Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  ‘Right,’ said Valentine, laughing. ‘Has he named Narr?’

  ‘Not yet. Says they heard Baker‐Sibley had cash on board. They didn’t know about the girl. But he knows that doesn’t work. He’s talking to the solicitor now. If he’s going down he’ll take Narr with him.’

  Valentine nodded.

  ‘And more progress on Terry Brand. Lufkin’s already named names for the suppliers in Belgium – exotic pets for illegal import – snakes, scorpions, you name it. Claims he doesn’t know what they were bringing in the night Brand died on the raft. But it was something lethal because they were specifically warned about opening the canisters. Lufkin says Brand had been lobbying for more cash for months – reckons he tried to go freelance, took a look, and paid the price.’

  ‘He’s in the bag,’ said Valentine.

  ‘Yeah. He is – but he’s the monkey. We’re here to see the organ grinder.’

  Shaw raised a hand, pointing to a spot about fifty yards offshore, in the middle of the flooded creek. A single flat stone had broken the surface. ‘Causeway,’ said Shaw. ‘Twenty minutes, we can walk across.’

  Over the water they heard a sound from the house.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  Like a door in the wind; but there was no wind. Shaw fetched his telescope from the Land Rover and studied the house. In the shadows he could see bay windows, a summer house, and a movement: rhythmic, like a metronome, amongst the pine trees. ‘Narr’s got an alibi, right? We’ve checked it, double‐checked it?’

  ‘Council meeting at the Guildhall – Police Committee,’ said Valentine, reading from his memory. ‘Half the senior officers in the county round the table. Didn’t finish ’til gone midnight. The snow was falling by then so he stayed – wait for it – at the assistant chief constable’s house. Guest room.’

  ‘As alibis go that’s pretty tight,’ said Shaw. ‘Makes a duck’s arse look like a string vest.’

  Shaw walked along the bank of the creek, giving himself some space to think. Jonathan Tessier’s file had been on his desk that morning at 5.45 a.m.

  Shaw’s conversation with DCI Warren, if he could call it that, had been terse. Shaw didn’t mind the confrontation with authority, in fact he’d rather enjoyed it once Warren had lost his temper. He’d learned the subtle art of defiance with his father, and he was good at it. What worried him was not the theoretical threat of reprisal, but the skill with which senior levels of the police force could literally close ranks.

  When the Tessier case was thrown out of court they’d moved swiftly to make sure it was soon forgotten. Jack Shaw had been eased into early retirement, while George Valentine had been quietly docked a rank and sent to the backwaters of north Norfolk. The case had been allowed to disappear under dust, despite the fact that Tessier’s killer was still at large. Nobody at St James’s, least of all DCI Warren, would want to know the truth if it meant reliving the past.

  Shaw had put the file on Warren’s desk. ‘Murder case from 1997 – Jonathan Tessier.’

  Warren didn’t touch it. ‘What’s that to me, Peter? That was Jack’s case, and he made a hash of it; it’s off the books.’

  ‘Right. We’ve uncovered some fresh information, sir.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘DS Valentine and –’

  Warren hit the desk with his fist, a ballpoint spinning off onto the carpet and a picture of his wife and two boys falling flat on their faces. ‘For fuck’s sake, Peter. Leave it – OK? That’s an order. Do you really think the reputation of the West Norfolk needs a fresh dunk in the cesspit? The judge pretty much accused the department – yes, by implication, the whole fucking department – of planting the evidence. Now that may be run of the mill down in the Met, but it isn’t up here. So why do I want to remind anyone of that?’

  He’d started off shouting and hadn’t been able to lower his voice, so when he finished he was breathing heavily, a line of sweat on his upper lip.

  ‘I’m making a formal request, sir,’ said Shaw, unable to resist the tactic of lowering his voice so that Warren had to strain to hear him. ‘On the grounds of a reexamination of the forensic evidence – I’ve included a summary in the letter. I can put that before you, or go directly to the chief constable’s office. I believe this new information warrants a fresh inquiry. It at least warrants a review. That’s my recommendation.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Warren, standing. They both heard the helicopter at the same moment, and looking out the window they saw it coming in to land beyond the perimeter trees, snow swirling, the chief constable returning from a security briefing in Brussels. The blades began to slow, the circular blur separating out as the pilot edged the machine down, below the treetops and out of sight.

