Death Toll

by Jim Kelly

  ‘I don’t have to listen to this,’ said Mosse.

  Masters missed the intonation, but was quick to respond to the legal niceties.

  ‘Mr Robins stipulated that the statement was to be read before the contents of the deposit box were transferred. I’m sure it will only take a minute.’

  Mosse looked into the middle distance. Shaw tried to imagine just how fast Mosse’s brain must be calculating. If he walked out now he wouldn’t know what he was facing. And why leave, why run, when all the life he’d built was here, in Lynn? Job, money, reputation, family, children, not to mention a shiny black BMW.

  ‘You might as well stay. You’re going to hear it one way or another,’ said Shaw. Valentine was standing now, staring at Mosse.

  Shaw opened the envelope and extracted a single sheet of A4, typed, single spaced.

  ‘I typed it,’ said Peggy Robins. ‘And signed it.’

  Shaw nodded, noting the scrawl at the foot, the two signatures almost merged.

  He read.

  ‘“I know this statement is worthless – that I’m as guilty as Bob, and the rest, of these crimes. But it seems to me – to all of us – that we’ve suffered, paid the price, and he hasn’t. Ever.”’

  ‘Oh,’ said Masters. ‘Goodness.’ He held up a hand, as if suddenly deciding it shouldn’t be read.

  ‘It’s all right. Carry on,’ said Mosse. He took out a yellow legal pad from the briefcase and started making a note.

  ‘“The night those people died in the car, it was Robert Mosse what drove. He was down from Sheffield and he wanted a bit of action. His idea. We went out to Hunstanton and he got the Mini over the ton. We drank – all of us. Bob was taking us home by the back roads, trying to keep the car over eighty – even on the lanes. He didn’t see the T-junction until it was way late. It wasn’t until afterwards that we realized he’d stayed in the car – let us get out, wander round. So those first few days was a nightmare. I didn’t tell you, Mum, did I? I’m sorry for that. And I stayed out – with the others, down at Alex Cosyns’s lock-up. We got the car in there and me and Voycy got a drum of paint from work to respray it – yellow, tractor yellow they called it. Alex was soft on that dog he’d taken from the car. Night of the crash he cried about it – ’bout the old people in the back. He’d taken the dog because he said he wanted something to live. Like I said – soft. Then that evening – the evening the Tessier boy died – Alex took the dog for a walk. When he came back the kid was with him. Alex had tried to tell him that it wasn’t the same dog. But the kid could get it to do stuff – beg, roll over. Odd kid. He wasn’t going anywhere. We let him play with it and decided on a plan: we’d let him go, let him take the dog, sit tight – that would work in our favour when the police came. We’d say it was the driver who was drunk at the crash, but we wouldn’t say who it was. We’d admit the rest. Bob needed to lie low – and we’d fix up an alibi for him on the Westmead.

  ‘“Bob said it wasn’t going to work. That one of us would crack and tell the truth. He told the Tessier kid to stop crying and cuffed him on the back of the head. And then he put those gloves on, his driving gloves – the leather ones with the fur on the inside, and he had a bit of nylon rope.”’

  Peggy Robins took out a tissue and pressed it to her mouth, looking out of the window.

  ‘“Then he kind of hugged the kid, turned his back on us. And he held on. It was Alex who realized what he was doing first. He told him to stop. But we all kind of froze. I’ve never forgiven myself – and I know I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. And Bob pulled the kid around, behind him, like I said, so we couldn’t see their faces. There wasn’t any noise at first. I heard a snap, like a plastic snap, a bone giving. And then the kid made a noise, just once, and it was over. He dropped the kid to the floor. He had one of Bob’s gloves in his mouth, stuffed in. Bob took the other one off and just dropped it on the floor, like he’d finished a job. He didn’t smoke, but he took one of mine.”’

  Shaw realized his breathing was shallow, so he too took a lungful of air.

