Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  The one remaining eye was open but dead of sight, and it was difficult to judge for colour now that life had gone. A thin milky membrane had closed over the eyeball. Green perhaps, shading to grey. The overalls were covered in workaday stains: several dabs of paint, and a patch where the cloth had been bleached by a chemical.

  Immediate environment. He smelt the air. Heated over a period of hours, it was heavy with aromas: an acrid hint of something earthy, possibly urine, and from the engine the smell of hot plastic and warm oil. Alcohol too, sweet as death. The dashboard held a half‐eaten apple, the exposed flesh already brown, and a can of Carlsberg Special Brew. The wrapping paper from a packet of Hula Hoops was in the ashtray, which was ashless. The passenger seat was obscured by a large toolbox: metal, blue and worn, with fold‐back wing lids. Hanging from the rear‐view mirror was a picture of three children: two boys holding a toddler, crammed into a photo booth. One of the boys had a shaven skull, the smile uncertain, the bone structure poking through translucent skin. From a suction hook in the roof hung a little plastic model of a bald eagle, which moved very slightly as Shaw’s weight tipped the suspension a few inches. Kneeling, he saw that a key ring hung from the ignition, a leather fob, with gold lettering. Three words: Jake Ellis Appeal.

  He stood, feeling that he’d gained firm control of the scene, the tension beginning to ebb from his neck muscles. A run through the snow would ease the stress that was making his head ache, but he knew he’d have to wait. He looked back down the line of cars. Valentine stood beside the Alfa Romeo, motionless except for the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders as he lifted his rib cage to draw the air into his lungs.

  Between them were three lines of human footprints – John Blickling Holt’s round trip and Shaw’s one way. Holt’s prints were still sharp, although partly filled with the snow that had fallen after the convoy had come to rest, and by the breeze which had blown flakes over the bank from the beach beyond. But they were still clear; unmissable. To the landward side the saltmarsh was dominated by sheets of black water, dotted with clumps of marram grass. There was no sign that anyone had tried to climb the bank, or drop down into the water. To the seaward side there was the dyke, six feet across, eight deep, and beyond that the snow‐covered sands, unmarked except for the delicate herringbone footsteps of the marsh birds.

  Which left forwards. The lights of the truck were still on and lit the fallen pine a pale yellow. There was a six‐foot gap of untouched snow between the pick‐up and the tree.

  Shaw took a deep breath. Even the perfect murderer leaves footprints in snow. Suicide? Hardly. Stabbing yourself through the eye was not an obvious way to leave the world. Self‐mutilation? Martyrdom? A message left for the living?

  Shaw breathed out, watching the plume of steam hang in the air like an accusation, his knee jiggling as he tried to think. What if the temperature rose? If the snow melted he’d lose the evidence; his crime scene would disappear.

  He needed fresh eyes, even if they were hooded.

  ‘OK, George,’ he called back. ‘Follow my tracks.’ Valentine struggled to match Shaw’s confident strides in the snow but eventually he stood by the open driver’s door, squeezed in beside Shaw.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, unable to stop the recoil in his neck muscles at the sight of the victim.

  ‘Indeed, George. Fuck it is. Let’s take it carefully, shall we?’

  Valentine sniffed and looked away. His guts began to contract rhythmically, his mouth flooding with saliva. But he fought the urge to vomit again, biting the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

  Shaw retrieved a small voice recorder from his pocket, checked it was working and pressed the record button. A pinprick amber light glowed.

  ‘DI Peter Shaw. Monday, 9th of February 2009. Eight thirteen p.m. I’m standing beside a pick‐up truck. Make and registration…’

  Valentine worked his way carefully to the rear of the truck. ‘It’s a Vauxhall Rascal,’ he said. ‘Ten years old – more.’ The licence plate was clear of snow and he read out the number, his voice sharp and discordant in the still air.

