Death Ship

by Jim Kelly

  When the project won planning permission and secured EU funding, CID had thrown a party, in the mistaken belief it marked the end of hostilities. Far from it. The STP had promptly launched a two-pronged attack in an attempt to stop the construction work and force both Brussels and the local council to go back to the original ‘Victorian’ blueprint first mooted by the consortium behind the project. They claimed the plan for a ‘super-pier’ had been sneaked past MPs, MEPs, and local councillors, and insinuated that financial backhanders had smoothed the way. Lawyers fought a continuous campaign to get Brussels civil servants to put the case before the EU’s auditors, while STP activists were preparing to stand as candidates at the next local elections unless councillors agreed to an inquiry. The STP argued it wasn’t too late to stop work and go back to the original design, pointing out that an elegant theatre pavilion could stand on the caisson just as easily as the planned fairground super-rides.

  Shaw called for order. ‘I don’t think any of us believe a bunch of local shopkeepers or butterfly hunters is going to start a bombing campaign. But what about our green warriors? We know outsiders have been flocking to the demos – activists, veterans from other campaigns. What if this device is home-made – cobbled together to make a point? Maybe it wasn’t a rusty old thousand-pounder; maybe it was an old fridge full of fertilizer.’

  DC Jackie Lau raised her voice above the general hubbub. ‘Maybe it didn’t just go off. Maybe it was triggered.’

  The yard fell silent. Lau was ethnic Chinese, a career copper who wanted to be the force’s first female DI in operational CID – not traffic, or, unbearably, child liaison. She had a reputation for working hard, and playing harder, largely in fast cars. Nobody doubted she was smart enough for the job.

  ‘Go on, Jackie,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Maybe they didn’t want to kill anyone. So the device is in the sand; they watch it being dug up, and then, when everyone runs, they trigger it off. That way they get the publicity, but don’t cross the line. No one empathizes with murder.’

  ‘Right. So triggered by someone in line of sight. How are we fixed for CCTV, Mark?’

  Mark Birley, ex-uniformed branch, had a genius for sifting through evidence, and a straightforward approach to the job which matched his rugby forward’s physique. Shaw’s theory was that Birley’s incessant physical activity – he worked out in the gym every day and was a manic weightlifter – gave him that rare human skill: an ability to remain still. Birley could review CCTV footage for hours, maintaining a high level of focus.

  ‘I’m on it,’ said Birley. ‘Six cameras on the front – plus one outside the amusement park, and one by the sailing club. I’ve got data requests in for the lot.’

  ‘Good. But let’s take Jackie’s idea one step further. If it is a home-made bomb, and it is the anti-pier campaign, then it may well be the same people who got out to the rig and lit that oil drum. Where are we on the arson, Paul?’

  Paul Twine was graduate entry, a smart copper good at keeping the unit from information overload. He worked as ‘point’ – the officer designated to review all data, and circulate anything of significance to his colleagues: effectively a human data filter.

  ‘Forensics gave the rig a once-over, but even they admitted it was perfunctory,’ he said. ‘The rig’s got three decks, two accommodation blocks; then there’s the tug, the crane, and the sea platforms down in the water. So they had to focus on trying to isolate the accelerant used.’

  ‘Right,’ said Shaw. ‘If the Ark can nail the device as military – and historic – then that’s all fine. If not, have a word with forensics; let’s get a second SOCO sweep of the rig. Maybe they missed something first time.’

  Valentine, leaning against the yard wall, stepped forward. ‘Home Office has been back on. What with the Brighton attack, they’re jumpy. Can’t blame ’em.’

  Six weeks earlier, an off-duty soldier suffered a fatal knife attack while sitting on a picnic blanket by Brighton Pier. The assailant had recently returned from Syria where he had fought with ISIS.

  ‘I told them it looked like a wartime bomb, maybe,’ Valentine continued, ‘but they’re spooked by the coincidence, right? A pier. A beach. Maybe it’s a summer campaign – hit the Brits on the sands. Crazy – but they want twenty-four-hour updates. I’ll do it.’

  Shaw sipped some more Guinness. ‘Good. But let’s not be too dismissive. What little we’ve got so far is second-hand testimony, or third-hand. So let’s be careful. We want theories, but we need facts. Until we get some, nothing’s ruled out.’

