At Death's Window

by Jim Kelly

  ‘A couple of days. I’ve set aside some time this coming weekend – I need to get a kiln going at the house at Holme. I buy in a lot of glass but the trick is getting the colour right, and adding the details by hand. I make a little too – using medieval methods. I’m going to try and tackle all the replacement pieces in one session. I’ll ring when I’m sorted.’

  Valentine offered a hand. ‘Thanks.’

  As she packed gloves away in a neat leather satchel, Shaw wondered about the house at Holme. The village was one of the most exclusive on the coast, nestling behind a spectacular beach which looked out across the Wash towards distant, misty Lincolnshire. It wasn’t millionaire’s row, but it was a prime slice of north Norfolk real estate. A glassware shop in well-heeled Burnham Market clearly turned a penny.

  She nodded at them both, and fled.

  Shaw held up a piece of glass containing a painted face. The airgun pellet had missed the drawn eye by a few millimetres. He felt a sympathetic pain within his own blind eye and massaged the muscle at his temple. Valentine looked away. The DI’s good eye was tested every three months by St James’ medical staff to make sure he was fit for duty. What they didn’t know was that Shaw’s good eye had shown worrying signs of deterioration, possibly as a result of his decision not to have the injured blind eye removed. He didn’t want the standard glass eye: the milky moon-eye had become part of his past, part of who he was. Technically, Valentine should have reported any sign of decline in his superior’s eyesight. (He had been invited to report such matters by at least one senior officer keen to see Shaw’s otherwise sparkling career derailed.) His decision to turn a blind eye – as it were – had forged an unspoken bond between DS and DI.

  ‘St Margaret’s, St Andrew’s, All Saints,’ said Valentine, indicating each cluster of colourful fragments in turn. Shaw edged closer. Each collection of shards told a common story: the yellow glass reserved for flesh, the elliptical heavenly eyes, the delicate feathers of wings.

  ‘I just thought I’d try and track this joker down,’ said Valentine. ‘After all, there can’t be that many people with a grudge against angels.’

  NINE

  ‘Sea mist, drifting in off the Wash, was the default weather forecast for the Darnall Estate. This morning’s haar was resisting the early morning sun, still just a pale disc hanging over the Sky dishes, so that the maze of cul-de-sacs which formed the estate was still marked out by pearl-like strings of amber street lights, orbs suspended magically on invisible lampposts, like St Elmo’s Fire – the legendary will-o’-the-wisps which hovered around the masts of sailing ships, harbingers of electrical storms. These lights were false sirens, because yesterday’s lightning had moved on, striking three offshore wind turbines before fizzling out in the North Sea. The radio weather forecast, however, predicted their return by dusk.

  The Darnall had been built in the early sixties to help accommodate London’s overspill: thousands sent north from the blighted bombsites of the East End to find jobs and modern homes in the Norfolk port. The estate still reeked of the age of the council estate, but most of those who judged it harshly had forgotten just how pleased its original tenants had been when they’d first arrived: the Darnall offered indoor toilets, insulated roofs, galley kitchens, spare rooms, and back and front gardens. It was pretty much paradise in 1963, except that in heaven you didn’t get a serving hatch between your kitchen and dining room.

  Time had dealt harshly with the Darnall. The target population had been five thousand, but the money had run out in the mid-seventies and the streets were interspersed with stretches of wasteland, each one graced with the suffix park – as if that alone could transform what the locals called rough lots into Kensington Gardens. Daily life on the estate was blighted by a small number of thugs and a handful of so-called ‘families’ – remnants of the East End’s underworld aristocracy, shipped out of the capital alongside the workers. The estate had no special reputation for street crime – that was reserved for the entire town – but the Darnall had its own particular vice, its specialist event, so to speak: car crime. Vehicles of all sizes and makes were stolen for joy rides in Lynn, then dumped on the Darnall before being ceremoniously set alight. The merry flicker of flames beyond net curtains was something the locals had come to live with, along with the anxiety prompted by the inevitable question: how much petrol was there in the tank?