  Shaw went on, his breath making the hand‐held recorder damp. ‘The driver of the vehicle is dead. Cause of death appears to be a violent stab wound to the face which has penetrated the left eye socket. The weapon used was a chisel with a wooden, worn handle. The vehicle is first in a line of eight stranded on Siberia Belt, Ingol Beach. Six feet in front of it is a fallen tree. Before I approached the pick‐up the only footprints in the snow to the rear were those of John Blickling Holt, one of the other drivers, who walked forward shortly after the convoy became stranded, and then returned to his own car – a Vauxhall Corsa. Those footprints have now been supplemented by my own, and those of DS George Valentine, who has joined me to examine the scene. There are no signs of any other footprints to the offside of the vehicle, or in front. I’m asking DS Valentine to check that observation now.’

  Valentine looked back into the headlights of the Alfa Romeo, along the bank above the star‐studded water of the marsh, and ahead to the fallen tree.

  ‘Check the other side,’ said Shaw, handing him a heavy‐duty torch.

  Valentine stepped across the rear of the truck, noting a pool of urine staining the snow by the nearside rear wheel arch, paw prints scattered nearby. Immediately below him was the deep gash of the dyke ditch. Looking back along the line of traffic he could see that after about eighty yards the ditch disappeared into a brick culvert which ran into a sluice gate – the point at which they’d crossed over from the sands. The snow over the top of the sluice and around it had been untouched when they’d climbed across. The bank on the far side of the truck was a sinuous sheet of silver white, with no sign of disturbance.

  He edged back. ‘Nothing – no one’s been in or out.’ Shaw clicked the recorder and held it to Valentine’s face. ‘For the record,’ he said.

  Valentine’s hooded eyes opened a few millimetres beyond normal. He’d never quite got used to taking orders from people twenty years younger than he was. He’d been a DI himself until they’d busted him after Jack Shaw’s last case, and he’d been to more crime scenes than Peter Shaw had been to university lectures.

  He took a deep breath and gave a short statement: detailed, professional, a forensic précis Shaw couldn’t have bettered.

  Shaw cut the recording and looked Valentine in the eyes. He thought for the first time that he might have underestimated him, and he reminded himself that trust was not one of his strong suits. So he made himself ask the question. ‘What do you think?’

  Valentine wasn’t a whiz, and he certainly wasn’t a kid, but the job ran as deep in his veins as it did in Peter Shaw’s. It wasn’t that he couldn’t analyse a crime scene. He’d done it a thousand times. He just trusted his instinct more than a fat textbook of procedural logic. So what did instinct tell him now?

  ‘It’s two crimes,’ he said. ‘This killing’s vicious, angry, unplanned. But signs of entry and exit are non‐existent. The killer just vanishes, coolly.’ He took a breath, looking towards the sea. ‘And then there’s the other corpse – down on the beach. Two hundred yards away, a bit more. Where does that fit in?’ He squatted down, looking under the truck. Nothing. ‘He could have jumped, from the cab here, into the marsh…’

  Shaw looked unimpressed, although he didn’t have a better scenario. ‘Why? Why risk drowning, or freezing to death, just to avoid leaving a footprint? And the splash would have caught someone’s attention.’

  Valentine’s jaw began to vibrate with the cold.

  ‘We need pictures,’ said Shaw.

  Valentine shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Tom’s boys from CSI?’ he asked. ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘Well. Two reasons, I guess,’ said Shaw, talking to himself as much as to Valentine. ‘First, I’m no meteorologist but a freezing still night doesn’t last for ever. What if the snow melts? Or there’s a fresh fall? Or rain? Second, and I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of this, our fir
st responsibility is to protect life. The elderly man in the car needs hospital treatment fast. The chopper’s on its way and if they put her down on the sands as close as they can to limit the stretcher distance then every snowflake within a hundred yards will get a second opportunity to fall. So. We need to record the scene to the best of our abilities – OK?’

  Valentine buttoned the top of his raincoat. He’d been out of serious front‐line policing for a decade and was honest enough to know he needed to sharpen up his act. Shaw was right in his summary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.

  From his pocket Shaw produced a small digital camera.