  ‘What about the construction work?’ asked Twine. ‘They’re working on the seabed now. They use explosive bolts. Or did I make that up? Plus, if they’re shifting rock, maybe they need charges … Springtime, they were hauling all their stuff down to the shoreline. Laying cables. Maybe they got careless.’

  ‘Check it out, Paul. In fact, forget what I said just now. Let’s organize a trip out to the rig and get forensic to do a fresh sweep whatever.’

  Valentine looked at his black slip-ons. No doubt he’d be included in the boat trip. He hated the beach because of the sand and the salt, and the moving, nausea-inducing water. Actually floating was his idea of hell.

  Shaw stilled a buzz of chatter with a raised hand. ‘Which leaves us with one other case. Congratulations to George. We have an arrest in the Roach murder inquiry. A woman’s in custody. A chemical analysis of the chocolates she was handing out at the bus stop has identified rat poison.’

  Applause drew a short, curt bow from Valentine.

  ‘No doubt George will get a medal. He deserves one.’ Shaw left that hanging in the air. He wasn’t quick to praise, and his relationship with his DS could be tetchy, so the commendation was duly noted by all. ‘He’ll get another medal if we can work out why the hell she did it.’

  EIGHT

  The website post was timed at precisely one thirty-four a.m. British time, two thirty-four Dutch time.

  Marine Projects Inc., the construction company undertaking the building of the Hunstanton Pier, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the multinational giant Blue Square, which operated a website hosted by a server in Rotterdam. It encouraged visitors to post comments. Given that Blue Square operated in 131 different jurisdictions on four continents, many of the posts were in Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese. One block of interrelated posts marked the opening of the new Ghoung Dam, 125 miles upstream from Beijing. The last English entries celebrated the award of certificates of merit awarded to six of the company’s designs for flood defences in Guyana.

  The tone of the post timed at one thirty-four was very different.

  Stop the pier. Next time people will die.

  The word ‘die’ triggered the site security and the post was removed three minutes later. Dutch CID rang a standard nightline number at the company’s corporate headquarters in Bremen, and the guard on duty contacted the senior board member with responsibility for digital communications. He rang Interpol, who in turn emailed Scotland Yard’s terrorist response unit. Over the previous year the Met had compiled a ‘digital crime’ register which listed officers in regional forces who had undertaken a two-week course at Hendon Police College.

  The West Norfolk’s officer was listed as DC Jackie Lau.

  Lau was in bed, her bed, with a man called Milo whom she’d met at a stock-car racing event the previous weekend in Lynn. Lau liked cars, motorbikes, anything that could impart to the word ‘speed’ a streak of glamour. She liked danger, chaos, and movement. Milo had driven his car – a Fiat shell with a Merlin 3.1 litre engine – off the track and through a wall of straw bales six metres thick. Lau had been standing twenty feet away, cradling a half bottle of vodka, as he extricated himself from the wreck.

  Over a few shots Lau had told Milo she was a fan, and, when asked, volunteered that she worked shifts at the Campbell’s soup factory on the edge of town.

  The first time the phone rang she thought she’d dreamt it, but the second woke Milo.

&nbs
p; ‘What the fuck …’

  She stretched a hand across his bare chest and captured the buzzing mobile, recognizing the incoming number as New Scotland Yard.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Jackie Lau,’ she said, and, in the moonlight, saw Milo’s eyes widen.

  NINE

  Esther Jayne Keeble was not the oldest suspect ever held overnight in the cells at St James’. Her date of birth had, however, been entered by the desk sergeant with some difficulty, as the drop-down computer option list had not immediately offered 1944. Given her birthday – 3rd April – she was booked in as aged seventy-two. The record was ninety-one, but that was in the case of a man suspected of dangerous driving, who had driven round three of the town’s roundabouts anti-clockwise, and couldn’t recall his own name, let alone trivial aspects of the Highway Code.

  The Lynn force seemed to specialize in apprehending the ancient. Popular prejudice held that the ageing burglars and petty thieves who seemed to crowd the magistrates’ courts had come to Norfolk in the 1960s, part of the great exodus encouraged by the government, keen to rehouse the East End in the then thriving port. The locals maintained that the town’s OAP crime rate was entirely imported from West Ham and Poplar, Bethnal Green and the Isle of Dogs.

