Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  Sarah Baker‐Sibley pulled the Alfa up three car lengths behind stationary tail lights. The vehicle ahead had stopped, a fallen pine tree blocking the way, lit silver by the headlights. Looking ahead she saw that it wasn’t a car but a small pick‐up truck, with an open back, and a covered low load. The cab had a rear window which showed a light within through frosted glass. The engine idled, the exhaust fumes spirited away each time there was a breath of wind. In a lull she heard music: something urban, jagged and loud. Then silence, and the next track, louder, even less melodic. The flurry of snow had passed, but flakes still fell.

  She activated central locking and searched her handbag for her mobile. The latest model: a gift from one of her suppliers, retail price £230. Internet link, GPS, camera, video, the casing decorated with a detail from Monet’s Water Lilies.

  NO SIGNAL

  Searching network

  She threw the mobile onto the passenger seat. Ahead the snow lay three inches thick on the road, as clean as hotel linen, the two parallel tyre tracks just visible, running forward to the stranded truck.

  Then she heard the crunch of a vehicle behind her and looking in the rear‐view mirror she saw headlights coming up until they were so close they fell into her shadow, revealing the driver, once the glare of his lights was gone. A man alone. She checked that the door was locked.

  She watched as the man levered himself out of the driver’s seat, straightening, with a hand on the car for support. He struggled forward, but when the wind blew he stopped, braced, waiting for a lull.

  He lowered his face to the closed driver’s window. A strained smile, the white hair matted with snow, the plump fingers holding an outsized working jacket to his throat. Glasses, heavy with black frames, magnified his eyes, which were milky with age. The cold had brought some blood to his cheeks but otherwise he was pale, drained, a cold sweat on his forehead.

  ‘You OK?’ he said when she wound the window down an inch. She heard the sound of music again, louder, from the pick‐up truck.

  ‘We’re stuck,’ she said, briskly. ‘I need to get through – I’m picking up my daughter from school. Could you check ahead, see if we can move the tree?’

  He looked forward, licking his lips, reluctant, but then set out. She watched the prints he made in the snow – a single line of flat‐footed impressions, slightly unsteady. He slipped at the edge of the ditch when the wind blew, his arms flying out in a crooked semaphore, the coat billowing.

  ‘That’s all we need,’ she said out loud, punching in the lighter. ‘Grandad in the soup.’

  She rubbed clear the condensation on the windscreen and watched as he reached the pick‐up’s window. He bent slightly at the waist, talking, just for a few seconds, then he straightened up, both bare hands deep in the jacket’s pockets.

  A minute, less, and he was back, out of breath so that he had to lean on the Alfa’s roof. ‘OK then. We’re not gonna move the tree – not now. He says we’ll have to all back out. Have you got a mobile?’ he asked.

  ‘No signal.’

  ‘Same with him. I don’t own one.’ He rubbed one of his eyes under the thick spectacles. Despite the cold she could see now that his whole face was wet with sweat.

  Baker‐Sibley pushed smoke out of her nostrils, her lips pressed in a humourless line. ‘You should take it easy,’ she said.

  He held his jacket’s lapels together. ‘I’m OK. I’ll try and reverse back to the turn, there was a farm track there, just give me a few minutes.’ He set off before she had time to answer.

  He tottered back to his car and wiped the snow from the windscreen with his sleeve before lowering himself into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. He peered down at the dashboard, then at the rear‐view mirror.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ said Sarah. ‘It’s not a fucking Space Shuttle.’

  He didn’t move. She threw open the door and stepped out into the night, holding a hand above her eyes to stop the snowflakes snagging her lashes. The cold made her back arch and she hunched her shoulders to try to protect the exposed skin at her neck.

  Now she saw the old man’s car clearly for the first time. A two‐door silver Corsa, a pair of ladders neatly strapped to a roof rack.

  It was what stretched behind the Corsa that made Sarah Baker‐Sibley swear. A line of headlamps running back, all stranded now in the snow.

  She looked up and let some of the flakes settle on her face. ‘Why me?’ she asked. She thought of Jillie trudging home in the snow. ‘And why now?’

  On cue the blizzard finally broke, the snow thickening, the wind driving it in from the sea. Visibility dropped to a few feet. She brushed flakes from her eyelids and scrambled back into the safety of the car.

