Death's Door

by Jim Kelly

  They made their way over the brow of the hill and then reached the tumbledown wall DC Twine had mentioned – the edge of the large estate which ran south from Creake. It was the kind of wall nobody could afford to build any more: four bricks deep, fired locally, with a stone coping. But it had not been repaired for years, and at regular intervals had been breached. Beyond it the trees opened out into a clearing, at the centre of which stood a tree without bark, blanched, but scarred down one side with a black charcoal seam. It was leafless, architectural; a fossil tree. Around the tree were a series of stumps.

  ‘You think he came here?’ asked Shaw.

  Robinson sat on one of the stumps. Then he put his hands together and, using his left, pulled the index finger on the right, producing a crack of cartilage: a sickening noise, and a habit Shaw loathed. And with Robinson it conjured up an image: the same hands, pulling a neck straight on a chicken at the poultry farm.

  ‘Little choice.’ His voice was gentle, like most of his movements. Gentle giant was a cliché but, thought Shaw, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be true. ‘You’d end up here whatever – the paths all take you down to the old house.’ He rolled a cigarette with one hand and pointed north. ‘That way you’d be able to walk for about 300 yards, but then you’d hit the security fence at Docking Hill – the wind farm?’

  Shaw nodded, unfolding an OS map, trying to orientate it to unseen compass points.

  Robinson lit the cigarette he’d fashioned, squinting as it flared. He didn’t say anything more and was clearly unembarrassed by silence. Lifting his right leg he adjusted the angle of the damaged foot and then set it back on the ground. The silver-grey eyes seemed to help suck what light was left out of the air. ‘I don’t come up here – not anymore,’ he said, and there was a sudden note of bitterness in his voice. ‘Not for years. But you get poachers – we hear the guns at night. And kids from the village.’ Robinson pointed into the edge of the trees where a rope swing hung.

  Shaw looked around, thinking of his own childhood, played out in a block of flats in North London. ‘Great place to play.’

  ‘I came up here with dad and granddad. We always had guns – we’d take rabbit, a few pheasant, set traps. Even then there were outsiders – professional poachers. They’d come for the venison on Old Hall. These days you’d get fifty quid for a carcass – if you can drag 600lb out of the woods without being seen. They come over from the Midlands – a white van – bag a few and then go. High velocity rifles – night sights. Old days it was all traps. That’s how I did this . . .’ He jerked up his trouser leg to reveal the calf, lacerated by an old circular wound, triangular teeth scars cut deep into the muscle. Shaw winced at the thought of the trap shutting, the bone shattering, the energy in the springs enough to bring down a stag.

  ‘Here?’ Shaw asked, almost in a whisper.

  ‘Blicking – the big wood.’ Shaw knew the spot, acres of estate around a fine Jacobean house. ‘We went everywhere, me and dad that was – granddad was dead. Gun went off when the trap sprang – I nearly blew dad’s head off.’ He laughed, but his eyes didn’t join in.

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘November ’93.’ Shaw looked at Robinson; the grey eyes seemed colder, like ice on the river. So the accident had happened while Ruth was away at university for her first year, and before East Hills and the year of his affair with Marianne. Shaw thought that for him, and for Marianne, the year had been a fulcrum: one of those points in your life when the number of possible futures suddenly narrows, as if the path ahead has been chosen.

  ‘Look,’ said Shaw, deciding that there would be no better time to talk about the past. ‘This is painful – and it’s private. But I want to ask you about your relationship with Marianne, the year after the accident –1994.’

  Robinson’s backwoods colour drained from his face. He half stood, but had to sit again, and Shaw guessed that his knees had given way because he almost fell back.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked, trying to sound aggressive, aggrieved, but the words came out in a whisper. And those penetrating eyes didn’t meet Shaw’s but scanned the edge of the woods, as if the primeval urge to escape threatened to overwhelm his self-control.

  ‘I understand this is something you don’t want to talk about,’ said Shaw. ‘And it’s certainly something the police don’t wish to make public unless it is absolutely necessary. But I do need to know about Marianne that summer: who she was with, who she was seeing. She saw you?’