  ‘Not admissible,’ said Valentine, before he could stop himself. All specialist forensic photography was on film, reducing any chance of digital enhancement. No court would accept a digital image.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw, failing to suppress his irritation at being picked up by his own DS. ‘But we need a record,’ he added. ‘Even if we can’t take it into court. I’ll get what shots I can… Meanwhile get Control. Tell ’em what we’ve got. We’re getting CSI anyway for the victim on the beach – and the pathologist – but we need back‐up. More bodies in uniforms. We need transport for the witnesses, and somewhere we can take them for the paperwork. We need statements, names, addresses, the lot. And no one goes home until we’ve had independent confirmation of their ID.’

  ‘Somewhere warm…’ said Valentine, taking a breath, ‘would be nice.’

  Shaw looked along the coast towards the lights he’d seen from the beach. ‘Tell ’em to try Gallow Marsh Farm. If they’ve got a barn we could use that, but the unit will have to bring some air heaters. And we need a catering unit.’

  He patted his jacket pockets. ‘What have I missed?’ There were times, thought Valentine, when Shaw looked like his father. Something in the face, but something subtle, the way he seemed to focus on the mid‐distance when he was thinking. Valentine leant in the driver’s window, looking around the tomb that the truck cab had become, trying not to glimpse the victim’s face. The side pocket in the driver’s door was empty except for a single piece of neatly folded paper. Valentine lifted it clear with his gloved fingers. It was an invoice. Beneath it was a pair of spark plugs. He leant in closer, and sniffed.

  ‘Old plugs,’ he said.

  ‘So?’ said Shaw.

  ‘Rusted. Plugs don’t rust in situ,’ explained Valentine. ‘Too much oil about. If they’d been taken out recently they’d give off that burnt smell… but there’s nothing.’ He pointed at the tiny question mark of the contact points. Dull metal, a blush of oxidized steel.

  The pick‐up’s engine still ran, the heating system clattering.

  ‘So he took them out, left them there, they rusted. What’s the problem?’ asked Shaw. But he knew that wasn’t right. The interior of the cab was immaculately tidy. A pocket road atlas, a torch in the side pocket of the passenger door. No litter, except the empty packet of Hula Hoops folded neatly into the ashtray, and the half‐eaten apple, set on a tissue so that it didn’t mark the dashboard. The footwells had been swept. He opened the glove compartment: a Haynes manual for the model, an AA card. The carpet had been vacuumed recently, the plastic foot mats washed.

  Then two things happened at the same time. They heard the first flutter of the helicopter blades along the coast. Within seconds it was with them, hanging in the air with the stars, an RAF Coastal Rescue, the bay doors open to reveal two men in full flight gear and crash helmets. The pilot brought it down to thirty feet and then began to edge closer, trying to find a spot as close to the dyke ditch as he could get without losing his safety margin. The snow began to rise about them.

  And as Shaw turned away, looking down the line of cars, he saw the teenager in the baseball cap crawling back up the bank from the marsh. He reached the top, then stood and broke into a run. Shaw watched him for twenty yards before he slipped again, almost down into the ditch on the far side. He knelt for a few seconds, looking back at the cars, and Shaw guessed he was considering a return to the warmth of the Mondeo. But instead he turned away and began to run, into the half‐light first, and then into the night itself.

  8

  Gallow Marsh Farm lay sunk in the snow, as if the weight on the roof had pushed it down into the damp sandy soil. Firelight flickered in the Georgian windows of the old kitchen. Inside, Shaw and Valentine sat at a plain deal table, the statements of the six witnesses left at the scene spread out in neat piles. Attached to each was a set of CSI pictures of their vehicles; interior and exterior, plus a set of Polaroid shots of each witness. Black and white prints; Shaw always insisted on that, so that he could study the faces in stark relief. Across the hallway the living room had been set aside for the witnesses, a nervous, over‐excited party, each now dressed in the plain white SOC suits they had been allocated while their own clothes were taken for forensic examination in Lynn.

  The mobile police canteen, parked in the farmyard, had produced coffee, tea and soup, hot dogs and cake. The farmer’s wife had donated a bottle of Johnnie Walker and what was left of the Christmas store of Gordon’s gin. A small bowl of dog food had been supplied for the Jack Russell, which had been shut in a utility room behind the kitchen. A uniformed PC stayed with the witnesses to make sure the conversation did not include any discussion of the events of the evening so far.

