Death Ship

by Jim Kelly

  ‘Up here. I’ve told Pete Royle to stand by; he’s the operator.’

  The decompression chamber lay at the end of a long corridor with blue lino and no windows. Royle, the attendant, swung the door out, revealing the four-inch-thick metal width of the chamber’s skin and the spotless interior. Shaw took a seat, but Valentine held back, watching Royle take his seat outside by the control panel.

  ‘So – the science, please,’ said Shaw. ‘Or as much as we need to know.’

  Ring joined him inside the chamber and nodded to Royle, who shut the door and swung the circular lock. Shaw felt his ears flutter, his heart beat responding to the claustrophobic interior.

  ‘Working underwater for long periods of time means the blood absorbs gases,’ said Ring, his voice echoless. ‘If you come up too quickly, the gas comes out in the blood as bubbles. These can kill you. So the chamber slows that process down. The men come up in the cage and then spend anything up to an hour in here – the pressure at first matches that below, then slowly recalibrates to match atmospheric pressure at sea level. The process is computer-controlled, but monitored manually by the attendant. It’s on a standard setting. All Pete does is make sure the timing is right. And he maintains a visual watch.’

  Shaw felt a single drop of sweat slide down his scalp. ‘Can he hear us?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at the moment. He can switch on a two-way mike – but if he does, this light comes on,’ said Ring, touching a small green LED set in the pale cream metal wall.

  ‘You trust Royle?’

  ‘First thing I did was call up his file with head office. Eighteen years’ experience, unblemished record. We conduct police checks in nearly twenty jurisdictions before offering anyone a job. Technically, he’s a consultant, not an employee – but the checks stand. Crew think he’s a bit standoffish, bookish, keeps himself to himself. But that’s not a crime.’

  ‘OK. Let’s ask him what happened.’

  Ring nodded to Royle and the locks sprung open with a faint hiss.

  ‘Talk us through it,’ said Shaw, noting the strong smell of disinfectant on the air of the corridor, compared with the dead air of the chamber. There was something else too – a faint aroma of nicotine.

  ‘Someone reset the chamber overnight,’ said Royle. ‘I didn’t touch it. I hardly ever do. There’s no need because the pressure of the caisson and its depth are constant – and so is our height. So the variable is the time spent inside the chamber – that’s what I set, and the name of the occupant, which brings with it their medical record. Ross’s time chart indicated that he’d been down for a double shift, so I just punched in his personal code and set the clock at twenty-eight minutes. Then I went outside for some fresh air.’ Royle put his hands in his pockets before Shaw could ask to see his fingers.

  Ring examined his boots. ‘She’s a non-smoking vessel, Peter. There’s clearly a bit of give and take I didn’t know about. It won’t happen again.’

  Royle licked his lips. ‘I just went out because twenty-eight minutes is a long time, and nothing can go wrong. Ross is an old hand, and he looked fine – cheery even. When I got back, he was just about to pass out. He’s OK, Captain?’

  Ring nodded but didn’t take his eyes off Shaw, who raised a hand and asked, ‘The control room – is the chamber not monitored from there?’

  ‘Yup. The night shift didn’t spot the recalibration,’ said Ring. ‘We’ll change procedure; it won’t happen again.’ He took a deep breath. ‘That’s two things that won’t happen again.’

  ‘Question is, how did it happen this time? Any ideas?’

  ‘Well, like Pete says, someone reset the computer.’

  ‘And you can do that at this panel?’

  ‘Yup. Or in the control room,’ said Ring. ‘But it’s more likely here because this area’s open to the crew unless the control room shuts the doors.’

  ‘So we’re talking know-how here,’ said Valentine. ‘This isn’t an alarm clock, is it? It’s a bit of high-tech kit. I bet you’re not on a deckhand’s wages, right?’ he asked Royle. ‘This is a professional job.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ring. ‘It’s complex. I’m employed by Red Chamber, a subsidiary of Blue Square, which makes and maintains this kind of equipment all over the world, not just on Blue Square projects. But I need the expertise to deal with problems. Actually setting the chamber time is easy. If you were here on a mobile phone, and I was on the other end, I could talk you through it – the recalibration. It’s effectively been knocked back to the default setting of sea level. In fact, if someone tried to tamper with it, and failed, the computer would react by going back to that default setting. That may well be what happened.’

