Death Wore White

They stood on the steps of St James’s — Shaw and Valentine — feeling the frost on the air. A bus went past, empty, the condensation on the windows cleared in circles by passengers already safely at home. It had been a good day: they knew why the convoy had been diverted down Siberia Belt. They knew how James Baker?Sibley’s plan had been foiled, and they knew why he’d died. HM Coastguard had located the Skolt and towed it back to Boal Quay, where it was being examined by one of Tom Hadden’s CSI units. But Hadden had brought them up to speed quickly on the most promising development — a gash on the port side where the trawler had been in collision with a smaller vessel. The paint was white. Yacht white.

A good day. And so Shaw couldn’t deny it to himself any more: as a partner George Valentine had proved to be worth his weight in filter tips. He’d already contributed more than his fair share to the investigation. He was a good copper, inspired even, when the moment was right. Shaw wasn’t the textbook pedant everyone liked to paint him as, but he knew his limitations, so having Valentine around made him feel a lot more confident about solving the final mystery: finding Harvey Ellis’s killer.

But the Tessier case stood between them. Shaw might admire Valentine’s unpredictable skills, he might feel sorry implicitly. Did he have a right to let a decade?old question mark hang over the DS’s career? No. But it did. And it hung over his father as well. The Tessier case was unfinished business: worse — business they kept pretending didn’t exist. The elephant in the locked room. He knew Valentine’s bitterness went back to those twelve lost years of his career. Shaw couldn’t give them back. But he could do something about the Tessier case.

Shaw stamped his feet on the icy steps. ‘I need the file on Jonathan Tessier,’ he said.

Valentine looked at his black slip?ons, his toes beginning to go numb in the cold.

‘Why?’

‘I just do, George. By the morning. And while we are on the topic, I think you might have talked to me about taking it out. It’s my father’s reputation too, not just yours.’

‘Jack’s dead.’ Valentine bit his lip, looked at his car keys in his hand, the gold on the green dice catching the electric light. He forced himself not to apologize for saying it. ‘I don’t get an explanation, then?’ he said. ‘I just hand over the file. My career, my life, but you take the decisions.’ He spat in the snow. ‘You’re an arrogant fucker, sir.’ Valentine had been wanting to say that since they’d been put together as partners. He wondered if Peter Shaw had even thought what it was like for him, taking orders from his former partner’s son; a snotty?nosed kid when he was first made up to DI.

neither of us is going to have anything more to do with the case. It goes to Warren: he decides. That’s the right thing to do. And that’s what’s gonna happen. You like it — great. You don’t. Well, then fuck you. George.’

Valentine shook his head. Did Shaw really think anyone at St James’s was going to reopen this case? They buried it once. They were the last people likely to dig it up. That’s how the top brass kept their uniforms and shiny buttons: by making sure someone else always carried the proverbial can.

‘I want the file back, George. This isn’t the end of it — but I need the file back.’

Valentine looked around.

‘By morning.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Valentine, putting a cigarette on his bottom lip.

Shaw stepped inside his personal space, close enough to smell the nicotine engrained in the raincoat. ‘I want the case reopened,’ he said, his voice vibrating like a reed. ‘Just like you do. But we’re the last people who can do that. You and I have an interest in this case which makes anything we do suspect in front of a jury. It’s all going up the line. I want you to understand that. For us, the case is over.’

Valentine stuck his head forward, the weak chin grey with stubble. ‘This case will never be over,’ he said.

5

Friday, 13 February

Andrew John Lufkin was arrested at 6.15 a.m. in his bedsit above Josie’s International Hair Salon — a lock?up on the Greyfriars Estate. The backstairs entrance reeked of singed hair and cheap scent. DS Valentine stood back as they took out the door with a shoulder ram, the splinters flying as they pushed through into the bedroom. Lufkin was naked, on top of the sheets, the room heavy with the smell of a paraffin heater and the salty tang of sex.

Shaw couldn’t help thinking he looked a lot cleaner than he’d expected. His skin was slightly pink, shiny, and tussling with the fumes from the heater was something else: pine, perhaps? Lufkin asked to see the warrant, not bothering to pull the sheet across his genitals. The girl was in the bathroom. She came out wrapped in a towel, a cigarette unlit between red glossed lips.

‘Suzi,’ said Valentine, recognizing one of the women who worked the docks, based in a sauna off the quayside. That was the smell, cedar wood, splashed with scented water. ‘I’d get your stuff; this one’s done.’

‘He’s paid up ’til lunchtime,’ she said, genuinely affronted on behalf of her client’s rights.

They ran her back into town in a squad car while Lufkin dressed.

All the clothes in the flat above the shop were new — brand new, newer. Boxer shorts, socks and T?shirts still held the creases from the shop packaging which filled the kitchen bin. M amp;S receipts, also in the bin, put the date of purchase as the previous Tuesday. Three pairs of jeans — identical — and a waterproof jacket hung in the wardrobe. They may have been worn once. But Lufkin’s watch had a green army?style corded strap, a dark stain by the buckle. A single CSI officer had accompanied them on the raid. The watch strap was bagged and dispatched to the Ark with him.

‘What’s this about?’ said Lufkin, pulling a T?shirt over his head. But it wasn’t a question, just part of a ritual.

‘Let’s save the questions for the station, Mr Lufkin,’ said Shaw. Tom Hadden’s early morning report from the Skolt was encouraging. The mark on her port side was an exact match for the gash on the Hydra’s starboard side. The paint samples matched, too. And there were plenty of fingerprints on the trawler. Shaw had little doubt he’d be able to put Andy Lufkin on board the Skolt the night James Baker?Sibley died.

Lufkin brushed back the blond curly hair, then covered it with the hood of his duffle coat.

DC Twine was trawling through the drawers in a bedside table; a model of concentration, methodically sliding his gloved hand around each drawer, then slipping it out to check underneath.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Valentine. He picked up a cardboard box on a windowsill and from it pulled out the plastic wrapping around a new mobile phone. ‘Your phone?’

Lufkin laughed. ‘It’s not just a phone, Grandad.’ He licked his lips. ‘TV, radio, video messaging. It’s the dog’s bollocks.’

Valentine looked around the flat and tapped his foot against the cheap electric fire sitting in the hearth. ‘You can tell me some more about it down at the nick. Like how you paid for it.’

Lufkin took a packet of gum from the bathroom and chewed loudly as they completed the search. He gave them the key for a drawer in a cheap desk set under the window, inside of which they found a passport, an HGV licence and a certificate of registration with the Trawler Association.

‘Where were you Monday night?’ asked Shaw.

‘Poker. Regular thing — with the Serbs. They can play all right, but I still won. I always win — but they come back for more. Stupid fuckers.’

‘Excellent,’ said Shaw. ‘Perhaps it’s your lucky week. But then again, perhaps it isn’t.’

‘There’s something here, sir,’ said Twine. He was flat on his back, searching under the bed. He rolled clear, a metal canister in either hand.

Each was the shape of a pencil box but the wrong size: larger, almost a shoe?box, in brushed aluminium, with several bands of metal added for strength. Shaw had never seen objects like them.