Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  ‘And there’s this rubber‐stamp thing on the back of his hand. BT. Do we check with them?’ asked Campbell.

  ‘Telecom?’ said Shaw.

  ‘It wasn’t anything fancy,’ said Valentine, shaking his head. ‘Kind of thing you get on your hand at a nightclub.’

  ‘We need to find this witness. He’s important. So let’s think of ways to find him, shall we?’ said Shaw.

  They heard footsteps in the corridor and the double doors swung open. Tom Hadden held a single sheet of computer paper, a tracing across it like a read‐out from a seismograph.

  Under the neon light he looked ill, his eyes pink, matching the strawberry‐blond wisps of hair above his ears. Hadden always reminded Shaw of a laboratory rabbit, pink ears, pale flesh under thin white hair, and the eyes set back, as if glimpsed under ice.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Go ahead – just winding up,’ said Shaw. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Yeah. Fred Parlour, the plumber. He hit his head on the door of the kid’s Mondeo. We did all the checks. The blood on the door is Group O, as is Parlour’s. But there was a smudge on Parlour’s overalls… here.’ He put his right hand over the left thigh of his cords. ‘It’s not O. It’s AB – same as the victim.’ He held up the print‐out. ‘I’ve done some checks using antigen analysis. The blood’s Harvey Ellis’s.’

  One of the DCs clapped slowly.

  ‘Is that definite?’ said Shaw.

  ‘Well, it’s more likely you’ll be hit by a meteorite on the way home, Peter, than this blood belongs to someone other than Harvey Ellis.’

  Everyone started to talk but Shaw raised a hand. ‘Tom. Thanks.’

  ‘Unfortunately…’ Hadden was looking at the printout. ‘It’s never that easy. I can match the blood, no problem. But the smear isn’t just blood. There’s something else and I can’t ID it, not 100 per cent. Spectrometer says it’s organic. The nearest match I’ve got is bone.’

  ‘Ellis’s eye socket was chipped,’ said Twine. ‘The pathologist’s report mentioned fragments.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hadden. ‘But not fragments of sheep bone.’

  Valentine snapped a pencil.

  ‘As I said, I haven’t got it exactly right. But it’s an animal bone. Possibly more than one. Anyway, you’ll have it in writing in the morning.’ He was already retreating through the doors. ‘I’ll be in the Ark if you want me.’

  There was a moment of silence as the doors banged shut. Shaw took a deep breath.

  ‘OK. That could be the breakthrough we don’t deserve. On the other hand it might not be – so let’s keep our heads. We do the legwork tomorrow. George and I will deal with Parlour.’

  Valentine cracked the joints in his left hand. ‘He’s got the victim’s blood on his trousers.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shaw. ‘But the problems are still the same – only worse. No footprints. How does that work? How does he get forward, kill Ellis, get back, without being seen and without leaving footprints. Anyone?’

  There was a silence that made all the other silences sound like the Hallelujah Chorus.

  ‘And carrying a dead sheep,’ added Valentine.

  23

  The murder team dispersed quickly to the Red House. Shaw had told the team not to get excited about Hadden’s forensic evidence. But it hadn’t worked. He could feel the almost palpable rush of adrenaline. He didn’t blame them for their optimism. Parlour had lied. He’d sworn he hadn’t gone further forward along the line of cars than Holt’s silver Corsa. But at some point that night he’d got very close indeed to Harvey Ellis. He’d be on a murder charge by lunchtime unless he could talk his way out of it. And Valentine was right – not for the first time. Their job was to catch a killer, not solve some arcane forensic puzzle. They could work out how he’d done it later. But in the end Shaw knew that if they got him in front of a jury then they would need all the answers to secure a conviction. In the end they’d have to work it out.

  Shaw said he’d see them there. He wouldn’t, and they knew it, knowing the DI would slip home. But this night, for once, they were only half right. Shaw knew he should go home, sleep well, and prepare for the crucial interview. But first there was something he had to do. Something which, if he’d really had faith in his father, he would have done many years before. He’d avoided even thinking about the Tessier case for a decade, probably – he could admit it now – because he was afraid of what he might find. Doubting his father’s honesty seemed safer than trying to find out the truth. So he’d let it be. But now things were different. Somehow George Valentine had brought it all back to life. And he wanted to trust George Valentine. But could he?