  Shaw, however, noted that the pensioner criminal was just as likely to be Norfolk born and bred. In fact, the port had a long medieval history of seedy, waterside crime which seemed to take no heed of age. Perhaps the phenomenon was a nationwide one, as the average lifespan lengthened, accommodating the professional thief unwilling to contemplate retirement on a dwindling state pension.

  Keeble had been regularly plied with cups of tea and biscuits. Generally, grey-haired villains got short shrift, clogging up the justice system and wasting police time. But Keeble’s stoic silence had engendered a rare atmosphere of guarded sympathy.

  A woman PC brought Keeble into the interview room, one hand supporting a fragile elbow. Shaw wondered if it was vanity or just plain bloody-mindedness that made her eschew a stick after her hip operation. Sinewy, with white knuckles, the suspect did have remarkable eyes, the spider’s web lines seeming to suggest the imminent arrival of a smile. Making a perfunctory effort to sit up straight, the very slight vibration of her skull on her slim neck betrayed the stress that seemed to hold her bones together, like piano wires.

  One of the canteen staff brought her yet another cup of tea, and a small plate upon which had been arranged three wrapped sweets, which Shaw thought betrayed a macabre sense of humour. They remained untouched.

  Valentine activated the tape and made the usual announcements, Shaw jumping in with the first question without preliminaries. ‘Have you ever seen a poisoned rat die?’

  Keeble shook her head, then seemed to try to disguise the movement after the fact, rearranging the collar of her spotless linen blouse. She had turned down her legal right to a solicitor, and Shaw wondered if she’d begun to regret the decision because she kept looking at the door as if assessing her chances of a dash for freedom.

  Shaw offered her a brief summary of the last six hours of her victim’s life, reportage in style, but replete with the medical detail that made it clear he died in pain, surrounded by strangers, both confused and terrified.

  Then he put a newly purchased carton of TopChoc on the table. ‘Our forensic laboratory staff are working on the ones you were offering the child. And the carton from your trolley. Fifty in that box, thirty tested so far, one containing rat poison. So a two-in-a-hundred chance – at the very least – of this child dying in a similar fashion.’

  Shaw’s capacity to see in the abstract was highly developed. Fran, his daughter, appeared to his mind’s eye, buckled over at the waist, trying to cough up the corrosive poison.

  His voice, which was usually light, suggesting the ability to hit a note at will, was a revelation now. ‘I want you to tell me why you did this, Mrs Keeble. I want you to tell me before you leave this room. Do you understand me?’

  The hairs on the back of Valentine’s neck rose. He’d heard this voice before, many years ago, at his first suspect interview with his then DCI, Jack Shaw. It wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t aggressive or threatening, but it was loaded with a sense of moral justice and conveyed vividly an entitlement to the truth.

  She almost told them then – they could see in her eyes the utter relief it would have brought – but she seemed to choke back a word, as tears began to fall.

  The woman PC offered a Kleenex. The cup of tea stood untouched, a fatty, milky, undisturbed film on the top.

  ‘I do want to say I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry it ended like this.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Shaw. ‘Why did you want to kill these people? Were the sweets handed out on a random basis? Did this child have a chance, or was she a victim already? Did you know Roach? Was he your target, or could any of them have died?’

  ‘I can’t say any more,’ she said, looking towards the door, as if this simple statement would release her instantly. She tugged at the fold of skin beneath her chin.

  Shaw leant back, and Valentine took up the thread. ‘I spoke to your husband, Mrs Keeble.’

  Shaw saw it then, behind the eyes, as conflicting emotions struggled for some kind of closure. This is about the husband, he thought, about George Keeble, retired newsagent and one-time lifeboatman.

  ‘We obtained a warrant to search your house but were unable to find any evidence of rat poison at the house or in the garage. Mr Keeble says he’s always used humane traps. He said he had no idea where you obtained the poison. He is shocked by what’s happened, and adamant that he didn’t know, or assist you in any way. Is that true, Mrs Keeble?’

  They sat in silence.

