Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  Sly didn’t move, but seemed to settle on his feet. Hadden opened his CSI bag and pulled on gloves. ‘I need to look around,’ he said, not waiting for Sly to give him permission. Valentine stamped the snow off his boots on the bare floorboards and led the way.

  ‘Like I’ve got a choice,’ said Sly.

  ‘You’ll need some clothes and a coat, sir. We have a car.’ There was a strong smell in the room but Valentine’s nose was blocked: peat perhaps, smoked fish?

  ‘Now? This is crazy,’ said Sly. ‘I’ve told you I’d nothing to do with James’s murder.’

  Valentine, suddenly tired, felt sorry for Duncan Sly, so he decided to cut it short, spell things out. ‘Mr Sly. We’re going down to St James’s. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s got nothing to do with his murder. We understand you were on Siberia Belt the night Harvey Ellis died. That’s what we want to talk about. For starters.’

  Sly stepped back again, and the single unshaded light bulb threw his face into relief. Valentine examined a large print of the Battle of Jutland on the wall. He thought what a defeat it must be, to end your life alone in a rotting houseboat, surrounded by the stench of tidal mud, when your dream was to be at sea.

  Hadden was below decks, opening drawers, cupboards. The uniformed PC hovered. ‘Can you get some clothes on, sir – we need to go,’ said Valentine.

  Sly stood his ground and Valentine wondered if they’d interrupted something. He walked to the sink. A box of firelighters stood on the shelf with a bottle of detergent, and the bowl had a black tidemark around it, a nail brush lying in the scurf.

  Valentine turned quickly and caught Sly with his hands over his face. He took them away quickly and, realizing they were wet, he looked at his fingertips as if the water were blood.

  ‘I didn’t kill Ellis,’ he said.

  Valentine treated him to a blank stare. ‘Fine. We’ll take your word for it, shall we?’

  Sly clenched then unclenched his fists.

  ‘It’s a tidy boat you’ve got alongside,’ said Valentine. ‘No more cockle‐picking with scum on the sands, right? A bit of dignity, freedom. But at a price.’ Valentine looked round the cabin, then up at the roof where a wooden patch had been nailed up to keep the old boat weather‐proof. ‘Perhaps it was worth killing for,’ he said. He put a cigarette between his teeth but left it unlit.

  Hadden reappeared with a clear plastic bag containing a pair of muddy boots. A single shake of the head. ‘No match on these. I’ll need an hour at least,’ he said.

  Frustrated, Valentine turned on Sly. ‘What happened – did you argue about money? Did Ellis want a share of yours? Did he want you to sort it? Because you could, couldn’t you – with James – your mate, the boss?’

  ‘That’s tosh. Jesus!’ But Sly didn’t move.

  Valentine took a deep breath, a collarbone creaking as his shoulders rose. ‘Just get dressed, sir. Now.’

  Valentine went to the hatchway and called in the second uniformed PC, who was standing at the landward end of the gangplank. ‘Accompany Mr Sly below please, Constable – he needs clothes, an overnight bag.’

  Sly reluctantly went down, a cat passing him on the steps coming up. It brushed itself against Valentine’s black slip‐ons, then made a figure of eight between his feet.

  By the time Sly was ready Hadden had six pairs of shoes and boots lined up on a plastic sheet. Two pairs had steel toecaps. But he still hadn’t got a match.

  ‘I take it you found some footprints,’ said Sly.

  ‘Just one,’ said Valentine. ‘Under the security van in the convoy of cars on Siberia Belt. But a deep one – because Harvey Ellis’s killer was loading his body into the pickup’s cab, and he was standing in a pool of Ellis’s blood which had melted the frozen soil.’ Valentine watched Sly’s eyes, looking for signs of fear or confusion. ‘Once the body was in the van my guess is it was pushed forward to the pine tree – but those footprints couldn’t dent the frozen ground. We’ve got the one print, though, and that’s all we’ll need. Right, Tom?’

  ‘If we’re lucky,’ said Hadden, unhappy with Valentine’s methods: the hectoring, the implied menace.

  ‘Why would I kill Harvey Ellis?’ said Sly.

  Valentine rolled the cigarette between his lips, tasting tobacco. ‘Because he wouldn’t do his job. And you worked out that he could do it just as well dead as alive.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Sly.