  He walked down the back stairs to the ground floor. St James’s had been built in 1926, on the ruins of the old city walls. Permission had been granted for the demolition of a row of Victorian lock‐up shops. The problem was what was under the lock‐up shops. At that precise point on the old medieval walls the original builders had dug deep to create a series of underground magazines for the storage of gunpowder. Semi‐circular vaults, in local clay brick, linked like a tube train. Four carriages in all, each nearly sixty feet in length.

  But it was for the last two that Peter Shaw was bound. The custody sergeant let him into the corridor that led to the stairs and the overnight cells. A drunk sang from the first, the voice light and tuneful. At the end of the corridor was an iron door, painted gloss black, with the single word RECORDS in copperplate script.

  The door, unlocked, swung easily inward on oiled hinges. Here the barrel roof of the old cellar had been left in its original state, spotlights illuminating the intricate work of the medieval builders, studded now with a network of discreet piping which provided a state‐of‐theart sprinkler system. The room was full of black metal shelving, stacked with file boxes, the rows arranged like a library. In each row stood a dehumidifier.

  A man at a desk sat obscuring the chair which presumably was supporting him. He had agricultural bones from which hung enough weight for two people. Even seated his stature was not in doubt, his shoulders met his head without the normal intervention of a neck, and he had one massive leg up on the corner of the desk, a cup in his hand the size of a ceramic bucket.

  ‘Peter,’ he said, standing, inadvertently heaving the desk forward. ‘Sir.’

  ‘Timber.’ They shook hands, laughing.

  Shaw thought Sergeant ‘Timber’ Woods looked his age, which must have been sixty‐six. Woods had retired a year earlier after a lifetime of unblemished, if uninspired, service. He’d been asked back to cover the late shift at the records office, a sinecure demanding only diligence. West Norfolk had switched to computerized records in 1995. But the St James’s budget had yet to find the extra cash to transfer the backlog. Access to information and data‐protection legislation demanded the files be kept, preserved, and made available to any member of the public completing the necessary paperwork – as well as for CID and uniformed branch inquiries. So nearly three thousand case box files, bound back copies of the local papers, stenographers’ notes and scene‐of‐crime evidence boxes had been saved – the collective memory of West Norfolk Constabulary stretching back to 1934.

  ‘So.’ Woods mashed a tea bag in another mug. ‘George Valentine,’ he said, smiling. ‘Jack would’ve laughed.’

  Shaw had known Timber Woods all his life. He’d been one of the few of his father’s friends not to fade out of the picture after the Tessier case and Jack Shaw’s hurried retirement.

  ‘We went out to the Westmead,’ said Shaw. ‘George and

  I. I’d never seen the spot, where they found the kid.’ He paused. ‘And I didn’t know the kid looked like me – Jonathan Tessier: the hair, the eyes.’

  Woods picked up the mug, effortlessly enclosing it within his fist. ‘We spent three years on the beat together – Jack and me – and we broke a few rules, cut a few corners, but I never saw him plant anything, Peter. That’s a rule he didn’t break, wouldn’t break. If you played by all the rule
s you didn’t get to nick anybody. He was a good honest copper. I don’t know why you can’t just accept that.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t want to, does it?

  Woods looked at the spot where Shaw’s tie should have been. ‘He’d have been proud of you.’

  ‘He didn’t want me to be a copper.’

  ‘He wanted you to have a life. He just didn’t think you could have both,’ said Woods, hiding a frayed cuff. ‘He’d still have been proud of you.’

  ‘Is there a box for the Tessier case?’

  ‘A file?’

  ‘No. A box – a scene‐of‐crime box.’

  Woods took some keys from a metal drawer and led the way down the room. The door set in the far wall was iron, fireproof, the black paint peeling. He reached inside and flicked a switch, a solitary light bulb illuminating the final cellar beneath an identical brick roof.