  A cheap wooden 1930s clock on the windowsill read 11.30 p.m. The kitchen was an odd amalgam of two ages: the original Victorian Aga clashing badly with the silver fridge‐freezer, a dishwasher and washing machine, which had been running since they’d first arrived two hours earlier. A plastic laundry basket held children’s clothes. Over the range were two photographs: a farmer and his wife standing by a hand‐pump, a horse tethered to a stone block, and a snapshot of a child – a girl aged six or seven – hugging a black kitten.

  Shaw took the limpet shells from his pocket and laid eight in a line, returning two to his pocket. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Eight vehicles. First in line the victim – no name as yet. Pathologist is with the body on site.’ He felt the familiar thrill of the hunt, the intellectual buzz of the unsolved puzzle. In the silence he could hear Valentine’s watch ticking.

  ‘Second in line…’ He looked at the statement. ‘Sarah Baker‐Sibley in the Alfa Romeo.’

  ‘Posh bitch,’ said Valentine.

  ‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw. ‘Least we know who we’re talking about. Third. The Corsa. John Holt – latest?’

  Valentine had radioed the Queen Victoria hospital on the half hour since the helicopter had left Ingol Beach.

  ‘The hospital says he’s comfortable – comfortable for someone who’s had a heart attack.’ Valentine shook his head, trying to fight off the tiredness that was making his bones drag him down. ‘DC Campbell’s with him – if he talks, she’ll shout, but she says he’s drugged up to the eyeballs. Wife’s with him too.’

  ‘Right. Fourth vehicle – the Volvo. Stanley Zhao of the Emerald Garden. That’s one takeaway dinner that won’t get delivered. Fifth. North Norfolk Security. His statement’s clear enough. But I’ve seen him somewhere, and he’s seen me. Criminal record – I’m sure of it. Let’s check that first thing. Name again?’

  ‘Shreeves,’ said Valentine. ‘Jonah Shreeves.’ He hadn’t checked the statement, and Shaw wondered if he’d committed all the names to memory.

  ‘Next?’

  ‘Express Plumbers. Fred Parlour and Sean Harper.’

  ‘Parlour’s head wound – we need to check that, double‐check it.’

  Valentine took an extra breath. Shaw shuffled papers. ‘Then the old dear in the Morris, Cynthia Pryce, and eighth the Mondeo. That’s a full house.’

  Shaw stood up and moved over to the window. His eye throbbed beneath the dressing. The farmyard was packed with vehicles: the mobile canteen, the CSI mobile lab, the diving unit’s van and back‐up, two squad cars, and the police bus which had ferried out a steady stream of uniformed officers for the fingertip sear
ch of the beach. The yard, the snow untouched when they’d picked their way in, was now a weave of frozen tracks, and jagged ruptured ice. On the far side was the old stable block in brick with the wooden dovecote lit a harsh aluminium white on the pitched roof.

  Valentine looked at his Rolex, annoyed that the second hand had suddenly started moving. ‘They’re sending out taxis for the witnesses, we’ll start letting them go home.’ He managed to squeeze in an extra breath: ‘Soon.’

  ‘We’ve double‐checked IDs for the lot?’

  ‘Sean Harper – the apprentice in the plumbers’ van – lives alone. But Parlour – his boss – vouches for him and we’ve checked Parlour with his wife. Those we can check are all who they say they are.’

  ‘Unless the dog’s really a Great Dane,’ said Shaw, pacing the cork‐tiled floor, as reluctant as ever to take a chair, his joints screaming for the release of exercise.

  The door opened and the farmer’s wife, Isabel Dereham, came in, stamping on the flagged floor. She was in her mid‐thirties and slight, but she hauled another plastic basket’s worth of dirty clothes in front of the washing machine with no apparent effort. Her arms and hands were suntanned, the tendons taut and strong. The sleepless nights, the hard physical work, the stress of running a farm were all in her face. And a restless energy, so that she didn’t look at home in her own kitchen. But there was something else too, and it wasn’t far from beauty. She flexed her wrists, relieving a pain, and smiled, the line of her lips slightly crooked. Shaw noticed that the upper and lower edges of her lips were marked by a natural red line: a textbook example of the vermilion border.