Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  Lau shouted, ‘Ahoy,’ thankful none of the stock‐car‐racing crowd could hear her. Norton climbed aboard using a short rope ladder which hung down from the deck. Lau followed, willing her short muscular legs to work properly in the cold. She felt relieved to get on deck, then almost instantly sick as the snowstorm rocked the boat erratically, thudding the hull against the mudbank on which it was grounded. The sail was furled but revealed a few inches of a blue motif.

  A seagull stood on the varnished wooden decking, its head and bill into the wind, balancing serenely on one leg. Norton jumped into the cockpit, pulled open the double hatch to the cabin. She followed him down the three‐step ladder quickly, embracing the moment when her head fell below deck level and out of the polar wind.

  She slid off the dark glasses, stashed them in an exterior pocket on her leather driving jacket and let her eyes get used to the gloom. There were narrow windows at deck level, but small pleated blinds were fastened down. Norton found a switch and lambent light flooded from beneath teak panels.

  The boat continued to rock, a bottle of wine rolling back and forth on the wooden decking. In the open forward galley a chopping board on the flip‐down worktop held two or three pieces of cheese, a six‐inch tubular piece of garlic sausage and a plastic delicatessen tub of olives.

  From the forward part of the cabin she looked back towards the cockpit and saw a small TV screen, inlaid in the wooden bulkhead, the sound down, the channel showing BBC News 24. Interference zigzagged across the picture like lightning.

  Beside it was a framed photograph. A man hugging two children – a young girl, an older boy – on the deck of the yacht. The sail was catching some breeze, billowed out, with a blue motif on it of a clamshell. And a handwritten legend: Hydra, 2005.

  Norton was checking the map on the chart table – a stretch of the north Norfolk coast, from Lynn round to Wells. He traced a pencilled route with his finger around Blakeney Point and out to sea. ‘Some summer sailor’s got caught out by the weather, doesn’t know the local waters, drops his anchor in deep water and then rows ashore. It happens. He’s probably tucked up in a nice hotel asleep in his bathrobe.’ Norton shivered as the hull rocked under them. ‘Lucky bastard.’

  ‘We need to double‐check,’ said Jacky Lau, knowing what Shaw would do. ‘Find a name.’ The boat lurched, and she fell on to one of the padded benches. ‘Where do you sleep on one of these things?’

  Norton showed her a small door in the forward bulkhead. ‘Through here,’ he said, flicking a switch.

  Two bunks, only one of them disturbed. But it was what was lying across the other one which made Jacky Lau’s pulse quicken.

  She leant in and touched a skein of human hair. Thick, like a horse’s tail, but soft. Holding some to her nose she caught a hint of scent, a soapy aroma. She ran it between her hands as if she were carding wool. Two feet of human hair, natural blonde streaks, brushed to a sheen like a liquid mirror.

  Norton stood back now, his shoulders pressed against the panelled bulwark. Jacky lay the hair back on the bed, knowing now she shouldn’t have picked it up.

  ‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘Just take a seat, Ian – don’t touch anything.’

  She worked her way back into the cabin. There was an attaché case in a space under the map chart. She slid it out with gloved hands and found that the lock had been forced. Inside, business papers, bank statements, a set of company accounts. The boat lurched. ‘Tell me this isn’t going to sink, Ian,’ she said.

  ‘We’re fine,’ he said. ‘What d’you reckon?’

  ‘I reckon this might be it.’ She moved into the galley. A small bowl, the water stained pink, a heavy wooden gaff for stunning fish standing in it. The light from the galley porthole caught the sticky matt surface of it, a stain in black, with a hint of red as subtle as the flush on a medium‐rare steak. And a piece of skin the size of a stamp stuck to the stain, its surface pitted like goose flesh, but with a single hair attached.

  29

  A hearse purred in the dark outside the Ark, like a black cat with the milk. A body in a grey bag was slid in from a gurney by two lab assistants, the tailgate closing with a visceral, oily click.

  ‘Goods out,’ said Valentine, lighting up on the step as they watched the hearse creep out of the yard. ‘Anyone we know?’

  ‘Styleman,’ said Tom Hadden. ‘Next stop, undertaker’s morgue until you sign it off. Can’t bury him without a name, right?’

