splash of colour on the street. The two chippies were closed, John’s Rock Shop alone spilling some electric light out on to the snow-swept pavement. There was a thirty-foot Christmas tree on the quay, but its lights were off. Down the channel which led to the open sea an automatic foghorn called to a beat as slow as a dying heart.

  Morston House was on the waterfront but two hundred yards east, beyond the old warehouses converted for the Chelsea-on-Sea crowd. A small lane ran to the town’s boatyard, and set back was a line of early Victorian villas, playfully painted in pink, blue and yellow, with arched doors, wooden balconies and wide picture windows on the second floors, giving a view, on a fog-free day, to the open sea and the dunes of the north coast. Most, like Morston House itself, had English Tourist Board B&B stickers in their front windows. Bea Garrison’s boasted four stars, a pair of wide bay windows in naval style and – alone in the street – a tower room with a ‘witch’s hat’ leaded roof.

  Shaw parked outside the Norfolk Arms, a gastropub which, he’d discovered earlier that summer, served up three scallops on a plate at £20 a time. The 4x4s crammed into the car park were all polished, beaded with the mist. It was holiday cottage season, and the town was full of people who didn’t know where they were, wandering in search of a coffee shop or book store that would tide them over until it was time to sleep in front of an open fire, or spend a small fortune on dinner. Everyone out had a dog, and most of those were Afghans or spaniels, both they and their owners sporting raincoats. In the public bar of the pub he could just see a group of local fishermen at the window, balefully eyeing the falling snow and the dying light.

  The radio in the Porsche was tuned to KL.FM for the news bulletin.

  …and the condition of six elderly men who fell ill at the dinner is still causing concern, said a hospital spokesman. The dead man’s family has been informed. The council’s Environmental Health Department earlier served an enforcement notice on the West Lynn company at which the soup was canned. The Clockcase Cannery has been ordered to cease production and is being examined by health experts. Our reporter spoke to the mayor at his home in Gayton, where he was recovering from the illness which had struck at the Shipwrights’ Hall lunch …

  Shaw cut the radio, hauling himself out of the Porsche. Zipping up his jacket, he heard his phone ring and called up a picture message from Lena: Fran, standing on a chair, stringing out paper chains in the cottage.

  Valentine stood looking at the façade of the Norfolk Arms, the window frames of which had been painted that precise shade of eggshell blue that wealthy property owners had used on their woodwork all along the north Norfolk coast. The corporate livery of the weekend set. A lunch board advertised samphire, Brancaster mussels, Burnham venison and Sandringham lamb.

  Shaw killed the image on his phone. He wasn’t in the best of moods after his interview with DCS Warren. He’d been in his office for six minutes and hadn’t sat down. Warren had taken the news calmly, his eyes bulging slightly. He said that when there was news of Voyce he wanted to be the first to know. If he later discovered that he was the second to know then he’d persona
lly suspend Shaw from duty. Immediately. Shaw thought about DC Lau out on Holkham Sands, overseeing the search of the woods, but said nothing. He’d had no word. There was nothing to say.

  They trudged up the sinuous garden path to Morston House past a dripping laurel. There was a sudden breeze from the sea, and Shaw wondered if, after all, the fog might clear in time for sunset. It was a curious magic of the coast that, however bad the day, the sun always seemed to make at least one brief appearance.

  Shaw rapped on the door with a knocker cast in the shape of a fox’s head.

  It was opened by Kath Robinson. Shaw was struck again – as he had been the first time he’d seen her in the upstairs room at the Flask – by her casual beauty, her translucent skin, and by the complete absence of something: Shaw was used to sensing a reaction from women – a spectrum of signals ranging from frank and open sexual interest to a kind of defensive reserve. In Kath Robinson he sensed nothing, as if she was blind to gender, or indifferent to it.

  ‘Bea said to take you up,’ she said, standing back to let Shaw and Valentine over the threshold, rubbing a hand on her jeans at the thigh. She had a way of talking which made every sentence sound dead – as if she’d over-rehearsed it before delivery.

  Bea Garrison’s description of Morston House as a B&B had been disingenuous at best. As they made their way down a wide corridor they glimpsed a dining room and a bar, and at the back of the house an elegant wooden conservatory converted into a breakfast room. On a table in the hallway was a picnic basket, an old-fashioned wicker one with leather straps, the top open, containing several packets wrapped in greaseproof paper and a flask. By the back door Shaw glimpsed three sets of walking boots and a bundle of the curious ski sticks which had recently become an apparent necessity for all serious walkers.