by Jim Kelly
Saturday, 18 December
Shaw and Valentine stood on the corner of Explorer Street, the snow falling so thickly that the two lines of terraced houses faded away into a white gloom, as dense as a sauna but so cold that Shaw could feel his skin freezing. A week before Christmas. From almost every window fairy lights shone, and above one door in the mid-distance a single reindeer pranced, flickering tirelessly from front hooves to back. It was just before nine o’clock in the morning and a silhouette trudged past them, a street cleaner in a reflective council jacket on his way to work. Shaw checked his watch, while Valentine listened for the clock to chime at All Saints.
After returning home the previous night Shaw had been trying to get the Christmas lights to work on the pine tree beside the cottage when his mobile had rung. He’d been rerunning in his head their interview with Mosse, admitting to himself that they’d failed to break him, but agreeing with Valentine’s verdict that they had shaken him. Shaw had taken him to the morgue in the Porsche and he’d identified Jimmy Voyce, but he hadn’t said another word. For now it was the best ID they would get. They could hardly expect Voyce’s wife to fly all the way from New Zealand only to travel home alone. Voyce’s dental records together with Mosse’s ID would have to be enough for the coroner. The forensics on Mosse’s BMW were still being processed but, as expected, the news from Hadden’s team was not encouraging. Unfortunately Voyce’s burnt-out hired car was yielding no better results. There was some buckling to the front bumper not recorded on the hire contract, but the flames had charred the plastic, seared the steel, so that their chances of lifting blood or skin were almost nil. It was a blow; a bitter blow.
So, when last night’s call had come he’d taken it without enthusiasm, expecting more bad news. It was Chief Inspector Bob Howell, head of St James’s uniform branch, who said one of his officers had something for them on the report that a light had been seen in Flensing Meadow cemetery six months earlier. PC Gavin Bright had been serving witness statements on the family of a man arrested for selling drugs outside Whitefriars primary school earlier in the week – an arrest made thanks to a phone-call from DI Shaw himself. The mother of the arrested man lived in a low-rise council block in Gladstone Street – the same block from which the witness had seen the light in the cemetery. PC Bright had something to show them. He’d be on the street corner at nine.
Shaw stamped his feet in the snow, producing a series of muffled thuds, and looked at his watch. He’d come straight to the South End from DCS Warren’s office. The interview had been cold, formal, and conducted largely without rancour. Any emotional bond which might have bridged the gap between their ranks had been severed. Max Warren intended his retirement to be long and blameless, and the last thing that was going to throw a shadow over it was the indiscipline of the youngest DI on the force combined with the wilful belligerence of the oldest DS.
Jimmy Voyce had died while under police surveillance. His murder would be the subject of an internal inquiry, Warren said. A coroner’s court hearing would be adjourned to allow the investigation to continue. If the press missed the short adjournment – which they often did if they had a full schedule to cover in the magistrates court – then they might be able to keep it quiet. If the press sniffed it out, they’d have no chance. The job of tracking down Voyce’s killer would now be the responsibility of DI Raymond ‘Chips’ McCain of Peterborough CID. His first interview would be with Shaw and Valentine. They were to be completely candid; any suspicion that they were anything less would result in immediate suspension. If either Shaw or Valentine approached Bobby Mosse during McCain’s investigation they would be suspended and face disciplinary charges which, Max Warren promised Shaw, would result in their dismissal without pension from the West Norfolk Constabulary.
‘That might mean bugger-all to you, Peter, given you’ve got a nice little business to go home to. But you might consider what having no pension would do to George Valentine’s remaining years.’
Which is when the mask finally slipped. ‘That is a door,’ said Warren, pointing a fat finger at the oak-panelled exit from his office. ‘If you break any of these conditions you will walk through it and out of this building. George Valentine will go with you. Either of you transgresses, both will go.’
The good news, Shaw had thought in the lift on the way down, was that Mosse had clearly not made a formal complaint about his unofficial interrogation in the car park at the Westmead. In the three years he had been trying to reopen the case into Jonathan Tessier’s death, that was the first time Mosse had displayed any weakness, any inclination to stay on the back foot. But that didn’t mean he’d miss the obvious next step – which was to leak the bare details of Voyce’s death to the press and sit back while they tore Shaw and Valentine’s careers apart.