  4

  In the blizzard Shaw and Valentine worked quickly, dragging the raft across the sands to the DI’s black Land Rover, parked beyond a copse of hawthorns. By the time they had a tarpaulin secured, weighting the corners with rocks, the snow was settling. Then they sat it out, Shaw watching the high tide boiling on the sands through an open window. He’d been a policeman for eleven years but this was the first time he’d discovered a corpse: he was distressed to find that the emotional impact was refusing to fade. His stomach felt empty, and he kept seeing the dead man’s mouth, the blood terracotta red between the white enamel of the teeth.

  Valentine bent forward, his hands over the warm‐air vent, his throat glugging with phlegm as the hot dust triggered his immune system. He’d binned his last packet of Silk Cut back at the station, so he closed his eyes, trying not to think about nicotine, trying not to think about the corpse in the raft. But the image of the apparently self‐inflicted wound was difficult to shake off. He took a call on the radio: Control said the force pathologist was on her way and a unit of the West Norfolk CSI team was assembling, but the snowfall had brought chaos to the coastal roads, so they could be some time.

  The storm itself passed in twenty minutes, rolling inland, buffeting winds at its leading edge, while in its wake the air was still, the last of the snow falling like poppies on Armistice Day, bled white.

  Shaw’s patience snapped. He flung the door open and shuddered in the super‐cooled air. He threw the keys to Valentine. ‘Roll the Land Rover out on the beach and put the lights on – there’s a floodlight there.’ He leant in and tapped a red switch. ‘Walk the high‐water mark, see if you can find anything – clothing, a weapon, just anything. Any footprints in the sand other than ours, mark them with the scene‐of‐crime flags – they’re in the boot – and there’s some tape; try and box off the point where I dragged him ashore, although it’s probably under water by now. There are evidence bags in the glove. When you see the fire brigade unit or our boys, fill them in. Scene‐of‐crime rules – so no smoking.’

  Valentine popped another mint.

  ‘I’m going to climb, see what I can see. I’ll be ten, no more.’

  ‘Right,’ said Valentine.

  Shaw detected the grudging note, a single syllable that said so much. He recalled George Valentine at his father’s deathbed, a glass of malt whisky in his hand, a cigarette burning between the yellowed fingers.

  Boredom, bungalow and early retirement (enforced) had killed DCI Jack Shaw. Luckily, they killed him quickly. The early exit to Civvy Street had come care of his father’s last, notorious, case. Until then they’d been the force’s star team: DCI Jack Shaw and DI George Valentine. A pair of old‐ fashioned coppers in an old‐fashioned world. And so he knew what Valentine was thinking: that a decade ago they’d have wrapped this case up without all the mindless mechanics of police procedure, without a fancy degree in forensic art (whatever that was), or the check‐it, double‐check‐it philosophy.

  Valentine turned over the pair of dice attached to his lighter and keys. Ivory and green, with gold dots. ‘What’s that smell?’ he asked before Shaw had gone ten yards.

  Shaw stopped, sniffed the sea breeze. ‘Could be mint, George. You crunch any more of those things you’ll start
scaring the sheep.’ But Valentine was right, there was something else on the breeze, something laced with the ozone and seaweed. ‘Petrol. An outboard?’ asked Shaw.

  Valentine produced a handkerchief and dabbed his streaming eyes.

  ‘Hold the fort,’ said Shaw, padding through the dunes and beginning to climb, picking a narrow ridge where the snow was just clinging to the sand and grass. At the top he pushed himself up onto an old gun emplacement, a tangle of concrete and rusted iron. The physical effort made him feel better, dissipating the stress. This high there was still a breeze, the snowflakes jostling, streamers of light like sparklers. Down on the beach he could just see the Land Rover and the spread tarpaulin.

  Swinging round he looked south, to the lights of a farmhouse: a glimpse of the corrugated iron of a barn and a white spotlight illuminating a dovecote on the roof of an old stable block. They’d driven through the yard an hour earlier to get down to the beach and Shaw had noticed the name: Gallow Marsh Farm.