  Shaw stubbed the toecap of his boot against the kerb. ‘So no progress – any forensics off the boat?’ he asked. The yacht at Morston Creek discovered by DC Jacky Lau had been towed into Lynn’s Boal Quay, where a full forensic examination was under way.

  ‘Bit early,’ said Hadden. ‘But Jacky’s got a briefcase off the boat – she’s inside.’

  DC Jacky Lau had a pile of documents on a trestle table, a pair of anglepoise lamps burning into the pages. She was working with gloves, sifting into piles, a mobile‐phone mic at her lips. She looked confident, in control, every micro‐movement charged with adrenaline.

  ‘So far?’ said Shaw.

  She held up a finger, finishing a call. ‘Thanks – that’s great.’ She unhitched the earpiece and threw it on to the table. ‘Boat’s registered in the name of…’ She read from a clipboard, treble‐checking. ‘James Baker‐Sibley.’

  She paused for a second, long enough to let them know that she’d made the connection too.

  ‘Address in the Barbican, London. Electoral roll puts him in a house in Burnham Overy Town in 2005. Local family, one of them was something big in the Royal Navy back in the sixties. Documents back up the ID – including a passport. A British passport – with plenty of Greek entry stamps from the nineties. But most of this stuff…’ She pushed a glossy company report aside to reveal a set of faxed figures. ‘Looks like business transactions – there’s a due diligence report on a company purchase, share certificates. But it’s a maze. Yard’s offered us a forensic accountant, so I’ll get it all down to London by courier.’

  Shaw and Valentine exchanged looks.

  Hadden had made the link too. ‘She drove the Alfa, right – Baker‐Sibley?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Shaw. ‘Wife, ex‐wife. Widow. Ex‐widow.’

  ‘Ex‐wife?’ asked Hadden. ‘She won’t be that upset, then.’

  ‘She’ll have the fucking flags out,’ said Valentine. ‘And a band.’

  ‘If it’s him,’ said Shaw, unable to resist the note of caution. ‘Passport?’

  Lau handed it to him. He flicked to the picture. ‘That’s him, even if I say so myself.’ Shaw’s sketch had caught the ‘lifelong look’ – the bland, handsome symmetry of the face’s main features. At last, he thought, they’d stopped finding pieces of the jigsaw, and started fitting them together.

  Hadden took them through the plastic doors into the morgue. On an aluminium bench he’d got the washing‐up bowl from the yacht, the fish gaff separately bagged.

  ‘First off, there’s plenty of evidence at the scene. The side of the yacht’s got some pretty bad scratching and a smear of paint – heavy‐duty marine, dark blue. I’d say there was a collision, something coming alongside in rough weather? Maybe. Anyway, something big. A sea boat. Trawler? Not a yacht – the marks are too high, and the paint’s all wrong.

  ‘And there’s what we’ve got here…’ He held the plastic envelope up to the light and Shaw could see the sickly glint of strawberry smearing the sides, the fish gaff a deadly black.

  ‘Same blood group as our man on the sands, and the hairs match on colour.’ He tapped a glass demijohn full of rose water. ‘This has got plenty of blood in it too – contents of the washing‐up bowl. I’ll try and match DNA for you.’

  He’d had the skein of blonde hair bagged too. He passed it to Shaw, who weighed it in his hand. He thought of brushing Francesca’s hair before school, the subtle smell of the natural oils, the irritable tugs as his daughter wriggled at the imposition.

  ‘We’re still
doing the tests on that,’ said Hadden. ‘Nothing yet – but it clearly isn’t the dead man’s.’

  Shaw remembered the pink plastic frame attached to Sarah Baker‐Sibley’s dashboard in the Alfa. The snapshot of her daughter with luxuriant, nearly waist‐length hair.

  ‘Rest of the boat?’ he asked.

  ‘Some blood, certainly – on a rug that’s been turned over on the cabin floor. The top side’s got stains too. And another piece of scalp, on the steps up to the deck.’

  Hadden pulled off his forensic gloves. His hands were as pale as his eyes, the freckles anaemic, the nails short and white.

  The final bag: the framed snapshot unscrewed from the wooden panelling of the Hydra’s cabin. The sky an Aegean blue, a single white domed chapel on the rocky hillside beyond a beachside taverna.

