Death's Door

by Jim Kelly

  Valentine stood aside. As she squeezed past she paused and looked him in the face.

  ‘I haven’t seen Joe since,’ she said. ‘You’re wasting your breath.’

  But he wasn’t, because if she’d remembered Joe Osbourne after all that time he hadn’t been a fleeting client, a one-nighter. Which begged the question: what had he been?

  ‘Joe was a regular?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Why remember Joe?’

  ‘He said he loved me. He said it because he wanted to be loved. Not because he meant it. It happens.’

  Valentine was astonished to see tears on her face, two of them, one under each eye, catching the orange street lights like a pair of cheap beads.

  ‘Christ,’ she said.

  ‘But he still wanted sex?’

  She glared at him, and for the first time he saw her eyes were blue, like the felt on a cheap pool table.

  ‘He didn’t want me to see other clients. And he couldn’t pay for that. I was saving to get out, off the streets. You stay, you never leave.’

  ‘But why the fight in the street?’ asked Valentine.

  She struggled with the answer, not because she didn’t have it, but because, Valentine guessed, this was a part of her past she didn’t want to relive for more complex reasons than shame or embarrassment.

  ‘One night, that night, he couldn’t take it – me seeing other customers – so he went for the next bloke up the stairs. Said he’d make sure I never got another customer. Those days we had muscle on the door, so they threw him out. But I knew he was out there because he always came into town on that motorbike of his, and I could see it opposite. So I went out, later, when there was no more business. I knew he’d be there. We had the argument – the one we always had – just louder. That’s when the uniform booked us.’

  ‘He had a wife,’ said Valentine. ‘She was a model, sort of. Beautiful.’

  ‘He said he was lonely,’ she said. ‘He said he’d made a mess of his life. I should have got him thrown out earlier. But he said he’d kill himself if he couldn’t see me. Or he’d kill someone so they’d put him away. It was just talk.’

  Valentine tried to picture the scene that night, knowing he’d missed a detail. What was it that Shaw always said? That you had to see what had happened. He thought of Joe Osbourne, the slight frame, the tense, fragile bones.

  ‘When you say he went for the next bloke up the stairs – what with? Fists?’

  She looked through Valentine as if she could see the past. ‘He had a knife. He always had a knife. Joe was strong – wiry. But he didn’t like the streets, so he carried that, in his leather motorcycle boot.’

  EIGHTEEN

  At home, closing the front door against the night, Valentine listened to the familiar sound of the echo of the latch and the clatter of the flap as the cat went out into the yard. Every time he came home the cat left, despite the fact that he fed it, filled its bowl. His sister had brought it round one Christmas Day with a cash’n’carry-sized pack of food. It wasn’t a total stranger, because it would creep in front of the gas fire when he was asleep on the sofa in winter. In summer he’d wake to find it sat on the window sill – outside – watching, as if Valentine was an intruder. The house felt like a timeshare, an arrangement which meant that when he did come home the place felt slightly less empty.

  He took a handful of post into the kitchen and put the kettle on, trying to pretend that he wasn’t going to go out again, stroll down to the Artichoke, and watch Match of the Day 2. An accident of generation meant that this always counted as a treat. He’d been brought up in the years when there was no live football on television, then, eventually, just the highlights of one, often boring, match. Not so much highlights as lowlights. Dour struggles acted out on muddy pitches in front of black and white crowds. To see all the games, in colour, in frenetic snap shot was still a thrill.

  He got a single mug, put a tea bag in with some milk, and waited for the kettle to boil. The interview with Naomi Goodchild was still fresh in his mind so he briefly reviewed it – a technique he’d discovered early in his career as an efficient way of burning the detail into his memory. The image of the knife stowed in the motorcycle boot was a vivid one, and he knew it would be the first thing he’d see when he opened his eyes in the morning.

  Then there was a single, loud knock on the door. There was a specific quality to the knock, as if someone had lifted the metal knocker and let it fall with a twist of the wrist, to maximize the noise. The second knock got him on his feet and he was mildly embarrassed to find that his nerves were humming by the time he got to the front door, as if he was some nutter afraid of the outside world, some recluse unable to touch a doorknob. It was Lena Shaw, but it took him a few seconds to recognize her, and he was so confused he didn’t hear what she’d said.