  And then, turning inland, he saw car lights – a line of vehicles backed up behind a pine tree which was in their path, its branches twisted and broken. Exhaust fumes hung in the airless night. That was the smell on the air, not an engine at sea. Shaw got the telescope out and held it to his good eye, focusing on the vehicle in pole position. A small pick‐up truck. The cab light was on, the windows flecked with snow, someone moving inside. He looked back along the line, each vehicle smoothed out by the gentle curves of snowdrifts.

  Out at sea the storm clouds had unpacked themselves, revealing a wedge of clear night sky, a planetarium of lights, the moon clear of the sea. He watched the white lunar disc moving sideways along the horizon, like a prop in a child’s theatre. The silhouette of a yacht, gliding east, turned in towards the coast, an engine humming efficiently, its white sail marked with a blue clamshell.

  5

  The line of eight vehicles stood as if fashioned in icing sugar, an exquisite model on an untouched wedding cake. The moon had appeared above the scene; the snow clouds had moved on after one last heavy flurry, the stars left to stretch north over the sea towards the distant pole. The marsh birds were silent, the sluices choked with ice, and the sea, past high water, tiptoed back over the sands. Closer to the marooned cars there were sounds of life: a bass note, strands of music, the rumble of vehicle engines running heating systems. From the pick‐up truck in pole position the local radio now played – a jagged tinny melody which came and went with the signal.

  Three vehicles from the tail of the little convoy was an off‐white Astravan. Radio 2 played, a voice inside singing along loudly, a ballad about a young girl in pursuit of an older man. Fred Parlour held the final note surprisingly well, then laughed at himself. He was handsome, mid‐fifties, with a compact symmetrical face, the jaw showing no signs of slackening despite the first strands of grey at his temples. His fingernails were neatly cleaned, the overalls laundered, the hair smartly trimmed.

  Beside him sat Sean Harper, the firm’s apprentice. His hair was sticky with product, cut short and spiky, his nose – pierced with a stud – was pressed up close to a pornographic magazine. ‘You’ll go blind,’ said Parlour.

  Harper looked at the lights of the stationary van in front. ‘So what? We’re gonna be ’ere all night, right? Might as well enjoy myself.’

  A small dog – a Jack Russell – thrust its snout between the seats and nuzzled his fingers, the tongue making a liquid smack.

  ‘How much you reckon they got on board?’ asked Parlour, his voice friendlier. The van in front had a branded motif on the rear doors:

  NORTH NORFOLK SECURITY

  01553 121212

  There’s safety in those numbers

  Sean Harper had got out when they’d first pulled up. His mobile couldn’t find a signal so he’d run along the seaward side in the still falling snow to see if they had a radio. It was a refurbished Securicor van, but an old model, rust round the rivets. One guard in an ill‐fitting uniform sat in the front, about as intimidating as a cinema usherette. Just a thumbs up: no window down. And no radio.

  ‘I don’t like uniforms,’ Sean had said when he got back. ‘Or the fuckers in them.’

  Parlour shrugged. ‘It’s not Brinks Mat, is it?’

  He got his mobile out of his breast pocket and checked the signal – one bar, but then it flickered and died. The dog sniffed at his neck so he reached back and lifted the animal onto his lap, rubbing its tummy where the fur was thinnest against the pink skin. He got a dog biscuit out of the glove compartment and fed it to her.

  ‘All right, Milly?’ Parlour thrust his head below the dog’s chin, nuzzling. ‘I’ll take her for a walk; she must be busting.’

  He checked his watch: 7.40 p.m. They’d been stuck for more than two hours. Pushing open the door against the small drift on the driver’s side he let the dog slip out. The sound of the door slamming faded, absorbed by the snow, but a pair of geese rose quickly from the marsh, creaking overhead.

  The air was unnaturally still, expectant, like an empty theatre.

  Parlour stood and coughed in the cold, reviewing the line of vehicles. There was no echo, the snow smothering the sound, wrapping it in silence. Sean had said he’d seen a tree ahead, blocking the road, and a car skewed across the track at the rear, behind the Morris Minor which was behind them. When he’d gone forward, beyond the se curity van, he’d met another driver from further up the line, a ‘Chink’, he said, but well spoken. Sean had asked him what he thought they should do. ‘Sit tight,’ he’d said, turning away. So they’d all sat tight.