  ‘All right,’ said Warren, placing both hands on his blotter. ‘I will review the evidence, DI Shaw. Then you will have my decision.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like it in writing, either way,’ said Shaw, turning his back before he got an answer.

  Standing now by the cold sea Shaw examined the moment. Yes, he felt he’d discharged a responsibility at last. But what if Warren declined his request? He watched Valentine shivering on the water’s edge. Maybe he’d been right about Warren. Would the DCI really have the guts to pick the scab off an old sore? A seagull dive‐bombed Valentine, trying to pull an unlit cigarette from his hand. He flailed at it, then lit the cigarette in the cup of his hand with his back to the sea.

  Shaw’s mobile throbbed again. A picture from Lena. The sudden image made Shaw’s hair stand on end. A pencil drawing of a face, the heavy lower lip and the high forehead marking it out as his wife. But the artwork was his daughter’s – he recognized the way she always tried to draw each and every eyelash. She was her mother’s daughter in so many ways except, perhaps, in this fascination with faces. She’d watched him drawing at home, his party trick, catching the likeness of friends, relatives, the odd customer in the café. But she had her own talent for it too. He couldn’t work out why he found it unsettling. Perhaps it marked a coming of age, a signal that one day she might live in the same world that he did.

  He snapped the phone shut. The causeway had begun to appear from the water, a curving path towards Nelson’s Island, so he led the way. Although the uneven path was still under water in places, it was easy enough to pick their way forward on stepping‐stones.

  ‘We could drive,’ ventured Valentine, looking hopefully at the Land Rover.

  ‘It’s fifty yards, George – not a walk in the Hindu Kush.’

  Shaw set out, his boots splashing. The causeway ran in an elliptical path, resting on the tail of the original gravel bar, so that as they walked they began to see the front of the house, built to face the open sea. There was a lawn, a flagpole freshly whitewashed, a wooden veranda.

  Valentine saw her first. He was moving slowly, picking a dry path. He stopped to take a breath and looked up: there was a shadow moving in the stand of old pine trees, where a swing had been hung from the great branches. Someone on the swing, moving in time with the metronome.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  Across the lawn their footsteps were silent, but even when they went under the trees, crunching through iced twigs, she didn’t take her eyes off the sea. She was bare‐headed, close‐cropped. Shaw was struck again by the contradictions in her: the swinging carefree playtime of a child, but the fixed gaze, the self‐possession of the adult.

  ‘Jillie?’ he asked.

  She didn’t stop, didn’t look at them. Shaw caught the swing by the rope and the seat, setting her back to the vertical.

  Through a break in the dunes they could see white water, a dog running on a beach a mile wide on the mainland.

  ‘We need to take you home,’ said Shaw.

  She fished in a quilted jacket decorated with sewn flowers, then held up a mobile.

  ‘I’ve phoned. Mum’s coming. She was waiting for the tide.’

  ‘Mr Nar
r?’ asked Shaw.

  She snapped out of it, jerked her head back as if throwing the long hair she’d once had out of her eyes.

  ‘He’s home.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked Shaw. ‘Your mother’s been worried. We all have.’

  ‘I was going to see Dad,’ she laughed. ‘But Colin spotted me on the road. And now I know that I’ll never see Dad.’ She looked at Shaw for the first time and he saw that the incredible violet eyes were dimmed, as if sunk beneath water. Something about the girl’s calm voice made his skin creep.

  Valentine stayed with her while Shaw went to check the house. When he opened the door he smelt food. Pork? And something else, a fused plug, a shorting wire?

  He called for Narr. From the garden he heard the return of the swing’s rusted motion.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  He climbed the stairs, the smell of the cooked meat getting stronger, knowing that must be wrong. A stained‐glass window lit the central stairwell. A fisherman on a biblical boat, hauling in silver fish. On the landing a bedroom door stood open. A double bed, both bedside tables holding alarm clocks, books, a mobile phone on one.