  She smiled. Her face was animated by genuine interest, and she didn’t break eye contact. She had a remarkable ability to remain calm which he’d always found intimidating. He realized, at the same moment, that he’d forgotten the fact of the colour of her skin, which when he’d first met her had been the first thing he’d noticed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, and they both laughed.

  In the kitchen she took a seat and he realized he was still wearing his raincoat. She was in a trendy kind of top with zips. Her body radiated a physical presence because the curves of it were so pronounced, especially in the face, dominated by the wide, full mouth.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, as it appeared to be her turn. ‘You’re going out – I won’t be a second.’ Again, the dazzling smile, a bit too big for the face, and the strangely attractive cast to the eye, so that she seemed to be looking past him, as if Shaw was about to come into sight. But a note of businesslike organization as well. She’d taken control of the meeting, even though this was his kitchen, in his house. The cat appeared at the window ledge and the two females eyed each other.

  ‘It’s Peter,’ she said. ‘He’d be mortified if he knew I was here. Of course, you can tell him if you want. I don’t expect it’s healthy to keep secrets. But I hope you won’t.’

  ‘Where does he think you are?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘Majestic, with friends. The last Harry Potter. Well, I hope it’s the last. Then an Italian – very good, on King’s Staithe? It’s my monthly night out.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’ll see them there. I just wanted to let you know something.’ She placed both hands on the table, as if to steady herself. ‘That Peter’s not well. His eye . . .’

  ‘He’s OK,’ said Valentine, misunderstanding. ‘He gets by fine – better than fine. Better than me . . .’ He pulled open the kitchen door and they went out into the yard. Unlike most of the street his yard was the original: no conservatory, no porch, just the outside loo, a coal shed. The cat sat on the wall, a perfect silhouette against a perfect night sky. Julie had always insisted he went outside to smoke, and it was a rule he liked to keep.

  ‘I don’t mean his blind eye, George. I mean his good eye.’ She told him what had happened on the beach that morning.

  ‘What can I do?’ he asked, but it wasn’t really a question, more a bald statement of helplessness.

  ‘You know him better than anyone else – it’s nearly four years. You’re together almost every working day. Just watch. If he’s in distress, if he can’t go on, ring me.’

  Valentine wondered how she’d got this picture of his relationship with DI Shaw and struggled to imagine what symptoms the DI might exhibit if he was in distress.

  ‘You’re his friend, George,’ Lena said. ‘I just didn’t want to be the only person who knew. That’s selfish of me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘He doesn’t talk much,’ said Valentine.

  Lena recalled the first time she’d gone home to the Shaw family home in Hunstanton – a minor Victorian villa at the back of the town; one of a pair, the other with a GUEST HOUSE sign in the large bay window. Shaw’s father had been forced into retirement by that
point, and it was the last year of his life. Shaw’s mother had fussed over her daughter-in-law, but ex-CDI Jack Shaw had said half a dozen words, a reticence she’d wrongly ascribed to the colour of her skin. By the time she found herself sitting at his deathbed she’d realized that he was a man of few words and almost no exterior emotions. That last time, as she’d waited in the car outside while Shaw said what they all knew would be goodbye, she’d seen George Valentine walking up the street. He’d stopped at the front gate and looked at the house for nearly a minute before walking up the path and knocking on the door.

  ‘I know he doesn’t talk much,’ she said. ‘It runs in the family.’

  Somewhere along the line of backyards they heard the cat cry out.

  ‘Like father, like son,’ she said.

  NINETEEN

  Monday

  Valentine stood on a pile of bricks in the street looking up at the corner of the house in which Arthur Patch had lived and died in the split-second of a gas explosion. The pinnacle of scorched bricks supported the staircase, the white wood of each step charred at the edge. The chimney stack stood as well, but little else. To the corner stack was attached a piece of bedroom wall, the blue and gold stripped wallpaper untouched by the blast which had blown the floorboards through the roof, and the roof into the sky.