  The light in the clearing was failing fast, and Shaw knew that soon the moment would come when his good eye shifted to night vision, giving up the effort of seeing the world in colour, and switching to black and white. In the gloom he watched Robinson struggling with the consequences of telling the truth – or, possibly, with the benefits of a lie.

  ‘I think there were plenty of us,’ he said. Was that how he’d dealt with it over the years? That he was one of many? A random indiscretion, not a betrayal.

  ‘Ruth came down after the accident,’ he said. ‘I was up at the Queen Vic – they tried to reattach the tendons in the ankle. Then I had physio – three times a day, every day. I wasn’t . . .’ He struggled to find the word that would take him forward: ‘Recovering. I knew it was over. I’d had this dream, to be like granddad – a countryman. Dad had worked on the land too, farming. But granddad was the real thing. This was his land, just as much as if he’d owned it. He knew every leaf, every rabbit hole. I thought maybe I’d work for one of the big estates or run a small holding, take some game.’

  He lifted his leg, repositioned the foot, and set it back on the leaf litter. ‘Ruth said I needed to rethink my life. Find another goal. She was a bit distant – different too. We spent Christmas together but she’d sort of changed, I suppose, and I didn’t think she’d come back again – not for me anyway. I thought it was over.’

  He locked eyes and Shaw decided that this was another excuse: that he’d been sure she would dump him, so he had a right to play the field.

  ‘Ruth’s Dad knew this farmer who’d gone into chicken farming. So I went there. I sit down most of the day at one machine or another. Government’s got quotas for people like me so the firm gets help with the wages. I’ve been there nearly twenty years.’ He shook his head as if his life had been sand, falling through his thick fingers.

  ‘Marianne came to see me at home one Friday night,’ he said. ‘May – end of May. She said she’d had a letter from Ruth, that she loved being a student, that she’d like to teach, maybe stay up north. She was upset, she said, because it meant she wouldn’t see much of her anymore. Didn’t mention me.

  ‘We went for a drink down at Wells. Then she said she wanted to swim – she was a bit drunk, a bit out of her head. There was a moon so we walked along the sea wall out to the beach. I couldn’t swim – never could swim – and after the accident it was impossible. I’m a dead weight. But I’d go in the water with Ruth – Marianne knew that. I’d go out as far as I could. The tide was in, filling the pool.’

  Shaw knew the spot, at that precise time, under moonlight. The tide washes in round an island of dunes and forms a lagoon. Just five feet deep, sheltered, a giant mirror of unruffled silver.

  ‘We dumped our clothes in the trees and ran in. When I looked around she wasn’t in the water, she was back on the shoreline, naked, just waiting. So I went back.’

  He lit another cigarette and suddenly Shaw knew it was almost dark, the flare of red and orange shockingly bright.

  ‘She was sorry for me,’ he said.

  ‘How long did it go on?’

  ‘Until early summer. Just a few weeks, really. Then Ruth came back. Nothing had changed – it was my Ruth. She wanted to be with me, here. She said she’d teach in Wells, maybe Lynn. We could live here on The Circle, the house I’ve always lived in. Start a family. We got married in ’ninety-five. Mum was still with us then but she died in ’ninety-eight so we had the place to ourselves. Six months later Marianne and Joe hitched up and Ruth s
aid why don’t they come out here? The house next door was up for sale and it was too good a chance to miss. Marianne and I never talked about what had happened. It was like it hadn’t happened.’ He thought about that. ‘Hadn’t happened to us.’ He stood, a dark figure now. ‘Ruth doesn’t know, or Joe. It would kill Ruth.’ There was an edge of belligerence in Robinson’s voice, so it almost sounded like a threat.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Shaw. He felt like a priest in confession. ‘There’s no reason they should know – ever. I’m interested in who killed Shane White on East Hills. I’m sure Marianne met someone on the island that day. Do you know who it was? Maybe White? He’d been taking pictures of lovers that summer, along the coast. Had he taken a picture of you and Marianne?’

