Death Wore White

by Jim Kelly

  Valentine pinched out his cigarette and put it in his raincoat pocket. ‘Yup.’ He smiled, holding Shaw’s gaze. ‘What’s the hurry here?’

  ‘Holt had a spare pair of boots in the back of the Corsa out on Siberia Belt. Steel toecaps. We need to find them – even if it’s to rule him out. Surveillance unit says Holt’s here – but he ran the wife home earlier to town. I’ve got a unit down there too.’

  Shaw told the CSI team to wait while they woke the family. Valentine knocked, the double rap bouncing back off the distant white pavilion beyond the football pitch: snow clung to its cupola domes, but the roof was clear, icicles hanging along the gutter.

  In the cottage lights came on, one by one, voices in the hallway before the letterbox opened.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘DI Shaw, Mr Holt. And DS Valentine.’

  Shaw shone his torch on the newly painted door. They could see the scratch marks now, despite the layers of paint; a perfect replica of the symbol etched into the side of the car. Holt opened the door on a chain. ‘It’s four o’clock in the morning.’

  ‘Sir. I have a warrant for these premises. Can you open the door?’

  Holt had a camp bed by an open fire where logs burned, the winter‐red flames reflected in ceramic tiles. Upstairs they could hear a child asking sleepy questions. Valentine walked quickly to the fire and used a poker to pick amongst the ashes.

  ‘Stay in bed,’ called Holt up the stairs. ‘Sasha’s upset,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘So I said I’d stay over. She likes that.’

  The CSI team bustled, collecting shoes from the hallway.

  ‘They’re going to have to go upstairs, Mr Holt.’ Holt’s shoulder slumped and he sat on the edge of the camp bed, his pyjamas damp where he’d been sweating in the night.

  ‘What are they looking for?’ he said, adjusting the glasses. The eyes, magnified, were bloodshot and rheumy.

  A spark flew from the fire. They both watched it turn to ash on the carpet.

  ‘Mr Holt,’ said Shaw. ‘You and I and DS Valentine are going back to St James’s. We’ve been talking to Izzy Dereham. Your niece. So you’ll need an overnight bag.’

  Holt’s face crumpled and he rested it in his hands. ‘Can I get dressed? I’d like to walk for a while, could we? I’d like the air before we go to the station.’

  ‘All right,’ said Shaw. ‘Five minutes, Mr Holt – no more.’

  They heard running steps on the stairs and Sasha burst in. She was laughing, but she stopped when she saw her grandfather’s face. Michelle Holt followed her in, and gathering her hand took her to sit in front of the open fire.

  She looked at her father. ‘Dad?’ she said, the tears already flowing.

  Holt stood. ‘I need to dress. I’d like some privacy. Take Sasha to bed, Micky. Now.’ She lifted his granddaughter up and carried her out. Shaw and Valentine waited out in the snow.

  ‘George, do me a favour,’ said Shaw. ‘That sports pavilion.’ He nodded across the snowy football field.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Why’s there no snow on the roof?’

  Valentine shrugged. ‘It fell off?’

  ‘Too shallow. Snow’s still stuck to the domes. Just check it out. Force the door if you have to.’

  Valentine set out on what he clearly judged to be a fool’s errand, his shoulders hunched against the damp.

  Shaw went back to the Mazda and used the radio to check with the murder room. Hadden had phoned through some preliminary results from Gallow Marsh – no joy on Izzy Dereham’s boots, but her teeth matched the apple from Ellis’s pick‐up exactly.

  Holt appeared wearing a full‐length beltless overcoat, which looked new. They trudged down the cleared path to the lane and through the gateway into the playing fields. The snow was a foot deep, reflecting the cold light of the stars.

  ‘The wood’s a good walk,’ said Holt, setting off uphill towards a line of dark, leafless trees. The stars overhead brightened as they got away from the CSI lights. Holt walked stiffly, his breath coming hard.

  ‘We know what happened that night on Siberia Belt, Mr Holt,’ said Shaw, his footsteps crunching now on the twigs beneath the trees. ‘Izzy Dereham has made a full statement. Sly organized it – recruited you and Harvey Ellis. You knew each other through football, right? You run the club here – and Harvey Ellis played for the TA team. Did he bring his kids? Did they play with Sasha? And Duncan Sly runs the works team for Shark Tooth – Wootton Marsh. It’s the same league – I checked.’