  Shaw swung his Porsche 167 off the main drag, a dual carriageway called Jubilee Way, which wound its way around the heart of the Darnall like a hangman’s noose. Shaw had chosen the Porsche because of the narrow A-bar – the stanchion between the windscreen and the side window. The Monocular Society, a self-help group set up in London, had a list on their website of cars suitable for those without stereoscopic vision, and the Porsche was top of the list. Modern cars had thick A-bars, designed to improve safety, but which amounted to a considerable barrier to the single-sighted. Shaw loved the car for itself too: the slightly antique lines, the sheer panache of the design. It looked classy, even on Jubilee Way, and even with George Valentine in the passenger seat.

  They were entering New Darnall – the council’s latest attempt to save the neighbourhood from decline to full-blown sink estate status. Here the tarmac had been colour-coded to match new speed limits, sleeping policemen installed across every road, CCTV posts added at junctions like alien invaders from The War of the Worlds. Finally, an aesthetic touch; each of the terraced houses had been painted a different poster-paint colour: blue, yellow, green and red. The locals had dubbed the area Balamory, after the popular children’s TV programme, which had been one of Fran’s favourites, and which Shaw had come to loathe due to its incessant good humour.

  Shaw and Valentine were both keen to get out to the scene of crime. They’d tackled the paperwork at St James’ – murder created red tape like no other crime. Shaw had endured a ten-minute interview with the chief constable, who had taken the opportunity not only to demand a quick and speedy arrest of the culprit, but also to remind Shaw that his other priority was to swiftly bring to a close the hunt for the second-home burglars – or Chelsea Burglars, as he called them. Shaw had resisted the urge to point out that the concept of two priorities was a linguistic nonsense. He had also declined the opportunity to tell his superior officer that the case was about to hit the local media – probably in Monday’s evening paper.

  Meanwhile, Valentine had rung round the rural police stations and mustered a squad of twenty uniformed officers to undertake a fingertip search of the coastal path, the Overy Creek sea wall and the outskirts of Burnham Marsh itself.

  It had been Valentine’s idea to fit in one last bit of routine police procedural foot-slogging before they left town. While he would never admit it to Peter Shaw, he was just as likely to recall DCI Jack Shaw’s maxims as his son, and near the top of the list was: Don’t forget the obvious. It was all very well sifting through the forensics, but nothing galvanized a police murder inquiry quite as potently as interviewing a suspect on his own doorstep.

  The body on Mitchell’s Bank was either linked to the trade in samphire, or someone wanted them to think it was. The victim had samphire in his pockets, and a pair of heavy-duty scissors – the tool of choice for the professional harvester. John Jack Stepney ran the van fleet which took the crop down to Billingsgate every day. His arrival on the scene that summer had sparked confrontation and violence. If they had to name a suspect right now, it was Stepney. Valentine had fixed the interview on the basis that they wanted to discuss the criminal damage to the vehicles at his garage. With luck he’d know nothing about the body on Mitchell’s Bank – unless he was responsible for the killing. Either way, it would be instructive to watch his reactions under questioning.

  John Jack Stepney lived at 54 King George Close. Valentine had phoned at 6.05 that morning and Stepney sounded chipper, as if he’d been at his desk for hours. Happy to discuss the vandals’ attack on his fleet of vans, he asked only that the interview be moved to his daughter’s house �
�� 56 King George Close. Number 54 was pink, number 56 green. Unless they wanted to meet later in the day, in which case he would be on his boat at Wells-next-the-Sea: a twenty-seven-footer by the name of Highlife, moored on the town quay. Valentine, who loathed boats and the people in them, had opted for a meeting on dry land.

  The Porsche slid into the curved kerb. ‘You’re banking on it still having tyres when we get back, right?’ asked Valentine, levering himself out of the passenger seat, his spine emitting a plastic click as he achieved the vertical.

  Shaw had a clipboard with the West Norfolk Constabulary’s crest on it which he set up on the dashboard.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Valentine. ‘Nothing like an incentive for the local thugs. Double points for a copper’s car.’ Suddenly breathless, he covered the moment by putting a cigarette between his lips, then transferring it behind one ear.

