Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  ‘Could be what killed chummy in the raft,’ said Valentine, as the wind thudded against the offside of the Mazda. He wanted to get up to the farm, check out what they’d found in the dyke, get back to the station. What he didn’t want to do was get out of the car.

  ‘Come on,’ said Shaw. ‘It’s not going anywhere. Let’s check this out first.’

  Shaw walked back to the turn in the road, then round the corner, leaving Valentine shivering in the wind. Once out of sight of Valentine Shaw could see down to the coast road; a bus lurching towards Lynn. Then he retraced his steps until he could see the Mazda again, and beyond it the rest of Siberia Belt, and the spot where the pine had been felled that Monday night.

  ‘Check it, check it, check it…’ said Valentine under his breath, annoyed at being kept out of the loop. He felt the damp insinuating its way down his throat and into his lungs, so he coughed, a deep hollow boom, like a goose. Shaw was upbeat, excited, but he hadn’t shared whatever the good news was.

  Shaw walked back. He stood still, then spun round, taking in the circular horizon of water, marsh and trees. He’d got it clear in his head now, and it made sense; at last, it made sense. He clapped his hands and listened to the echo ricochet off the farm buildings at Gallow Marsh.

  ‘OK – the kid was annoying,’ said Shaw. They stood together, looking out to sea. ‘But bright. And he was right, George. We’ve made assumptions. We’ve assumed, and all the drivers have assumed, that the vehicles they followed round this bend were the vehicles they found when they got round this bend.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Valentine. He didn’t see what difference it made.

  A marsh bird made a noise like a 1950s football rattle.

  ‘Two things are possible,’ said Shaw. ‘One of the vehicles in the stranded convoy could have come out of Gallow Marsh Farm that night and slipped into the line. Or. A vehicle came up the road from the coast and slipped out of the line into Gallow Marsh Farm.’

  Valentine spat in the snow. ‘Well that clears things up.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’ Shaw beamed. ‘I reckon we’re pretty close, George – pretty close. The jigsaw’s almost finished.’ He smiled the surfer’s smile.

  ‘So what shape’s the missing bit?’ asked Valentine, acutely aware that the ‘we’ didn’t appear to include him.

  ‘I’m not absolutely sure, but it’s got four wheels.’

  48

  Snow lay across the yard at Gallow Marsh, marred by tyre tracks, straw laid out in the worst of the ruts. The hazmat unit had beaten them to it, and was parked in the entrance to the barn, out of the wind. A blue light flashed, shadows dancing round the high rafters within. They walked past it and out through a pair of double doors on the far side. There was another yard here, bounded on one side by a deep arrow‐straight dyke running towards the sea. A broken harrow stood rusting in frosted weeds, and a pile of sugar beet gave off a stench of damp earth. Two farmhands stood smoking in the half‐light, standing on the snowy bank a hundred yards down towards the beach. Closer, three men stood in full protective gear, looking at mobile phones.

  The dyke was a gullet of shadow about twenty feet across, the surface ten feet below them. The sound of water churning filled the dusk as the tide pushed in, swamping the banks of reeds and grass. One of the hazmat team produced a heavy‐duty torch and scanned the dark channel below.

  ‘She’s here somewhere; I found it earlier,’ he said. A corner of bright unpainted metal stuck up in midstream, the edge of a box, perhaps, an angle of reflective steel.

  ‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘When you’re ready.’

  ‘Right. But we think this might be dangerous, yes?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Shaw.

  The firemen began to unload a winch from the unit, a set of boat hooks. Valentine let the burst of flame at the end of a match warm his spirits as he lit a cigarette. This was tying up a loose end. They were making progress, and it felt good. Sunset soon, and then back to the city. The canteen at St James’s did a roast on Sunday nights. He’d read the papers, then watch the live match on Sky at the Artichoke. It was the best week’s work he’d done in ten years. Yes, it made him feel very good. It made him feel like a human being again.

  One of the farmhands came up to Shaw; a teenager, swaddled against the cold, stamping his feet. ‘Izzy said if we found anything we should get her first, but the kid’s not well – flu, she reckons – so we thought we’d ring you lot.’ They all stood back as a fireman in waders began to edge down the bank with a hook.