  Holt didn’t say he was wrong. The starlight lit the path ahead like crazy paving. ‘And then – the final piece of the jigsaw – you recruited Izzy.’

  Holt didn’t look back but Shaw heard what he said, almost a whisper. ‘She’ll never forgive me.’

  ‘James Baker‐Sibley was a rich man, and one who wanted his daughter at any cost. What did he promise you?’

  ‘He cleared the debts,’ said Holt, turning. ‘An interest‐free loan. But it was a loan. And I’ll pay it back.’

  ‘Who to?’

  The old man shrugged.

  ‘The real question,’ said Shaw, ‘is who killed Harvey Ellis. You were down there with him. He did lose his nerve, didn’t he? And you were all smart enough to realize that he could fulfil his part of the bargain just as well dead as alive. The body would be found – but so what? There was nothing to link him to you, to any of you.’

  ‘When I left him, Harvey was alive.’ Holt licked his lips. ‘We saw him waving as we came out of Gallow Marsh. But I’d told him it was dangerous – what he was doing, what he planned to do.’

  Holt walked on and within a few hundred yards they emerged on the crest of the hill. Over by Blickling Cottages members of the CSI team were in the upstairs rooms, the curtains pulled back.

  ‘What was he going to do that was dangerous?’ said Shaw, recognizing that he’d been invited to ask the question. He reminded himself that Holt and Izzy were family. Sly was the outsider, the fixer, the boss’s man.

  Holt spat, took an extra breath. ‘Some people are greedy once they get their snouts in the trough. Harvey was a fool. His children made him a fool, anyway, and they’re all he cared about. He knew there was money to spare, so he said he was going to screw them for it.’

  Shaw watched the last of the snowflakes falling, outsized and feathery. There was a wind up on the hill and it promised rain.

  Holt laughed, adjusting the spectacles. ‘He said he’d put it to Duncan Sly, that he hadn’t realized the risks. He wanted ten thousand – double what we’d agreed. I left him about four thirty. He’d been in a mess all day, kept saying he was putting his arse on the line, whatever Duncan said, and he deserved a bigger cut. Harvey said if he got caught he’d be inside when Jake died. That’s what really freaked him out. That was the big risk, the only one he really cared about. But if he was taking it, he wanted paying for it.’

  Holt’s top lip curled back to show the ill‐fitting dentures, the first time Shaw had seen the old man sneer. ‘If Duncan didn’t promise him more he said he’d reverse back, take the sign down, stop her coming up the lane.’

  Shaw took in a breath of the air, damp now. To the east dawn was bleeding into the sky.

  ‘I saw Duncan coming along Siberia Belt,’ said Holt. ‘He’d walked up from the far end. He had his car down there ready to put out the no‐entry sign. I didn’t want to be there for that. Harvey was a weak man, I reckoned he’d toe the line. Duncan could switch the spark plugs. So I left them to it.’

  Shaw imagined Ellis and Sly in the cab of the pick‐up, dusk gathering, the toolbox between them, the young father delivering his threat.

  Shaw touched the dressing on his eye, the nerves behind suddenly jumping, making his jaw tremble.

  Holt stood, shaking his head. ‘Harvey didn’t deserve to die like that. He loved that kid, all of his kids, and Jake most of all.’ He gazed out over the field. ‘He used to bring them to matches – they’re good kids, they deserve a fathe
r.’

  He looked back at Blickling Cottages. ‘I couldn’t have done that, lived with that kid’s illness, knowing he was going to die, and not hating him for it.’

  The rain was falling now, sheets of water like net curtains. They walked through the slush on the field. In the garden the carapace of snow had shrunk back, the dead stems of Brussels sprouts stuck through, the line of bricks which marked the path, a border of globe artichokes, the blackened fern‐like leaves arching out of the snow and back to earth.

  John Holt trudged to the door not looking back. Hadden stood on the step, gave Shaw a quick shake of the head – no boots.

  Shaw stood his ground in the rain. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said to Holt.

  Holt climbed the last two steps an old man. Shaw’s mobile beeped. A text from Valentine.