  ‘No?’ said Valentine. ‘Let’s go and hear what it was really like, shall we?’ He nodded at the PC: ‘I think we should cuff this one.’

  The officer put Sly’s muscled arms behind him and handcuffed his hands. Valentine was rewarded with a look of undiluted hatred.

  Valentine swayed slightly on his feet, enjoying the moment. They’d find the boots. And if they didn’t, they’d find blood. If Sly had struck the fatal blow then they’d find blood. Perhaps, he thought, there’d be time for the house on Greenland Street. The thought of the fan‐tan table made his pulse pick up so that he nearly missed it, nearly proved for the last time that his career was over. But there was something about that smell, the smokiness.

  He filled his lungs. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘The fire.’ He threw open the double hatch doors, clattered down the steps and ran to the smouldering wood and rubbish, stumbling through the mud, splashing through the stagnant salt water. The heavy snow had almost put it out, the flakes sizzling in the embers.

  He pulled out some wood, a branch, as Hadden joined him.

  ‘There,’ said Valentine. Under a piece of rotting timber they could see a piece of unburnt fabric, charred metal buttons, some cooked leather, as crisp as pork crackling, and an upturned tread of a boot.

  ‘Got the fucker,’ said Valentine.

  50

  Shaw unlocked the filing cabinet in the incident room and took out John Holt’s file. The wad of scene‐of‐crime pictures was comprehensive. Holt’s Corsa, interior, exter ior, boot. And a black‐and‐white shot of the cast taken from his shoes. Slip‐ons, like George’s, with a crisscross tread and diamond motif on the heel.

  ‘Distinctive…’ said Shaw, to himself.

  The building was silent, even the drunks in the cells were quiet.

  He pulled out the file on the footprint found under the security van by Tom Hadden’s team. A boot, the steel toecap wide, the sole a grid‐iron of raised squares, cracked and fissured with age, the imprint of the burnt‐in fern, like a signature. Whoever had worn that boot had stood in Ellis’s warm blood.

  He re‐read Holt’s statement. He’d been on an errand that night, to his daughter’s house, to cut back the magnolia tree that was knocking on his granddaughter’s window. Shaw had seen him finishing the job when they’d called at Blickling Cottages: he recalled the gardener’s jacket, the gloves and the heavy‐duty boots. Holt had said the police had just given his kit back from the Corsa.

  Shaw went back to Holt’s file. Each car had been given a thorough forensic examination and each had a detailed inventory. Shaw read the one for the Corsa. The list for the inside of the car was predictable – mints in a tin, de‐icer, an A–Z of Britain, a directory of builders’ merchants in north Norfolk, two old copies of the Lynn News, both open and folded at local football reports. On the back seat a pot plant, a hyacinth, listed simply as ‘gift’. A hatchback, so the list moved on to the large boot. A length of synthetic rope, a child’s kite with a Mickey Mouse design, and a holdall, with zip, containing ‘gardening kit’.

  He rang Tom Hadden. The CSI senior investigator answered on the second ring. Breathless, the rhythmic thud of a heavy bag.

  ‘Sorry, Tom – you can talk?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a fire out near the houseboats, we’re just checking it out. Some clothing, a shoe perhaps.’

  ‘Tom. The night the convoy got stuck in the snow. Who took the inventories for the vehicles – specifically Holt’s Corsa?’

  Hadden left a beat. ‘Er. Phil Timms. One of my best. Why?’

 
‘I need to ask him a question – can I ring?’

  Hadden gave him a number. Shaw rang. He let it ring ten times, waited a minute, rang again. Third ring it picked up.

  ‘Hello? Phil Timms.’

  The voice was thick, the acoustics muffled, Shaw guessed by bedclothes.

  ‘It’s DI Shaw, Phil. Look, I’m sorry, Tom gave me the number.’

  ‘No, no problem. Go on.’

  In the background Shaw heard heavy footsteps, a door opening to admit the razor‐edged pitch of a child’s scream, then slamming.

  ‘You did the inventories on the car contents at Ingol Beach?’

  ‘Right,’ said Timms. ‘That was me.’

  ‘John Holt’s Corsa. You list a holdall containing gardening kit. What constitutes gardening kit, Phil?’

  There was a long silence, and Shaw imagined him sitting on the side of the bed, trying to focus, trying to recall the details of a night a week earlier that seemed like a career ago.