  Valentine heard the low rumble of Shaw’s Porsche at the roadblock down on the main street. He’d called Shaw first thing to tell him what he’d discovered about Joe Osbourne’s secret life on the streets. A one-off incident, or a glimpse of a pattern? Joe had motive – Marianne’s sexual indiscretions – a flimsy alibi which no one alive could substantiate, so opportunity as well, and now a weapon. Shaw had been particularly struck by Valentine’s description of the incident, because in his experience the number of people who get through life without using physical violence on someone else was astonishingly high. It was just that those who did tended to make a habit of it.

  Shaw made his way up the street, led through the rubble and broken glass by a fireman; Valentine noted the epaulette on his shirt – an impeller, a laurel leaf, then two smaller impellors, making him an Assistant Chief Fire Officer. Top brass. Shaw introduced him as Bill Harding, mid-forties, brisk and military. He gave them a two-minute summary report. The gas explosion had occurred at precisely 2.31 p.m. on Friday. Arthur Patch, aged eighty-seven, was the sole occupant. The house was rented. His wife Marie had died six years earlier. Social services had organized food and medical visits until last summer when Patch had elected to look after himself. Neighbours had rallied round. There had been signs of mild senility, but nothing worse.

  The fire brigade investigations unit had made a preliminary examination of the scene. They’d concluded that the oven in the kitchen had been the source of the gas, but that the seat of the fire had been in the bedroom above, which is why the force of the blast had destroyed the upper rooms, torn off the roof, but left the ground floor virtually untouched. A single tea light beside the bed had probably provided the lethal spark. Given the power supply was uninterrupted for the area at the time the presence of the lighted candle in mid-afternoon was suspicious.

  Initially, they’d tried to put together an innocent explanation for Patch’s death. He was a smoker, and may have used the candle to light up. There was no law against pensioners lying in bed smoking. But it wasn’t likely, and the neighbours reported that Patch was often seen in the daytime, and always dressed. A more likely scenario was that Patch had gone to bed Thursday night, died from natural causes, and it had taken several hours for the lethal concentration of gas to build up in the roof space and reach the candle. But what they had of the corpse was clothed: shreds of shoe, a jumper. So that didn’t fit. There had been enough questions to ask the pathologist to take a closer look. They knew the rest. Cyanide in the bloodstream.

  ‘Exit fire brigade, enter CID,’ said Harding. ‘My problem’s what happened when the smoke cleared.’

  The explosion, he explained, had sent half a tonne of burning wood and masonry up into the sky. Bits of brick had come down nearly 200 yards away, but burning paper and wood sparks had drifted on the wind. At first they thought they’d got away with secondary fires even though the landscape was a tinderbox, waiting for a match. But last night they’d spotted flames about midnight, up on the crest of the hill. They had beaters out now trying to stop it spreading. There might be more embers just waiting to flare into life. And each fire created its own embers. If the wind picked up they’d have a real problem. ‘Which is why I’m here,’ said Harding, ‘and not on the beach with the kids. But I’ll leave Patch to you boys . . . I think cyanide pills are way out of my league.’

  The street looked like something out of the Blitz. The rest of the houses were still evacuated. None had kept their windows, and the two on either side of Arthur Patch’s houses would need rebuilding – the partition walls laced with cracks, a hole in one showing the corner of a bed, the linen white and crisp. The tarmac was strewn still with bricks and glass, a scene-of-crime tape keeping the inquisitive down by the corner.

  Shaw stepped over the threshold, a wodge of daily newspapers under his arm. Taking them into the small front room he spread them out on the dining table, which was unmarked by the blast but covered in a thick film of brick dust. East Hills had made the front of The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail and The Independent. The chief constable had got what he wanted in spades – which was good news, set to make the bad news even worse.