  Open wooden shelving this time, metal boxes, navy blue, stacked in lines, each secured with a small padlock, each with a card inserted in a groove. Shaw turned one to the light:

  ATKINS. June 1974.

  DI R.G.WILLIS. CN 778/8

  Shaw walked to the end of the vault and moved back in small sideways steps, his lips marking off the alphabetical order. Then he brushed his hands on his trousers and reached into the stack, pulling a box out so that the metal screeched.

  TESSIER. July 1997.

  DCI Jack Shaw. CN 1399/3

  They each took a handle, lugging it to a wide table, scratches polished into the surface. Woods unlocked the box and tipped back the lid. Dust rose like a final breath.

  There wasn’t much inside. Shaw held up a plastic bag containing a single black leather glove. The label was in Jack Shaw’s writing. Date. Time. Place. Countersigned by DI George Valentine.

  ‘And there we have it,’ said Shaw, wanting to believe. Another cellophane bag. Items of clothing cut from the body in the morgue. A football top – Celtic – and a pair of white shorts. Pants, socks (odd, both football, but one green one white), a pair of football boots with the studs removed, and a red sweatshirt. Another held the contents of the shorts pocket: a 20p piece, two 10p pieces, a single wrapped Opal Fruit. A third bag had been set aside for a scrap of paper covered in oil stains.

  Shaw held it up to the light. ‘Chip paper,’ he read off the label. ‘Beef dripping – those were the days, eh, Timber?’

  Next was a glass phial, empty now apart from a dirty tidemark, but the label said it had held water and oil from the puddle in which the boy’s body had been found. Three bagged hairs from the shirt – again collected at the morgue – all, Shaw noted with irritation, in the same bag. A perspex box held a length of sticky tape used to lift fibres and trace evidence from the shirt and shorts. The label noted that all the items had been examined by the Home Office forensic laboratory at Bracknell. And there was another clear plastic evidence tube, this one marked ‘DNA swab – victim’s fingernails. Human skin.’ But the tube was empty. And a tiny chip of blue paint, held in a plastic tube, inside a clear envelope.

  ‘The original forensics report will be with the file,’ said Woods, nodding as if the question had been asked. ‘But this is a copy.’ There was an envelope attached to the inside of the box lid, and he slid out a sheaf of papers in close type. ‘You often get those empty tubes with these old cases. Nothing left after a standard set of DNA tests in those days.’

  ‘I’d like to book the box out.’

  Woods heaved a ledger round. ‘Got a bit of spare time, have you, Peter? A coupla murders would keep most DIs busy.’

  ‘Can’t sleep,’ said Shaw, laughing.

  ‘Your dad was the same,’ said Woods, locking up.

  ‘I’d like the box and the copy of the lab reports taken over to forensics – Tom Hadden’s attention. Get a signature there as well, OK?’

  Woods checked the entry. ‘You know what this place used to be?’ he asked, looking round.

  ‘No idea, Timber.’

  ‘Before we had to bring the records down it was cells too. Pretty grim, actually. We had Bobby Mosse in here a night or two. I ran the place then, custody sergeant. Odd kid. He killed Jonathan Tessier, Peter. Believe me.’

  ‘So everyone says. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work, Timber.’ Shaw couldn’t keep the edge of anger out of his voice. ‘I’m supposed to be convinced by the evidence. So.’ He tapped the evidence box. ‘Let’s see what twelve years’ worth of advances in forensic science can tell us, shall we?’

  They walked back into the records room. ‘I’d like the file too,’ said Shaw, closing his good eye, resting it now that the tiredness was blurring his vision.

  Woods took a big breath. ‘The file on Tessier’s out.’ Shaw stopped and looked at his heavy, fleshy face. ‘Who… ?’

  ‘According to the book it was George Valentine,’ said Woods. ‘You two should talk to each other.’

  An hour later Shaw was walking back along the line of the dunes towards The Old Beach Café. Despite the hour Lena was still working, that day’s delivery of stock spread out on the wooden floor of the old boathouse shop: wetsuits spreadeagled in lines, a rack of swimwear, and a brace of new surf boards encased in bubble wrap.