  ‘No way. We met here, in the woods,’ he said. ‘Never again on the beach. Everyone knew us on the beach.’ And again, the left hand pulled the index finger on the right, this time followed by the right hand pulling the left – a double, plastic click.

  ‘So you didn’t ask someone to help Marianne out that day, provide a bit of muscle, bit of support, frighten the Aussie off?’

  ‘No way.’

  A cloud of rooks swung in the air, then dropped into the trees.

  ‘How far’s the fence to the wind farm?’ asked Shaw.

  By way of answer Robinson set out to the edge of the clearing, then down a path, still clear and visible despite the dusk. The fence, when they reached it, was nearly eight foot high, steel and wire, with an angled top ridged with razor wire. There was a gate, in iron and mesh, with a keypad padlock.

  ‘Tilly’s one of the demonstrators, up by the gates?’ asked Shaw, rattling the padlock.

  Robinson thought about an answer. ‘Right. She told us. She does press releases, that kind of thing, because it’s something she believes in. She didn’t tell Joe or Marianne. There’s been scuffles, stuff thrown, and Tilly’s got a temper. She thought they’d worry.’

  Shaw thought about the demo in London. Clearly, Tilly too had a secret life.

  ‘But she is serious about the issue – me too,’ said Robinson. ‘People think it’s gonna be a few big turbines but it isn’t like that. To meet the targets they’ll need hundreds. All through these hills. Granddad’s hills.’

  They turned back, retracing their steps, the path only just visible now, a pale, sinuous, line ahead. ‘I’ve been up to the demo,’ said Robinson, stopping, massaging the lame leg. ‘I can hold a placard with the best of ’em. And they’re right. It’s all big business – out for a buck. This one’s owned by Yanks. Fencing cuts off the footpath but the council doesn’t seem to mind. Ask me they’ve been given a backhander. I’m proud of Tilly for standing up to ’em.’

  They took a fresh path downhill. Shaw found that he had to slow his pace as they descended, and that he could hear the slight rustle of Robinson’s lame foot dragging in the loose forest litter behind him. Just as they left the cool shadow of the trees Shaw stopped abruptly. He’d chosen the spot deliberately so that Robinson would have to come close, because the path here was edged with thorns. He tried to pin him down by looking in his eyes. ‘Do you think Joe could have helped Marianne kill herself?’ It was one of the scenarios which had been worrying him. That the killer of Shane White wasn’t at Marianne Osbourne’s deathbed? That Joe had taken pity on her, and helped her end it all before she faced the ordeal of the being cross-examined about the East Hills murder?

  He’d prepared the question and waited patiently for the answer. In the garden below they heard laughter and saw that Ruth and Tilly were now surrounded by candlelight. And Joe was there, beside his daughter, oddly diminished, as if he was a younger child, a little brother, perhaps.

  ‘I think he wanted to,’ said Robinson. He took a breath. ‘I think he found it tough, seeing her suffer like she did.’ He looked Shaw in his blind eye. ‘They loved each other once,’ he said, elegantly implying that they hadn’t by the time she’d died. ‘But no. I don’t think he could have helped her.’

  ‘Someone did,’ said Shaw.

  Robinson’s jaw set: ‘When they do it with horses – put them down for their own good – they say they destroy them,’ said Robinson. ‘It’s a good word because it makes you realize that’s what they’re doing – that something beautiful is gone for ever.’

  They heard a barn owl hoot, and then, astonishingly, it was there, gliding over the grass, luminescent.

  ‘I’ve remembered something,’ said Robinson. He took half a dozen steps out into the open grassland. ‘The man – the one I saw here? It’s been in my head that I did recognize him – not him, but a . . .’ He searched for the word: ‘A type.’ Again, the shift from right foot to left and back again, nodding to himself in self-encouragement. ‘I thought, at the time, there’s something military about him. And when he did move it was unhurried, powerful too – a stride. I didn’t say anything because it sounded daft. But there had to be something else. His hair was short, but not like trendy short, and not a skinhead like the squad dies. Officers’ hair.’ He laughed. ‘But the thing I can see now is he was wearing one of those jumpers: green wool, with leather shoulder patches. They always wear them – it’s a sort of off-duty uniform. So maybe army?’ He looked down at The Circle. ‘It’s not much,’ he added, but Shaw was already texting Twine on his mobile, using the trees to shadow the screen.