  ‘Trowel, hand fork, secateurs – you know, junk really. Oh, gloves, gardening gloves.’

  Shaw willed himself not to interrupt.

  ‘A torch – heavy‐duty torch. Sorry, sir, I should have listed them. It was just we were looking for bloodstains, anything with blood… and there was nothing like that, nothing.’

  First mistake, thought Shaw. He shouldn’t have been looking for anything. Looking for anything was a good way to miss something.

  ‘And boots,’ said Timms, the voice suddenly dead. ‘Steel toecaps, battered. Yup – that’s it, right – boots. I didn’t think. Sorry.’

  Shaw winced. The English language’s most overrated word.

  ‘OK. Can you ring Tom – tell him what happened? They’re on a job right now at Boal Quay. When they can, they need to get over to Old Hunstanton, Blickling Cottages. DS Valentine knows the address – he’s with Tom. If these boots haven’t been destroyed then that’s where they are, either there or the town address in Devil’s Alley, but we’ll start with Blickling Cottages. OK – got that?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Tell them I’ll get a warrant for Holt’s properties. I’ll meet them there.’

  He rang the number for the night‐duty judge. Mr Justice Lamprey. A big house, a hobby farm, out on the silt fens at Wiggenhall St Germans, where the river cut under the walls of the old church. He’d be ready in an hour. Shaw needed to bring the paperwork for signature.

  Shaw took out his mobile and swore. He’d left it off in his pocket, and when he turned it on it buzzed like a bluebottle. He scrolled to his inbox. He’d missed a message, an hour earlier.

  STOP

  Just that. He rang the number back and it rang just once before it picked up.

  ‘’Ello.’ The voice was loud, stressed.

  ‘Hi. This is DI Peter Shaw, King’s Lynn CID. You rang me an hour ago – I’m sorry, I don’t understand the text you sent.’

  ‘It’s not my phone,’ said the voice, then he heard a series of bangs as if it had been dropped, then the voice again, out of breath. ‘It’s Giddy’s.’

  Giddy Poynter’s phone? ‘Where is he?’ asked Shaw. ‘In the bathroom, but I can’t get the door open.’

  ‘You’re a friend?’

  ‘Not really. Flat next door. Did you say police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We need you. Some bastard’s put glue in the locks on the front doors. I’ve just had the carpenter round to let us out – twenty‐eight fucking quid. We looked at Giddy’s and they’d done his too – so the chippy cut his lock out.’

  ‘OK – look, I’ll pop round. Just stay put. Wallflower House, right?’

  Shaw ran down the back stairs and out into the yard to the Land Rover. Wallflower House was on the London Road, a fifties block on blighted ground beyond the city gate; a two‐minute drive.

  Frederick Armitage, the neighbour, introduced himself. He was wearing a jumper and running pants. He’d be sixty, wiry, the hair a wodge set at an angle, as if he’d just taken his head off the pillow.

  ‘That’s mine,’ he said, nodding at an open door. ‘This is Giddy’s.’ The door had been thrown back. The flat had a single living room in which Giddy had put one chair – wicker, with a cushion. A footstool lay on its side by the wall. There was nothing else except a TV, flat‐screen, a pile of DVD games and a chessboard set on a tea crate.

  Armitage took him down a short corridor to the bathroom door.

  ‘Giddy?’ said Shaw, shaking the handle. He turned to Armitage. ‘What makes you think he’s in there?’

  ‘We heard him come in. At midnight. It’s always midnight. Then out at three, back at five normally. He fishes at night, down off the Millfleet. Then out at six. That’s Giddy. Clockwork.’

  Shaw looked at his watch. He didn’t have the time for this.

  He thudded his fist on the chipboard. ‘Giddy!’

  ‘He’s not deaf,’ said Armitage, stepping back.

  Shaw put his shoulder to the door and the hinges popped, screws lifting almost effortlessly clear of rotten wood. A toilet, the lid down, a washbasin, spotless, a shower unit with the curtain pulled back to reveal tiles in alternate black and white. A window stood open, a fire‐escape beyond. He hesitated, just one second, before checking the bath. Spotless, empty.

  ‘Nowt,’ said Armitage.