  ‘Thanks, it might be important,’ said Shaw. He scanned the horizon, trying not to look in the water, wondering what the chances were that whatever had come ashore that Monday night was still alive.

  The fireman expertly snagged the metal triangle, then attached a chain back to the winch. The engine squealed, the chain tightened, water droplets flying off, and then whatever it was in mid‐stream got sucked off the muddy bed of the dyke. Suddenly it was there beneath them, on the grass bank.

  ‘Well that’s solved that mystery,’ said Shaw.

  It was an AA diversion sign. Black lettering on a yellow background. Green weed, black under the light, knotted around one of the metal legs.

  ‘Call Tom,’ he said. ‘Tell him we’ll bring it in – we should get it dusted. See if you can get it in some shrink‐wrap and get it in the boot,’ he said to Valentine. ‘I think it’s time I gave Izzy Dereham another chance to tell the truth.’

  The door to the farmhouse was on the latch, the hallway warm, full of shadows. Upstairs they could hear a child’s voice, Izzy Dereham’s comforting murmur running in counterpoint. Valentine shouted up that they were there, that they needed to talk. She said she’d be a minute, so they sat in the kitchen by what was left of a log fire, watching the clock creep towards six. Three rabbits, a hare and a brace of pigeon hung gutted from a rafter. She must be good with a gun, thought Shaw, and imagined her out on the marsh, the birds wheeling over her head. There was a child’s drawing pinned to the door – a black cat again, on a raft at sea. Shaw walked to the window and shivered. Outside the clouds had finally closed over Gallow Marsh. The night snow was sporadic, in the wind.

  When she appeared in the kitchen she seemed distracted, harassed. She considered taking the rocking chair by the Aga, but stood instead, leaning against the warm rail.

  ‘Detective Inspector. Sergeant.’ She tried to find pockets for her hands but gave up the struggle. She wore heavy‐duty boots, green canvas trousers, a smock in blue, blotched with chemical stains.

  ‘We found something in the ditch.’

  She crossed her arms.

  ‘The AA diversion sign. We wondered where it had gone.’ He left a beat. ‘Did you wear gloves? CSI will get prints off it otherwise.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘Was it just for the money?’ He looked round the kitchen. ‘The lease is up next year? Things must be tough. And then John Holt turns up on the doorstep one day – bringing a present for his godchild?’

  She looked at her feet. Shaw thought how it was always little lies and omissions that were the real clues to guilt. Valentine got out his notebook and began to scribble a note.

  ‘Holt’s got your daughter’s picture at his daughter’s house. Bit like that one…’ Shaw nodded at the snapshot framed on the wall.

  She shrugged. ‘John’s my uncle. It’s not a crime, is it? I’m a Holt too – I kept Pat’s name after he died. It’s all there was.’

  Shaw braced both hands around his knee. ‘You’ve been formally interviewed about the events here on Siberia Belt – you didn’t mention the connection. Neither did he. What was there to hide?’

  She ran her wrist across her lips and Shaw could see the rhythmic tremble in the fingers. Water began to pump out of her eyes and she grabbed a chair, the legs scraping horribly on the cork tiles.

  ‘Your parents lost their farm, didn’t they?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she said, her head dropping. ‘Dad couldn’t take it – he kil
led himself, in the car with a pipe to the exhaust. I was seven. Uncle John helped Mum for a while, but it was no good. We gave it up.’

  ‘And then it looked like it might happen again. Your husband’s dead. The farm’s struggling. So Uncle John knew you were desperate. And he tried to help. And now you’re going to let him carry the can alone? He’s got a daughter too, you know.’

  The line of her mouth broke, a sudden flush in her face squeezing out the tears, fully formed, like a child’s crystal beads. ‘It wasn’t a crime,’ she said, throwing her head back. ‘No one was going to get hurt.’

  Shaw winced at the cliché, because it was never true. ‘John said James Baker‐Sibley owned Shark Tooth – and Shark Tooth owned Gallow Marsh. I’d get a year, rent free, time to get back on top of things.’ She stood suddenly, pacing the kitchen. ‘All I had to do was put the sign out at the right moment, then fetch it back in. They had to do it on Siberia Belt because there’s no phone signal – and it’s the only spot on her route that’s remote enough. It’s always her route – that was something else I had to do, down on the coast road, I timed her each Monday for a month. Five o’clock, a few minutes either way. She never missed.’