  ‘“So we made another plan. Bob thought it all through. He said they’d be looking for the kid, that they’d go on looking until they found him, so the trick was to give them the kid. Dump him – under the big tower. That’s where you get the gangs, the crime, and they’d think the kid had got caught up in something nasty. I was to clean up the garage. Bob went to get his car, Alex went to check out where the kid lived, see how long we had, see if they was searching already. We put Voycy on lookout up by the community centre. When Bob got back with his car we waited until after dark and then rolled the kid up in a bit of old carpet, put him in the boot. The light was bad by then – and we dared not use the mechanics’ lights we had for working on the car, ’cos we thought the police would be out on the estate by then looking for the kid. I took all the things I could find in the garage that might be linked to us – bagged it, took it to the bins under our flat. Later, when we knew they was searching for the kid, I took it out on the roughlots and burnt it. Then we all met at the pub on the estate – the Painted Lady. Bob said he’d been seen dumping the kid, and he had to get rid of the car. So he reported it missing and we fixed him up with an alibi – at the cinema, ’cos his mum had been and all we needed was a ticket. I’m sorry for what I did. We tried to make Bob pay but we never had the courage to face up to what we’d done. He knew that. But I am sorry. Tell the kid’s mother I’m sorry. And tell her that what I’ve left is for her. I didn’t burn everything.”’

  Shaw leant forward, put the sheet of A4 on the desk. Valentine beckoned for Mosse to hand him the box, then passed it to Shaw. Masters opened his desk, took out a pair of identical small gold padlock keys and handed them to the detective. Shaw worked one into the lock on the box. As he lifted the lid a look of disappointment crossed his face: the box appeared to be empty. Then he saw a plastic bag tucked into one corner, knotted, with an unbroken paper seal signed by Chris Robins and Jerrold Masters. He held the bag up: inside was a single fur-lined leather glove. In the leather was imprinted the marks of a child’s teeth, pressing down, a faint ghost of the last bite, drawing blood at last.

  LYNN SOLICITOR TO SERVE LIFE FOR ‘COLD-BLOODED’ CHILD MURDER

  By Our Crime Correspondent

  Lynn solicitor Robert Mosse was yesterday given a life sentence after being convicted of the murder of a nine-year-old boy in 1997 on the town’s notorious Westmead Estate.

  The trial judge recommended that Mosse, 34, should spend the rest of his life in custody. Leave to appeal was denied.

  ‘In over twenty years on this bench I have never encountered a more cold-blooded crime,’ said Mr Justice Lamfrey. ‘Robert Mosse is a calculating killer who poses a continuing threat to society.’

  Mosse, through his solicitor, said after the verdict, ‘It is clear the police have fabricated the evidence upon which my conviction is based – as they did at my original trial. I am innocent of this crime.’

  Mosse, who was due to be called to the Bar later this year, is a founding partner in Mosse, Turnbull & Smith. His wife and three children live in a million-pound house on the exclusive Clearwater Estate.

  The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement after the trial that the files on two subsequent murders, which the police claim Mosse committed to cover up his original crime, would now be closed.

  Mosse denied killing nine-year-old Jonathan Tessier on the night of 25 July 1997 at a lock-up garage on the Westmead Estate in Lynn’s North End. The prosecution’s case was that Mosse had strangled the child to prevent his implication in another crime.

  Mosse was charged with the killing at the time, but the original trial was unable to proceed owing to a legal technicality. Recently, however, the police obtained new forensic evidence linking him to Tessier’s murder.

  A fur-lined leather glove, the partner to one recovered at the murder scene, was found to contain skin shed by Mosse and was heavily impregnated with dried saliva, later matched by DNA analysi
s to the Tessier family, and exhibiting bite marks that matched the victim’s dental records.

  Mosse’s first trial in 1997 was stopped because the investigating officers had taken the glove discovered at the underground car park where Tessier’s body was found to Mosse’s home – a flat in the tower block above – potentially contaminating it.

  The original trial judge implied that this might have been done deliberately in an attempt to secure a conviction.

  ‘I would like to say at this point,’ said Mr Justice Lamfrey after passing sentence, ‘that today’s conviction in large part clears those original officers of any improper or criminal behaviour.