  As he reread the headlines Shaw felt a slight pain in his damaged right eye. That morning, at eight precisely, he’d seen the eye specialist at the Queen Elizabeth. There was no sign of deterioration in his good eye, and no indications of disease in the blind one. But the blurred vision was clearly a worrying symptom. Any repetition would warrant consideration of enucleation – surgical removal of the blind eye. If he was really worried about what a ‘fake’ glass eye they could fashion one to mimic the damaged one – a synthetic moon-eye. He’d given Shaw numbers to ring if the symptoms returned. With flexibility on his part they could have him in for the operation within forty-eight hours. There was no guarantee the procedure would arrest any decline in the good eye, but in eighty-five per cent of cases it did. As odds went, for Shaw, they were good enough. He looked up through the charred rafters of the house and saw the daytime moon: mountains, craters and seas, in sharp focus. Natural optimism, his default setting, reasserted itself, like a caffeine rush.

  Valentine walked into the hall and down into the kitchen. The oven was still in place, held by the heavy cast iron of the range. The door had gone, the steel box of the oven itself distorted into a ragged hole. Shaw crouched down on his knees and looked inside.‘So, George. Off you go . . .’ he said, his voice echoing slightly. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Valentine wasn’t particularly interested in playing games. ‘Killer gets in – walks in, ’coz this kind of street no one locks their doors,’ he said. ‘He forces the pill down him – maybe cracks his jaw too. We’ll never know because every bone he had is now cracked like an old teacup. Then the killer carries the body up to the bed – let’s say that’s Thursday night – sets the candle, then turns on the gas. It took all night and half the next day for the gas to build up in the loft, the ceiling space. My guess is that’s a lot longer than he thought it would take. But he’d closed all the windows so it was gonna blow eventually. When it does it takes Arthur into space. Our good luck was that some of him came back down.’

  Valentine thought about the picture he’d painted then shook his head. ‘Only thing that doesn’t work is the candle – it’d have to be eight foot tall to burn all night. So maybe the killer came in the night? But then, that doesn’t work, ’coz the old bloke’s in his daytime clothes. That morning, perhaps – the Friday. Same day Marianne Osbourne died.?’

  ‘That’s better,’ said Shaw. ‘The key question is why – why did Arthur Patch have to die?’

  They’d been advised not to climb the stairs but Shaw said
he’d take a chance, edging up, the wood creaking. Valentine stood at the foot, dizzy with sympathetic vertigo. Ten steps up Shaw could see into what was left of the back bedroom. Part of the floor was left; on it stood a small bedside table on which they’d found the saucer and all-night candle. Part of the headboard of the bed was left imbedded into the wall. There were stains there, on the dark wood, so Shaw looked away. The glimpse reminded him they were dealing with death, and as always that focused his mind, making the real world clearer.

  ‘Why’d he die?’ asked Shaw again, feeling the gritty dust on the banister.

  ‘He saw something . . .’ offered Valentine, opening a file he’d got biked out from the council offices in Wells. Arthur Patch’s employment records: 1951–1994. His last day on the payroll was October 1 – two weeks after the East Hills murder. He’d been the senior car park attendant at the quayside for eighteen years. ‘Imagine what he had in his head,’ said Valentine. ‘All the locals, plus their cars. ’Coz it’s the only place to park on the quay, so it’s not just tourists. Most of the towns got double-yellows, so even the residents have to use it. He’d know everyone, they’d know him. Dangerous man if you’re a killer trying to cover your tracks.’

  ‘So you’re saying Patch died so he couldn’t come forward and give us an ID, and that the same man helped Marianne Osbourne take her life to stop her telling the truth when she got into St James?’ It made sense but Valentine didn’t react, so Shaw tried another question. ‘If that’s what happened why didn’t Patch die in 1994?’

  Valentine didn’t miss a beat. ‘Because in 1994 everyone thought the killer was one of the seventy-four people taken off East Hills. Whatever Patch saw wasn’t suspicious in itself, only in retrospect. The killer knew we’d draw a blank with the mass screening – that we’d widen the net. There’d be publicity. We’d want witnesses, fresh witnesses, who’d seen anything suspicious that day. That’s when the killer feared Patch would come forward.’