Shaw felt utterly impotent. Not only were they unable to take the case forward, they frankly didn’t know how to. Their only slender hopes now lay with Chris Robins’s will and the investigative powers of ‘Chips’ McCain – a man with a reputation for running steamroller investigations of unmitigated thoroughness. Shaw could sympathize with that, but the problem with thorough was that it was also slow. And they were running out of time.
Valentine stood still, letting the snow accumulate on his thin hair. ‘Couldn’t this uniform have just told us what he’s found?’ he asked.
‘Apparently not,’ said Shaw. ‘He needs to show us.’
Shaw tried to lift Valentine’s obvious depression. ‘Twine had news, by the way. Caught me on the way out from Warren’s office,’ he said. Twine had received an e-mail from FBI headquarters at Quantico. They’d sent a field officer from Bismarck out to Hartsville to check out Bea Garrison’s past history. Shaw summarized: ‘The big lie, and the relevant omission, is that it wasn’t Latrell Garrison who set up the drugstore. Yes, there had been a programme for GIs to retrain, but Latrell had flunked out of that in six months. The shop was actually a local store called Garrison’s – a coffee shop, general grocer’s, post office and pharmacy, owned by the family since the twenties. The dispensary had been closed since before the war because they couldn’t entice a qualified pharmacist out to Hartsville. When Latrell ducked out, Bea took his place. She qualified in 1971. In 1973 she took a further course in advanced pharmacy. In 1975 Levi’s opened a clothing factory on the edge of town – population went from 3,000 to 16,000, and the general store boomed. Latrell drank his share of the profits, that much is true. Bea left in 1982, selling up at public auction for $450,000. Twine worked it out – that’s £245,000 at 1982 prices. So she lied to us,’ Shaw said to Valentine, as a car crunched past at ten miles an hour, its driver clearing condensation with a waving gloved hand. ‘In fact she’s lied several times. It turns out she’s a qualified pharmacist, and as such she will have – at the very least – a firm grasp of toxicology.’
‘But other than telling Alby Tilden how much rat poison to put in the cans, what could she do with it?’ asked Valentine. He’d meant to buy a fresh pack of Silk Cut on the walk from his house. His irritation was growing with each nicotine-free minute. ‘Christ, we’ve checked it out. Justina says the poison in the soup was well short of a lethal dose for most people.’ He hauled some air into his lungs. ‘So how do we build a murder charge out of that?’ He looked up at the falling snowflakes. ‘Sir,’ he added.
‘Justina said that, if anything, Venn had less than the average,’ added Shaw, checking his watch. ‘Let’s put Guy Poole and Tom Hadden together – if they’re not talking already. They need to hammer this out – there has to be an answer, George. I think Alby and Bea wanted the three men dead. They got two of them – only missed out on Murray because he wasn’t there. But how? What about cutlery? The soup bowls? And we know Fletcher was ill the day before the lunch. What about Venn? Check that out, too. And while you’re at it, check with the incident room and see what they’re doing to track down John Joe Murray. He still hasn’t turned up. We need to find him.’
Then, as if he’d beamed d
own through the snow cloud, PC Bright was with them. He was short, broad, with a formless pale face and strikingly small jet-black eyes. He had that particular pallor which comes with working a night shift.
‘Sir.’ He stifled a yawn.
He took them down Explorer Street to an alleyway, then cut north and out into the hidden churchyard of All Saints. Here the snow made a blanket for the dead. On one fine civic monument to a long-dead mayor someone had arranged ten cans of Special Brew in bowling-pin formation. The snowfall was so gentle the cans still stood, upright and untouched.
Bright led the way to the church porch. Around them, encircling the churchyard, was a 1960s low-rise block of former council flats.