  ‘Could it be an accident?’ asked Shaw.

  Royle looked at Ring, then Shaw. ‘One in a million. Less. You’ve got to try to do this. Accidental resetting can’t happen.’

  Ring produced a printout from the pocket of his high-vis jacket. ‘I got this from Rotterdam an hour ago. We’re closing down the caisson at noon until further notice. All operations are at stop from then. They’ll review that in forty-eight hours. This incident is classified as an accident and as such will have to be the subject of a health and safety investigation. We don’t have a choice. The work stops – if we’re lucky, a few hours; unlucky, weeks.’

  ‘What about the crew in the meantime?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘You’re in charge, Peter. We’re a mile offshore, not fifteen; if I was in international waters, of course, I could tell you what we’re doing. But if you’re still thinking this might be an inside job, there’s one other person you should see – a guy called Abel DeSouza, one of the mop-up crew. It was his job to check the corridor was clean this morning at dawn. It was spotless, as he’d left it six hours earlier, except for two sets of wet footprints, one set in, one set out. Footprints – that’s bare feet, not boots.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  Blue Square Inc. issued a statement to the London Stock Exchange at noon precisely, announcing that work on the new Hunstanton Pier would cease while investigations continued into an incident on the site rig, which might, or might not, be the result of sabotage. The share price fell 2.4 per cent, wiping £210 million off the value of the company. The Financial Times ran a short item on their website quoting a source at Blue Square who estimated the daily cost of the shutdown to be in excess of £1.2 million. In Brussels, a spokesman for the development fund, the principal backers of the project, told the press that delays were a concern and the project would be monitored closely. The company, which retained the services of three MPs as consultants on infrastructure policy, pressed them to lobby the Cabinet Office, insisting on a quick and efficient investigation by the police in the interests of protecting local jobs and public investment in the scheme. A Home Office civil servant was summoned to Downing Street and briefed, resulting in a telephone call to the chief constable of the West Norfolk at six fifteen p.m.

  Shaw got the call ten minutes later, and responded by calling the serious crime unit’s eight officers to a meeting at Surf! They sat outside at the picnic tables, the rig silent on the horizon, the summer crowds already drifting back towards town, dragging pushchairs and cool boxes, children and wetsuits.

  ‘Sabotage is an ugly word,’ Shaw told them. ‘It just got uglier. This latest attack signals a degree of premeditation and organization, so we need to drill down into that, and at the very least disrupt any plans for further attacks. The pressure’s on from the top down. It’s pretty clear someone is reckless enough to risk human life; in fact, it may be that Dirk Hartog was their first victim. So, all leave is cancelled – we’re on this until we crack it.’

  They would reinterview Anna Roos, and double the team sifting through her email account, which had turned out to be extensive. A warrant had also been obtained to search Winterhill, and Roos’s family home, further along the coast. Peterborough CID was making some effort to track down the Leander Club watch stolen from the city baths, while uniformed branch was
trawling the Tuesday market in Lynn, in the hope of finding some trace of the shopper who’d picked up a similar watch at a cut price.

  ‘The wet footprints point to a swimmer. Maybe they point a little too conveniently to a swimmer – but we can’t ignore the obvious. We’ll get Atkins and Kersk into St James’ for a formal session too.’

  A liaison officer from the Met’s animal rights squad was travelling up to brief them on links between known activists and the anti-pier campaign. A warrant had been obtained for a raid on the offices of STP, which would be conducted while most of the organization’s members were at a rally, to be held in the town’s Princess Theatre the following day, at which a vote would be taken on plans for a major public demonstration calling for the rig close-down to be permanent.

  Each member of the team was given a set of duties and deadlines. DC Twine would coordinate data and circulate anything relevant.