  The garden was just grass, but neat enough, and they stood in the cold mist of morning listening to the doorbell echo inside. The two houses were twinned semis. Shaw wondered how difficult it was to wangle that arrangement if you wanted to keep the family close at hand.

  A young woman opened the door in tight shorts and a T-shirt. ‘We’re off to Tenerife,’ she said, as if that explained everything.

  ‘I’m Emilia,’ she added, which was a surprise. Shaw thought it was a beautiful name. ‘Dad’s upstairs. He’s not coming – he just buys the tickets, thank God.’

  They heard a child squeal from the front room.

  ‘Just go up – like, it’s not Downton Abbey – you’ll find him.’

  The stairs were carpeted, spotless and newly hoovered, but littered with children’s toys. On the landing stood a single one-armed bandit, a modern digital model, plugged in, and winking at them images of apples and oranges and pears, with all the usual paraphernalia of NUDGE and HOLD. Shaw loathed the machines because they reminded him of being at the seaside in the rain, rather than on the beach in the sun. Whenever he saw a slot machine he could smell damp coats, and feel wet sand between his toes.

  Stepney was at his desk, perched on an office chair. Shaw always thought there were two kinds of desk – the sort people pose at, and the one that people work at: this was the second variety. Two MacBook Airs stood open and working (both on Face-to-Face and showing talking heads). There were two other desks, four mobile phones visible, plus a speaker. In the corner was a Lavazza coffee machine in brushed chrome, and a wall-mounted pair of Hi-Fi speakers.

  Stepney, fifty according to his police file, looked ten years younger, biceps pronounced without the whole iron-pumping swell, a cut-away gym top revealing a tattoo of a bald eagle. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair which made his scalp look like he’d have a spotted coat, like a dog, if he let it grow.

  ‘Gents. I don’t do seats for visitors – sorry. I like to encourage brisk business. Give me a second.’

  There was something wrong with the accent, and Shaw and Valentine exchanged glances. They’d been expecting Estuary English and they’d got classless BBC, with no regional burr. His file had listed a perfunctory education at a primary in Poplar and a secondary in Bow.

  Stepney wound up his two digital conversations and then stood, perching himself on a desk edge. Out of the window, which had blinds set open, Shaw could see down into the misty garden, and a child’s climbing frame, in red and blue.

  ‘Thanks for meeting here,’ he said, unprompted. ‘I like to keep work separate. Emilia’s got a spare room and the wife likes her privacy. Anyway, fire away.’

  After six years of conducting interviews together, Shaw and Valentine had evolved several effective techniques to unsettle interviewees. This was their standard double act: Shaw asked questions – on this occasion about the tyre-slashing of Stepney’s vans in the garage off the Tuesday Market – while the DS took notes. Then Valentine would start to chip in, while Shaw took time out to listen and think. After that they fired at will.

  Stepney was happy to talk about the business. The contract with Green Gold, the Billingsgate wholesalers, required them to supply 150 punnets of fresh samphire a day in season: mid-June to mid-October. That required two vans on the road every morning at two a.m. The fleet consisted of three new Vivaros, each with a 1,100-kilogram payload. Stepney paid six boat skippers on contract to run up and down the coast picking direct from the beach. They in turn hired pickers – mostly migrant workers – who worked as sub-contractors.

  ‘You don’t employ any pickers directly then?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Nope. Why get my hands dirty, eh? It’s a rough trade. Too much like hard work, if you ask me. “Halfway down hangs one that gathers samphire – dreadful trade!”’

  ‘Fan of EastEnders, are we, sir?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘It’s Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Although, to be fair, that’s rock samphire – this is the marsh variety.’

  Valentine asked a series of routine questions about the night the vandals targeted the vans.

  Shaw thought about what was behind Stepney’s curiously lifeless grey eyes. Physically he radiated energy, but those eyes hardly emitted light, let alone emotion. The pretence was obvious enough: the entrepreneur in his office, the veneer of education, the easy manners. Valentine had summarized his previous convictions on their journey out to Balamory. Two counts of GBH, six of ABH, five of burglary. One of the more serious charges involved Stepney kicking a ‘business associate’ more than thirty times while he lay in the gutter outside a pub in Lynn town centre. One witness described how Stepney had called out a number after each blow: from thirty, counting down. The damage this attack had done to his victim’s internal organs had resulted in a long stay in intensive care, his condition causing enough concern for files to be prepared to support a murder charge. He’d got four years for that offence, and had not been in trouble since – a clean sheet of nearly eight years. Shaw felt certain this meant he had not been caught for eight years.