  She was in a tracksuit, her hair pulled back in a stylish knot.

  ‘Did you have a run?’ said Shaw, sitting in a wicker chair by the racks of beach shoes.

  ‘Just down to the sea at dusk while Fran was reading.’ Shaw glanced at the baby monitor Lena still left on when she worked in the shop. Fran was old enough now to find her own way from the cottage down the path. But after dark, and in winter, Lena couldn’t bear to snap the electronic link between them.

  ‘Drink? I heard the latest on the radio.’

  She fetched a wine bottle, the cork eased out, and two small glass tumblers.

  ‘George Valentine told me something I didn’t know about Dad,’ said Shaw, holding the wine up to the light. It looked like blood. He drank it quickly and helped himself to a second glass.

  Lena knelt, spreading out one of the wetsuits, testing the seams. Shaw’s family was not a subject they ever discussed. When he’d come back from London after his year with the Met he’d brought Lena with him. His mother had tried to see past her skin, but Jack Shaw couldn’t even do that. The atmosphere at home was toxic in the aftermath of the Tessier case. Jack Shaw had taken early retirement to protect his pension. Which meant the Tessier file was closed. The subject was never mentioned, but had permeated his father’s bitter last year of life. It hadn’t been the best moment to ask him to embrace an inter‐racial marriage. The clash marked the final break between father and son. Lena couldn’t believe so little could be said as a family tore itself apart.

  ‘He said Dad asked him to clear his name. To prove that Bobby Mosse killed Jonathan Tessier.’

  ‘And has he?’ she asked.

  ‘No. And I don’t think there’s any chance he ever will.’ Shaw thought about what he was going to say next, knowing it revealed a cynical side to his mind which Lena hated. ‘Which raises two questions. Did Dad really ask him to clear his name? If it’s a genuine question it’s a kind of proof in itself, isn’t it? And second. He’s taken the file on the Tessier case out of the records at St James’s. Why? Perhaps there’s something in it that incriminates them both.’

  Lena stood, holding up a new suit, a sky‐blue wave picked out on the stippled black chest.

  ‘But if Jack did ask him?’

  ‘Then I suppose I could try to help,’ said Shaw. ‘Should try to help. If we could prove Mosse was the killer it would lift the cloud over the case – not entirely, of course, even if Mosse is guilty it doesn’t mean they didn’t plant the evidence. But it shifts the probabilities. They didn’t follow the rules that night, nobody’s going to rewrite that. But if Mosse is the murderer then it’s odds on it was his glove, and that it was bagged when they took it to the flat.’

  ‘How are you going to prove he was the killer?’ she asked, ever practical.

&
nbsp; ‘I’ve got the forensics – the original box. Valentine’s a good copper, in fact he’s a bloody good copper…’

  Shaw stopped, realizing that Valentine had earned the compliment. Lena just smiled, knowing how difficult he found it to admit he’d got someone wrong.

  ‘A bloody good copper,’ he said again. ‘But forensics aren’t his strong point. I’ll get Tom Hadden to run through, see if they missed anything. Or I can put it up to Warren, see if he’ll look at the file at least.’

  ‘Good. Do that. Don’t stew in it, Peter. You don’t know what happened, so find out. If you don’t trust either of them implicitly then it’s all you can do.’

  ‘You think I should trust them? Implicitly?’

  It was one of her favourite words, but only because it hid what she really wanted to say. Faith was the word she was thinking about. ‘Maybe,’ she said, toying with a simple silver cross at her neck.

  ‘But I don’t, do I? So there’s no point in pretending.’

  ‘And what do you feel about that?’ she asked, smiling, balancing a toolbox on her hip.

  Shaw dropped his chin on to his chest and gave her a weary look. ‘Feel?’

  She pulled up another chair and put her feet up on his lap. ‘Yes. Feel.’

  He massaged her foot, bending the toes down to flex the instep. ‘Let’s go to bed.’