  TWELVE

  Valentine left the Mazda on double yellow lines on the quayside at Wells, a West Norfolk Police pass propped up behind the steering wheel. The bar of The Ship was empty, all the customers out on the quayside or in the whitewashed backyard, enjoying the coolness of the night now the sun had set. He got himself a pint from a silent barman and shoved the change in a RNLI charity box, helping himself to a sticker which he put on his lapel. Then he walked out on to the quayside, a spring tide almost level with the stone blocks of the wharf. High water brought a strange mood over the town, as if the sea was brimming up and might spill over the edge of the land, filling the narrow streets. Valentine sat on the wharf with his back to a low wall, watching the lights come on in the yachts out in the harbour. It was hypnotic, the way the dusk was thickening, as if the air itself was getting heavier. His eyelids drooped.

  Waking from sleep a minute later, or a nanosecond, it seemed darker. He was surprised, and always was, by the sudden vibrancy of the colours – like those on the cover of a jigsaw box. The town’s only amusement arcade blazed out into the night: reds, oranges and yellows. The floating pub on the quayside was festooned with white bulbs, the pale purple sky beyond criss-crossed by contrails. In his ten long years of exile out here on the coast this had been his salvation: the evening light, a feeling of peace and a brief glimpse of a life seen in proportion.

  The rest of his time in Wells had been a kind of perfect torture. He’d hated the pettiness of small town life, the profound feeling that he’d been banished to the edge of the real world, and that back at St James’ coppers with half his ability were dutifully sitting their DI exams. He’d hated walking into a pub and knowing everyone, and knowing they knew him just as well. And he’d walked into plenty of pubs.

  He checked his mobile, rereading a text Shaw had sent DC Twine, with a copy forwarded to him FYI. The dead woman’s brother-in-law, Aidan Robinson, had recalled a detail about the stranger he’d seen behind Marianne Osbourne’s house ten days before she died. A useful snippet; the man he’d seen might have a military connection, as he thought he was wearing a green combat jumper with leather shoulder pads. Twine was to liaise with the Red Caps at Boddington Camp, an army transport depot along the coast near Sheringham, and see if they had anyone reported AWOL or acting suspiciously – such as a last-minute unscheduled demand for leave. Then Twine needed to check the mass screening records and see if any of the men at East Hills on the day of murder were in the military, or ex-military, or Territorial Army. Priority. So that was Paul Twine’s Sunday sorted. Valentine knew why Shaw wanted quick results. If the mystery man was military it gave them a p
ossible source for the cyanide capsule. And something else: an expertise in the art of killing.

  Valentine took an inch off his pint and didn’t jump when someone touched him on the shoulder: a woman, leaning over the low wall, already very close, in white fish-and-chip shop overalls, a scrunched up hairnet in one hand.

  ‘Georgie,’ she said. ‘Long time.’ She laughed once, a single note, like one of the birds calling on the marshes.

  It had been. Three years. The day he’d left Wells to go back to force headquarters at Lynn. The little staff canteen at the local nick had been packed, which was something he’d never understood. He’d been unhappy at Wells – despite what he felt today, he’d been beached, like one of the rotting boats in the marsh creeks. But he’d been popular, and he couldn’t even now guess why.

  He put his pint down and then realized he didn’t know what to do with his hand. She’d stepped easily over the wall but had turned away, sensing the awkwardness of the moment. Straightening his back against the concrete he didn’t get up, knowing the stoop he’d developed made him look older than he was.

  ‘Jan,’ he said. ‘God,’ he added, shaking his head.

  She was late-forties, early fifties, slim, with short hair which he remembered as dark but was now blonde. She was one of those people whose hair always seems to fall right: the fringe carelessly jagged, but framing the pronounced arc of dark eyebrows. Despite the shapeless overalls he could see her narrow waist, biro marks on the white breast of her top where she’d missed the pocket. She adjusted the length of a trouser leg by pulling at the material at the knee, and then sat down.