  As they walked back into the main room the front door creaked, a second hinge working its way loose, so that it began to swing into the room, revealing the hooks on the back.

  Giddy was hanging from one of them, a piece of electrical flex round his neck. His toes, in socks, brushed the lino as the wood groaned with the weight. His face was distorted by the broken neck, one side compressed into a series of folds. The dove‐grey eyes were open.

  ‘Giddy,’ said Shaw, moving forward, knowing it was too late. ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said, pulling up the discarded footstool and lifting Giddy’s body clear of the hook, then laying it down. It was as light as a child’s, and Shaw couldn’t stop himself pressing it briefly to his chest. He knew it was pointless but he checked the pulse at the neck anyway, massaged the heart. The arms were still flexible, the joints free. He’d been dead an hour, maybe less.

  Armitage stood his ground, beginning to shiver in his bare feet. ‘The wife said he’d do it one day,’ he said. ‘I better tell her.’

  But had it been suicide? Had a random act of vandalism pushed him over the edge? Had Giddy locked the bathroom door to keep someone out? Shaw searched the flat looking for a note. Giddy was convinced he was being followed. Had someone seen him talking to Shaw in the churchyard at St Martin’s? But he’d said he’d been followed before that. Or had an imaginary enemy become a real one?

  Shaw didn’t step into the bedroom, but viewed it from the threshold, the interior lit by the hall light. A single bed, and no other furniture; but this had been Giddy’s special place: the walls were painted sea green up to head height, sky blue above, the horizon encircling the bed, the two windows open. But Giddy’s glory was the ceiling: night‐black, scattered across it hundreds, thousands of children’s homework stars in silver. Constellations had jostled over Giddy’s head.

  He heard an ambulance siren and walked back into the living room. Now that Giddy’s body was on the floor Shaw could see the letterbox. There was something caught in the flap. He walked to it, knelt down and felt his skin goosebump. He slipped on a glove and pulled it clear. It was a rat’s tail.

  51

  By the time Shaw reached Blickling Cottages with the search warrant one of Tom Hadden’s CSI units was parked in the lane by the sports field. The windows of the house were as dark as sockets in a skull. Shaw got out, the snow creaking underfoot. But the wind from the sea had lost its polar edge. The snowflakes were fat, spidery, falling lazily like leaves.

  He’d left the duty DI from St James’s at the scene of Giddy Poynter’s untimely death. He hadn’t had time to fill him in on the background to the case but he urged caution: it might look like a lonely and desperate suic
ide but the rat’s tail had unnerved Shaw. It was too pointed a reminder of Giddy’s childhood nightmare. Had Giddy been deliberately driven to his death? He remembered Giddy’s fear, the figure stalking him from the shadows. Shaw left as quickly as he could, promising a witness statement when he got back to the station. Giddy’s corpse had left at the same time, a life reduced to an anonymous black body‐bag, shuffled into the back of a silent ambulance.

  Headlights swept across the football field and settled on the front of Blickling Cottages. Valentine’s Mazda rumbled along the lane at a steady 10 mph. His overcoat flapped at his knees when he got out but he didn’t seem unhappy to be in the fresh air. He smoked a cigarette with enthusiasm, his shoulders hunched forward, his face turned away from the snow so that large flakes were left in his thin hair.

  ‘There was a fire by the boat,’ he said, looking Shaw in the eyes. ‘Tom got to it before it was cold. Snowfall had saved a bit. Material – looks like a set of blue overalls. They’re stained. Tom says it’s definitely blood. In fact the material’s soaked in it, and a belt. He’s doing a type test now. He’s got the stuff back at the Ark. And we can link Sly with the fire – there’s ash in the boat, round the sink, on his hands.’

  ‘Boots?’

  ‘In the fire too. But there’s not enough to get a footprint.’

  ‘What’s he said?’ asked Shaw, trying to keep the inquiry balanced, trying not to let it turn into a lynching.

  ‘Fuck all, really.’ Valentine watched the smoke drain out of his nostrils into the night air. ‘Denies killing Ellis. He wants his lawyer.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘That they didn’t go out on the sands on Monday – tides were wrong. Spent most of the day on his fishing boat down on the Boal, overhauling the engine. Says he didn’t see anyone. Says he doesn’t do friends. Bitter man, seems to think life owes him something.’

  ‘Might he kill to get it?’