  Stepney’s patience with Valentine’s questions finally snapped. ‘Look. What is this about?’

  ‘You said it was a rough trade,’ said Shaw. ‘How rough a trade, precisely?’

  ‘I think I got my question in first, Detective Inspector. What is this about?’

  The doorbell rang and they heard Emilia calling up the stairs: ‘Bye! I’ll ring from the flat.’

  Stepney didn’t move a muscle. They heard the taxi driver’s voice, then the child crying, then the door slamming.

  ‘She likes to get away. Problem is, when you get back, it’s still the Darnall. There’s a sixties protest song – “The Eve of Destruction” – that has a great line in it: “You may leave here for four days in space, but when you return it’s the same old place”. Escaping isn’t as easy as it looks, is it? Place like this pulls you back down every time.’

  Shaw ignored this piece of philosophy. ‘The fishing boat captains you hire on contract are all Polish, Mr Stepney. How do they know where to find samphire in season?’

  ‘First rule of business, Detective Inspector. Market intelligence. I recruited the knowledge. A fisherman works out of Wells called Slaughden – Painter Slaughden, they call him. He knows every inch of the coast and takes each of the boats out for a recce in early summer. Next question?’

  Any pretence that this was anything but an adversarial interview had evaporated.

  ‘Any idea who slashed the tyres?’ asked Valentine, sensing Shaw wanted a time out.

  ‘I think that’s your job, answering questions like that. My guess? Some of the old samphire pickers trying to scare us off.’

  ‘Did you retaliate?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Did you retaliate?’ repeated Valentine.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘A man has been found dead in the marshes at Burnham Marsh. Murdered,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Nothing to do with me, or mine.’

  This mock-mafia ideal of family was often used in Lynn to justify crude violence. It sickened Shaw.

  Valentine made a note. ‘Whe
re were you on Friday night, sir, between eight and midnight?’

  ‘Do I need a lawyer?’

  ‘Depends what the answer is,’ said Shaw.

  Anger twitched at the edge of Stepney’s eyes – at the tail of the eye, where the skin tightened.

  ‘At the warehouse. That’s the one the vandals broke into so they could slash the tyres on my new vans. That’s the crime you’re supposed to be investigating. Insurance claim is one thousand eight hundred pounds, by the way. I’m guessing you don’t care. Since the damage was done to the vans, one of us stays over at the garage. That night it was me.’

  ‘Alone?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘I got a takeaway delivered at nine from the Bengal. They know me. And the drivers clock on at one o’clock.’

  ‘But it’s out of season for samphire, right?’ said Valentine.

  ‘The vans are business assets. You need to sweat your assets to stay in business. I run organic veg down to New Covent Garden. Just about covers the costs, but beats letting four new vans sit on their tyres all day. Especially slashed tyres.’

  ‘And what do your Polish fishermen do all winter?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘That’s not my problem. I hire them for three months – that’s it. If they were on my books I’d get them to run cockles. They’re never out of season. Cheap labour, high mark-up – especially if you can get the produce out to Spain. But like I say, that’s their lookout.’

  ‘I’d like their names, please. And the port registration numbers of the vessels,’ said Shaw.

  Stepney shrugged and called up details on one of the MacBook Airs. Valentine added them to his notes and they all went downstairs to the front door. Outside the fog was lifting, revealing a stretch of waste ground opposite, in the middle of which was a burnt-out car. Strands of mist floated from the wreck, as if it was still smouldering.

  ‘You can escape, of course,’ said Stepney. ‘I’ve got two sons, they’re at St Felix’s near Lincoln. Emilia wouldn’t have it – so she’s going to pay the price. She’ll never get out. Mind you, my boys are fucking strangers to me. Me to them. Least they’re still scared of me, so that’s something.’