  He called again. The bathroom door was open too and he could see into a mirror set above the washbasin, clear, cold, unblushed by steam. In the corridor outside a mug stood on the carpet, full of tea, a thin scuddy film on the surface, and a plug in the socket, the lead trailing away into the bathroom. Shaw pushed at the door and walked in. A shower unit stood empty. The stench of meat was tangible, as if he’d bent forward to get the Sunday roast out of the oven. He turned to look down into the bath.

  ‘Jesus.’ He took a single step to the toilet bowl and vomited.

  Colin Narr lay in the bath, his limbs contorted into an agonizing semaphore. In the water lay a toaster: silver, with a marine blue side decorated with a silver anchor. His flesh was black at the extremities of his limbs, a bluish‐purple on the torso, his face a ripe peach, the lips a startling blue. The flesh, cooked, swelled at the joints. Shaw forced himself to look a second time, to check the ears, the shrunken lobes.

  The only sound was the swing in the garden.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  Eeeeeer Acttttttttt.

  40

  Colin Narr had made many mistakes in the last week of his life, but telling Jillie Baker‐Sibley that her father had died that night on Styleman’s Middle was his last. In the warmth of the BMW she’d listened to him recount what had happened. How he and her mother had only wanted to protect her, to bring her home. But that her father had been stupid, to tell the men who came to get her that he had cash on board. So little money to die for: £50,000. He said she had to understand, that lies were necessary. Neither he nor her mother had planned that James should die. It had been Lufkin and Fibich’s fault. Narr said he’d been horrified when Lufkin told him what had happened; and he’d kept it from her mother. But it was too late – James was dead. They had to do what was right for Jillie and Sarah. Jillie had smiled then, because it was really about what was right for him.

  How had he found her? Mother’s intuition. James had a cottage near East Midlands airport, a village close to the motorway. Sarah had never been given a key, even after they were married. But if they’d made a plan – daughter and father – then that would be it. To meet there. Jillie had some money of her own, a bank card. But they knew she’d keep clear of the trains and coaches. And Sarah knew she loved hitch‐hiking, because she’d been forbidden to do it. She’d gone into Lynn once with Clara during the summer holidays, hitching a ride. They’d been proud of it when they got home. Sarah had screamed at her, telling her she was a child.

  And they were right. When those men had come aboard the Hydra to take her away they’d let her have a minute alone with her father. He hadn’t argued with them because the little man had a gun. He kept passing it from hand to hand, the sweat glistening on the cold metal. But he’d asked for some time alone. That’s when he’d given her the key, told her to get to the cottage when she could. He’d be there. Then the foreign one had rowed her ashore. She’d waited for her moment to leave home and then stuck to the plan. And she would have seen it through, up until the moment she’d climbed into Narr’s black Jag. He’d told her that her father was dead. And that had changed the world. She’d lost a brother, and now she’d lost her father. It was about time someone paid the price.

  They sat in silence during the rest of the ride back to Narr’s house. Jillie’s hands clenched and unclenched, imagining revenge. All the anger she’d harboured during her young life had finally found a target. Someone upon whom she could focus her hate.

  The tide was out so they’d driven over. She’d said she wasn’t in a hurry to get home, her mother would be in the shop, so he could eat, have a bath – he’d been out all night; she’d text her mum. They’d had eggs on toast. He’d broken the eggs scraping them out of the pan, but the bread had popped up nicely browned from the toaster with a silver anchor on the side.

  Sarah Baker‐Sibley was on her way. So he’d filled the bath and she’d made tea. He said to leave it outside the bathroom door. She’d knocked once to say it was there, waited ten seconds, then opened the door quickly, the toaster in her hands, plugged into an extension lead she’d found in the kitchen.

  Had she said anything? Shaw had asked.

  She’d thought about that, coolly reconstructing the moment of murder.

  ‘No. Nothing.’ She’d smiled then, running her hand through her short hair. ‘I know what I thought. I thought that I had a brother once and that I’d forgiven Dad for killing him. But I couldn’t forgive anyone any more, not for anything. Either of them. You can’t spend your whole life forgiving people.’ She’d crossed her hands on her lap. ‘That’s taking advantage.’