‘That one there, sir – second floor, with the window open in the bathroom? That’s the mother of the pusher we arrested outside the school, after your tip-off. The woman who said she saw the light in the cemetery is her next-door neighbour. On the other side the flat has a balcony looking down into Explorer Street. I’d read the witness summaries for your case on the murder incident room website, so when I called round to take her down to St James’s to bail her son I took a look. Now, the neighbour said she saw the light in the graveyard over the rooftops. But she couldn’t have, sir – the terraced houses are too high. Third floor – maybe. Second floor – never.’
‘Name?’ Shaw asked.
Valentine beat Bright to it. ‘Jade Moore.’ The DS looked at his shoes, knowing that was a stupid thing to say, because if he knew the name then he’d read the statement, and he’d lived here, in this neighbourhood, all his life, so he should have known that she couldn’t have seen what she said she’d seen.
They let Bright lead the way, into a stairwell then up to the landing.
Jade Moore was in her mid-forties and applying make-up to try to look half that age. She had a job to go to, she was late, she couldn’t spend all day talking to them.
Shaw explained why they were there and asked her to open the metal-framed door to the balcony.
‘It’s snowing,’ she complained. But she got the keys, and the door screeched at the hinges as it swung open.
They all stood at the rail, looking across Explorer Street.
Moore had put a cardigan on, which wiped out all the years she’d clawed back with the make-up.
‘You didn’t see the light in the cemetery at all, did you?’ asked Shaw. ‘You can’t see past the houses from here.’
‘Does it matter?’ she said, looking at them all in turn. ‘There was a light in the cemetery, believe me.’ She lost her temper then, throwing an empty packet of cigarettes over the railing and stomping back into the flat.
They heard voices raised, then she reappeared, towing her daughter. She was in her mid-teens, with pancake make-up, clutching a man’s blue dressing gown and a copy of Persuasion.
‘This is Jilly, she saw the light. All right? When she got in she told me what she’d seen so I rang it in to Jamie – Jamie Driver, my brother-in-law. He’s on traffic but he wants to get into the CID, so he likes any tips. I didn’t want you lot taking Jilly down the nick, that’s all.’
They sat the girl down and asked her to describe what she’d seen. She’d been sitting outside the Lattice House with some of the girls from school, drinking cider. She’d gone into the cemetery with a boy. Her mother nodded at that, grim faced, and Shaw guessed that Jilly had already paid the price for that transgression. ‘We were just sitting talking,’ she said, glaring defiantly at her mother. ‘Round by the cedar trees.’
‘Time?’ said Valentine. ‘Incident report said just after three o’clock – that right?’
‘Two,’ she said. ‘Mum rang then – but like I had to get home, see Gav home too.’
Her mother looked skywards.
‘There’s a gap in the cemetery railings down by the water. Anyone can get in. We heard someone digging – like a spade. And – yeah – a light. But not much ’cos there was a moon.’
‘Tell us about the person who was digging,’ said Shaw.
‘We didn’t see anyone, not really. Like I said, we heard them. We just saw the light, down by the riverside. Near that big stone box – the tomb. Then we got out. Went home.’
Shaw and Valentine swapped glances.
‘How did you see the light, but not the person?’ said Shaw gently, turning to watch the snow fall.
‘She was in the hole. But Gav saw her for a second, just her head.’
‘She?’ said Shaw.
‘Yeah – I said that.’ She looked at her mother. ‘I said that. I did.’
Jade Moore passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Christ!’
‘And where can we find this Gav?’ said Valentine, taking out his notebook as she reeled off the details.
‘A question,’ said Shaw, holding up his hand. ‘Did you disturb her, Jilly? The woman in the grave. Did she know you were there?’
‘No way. Gav said it was like well creepy, and we should get out. So we slipped back round the trees and away. I didn’t get a proper look at her, but he said it was definitely a woman, ’cos she seemed to be really struggling with the spade.’
Outside, they let PC Bright go home to his bed. Valentine placed a call to the boyfriend – who lived up in the North End and was probably still in bed, according to Jilly. After a pause he left a message on an answerphone, telling the teenager to ring St James’s as soon as he picked up the call. Shaw stood in the porch of All Saints, trying to think it through. A woman. Which woman? It was a fact that didn’t fit his theory in so many different ways.