  Shaw took Valentine in the Porsche to check on the army’s progress clearing the beach, before using a Skype link from Captain Wharram’s four-by-four to talk to Captain Ring, organizing interviews with all crew members aboard the MV Telamon. In the interim, they were all to remain offshore.

  The chief constable wanted a face-to-face briefing from Shaw at his office in St James’, so Shaw offered Valentine a lift back to Lynn.

  ‘Sorry, house-hunting to do,’ said Valentine. ‘Jan’s seen one she likes, wants me to check it out on the way home. Which means I’ll need to catch the T45. Good job Keeble’s in the cells.’

  ‘How long can it take?’ asked Shaw, in no hurry to endure the chief constable’s cross-examination. ‘If you can stand slumming it in the Porsche, you’re welcome to a lift.’

  Shaw pointed the car south on the Lynn Road, the night rising in the east, closing like a lid over a cloudless blue sky. Valentine gave him a postcode and they let the talking voice guide them down a back lane, into Heacham, and then on towards the marshes. A field, which Shaw recalled had once corralled wild horses, now held a small estate of executive homes: six houses, with double garages, but postage-stamp-sized gardens behind rustic walls. A For Sale sign stood outside one, the house lights blazing, a family sitting at a kitchen table clearly visible.

  ‘They said to just call by,’ said Valentine, unmoved in the passenger seat.

  ‘Price?’

  ‘Two forty-nine nine-nine-nine. Daft, isn’t it – the way they shave a quid off, like it’s going to make you jump at it. A quarter of a million. We got Greenland Street for nineteen thousand.’

  ‘Got to move on,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Not here, I don’t.’

  ‘Gonna give it a miss, then?’

  ‘Yup.’

  Valentine’s mobile buzzed, and Shaw noted the screen had lit up with Jan’s name.

  Shaw listened to Valentine’s half of a conversation which consisted of three ‘yups’ and one ‘will do’ before a perfunctory ‘bye’.

  ‘As we’re here, Probationary PC Clay has a job for us,’ he said, stashing the mobile in the glove compartment. ‘We need to walk, apparently. Down that lane, past the bus stop. We’re looking for the Willows Rest Home.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘Keeble’s sister-in-law,’ explained Valentine, pressing an intercom buzzer and giving their names and ranks. ‘Jan’s been trying to get her for days. She tried turning up on the doorstep but got the bum’s rush. Appointment only. She just rang her back. Now’s good. Maybe she knows why the wonderful Esther has taken up a career as a random killer. Nobody else does.’

  Bach played in the reception area of the Willows, the tinkling notes following them as they were led into the heart of the Georgian building and then down into a spa area in the basement.

  Several elderly women swam in stately, metronomic lengths in a pool illuminated by underwater lights. Alice Banks, George Keeble’s sister, was in a large jacuzzi, floating in a metal cradle, the water bubbling and swirling around her. She wore a green swimming cap dotted with sunflowers, and a matching one-piece swimsuit. Her narrow limbs floated and bobbed in the artificial currents, the painful narrowness of her ankles and wrists exposed to forces which Valentine imagined might at any moment tear her apart.

  ‘Ah, good,’ she said by way of welcome. ‘This is such a bore. It’s therapy, you see. I have to lie here for hours. I welcome any distraction, even a discussion of my saintly sister-in-law.’

  She had small nail-head eyes and a wide mouth, which was oddly marked out by a crude slash of red lipstick.

  ‘Esther visited, I understand?’ offered Valentine, faintly unsettled by the fact that he seemed to be spending a great deal of his time beside water, as if it offered some fatal attraction.

  Banks floated in her metal cage. Shaw judged her to be eighty years old, wiry, slightly bird-like. There was something predatory, even cruel, in those unblinking black eyes.

  Valentine realized she was waiting for a specific question. ‘Had you noticed any changes in her character, her behaviour? Did she talk about any particular anxieties?’ he asked.

  Shaw looked up at the ceiling, mottled with reflective light. ‘Who – for example – did she hate?’