  She went to the mantelpiece over the fire. There was a family picture, framed in black wood; she turned it face down.

  ‘It wasn’t the only…’ Shaw searched for the right word, ‘enterprise you were involved in, was it? You were already working for Colin Narr, helping get his smuggled merchandise ashore. The light on the dovecote to guide the boat in. Did they bring the stuff here?’

  She nodded. Valentine scribbled.

  ‘I didn’t have a choice. Narr said he’d make it his business to push for the rent arrears on the farm. Get me out, us out, unless I cooperated. And again – it wasn’t much. He ran the boat – the Skolt – over to Ostend. It was always timed so that they could slide back in to Lynn on a tide at dusk. They’d get in close – using the light on the barn – then drop the raft for the last few hundred yards. It’d be dark by then. I’d meet Terry down on the sands, stow the raft by the oyster beds, bring the stuff back here. Terry always had a lift waiting, up on Siberia Belt.

  ‘He was due Sunday. The day after the consignment comes ashore Narr’s men are always out on the delivery run – it’s the only day I know they won’t be here. That’s why we timed Siberia Belt for the Monday – we knew the coast would be clear. But first Terry didn’t appear, then you turned up looking for the drums. It was a nightmare, but we couldn’t stop it happening.’

  She rubbed her hands on the skin of her cheeks. ‘We just had to keep our nerve. The plan was too complicated to ditch. If we wanted to get her off the road, and out of mobile contact, it had to be that night. Mr Baker‐Sibley was ready as well, and the tides were right for him to sail before dawn.’

  ‘Take me through what happened,’ said Shaw.

  ‘We met here first – me, Uncle John, and Harvey Ellis. Harvey was sick with worry over that kid of his.’

  ‘Jake,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Harvey put the pick‐up truck in the barn out of sight and we sat in the cab, going through it all one last time.’

  ‘What time was this?’ asked Shaw.

  She shrugged, and Shaw noticed that her eyes had lost focus. ‘Four o’clock. I made us a flask of tea, some rolls and fruit.’

  Apples, thought Shaw.

  ‘Harvey was in a bad way. Nervous. He was sick, throwing up, shaking. He said he couldn’t do it. We said he had to. John said it was too important to all of us. And no one was going to get hurt. Then they drove down to Siberia Belt in the pick‐up – the two of them.’

  The key. At last. Shaw sat back: ‘So Harvey Ellis’s van was already parked up on Siberia Belt – he didn’t arrive there with the rest of the convoy?’

  ‘That’s right. They were going to switch the plugs – fake a breakdown. That’s why John went: Ellis said he couldn’t do it on his own. I guess they took the tree down to make sure. They were pretty nervous. Then John came back. Things were OK then – I could see it was going to be all right. John said he’d talked Ellis round, that once he was out in position he’d calmed down. Then it was our turn to get in place. When I got the van down to the junction just here by the farm I could see Ellis standing by the pick‐up out on Siberia Belt – he waved. That’s the last time I ever saw him.’

  Shaw nodded. The confession had been smooth, almost effortless. Too smooth?

  ‘Then?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘It was simple, really. We got in position on the coast road in a lay‐by. When Baker‐Sibley’s Alfa went past John had to stay behind her, I got in front. When I reached Siberia Belt I had time to drop off the sign, then drive back here.’

  ‘So Sarah Baker‐Sibley followed your lights up the track?’ said Shaw. ‘And by the time she turned the corner you’d turned off into the farm, and so she saw Ellis’s lights ahead – but he’d been there for an hour or more. But she thought she’d followed him there, all the way from Castle Rising.’

  The wings of a gull scuffed at the window and left a feathered imprint in the ice.

  Izzy Dereham jumped at the noise. ‘When I saw a few more cars go past at the junction I walked down, on the far side of the trees, and dragged the sign in. We needed to keep Baker‐Sibley there for an hour – that was the deal. If she’d tried to reverse John was going to put his back wheels over the ditch and keep her in. But the snowstorm made it easier. We knew she was trapped for hours.’