  ‘You were a nurse, of course, for many years,’ said Shaw eventually. ‘The cottage hospital in Hunstanton – that’s right, isn’t it?’

  She nodded quickly, as if scared that one admission might lead to another. ‘A volunteer; I’m not qualified.’

  ‘So you spent your life looking after others, and now this …’ Shaw stared at the sweets on the plate. ‘Mr Keeble says he can’t think why you should want to kill anyone, let alone an apparently random victim. You’re a “good wife” – his words. An articulate man, your husband: an aberration, he says – a mental storm, brought on by the strain of caring for him, on a limited budget, in a cramped prefab on a windswept piece of estuary beach. And the disability allowance has just been cut back, so that’s made life harder. Is that what did it, Mrs Keeble?’ Shaw left a gap in which they could hear the wall clock tick. ‘But none of that really fits, does it? The slow accretion of strain and stress is unlikely to lead to a fairly meticulous and pre-planned attempt to poison a group of total strangers. That smacks, surely, of much darker motives.’

  Again, the effort not to speak seemed to overwhelm her, until she visibly set her jawline, teeth clamped. ‘I want to speak to my husband. I want to see him. Is he here? I thought I heard his voice …’ The eyes again, flitting to the door and then back to the cup of tea.

  Valentine rearranged his black slip-on shoes beneath the table, leaving the answer to Shaw.

  ‘Mr Keeble has attended for interview, voluntarily. His solicitor has advised him not to see you. If he did, we would have to insist at this point on a police officer being present. That option was declined; in fact, I have to tell you that Mr Keeble said he did not wish to talk to you, or see you – not today, and perhaps not ever.’

  TEN

  The naming of hospital wards had always been a source of irritation to Shaw. The transparent attempt to instil a message always ensured a deadening effect: Nelson Ward was oncology, and therefore a desperate plea for courage and a reminder of mortality; Rosemary Ward – geriatric – a tired Victorian effort to conjure up the English country garden in which old age consisted of the scent of herbs; and now Sunshine Ward, for children, invoking the spirit of summer adventure and the distant, thrilling susurrus of play.

  The reality was starkly at variance with the b
right poster colours of the shiny walls. Eight beds, six taken, two surrounded by the screens which in themselves were tangible euphemisms, in that the imagined, unseen suffering was often far worse than the obscured reality. Somewhere, off stage, a child cried. In the bed by the doors a small boy blinked through a swollen face marred by a gravel-rash, one eye bloodshot.

  Eric Ross, five, was transfixed by a game on his brother’s smartphone, his small thumbs working the controller with preternatural dexterity. His bare right leg, marked by a red blotch, exhibited a livid burn. The rest of the boy’s family sat round on plastic chairs, except for Jonah, the middle son, who had inveigled his way on to the bed beside his brother to see the screen. Marc, the eldest, took snapshots with his Canon, ostentatiously swapping lenses to take a shot out of the window.

  That morning’s daily national newspapers were spread over the rest of the bed: the Daily Mail’s headline read: TERROR LINK TO BEACH BOMB OUTRAGE – a story cobbled together from anonymous sources and one – unnamed – member of the Cabinet. The Guardian’s front-page coverage avoided the hysterical: POLICE PROBE WARTIME RECORDS IN WAKE OF BEACH BOMB BLAST. Only the Daily Express seemed unable to rise above cliché with MIRACLE ESCAPE FOR THOUSANDS ON BOMB BLAST BEACH. None of the papers had gone with the trickier storyline involving the anti-pier campaign, although both local radio and TV had quoted the force media spokesman, who had refused to rule out any line of inquiry, and speculated that detectives would undoubtedly investigate possible links with environmental extremists.

  Shaw’s eye encompassed the newspapers, as he considered again the email he’d just received from DC Lau outlining the overnight posting of threats on the Blue Square website. He’d authorized time and personnel to track down the person responsible, or at least the computer responsible, and set finance aside to bring in an IT specialist to help. If the claim made was valid, then the bomb was indeed home-made. If. But it was far more likely that anti-pier campaigners had simply decided to make the most of a totally unexpected turn of events. Shaw’s money was still on a wartime UXB. He hoped that his junior eye witnesses could provide the key evidence.