  ‘She hated herself,’ said Banks, and lay back in the water, apparently satisfied with this summation. ‘That’s why she’s so good.’ She laid a peculiar emphasis on the word, indicating a level of disdain for the concept of good and evil. ‘Strange, tortured woman. Before my husband died, eight years ago, she promised him she’d visit me every week. No one asked me if I liked the bloody woman. I’ve been a paraplegic for nearly a decade. She took on this duty of care with some alacrity. For a while I suspected she wanted my money, but I told George years ago it was all going to my children. I have three, although you’d never guess by the visitor’s book.’ She reached over to the side of the pool where a glass of orange juice stood on a linen napkin.

  Valentine hauled some chlorinated air into his lungs to ask a fresh question, but Banks hadn’t finished.

  ‘George wasted his life, of course. He had opportunities – not least a decent education. Ended up running a corner shop, for heaven’s sake, selling grubby newspapers to grubby people. And wasting the rest of his time playing boats with the RNLI. But that’s all right, because it’s a charity.’

  ‘I guess they have each other,’ offered Shaw, feeling the need to fight the absent Esther’s corner.

  For a moment they saw it then, in the dead-nail eyes: a sudden angry void too bitter to label loneliness. The recovery was almost instant, the wide mouth parting to reveal small, beautifully white teeth.

  ‘You know George is dying? Lung cancer. Still manages twenty a day. That’s a considerable reduction by the way: he was once proud of smoking sixty on occasion. A failing heart has put him in that wheelchair, but his lungs will kill him. From my perspective, I’ve always seen them as the perfect couple: I can’t see what she sees in him, or what he sees in her. The idea of them cooped up in that dingy prefab is pure hell.

  ‘They never asked for money of course, although George specialized in heavy hints. But as I said, I have responsibilities, family responsibilities. The last time she visited, she said George had been given six months, possibly less. She’ll live for ever, of course; she’s the type. And she’s so proud of walking without a stick, despite the new hip.

  ‘As for a motive for what she did, your guess is as good as mine. She had her – what can I call them? – targets. The health service for letting George down. The doctors for taking so long to get her in for her hip. The bus company for making it so difficult to get his wheelchair on board. The City of London for frittering away their little nest egg of shares. The people at Swansea for insisting she take her driving test again – which she failed, of course. That’s what she couldn’t abide, you see. She thinks the world owes her something because she’s been so conspicuously good.’ She stretched her arms out and Shaw noted a gold wedding ring, a diamond ring, and a bracelet of silver charms. ‘Well, the world doesn’t owe her anything. Maybe,
in the end, that was just too much to take.’ She altered her position in the water, setting up a series of concentric waves that creased the oily surface of the pool. ‘Frankly, and I mean this, it’s probably the most interesting thing Esther’s ever done. And it brings with it the untold joy associated with the knowledge that, with luck, I’ll never see her again.’

  She smiled then, to indicate that this was perhaps her idea of a joke, and the thin scarlet lipstick formed a zigzag across her face, and Shaw knew the precise word he’d been searching for to describe her later to Lena.

  Poisonous.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Stop the Pier supporters filled every seat of the town’s Princess Theatre for their rally, with children on laps and playing in the aisles. The local paper had done the campaign no harm by printing an artist’s impression of the new pier-head fun park, the highlight of which was a seventy-foot death-plunge ride called Moon Shot. The foreground of the illustration showed crowds of thousands on the beach, and coaches parked across the town’s trademark ‘village green’ opposite the pier entrance.

  This public relations disaster had been compounded by news that an application had also been filed with the council and the Home Office for a casino licence. ‘Up in arms’ was a tabloid cliché, but the crowd bristled with a genuine sense of outrage and anger, while party balloons – in the campaign colours of blue and white – bobbed randomly from row to row. Two TV crews were on site – one inside and one outside the theatre.

  The stage was stark, empty, but for a trestle table supporting a huge campaign sign:

  STOP THE PIER

  WHY WASTE £77m?

  The on-stage theatre scenery was in disarray, caught between a production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong and the backdrop for an Elvis Presley tribute band. The old theatre, a 1930s gem, looked odd in the white TV lights, the colour scheme of raspberry and silver hard on the eye.