  Valentine closed his notebook. ‘But when you and John Holt left the farm Harvey Ellis was alive?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And alone?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to Shaw. ‘It wasn’t just the three of us. There was a fourth: someone to put the sign out at the other end of Siberia Belt. He was going to meet Harvey at the pick‐up – just to double‐check everything was OK. When I drove off there were two figures out on the track. John said this other man had planned the whole thing, and sorted the money side, but he wouldn’t tell me his name. All he said was that he was James Baker‐Sibley’s man. His eyes and ears – that’s what he said. Baker‐Sibley’s eyes and ears.’

  49

  They stood on the pavement outside the Artichoke in the steadily falling snow, Valentine using his mobile. Tom Hadden was in the Ark; he’d pick them up in ten minutes to run them to Sly’s houseboat. Duncan Sly – ‘the eyes and ears’ of James Baker‐Sibley, and before that of his father. They’d need uniform back‐up. Shaw and Valentine had got scalding tea from the late‐night burger van parked opposite the pub. Under a canvas awning they’d reduced the investigation to its stark core: if Izzy Dereham was telling the truth, the only person who could have killed Harvey Ellis was Duncan Sly. If she was telling the truth.

  Valentine stood in the snow, his head sunk low on his shoulders so that the collar of the raincoat kept the back of his neck warm.

  Shaw tried to call up an image of the boot mark they’d found in the bloodstain on Siberia Belt. Heavy duty, with a steel toecap, and the fern leaf burnt into the heel. It wasn’t Holt’s footprint, so was it Sly’s? They needed to turn over the houseboat, find the boots. The footprint was the only physical forensic evidence that could put the killer on the spot. They had to trace it.

  The snow was making little drifts on Shaw’s shoulders as he stood under the swinging pub sign. He’d never really looked at the picture before: a gardener leaning on a spade, a line of artichokes still to be cut, a floppy white hat to keep the sun off his face, steel‐capped boots, a freshly cut globe in his hand.

  Shaw looked a long time at the boots.

  ‘I’ll catch up with you at St James’s, George’ he said suddenly, the excitement in his voice as audible as the snow was silent. ‘I’ve got to check something out. Take Sly carefully, then bring him in to the station. Secure the site, leave the rest to Tom. The important thing is getting in the door before he’s got a chance to destroy anything. Boots, clothing. I’ll meet you at St James’
s.’

  Valentine nodded, trying to see it as a vote of confidence, but knowing he was being cut out of something.

  Hadden arrived in the CSI van with two uniformed PCs for back‐up, and as they pulled away Valentine could see Shaw still looking up at the swinging sign of the Artichoke.

  The streets of Lynn were empty, snow settling despite the salt. A neon kebab‐house sign pulsed on Norfolk Street, the gyro inside turning as a man sliced off the cooked meat. They pulled up at Boal Quay and Valentine led the way to the footpath which ran to the houseboat jetty. The communal fire still burnt, despite the falling snow, but there was no one tending the flames. Valentine went aboard Sly’s boat with Hadden and one of the uniformed PCs, the other skirted the hull of the boat, up on its blocks, round to the far side.

  Valentine didn’t have to knock. Sly opened the double wooden hatchway, blinking into Hadden’s torch. He stood in his pants, nothing else, his skin as white as lard except where he couldn’t cover it up on the sands – the hands and face as dark as tanned leather. Old tattoos, faded to a smudge of grey and blue, curled and intertwined on his forearms. Still powerful at fifty, but the skin tone gone, folds of tissue hanging across the broad chest. Valentine saw that Sly’s hands were wet, the nails black, and that there were dark smudges on the white skin of the forearms.

  ‘Jesus! What… ?’ asked Sly, covering his eyes with a hand as if he were looking out to sea.

  ‘Mr Sly? We’d like a word, and to look around.’

  Sly looked back into the houseboat. Valentine sniffed, the cold air making his sinuses flood. ‘Or I can be back with a warrant in ten minutes.’ He’d give him one more chance, then they’d force a way through. Sod the warrant.