  Shaw held his thumb on the girl. ‘That’s Jillie Baker‐Sibley. Who’s the boy – question one. Where’s Mum – question two. Taking the picture? Maybe.’ He held the picture closer, studying Jillie’s face, the tomboy’s shorts and T‐shirt, the hair cut back to shoulder length. The boy was darker, older, the stance – one forearm across his knee – a mirror to his father. The son shared the father’s facial keystone, the balanced features. The girl had inherited the eyes and nose, but the bone structure was Sarah Baker‐Sibley’s.

  He handed the picture to Valentine. ‘Let’s get Baker‐Sibley in first thing for interview,’ said Shaw. ‘And Jillie. Let’s do it out in the sticks – Burnham Market. That way she might not panic. Then we’ll bring her back here to ID the body from the sands.’

  They heard the bell at St Margaret’s mark ten o’clock. ‘And I’ll pick you up at seven, George – your house.’ Valentine stood his ground, irked to be dismissed, sensing there was something else to say that he wasn’t going to hear. Hadden worked at a PC. Shaw helped himself to coffee.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, turning on his heel, slamming the door.

  30

  ‘I owe you for this,’ said Shaw, stretching, bending his spine back so that he could see the Ark’s wooden vaulted ceiling.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Hadden. ‘I don’t sleep much. Usually I read books about birds I don’t have time to see. I’ve made a start on Tessier – it’s intriguing work – but it’s just a start.’ He dragged a heavy black metal box out from under one of the work benches and placed the contents, all bagged, out on the conference table.

  The last time Shaw had seen them they’d been crushed in the cellophane evidence bags. Now, laid out, following the order of the body, the sight was more intimate. The green‐and‐white Celtic football shirt, the white shorts, the odd socks, the studless football boots. The red sweatshirt had been laid to one side, on top the contents of the shorts pocket: the 40p change, the wrapped Opal Fruit – the paper discoloured with age.

  Shaw produced two bottles of mineral water from his overcoat and offered one to Hadden, who took it, drinking in silence. Under the neon light his skin looked ghostly – especially the narrow scar just below his hairline where the last operation had removed a melanoma.

  ‘Right.’ Hadden closed his eyes. ‘I don’t have the case file but there were notes with the forensics and I’ve access to copies of the Home Office reports. They’re thorough, actually – given the state of the science at the time.’ He touched the keyboard of his PC and the screen flooded with colour, the wallpaper a scene of flamingos in flight over an African saltpan. At the centre of the screen was an open folder containing a single document.

  ‘I made some notes. Here.’ He opened the document, read for a second, clicked some more, then leant back in the seat. ‘This was one of your father’s cases, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Just tidying up.’

  Hadden trusted him enough not to ask any more, or to wonder where the case file had gone. ‘There’s plenty of physical evidence that we could re‐examine – but most of that would take time. But my first thought is that there is a real miss here…’ His face had flushed slightly, and his eyes for once caught the light radiating from the screen which now showed a series of microscope slides. Each picture was black, with a central image in a buttery yellow. Each one appeared to be a small distorted globe – some almost perfectly round, most smooth but asymmetrical.

  ‘These are really small – this is at 10,000 times magnification. You couldn’t get a pinhead into one of these shots, it would be too big.’

  ‘Where’d you find them?’

  ‘Everywhere – all surface clothing anyway – the Celtic top, the shorts, both socks outside the boot, but just the arms of the sweatshirt, and in bands. I’ve got a theory there – kids often wrap jumpers round their waists, the arms knotted. That would be consistent.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Balls of paint. Thousands of them – in fact…’ He shuffled the sheets of printed report. ‘Approx two thousand.’

  ‘From an aerosol can?’

  ‘No. There are traces of an industrial lubricant and a thinner. So I’d say the child was standing near some sort of paint‐spraying operation at some point between the last time the clothes were washed and his death.’

  ‘A wash would have got rid of them?’

  ‘No – but these are distributed in a very fine mesh‐like pattern over the clothes. Washing would have disrupted that – there’d be pools of them, they’d get caught up in the seams, the stitches. There’s no sign of that. The case file should have details on the last time the clothes were washed, but judging by the shorts I’d say they were clean on.’