  BLOOD AB

  Shaw smiled. They had Sly now: they’d get a DNA match as well. He had the victim’s blood on his clothes. Ellis had threatened everything Sly wanted – his own boat, his own life, and freedom from a low‐life existence out on the sands. He might have been an honest man, an honourable man, but he’d kill to stay one. However, something about Holt’s story made Shaw hesitate. He’d told so many lies, and told them so well, that Shaw was reluctant to believe he’d finally been able to spit out the truth.

  52

  Shaw walked Holt to the squad car. Through the rough tweed material Shaw could feel the warmth within, the old man’s body over‐heated by the exertion of the walk in the woods. Rain fell from clouds the colour of gunshot, behind which the day was breaking. Each drop left a miniature crater in the soft snow. The old man reached the car, and leant on the door for a second look back at Blickling Cottages, as if for the last time.

  ‘Wait,’ said Shaw to the police driver. ‘I’ll get George – we’ll follow you back.’

  He checked his watch. Valentine had set out to check the sports pavilion half an hour ago. Where was he?

  Shaw padded through the slush of the football pitch, thudding up the wooden steps to the veranda. In the silence he could hear his heart beating.

  ‘George! George!’ An echo bounced back off the hillside and some rooks clattered out of the winter branches.

  But otherwise, silence. Shaw cupped his good eye against the window but could see only condensation within. The central double wooden doors were padlocked – the locks new, brass, and shiny. He noticed that one window had recently been replaced, the putty still white and unweathered.

  ‘George!’ He looked around. Something about the condensation on the glass made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. He followed the veranda around to the side and found a single reinforced metal door with a padlock and Yale. The door had been forced. As he stood before it a security light came on over his head and he felt the sudden surge of heat. A sign said: SECURITY BY RYNE GROUP. But the door was open by an inch. He pushed hard, so that it thudded back against the wooden wall.

  ‘George!’

  Still nothing. He flicked a light switch but nothing happened. It was a kitchen, a utility sink, a hot‐water urn, a row of mahogany‐brown teapots. And a hatch, closed, but on the serving surface a set of plastic tubs and a measuring spoon, some heavy‐duty mechanics’ gloves and several plastic dishes. He picked up one of the tubs and prised off the lid. Within, mealworms wriggled against each other, soft, translucent, the colour of pale butter. Overhead he could hear rainwater glugging in a drainpipe.

  He crossed to the next door and pushed it open. The heat surrounded him like a duvet. A soft, wet heat. Despite the dawn the room was in shadow, and he stood motionless, letting his eyes change to night vision. Somewhere an electric motor hummed and a light came on – the light he’d seen that first day he’d come to Blickling Cottages – and he saw that it was on the control panel of a portable humidifier under the window. The open door behind him let in the cold air and he heard a thermostat clicking as an electric heater whirred on. Over his head fly‐catchers hung from the wooden rafters, little sticky strips turning.

  He searched in his jacket for a torch then let the light flood across the floor. It was covered with a cracked lino in black and white, like a chessboard. There were two large glass‐topped wooden seed boxes on the floor – from a greenhouse perhaps, each about ten foot by four foot. George Valentine lay sprawled across one, the glass smashed, his face down amongst the splinters of wood.

  Shaw ran to him, turned his body over, then lit his face. He stepped back, almost falling, unable to control his leg muscles. On the bare skin of Valentine’s neck a spider the size of a small plate flexed one of its fur‐lined legs. Its body was black and plump except for what looked like a circlet of white fur, like a jacket. Mandibles shivered where the mouth must have been, cleaning, extending, then folding away. The rest of the smashed box appeared empty, except for shards of glass and splinters of wood. Forcing himself to kneel again Shaw used his torch to brush the spider aside. It dropped lazily, with an audible thud, to the lino, and began to walk slowly towards the shadows by a raised stage, its movements arthritic, jerky. It paused in one of the white squares of the lino, then reared, two legs probing the light which fell through the window.

  ‘Indian white jacket,’ said Shaw.

  ‘I fucked up,’ said Valentine, his voice a rasp.

  Shaw switched the torch back to his face. Valentine’s skin was white, bloodless. ‘Don’t move, George. Keep still.’ He examined Valentine’s neck – which seemed unblemished. But then he saw his hand, palm up, and within it the tell‐tale double incision of the bite. Clear pustules were already erupting in a ring around the wound.