  ‘Furthermore, I would like to commend publicly the work of DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine of the West Norfolk Constabulary, for their tireless determination to bring Robert Mosse to justice.’

  DI Shaw, the lead investigating officer in the case, is the son of DCI Jack Shaw, who led the original murder inquiry. DCI Shaw took early retirement on the grounds of ill-health shortly after Mosse’s acquittal. He died in 1998.

  The prosecution alleged that Mosse and three other associates, all now dead, were involved in a road accident three days before Tessier’s murder, in which two elderly women were killed.

  Mosse was driving when the four, in a Mini, struck another vehicle at a T-junction near Castle Rising. They fled the scene. When the emergency services arrived 45 minutes later the two passengers were found to be dead. The driver survived.

  One of the fatalities was Jonathan Tessier’s grandmother. She had been travelling with her pet dog – a puppy – which was taken by one of the joyriders from the rear of the car, according to CCTV footage of the crash.

  Three days later the four teenagers were in the lock-up garage on the Westmead respraying the damaged car. Jonathan recognized the puppy when one of the gang took it for a walk on the estate, and followed it back to the garage.

  Mosse’s defence argued that the killing of the child had been an accident. One of the other members of the gang, Chris Robins, had hit the child to stop him crying, Mosse claimed.

  But the court heard a statement left by Robins as part of his last will and testament. It outlined a different version of events in which Mosse – at the time a law student – decided to kill the child to save his career.

  The defence argued that Robins’s version of events was designed to divert the guilt on to an innocent man. But the forensic evidence corroborated Robins’s version of events.

  The jury retired for sixteen hours before returning a majority guilty verdict.

  Police believe that Mosse also killed two members of the gang – Alex Cosyns and Jimmy Voyce – because they had threatened to go to the authorities with the truth.

  DCS Max Warren of the West Norfolk Constabulary released the following statement after sentencing.

  ‘The verdict in this case restores the high reputation of the officers of the West Norfolk Constabulary. It illustrates that we were always determined to give Jonathan Tessier and his family the justice they were denied in the months after his brutal and callous murder.’

  A spokesman for the Law Society confirmed that Mosse’s conviction would result in his name being permanently removed from the Society’s register. His partners at Mosse, Turnbull & Smith declined to comment.

  In depth: The Case of the Missing Glove – page 21.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my agent, Faith Evans, in equal measure for both her criticism, which is always subtle and constructive, and for her friendship, which is valued. My team at Penguin – editors Kate Burke and Stefanie Bierwerth – have completed yet another thoroughly professional job. I would also like to thank Francesca Russell for her enthusiasm in promoting the book.

  Now to specific debts owed. (I should warn the reader that the following reveals some plot.)

  I have often relied on Paul Richards’s excellent book King’s Lynn for historical background. Martin Peters has again been invaluable as a general consultant on all things medical. I also consulted the comprehensive and definitive Book of Poisons by Serita Stevens and Anne Bannon. Professor Paul Cullis of the University of Leicester found time for some invaluable guidance on poisons and their properties.

  A note on poisons. The general principles upon which the plot relies are real. The specific poisons used in the text have been selected to fit the plot, and therefore any attempt to replicate the perfect murder will be doomed to failure.

  Lastly, I must thank my loyal copy editor Trevor Horwood, for his tireless attention to detail and helpful suggestions. Jenny Burgoyne has again provided us all with the reassurance of reading the final manuscript. And I must thank my wife Midge Gillies, who, despite facing her own deadlines, has always been on hand with helpful advice about character and plot, and who found time to read the text and provide both encouragement and criticism.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  DEATH TOLL. Copyright © 2011 by Jim Kelly. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kelly, Jim, 1957–

  Death toll: a mystery / Jim Kelly.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-7006-8

  1. Police—England—Norfolk—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 3. Norfolk (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6111.E5D4 2011

  823'.92—dc22

  2011007071

  First published in Great Britain by the Penguin Group