  ‘And the paint?’

  ‘That’s why it really is your lucky day. It’s not a car paint at all – it’s a kind of yellow sealant paint used on tractors. It’s hardwearing and withstands chemicals used for spraying. It’s listed in the national database but the company that made it – Roncal – went bust in the mid‐nineties.’ He picked up a printed list and gave it to Shaw. ‘This is a list of their customers – mostly agricultural engineers. Only local one is out at Castle Rising, on the edge of town. Outfit called Askit & Sons.’

  Shaw held the list in his hand. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘That’s OK. I’m not done yet – and I won’t get done this week unless you push this up the priorities list. We’ve still got three vehicles out on Siberia Belt. And the basics from the Hydra will take us forty‐eight hours at least.’

  Shaw held up both hands. ‘No, no. Tom, I can’t justify asking you to do this. Not now. The chances of taking any case forward twelve years down the line are a thousand to one – we both know that. So, if you can, you can. It’s a favour, and I owe you one already.’

  ‘OK – when I can I’ll get back to it. One thing would make things quicker…’

  Shaw nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘The original case file.’

  ‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Shaw. It was a confrontation he’d been avoiding. An emotional tussle over his father’s memory. ‘Give me twenty‐four hours.’

  31

  It had been someone’s birthday in the Queen Victoria, on Mary Seacole ward. A blue balloon, detached, stirred and rushed ahead as Grace Ellis pushed through the doors of the children’s ward, nodded to the nurse on night duty, and headed for Jake’s room, the linoleum sticky with disinfectant under her feet. A child laughed in one of the rooms, and through an open door she saw a small girl lying on top of the sheets, one leg kicking out straight in her dreams.

  Grace Ellis knew Jake would be awake. Normally he slept in the afternoon, and then early evening, something to do with the drugs. But since his father’s murder he’d struggled to find deep sleep, enmeshed instead in a series of fitful nightmares. His TV was on, the sound down, a video playing, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the flickering picture making the room’s walls jump forward and back. At the foot of the bed was a cuddly toy, a present from the Police Benevolent Fund.

  Her son turned his head on the pillow. ‘Mum,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, kissing him roughly, cradling the head. She didn’t
take another breath. ‘Look. Dad’s not here to tell you this.’ The boy killed the film with the remote control, just using his fingers, not even flexing the wrist. ‘The appeal, Jake. We’re not going to raise the money, love. Without Dad, there’s just me. I can’t do it…’

  She went to stand, but forced herself not to run away. ‘Mrs Tyre’s looking after Michael and Peggy, I can’t stay long. Only I couldn’t sleep thinking… thinking you’d be looking forward to it. Because it isn’t going to happen.’ She began to cry. ‘What is it about this bloody hospital?’ she said. ‘I never cry at home. I walk in here and it feels like my whole life wants to run out through my eyes.’

  They both laughed. ‘S’OK,’ said Jake. ‘It was Dad’s idea really.’ He hauled in another breath, an effort which distorted his face. ‘He said it’d give you something to look forward to.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘So you could cope,’ said Jake. ‘I’m OK, Mum,’ he said, but his voice was desperately weak.

  ‘Me?’ she said again.

  But he’d turned away, with his eyes open.

  John Holt sat in his favourite armchair, the lightweight overnight bag on his lap full of his kit from hospital – pyjamas, toothbrush, toothpaste, towel, soap, reading glasses. The front room of his daughter’s bungalow was overheated and he worked a finger between the collar of his shirt and his neck. His daughter Michelle sobbed on the sofa, clutching and unclutching his granddaughter’s thin body. ‘They won’t be back,’ said Holt, sipping tea, aspirating to cool the surface. ‘It was a mistake – they’ll get their money. We’ll be OK, Micky, so stop crying.’

  ‘She was out in the snow,’ said Michelle, dabbing at her eyes. ‘Playing snowballs.’ Michelle was in her mid‐twenties perhaps, but obesity obscured her age. Flesh hung from her arms and a collar of fat lay below her chin. On the table beside her a bottle of pills stood open beside a mug of hot chocolate. ‘She was terrified, Dad – they had knives for Christ’s sake!’