  Parlour stretched in the cold and stood trying to hear the sea sigh. He edged down the side of the Morris and tapped on the window. There was no light within, and no sign of life at all. Then he saw frail fingers fumbling with the window handle, one encumbered by a large amber ring. The driver wound the window down. ‘Are we going to be here long?’ she asked, as if he were an AA man. Make‐up, a savage attempt to defy the years, made her face look artificial, her eyebrows two black pencil lines, a smudge of crimson where the lips should have been. Parlour said he didn’t know how long it would be, that the sky had cleared and they’d be spotted soon. But it might be all night. And the mobiles were useless.

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I’ve always said that.’

  Milly snuffled around his shoes.

  ‘You’ve cut the heating?’ he asked her.

  She’d looked at him as if he were an idiot. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, and then, with what seemed like an effort, ‘Please. Don’t worry about me.’

  He checked her fuel gauge; she had a quarter of a tank, perhaps less. ‘OK. But like I say – if you get cold we’re just in front.’

  ‘I’m going to sleep now…’ she said, winding up the window.

  The next car was the last in the line, a Mondeo, stuck sideways across the track. Fred was leaning down to knock on the glass when the door opened with a jerk and clipped him on the forehead. He just had time to grab the frame, saving himself from a fall into the dark water and the reeds.

  In the moonlight he looked at the smudge of blood on his fingers, touching the wound.

  A teenager with a baseball cap got out of the car, the crotch of his jeans half‐way down to his knees. He looked hot, his face flushed, a patch of sweat discolouring a T‐shirt with the logo Pi is God. The rest of the fabric was covered in blue numbers. Adolescent‐thin, the arms held at awkward angles, his skin clear, the narrow face dom inated by thick, dark eyebrows. Parlour didn’t notice the rapid shallow breathing and the trembling which made his hands vibrate in his pockets. Or the running shoes: Nike, £180 new.

  ‘Yeah?’ said the youngster, taking a hand out of his pocket before thrusting it back in.

  ‘Don’t suppose your mobile works?’ asked Parlour. He shook his head and looked up and down the line. ‘Nope.’ The kid licked his lips. ‘What’s gonna happen then, do you think?’ Estuary English, but beneath it the subtle lilt of middle‐class Blue Peter.

  P
arlour shrugged. ‘Guess we’ll start eating each other eventually.’

  ‘No.’ The kid made a noise in his throat which wasn’t a laugh. ‘You know… like, what will happen?’ The note of pleading was unmistakable; Parlour saw the boy’s eyes flooding.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ said Parlour, looking up at the stars. ‘Police’ll get a chopper out soon. We can’t be the only ones stuck. You got any food? Water?’ He could see a bottle of vodka on the passenger seat.

  The teenager looked out over the marsh, swivelling the baseball cap down over his short, thick hair. ‘Reckon I could get through? I could stop a car down on the road. Get help.’

  Parlour shook his head. ‘Best wait. If you fall in tonight you’d freeze to death. Isn’t worth it – anyway, this thing can put out enough heat to trigger global warming. So you’ll be nice and snug. How’s the fuel?’

  The kid got back in the driver’s seat, looking blankly at the instrument panel, and held the steering wheel with both hands. Parlour noticed that the wheel had a cover – snakeskin, chevrons in black and white. He focused on the fuel gauge. ‘Right. That’s not so good, is it? On the red. If I was you I’d kill the lights, heat her up again and then turn off the engine. See how long you stay warm. Don’t worry – if it cuts out just come in with us. OK?’ Parlour held out his hand: ‘I’m Fred. Your dad’s car, is it?’

  No answer. The boy pulled the door shut.

  Parlour turned away and saw a pair of green reflecting eyes out in the marsh: a fox, watching him, smelling them all, petrified by the intrusion. It blinked first, and he followed the shadow as it slunk into the snow‐capped clumps of grass. Ahead he saw someone walking back down the line of cars and trucks. A woman, forty‐something, in an expensive yellow all‐weather sailing jacket, waving a torch.

  They met by the plumbers’ van. ‘I’m in the red Alfa Romeo,’ she said. She produced a packet of cigarettes, fumbled until she got one between her lips and lit it with a gold lighter the size of a bullion bar.