  ‘I bent down to look in the cabinet,’ said Valentine, his eyes moving in and out of focus. Blood dripped from a wound on his forehead where he’d crashed into the glass.

  ‘Spiders.’ He splayed a hand, indicating the size. ‘I jumped. Tripped, fell into the other one. More spiders.’ He closed his eyes and a thin line of saliva spilt from his mouth.

  Shaw flicked his mobile open and stood. The retreating spider had switched direction and was now ambling back towards the door and the hatch by the kitchen. Shaw was on hold for the St James’s control room. Impatient, he counted out loud. ‘One, two, three, four…’

  Then he stopped. He’d let his torchlight fall on the hatch: it was covered in spiders, sensing their food beyond the flimsy wood on the kitchen counter, a dozen, maybe twenty, and as the light fell on them they all moved at once, a single ripple of flexing legs.

  ‘Control room,’ said a familiar voice, but Shaw couldn’t speak.

  53

  Valentine’s pulse was a fading tattoo, so Shaw didn’t wait for the ambulance. He carried him, unconscious now, across the sports field, shocked by how light he was; just a sack of fragile bones. He used one of John Holt’s kitchen knives to open the wound, squeezing out as much of the clear poison as he could, then bandaging the hand with a tea towel. The ambulance finally appeared out of the teeming rain, and he carried him into the back. Valentine’s face was dotted with sweat so Shaw helped the paramedic get his raincoat off. Grasping the collar, he’d been oddly moved to glimpse a name tag inside: G. VALENTINE – like a child’s.

  He’d left a PC guarding the pavilion, the doors locked, with orders to leave it that way until a unit arrived from Linton Zoo, near Cambridge.

  John Holt was waiting in the squad car.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said.

  Shaw wasn’t in the mood to soften any of the blows. ‘He’s been bitten by one of your spiders. He may live,’ he said. ‘He may die.’

  Holt buried his head in his hands. ‘Tell me,’ said Shaw. ‘Tell me quickly.’

  ‘They’re Indian white jackets – fifteen hundred pounds a time. It was Terry Brand’s last consignment. Izzy found the canisters floating down by the oyster beds that Monday night. She didn’t tell Narr and Lufkin – she thought we could take a fair share for a change and they wouldn’t be any wiser. So we brought the canisters up here. I did a bit of work on the pav
ilion. I told the security firm I’d check out the building – so they gave me the keys. I found a dealer in Manchester. No questions asked. I just needed to get them to him,’ said Holt. ‘I’m sorry, we –’

  ‘Save it,’ said Shaw, cutting him off.

  He watched them drive Holt down towards the coast road, and he noticed the old man didn’t look back. One of the murder squad had brought Shaw’s Land Rover out to the scene and he unlocked it now, slid into the seat, turned on the heating and closed his eyes. From here he could see the sea in the light of dawn, brown, like over‐brewed milky tea. It was a sepia world, sand brown and salt white.

  He should get back to St James’s. He’d have to make a report to DCS Warren. He put both hands over his face and rubbed the skin. What would he feel if George Valentine died? That’s what Lena would want to know. At the moment he felt nothing. Shock? Maybe. Loss.

  He had to get a grip. Duncan Sly would be ready for an interview soon at St James’s. They had the forensics, his blood‐soaked clothes were damning enough without the evidence of Izzy Dereham and John Holt. It would be tough; but he couldn’t see how Sly could escape a murder charge. And yet…

  He couldn’t forget that pathetic name tag on Valentine’s collar. It was as if the jerky handwritten capital letters were the only way the world could know who he was. He let that idea just float; an image swimming in and out of focus. Memory, like an escalator, took him down into the basement of the past. He was back on Siberia Belt that Monday evening, leaning into John Holt’s car to check his pulse just as he’d checked George Valentine’s. There was a name tag on the collar of the heavy blue jacket Holt had been wearing: RFA.

  He jerked back into the present, rubbing cold hands into his face, shivering. RFA. Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Not anyone’s initials at all. Why hadn’t that jarred at the time? He pressed knuckles into his eye sockets. Then the first thing he saw when he opened them was the picture Sasha Holt had given him, stuck to the passenger side of the dashboard: sycamore helicopters rising from a blazing fire. He touched it with a finger where the flames were red, and felt his blood surge, his heartbeat racing.