38
John Joe Murray’s body was earthbound, weighted at each limb, so that he lay spreadeagled on the floor of the old coal barn, spatchcocked, but with his head raised on the stone shelf so that he could see through the doorway to the north, and to open water. The cold, which seemed to be concentrated in the stone floor beneath his back, made his bones ache. But it wasn’t the cold or the swirling snow which blew in squalls over the grey sea that made him want to scream. It was the tide, edging towards the doorway. The flood boards had been taken away so that the view was clear, right to the cold horizon. Dusk was falling, the sea turning inky black. He looked at the old stone walls of the barn for the thousandth time, running his eye along the mark that clearly delineated the line of the highest tide. It was a foot above his head.
He’d come to after the attack in the hour before dawn, lying on the cold stone stairs, his hands and legs tied in rough fisherman’s rope. A light had seeped through the floorboards above. Calling out, he’d felt the blood in his throat, and the stab of pain over his eye where the blow had fallen. Mid-morning his stepson had come down the steps and stood looking out to sea. Then he’d turned and made a decision: ‘We’ll wait,’ he said. ‘For tonight.’ He’d given him tea to sip, and some tortilla. John Joe asked him why this was happening but Ian wouldn’t meet his eyes, let alone answer his questions. After that, time dissolved into patches of consciousness and nightmarish dreams. Mid-afternoon, Ian had given him some more food, then moved him to the floor of the barn and he’d lost consciousness again.
When he saw the first star – Venus, surely, rising with the moon – Ian had come down and removed the flood boards, taking them with him back up the stairs. He tried to raise his head to see the sea more clearly, but when he moved his skull he could hear – through the bone – the slight crunch of something broken in his jaw. The injury, the impact of the blow, had made his right eye swell, so that his vision was murky on that side. But with his left eye he could see the waves sharply. It was a spring tide, and it had already breached the protective arc of dunes, so that the waves he could see were breaking in open water. Not a wild sea, despite the snowstorm, but winter-choppy, flecked, disturbed. When he’d come to, the sand bars were standing out at sea, dusted with snow. But now they’d gone, the grey sea swallowing each one until all he could see through the door was a world of water, the horizon coming and going with the snow squalls.
The first wave that came through th
e door broke his resolve to stay calm. He screamed, the water white, foaming, laced with ozone, seething over his legs, then flowing out.
When he stopped screaming he heard the foot steps over his head, and then Ian’s narrow slender legs appeared on the ladder-stairs.
His stepson watched him dispassionately, like a fisherman eyeing a float.
John Joe went to speak but the pain made the urge to scream again so insistent he swallowed back the words.
Ian raised a hand, as if asking for time in a polite conversation. It was an oddly civilized mannerism, coldly frightening in its intense self-possession.
‘Let me,’ he said. ‘You must have questions.’
John Joe pulled with his right hand until he felt the skin part at the wrist. He felt his guts turn to water, heavy water, like mercury that wanted to fall through his body and wash out to sea.
‘Kath Robinson saw you,’ said Ian, momentarily troubled by the congestion of blood in his stepfather’s face, the strange mottling, the stress which had tightened his skin and made him look younger, less dissolute.
‘The night they buried Grandma. Dad came into the bar to talk to Mum – and Kath didn’t want to see that, did she?’ He smiled, and despite his terror John Joe was reminded of the boy’s father – that same cynicism, almost older than it could be in one so young, as if he’d inherited a distrust of life along with the colour of his skin. The casual use of the word ‘Dad’ was a calculated cruelty and Ian looked pleased with the effect: John Joe’s feet had jerked together, making the rope creak.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want – wanted – to see you dead. I tried – we tried – to make sure you died with the others, with Fletcher and Venn. But actually, this is better. Much better, because I get to ask you questions, and you get to answer them. We’ve got one last chance to find out the one thing we don’t know: who struck the killing blow? Mum said we didn’t need to know. That you were all guilty, all cowards. And I’d have been happy if you’d died with them. But now we’ve got this time. And maybe – maybe – I’ll let you walk away from this when I know. But I need the truth, and I’ll know it when I hear it. And if you lie, you surely won’t walk away. They’ll find you one day. But it won’t be this winter. Or next.’