  There was silence round the table in the Red House. The jukebox had run dry while Shaw was briefing them. DC Twine tilted his head back and finished his bottle of Chimay.

  ‘Will she talk?’ asked Mark Birley, one of his ham‐sized hands wrapped round a pint.

  ‘Sarah Baker‐Sibley? She’s talking already,’ said Shaw. ‘She rang Narr from Gallow Marsh the night of the storm. She didn’t know what they’d do, of course. Her crime was not telling us what she’d done. Jillie’s given us a positive ID on Lufkin – so it’s all over for him. We can put him on the boat, the forensics are watertight, and the motive comes in fifty‐pound notes. I’m recommending a murder charge tomorrow when I see Warren.’

  ‘What happens to Jillie?’ asked Twine.

  ‘Jillie? Straight into care. Psychiatric review first, then who knows? She’s not a full ticket – question is, is she still a dangerous ticket? Narr’s murder wasn’t some random act of violence. It was calculated, planned, executed. And she’s thirteen – old enough to be charged.’

  ‘And her mother?’

  ‘Sedation. Then we’ll see. If Jillie ever gets out she’ll need her mother. She’ll have to face charges, but I can’t see any court sending her down.’

  They all drank in silence.

  ‘So – we started with three dead men. Two down – one to go. Lufkin killed James Baker‐Sibley. Terry Brand died of curiosity while smuggling for Narr. But Harvey Ellis is still on the books. His killer is our priority. But that’s for tomorrow.’ Shaw finished a pint of Guinness and handed Valentine the empty glass.

  They’d set up a darts tournament and were taking it in turns to ring Fiona Campbell in hospital, sending pictures by mobile. She’d had another blood transfusion, her condition was stable, but the knife wound across her neck would take a month to heal, a necklace for ever.

  Pint glasses covered the pub’s plywood tables. Birley put all his fruit‐machine winnings in the jukebox to stop Jacky Lau playing any more Kaiser Chiefs. Twine was trying to explain the basic science behind lighting techniques to locate blood traces, using a set of beer mats. Shaw sent Lena a picture too, a pint of Guinness on the table, a shamrock in the top. A signal: he’
d be late. He hoped she’d understand.

  He waited until Valentine had been knocked out of the darts tournament before passing him the pub’s copy of the Yellow Pages. He smudged the print on an advert with his finger.

  Askit’s Agricultural Engineers

  Established 1926

  He leant in close, taking an inch off the top of the Guinness. ‘The file’s with Warren. You’ve got a right to know what’s in it. Everything that’s in it.’

  Valentine looked at his drink.

  ‘What would you say if I told you I think Jonathan Tessier may have spent the last few hours of his life at Askit’s factory?’

  ‘Why not just tell me?’ said Valentine, his jaw set. Shaw checked that nobody else was within earshot. ‘Jonathan’s football kit was covered in a fine spray of a specialist paint. Askit’s is the only local business to take that paint in 1997. Askit’s sprayed on the premises. But the kit’s mobile – I rang them up and talked to the foreman. You can load up a few gallons and get the air gun and gas cylinders into a van. So – maybe on the premises, probably on the premises, but maybe not.’

  ‘I need a fag,’ said Valentine.

  They stood and went down a corridor that smelt of urine and out into a small courtyard. The landlord had bought a gas heater and a small gazebo. Dog‐ends lay in the snow around it and through a plastic loud speaker the jukebox music played. The gas popped, flared, and popped again. Shaw thought it sounded like they were in the basket of a hot‐air balloon, sailing unseen over the city of the sober.

  The snow was falling softly but turned in a whirlwind in the yard, making Valentine dizzy. He gripped the back of a chair, sucking in the nicotine. If Shaw knew about the chemical composition of the paint on Tessier’s clothes, thought Valentine, then he must have got CSI to check out the original forensics. He felt cheated, out‐classed. He’d spent a decade worrying away at the case without making any progress. Shaw had notched up a breakthrough in a few days. And Valentine sensed there was more to come.

  ‘But that isn’t all you’ve found out, is it?’ said Valentine.