‘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
Askit’s Agricultural Engineers
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.
‘But that isn’t all you’ve found out, is it?’ said Valentine.
Shaw closed his eyes. ‘No.’ He edged closer to the gas heater, turning one of the limpet shells in his pocket. ‘I checked Askit’s out through the files. Then I cross?checked the company with all criminal records online for West Norfolk from 1995. And I got something — a match. A witness at a juvenile court case in the summer of ninety?six. Timber Woods dug me out the file.’
Valentine didn’t say anything.
‘There was a child,
‘Quite. Someone suggested she might like to forget the idea. She declined. So they thought they’d teach her a lesson, by teaching Giddy one.’
‘What’d they do?’ asked Valentine, licking his bottom lip.
‘They took him. A Sunday night, after dark. He was out playing on the landing so they bundled him down the stairwell. Four young thugs put him in one of the bins under the flats, one of the metal ones, and tied a bit of rope round the handle so he couldn’t force it open from the inside.’
Shaw leant back, trying to remember that this had really happened, that it wasn’t some sick plot from a TV thriller.
‘But he got out?’ said Valentine. ‘He must have got out.’ When they’d picked up Bobby Mosse that night in July 1997 they’d checked back through the files; reviewed every serious crime on the estate for the last eighteen months. Standard murder inquiry procedure. Valentine didn’t remember anything about Giddy Poynter.
‘Yeah, he got out. Eventually. Before they put him in the bin they showed him what was inside it.’ Shaw looked at the bottom of his empty pint glass. ‘Rats. Half a dozen. That’s what counted as a joke on the Westmead.’
‘How long was he in there?’ said Valentine. The drink had wiped some of the anger and tension out of the line of his mouth, the narrowed eyes.
‘The council emptied the bins at seven the next morning. The kid was traumatized, couldn’t speak. He needed help, probably still does. But it was just another
‘So how’d they catch them?’
‘The kids wore gloves but one of them had a hole in the finger. There was enough to get a match — that was…’ He checked his notebook. ‘Kid by the name of Cosyns. He was on file, even then. Another two stepped up for it when he was charged. Proud of it in fact. Bunch of little heroes.’
‘But just the three?’
‘Yeah. They never got the fourth.’ They both thought about that for a second, thinking the same thing, that it could have been Bobby Mosse. ‘The three got suspended sentences and community service. Nothing custodial. Know why?’
Valentine jiggled his empty pint.
‘Employer took the stand, said they’d all got decent jobs, prospects, and if they got sent down he’d have to let them go.’
‘Askit’s,’ said Valentine.
‘Askit’s. A year later we’ve got forensic evidence linking Askit’s to Jonathan Tessier’s murder. And Tessier’s body’s found in the underground car park, a hundred yards from the waste bins where Giddy Poynter spent the worst night of his life.’ It was the kind of coincidence, thought Shaw, that didn’t happen in the real world.
‘Is there a link to Bobby Mosse?’ asked Valentine. ‘Other than the fact Mosse lived on the Westmead — none.’ He watched as Valentine’s hooded eyes closed. He knew what his DS was thinking; that Warren would use
They heard the last bell ring and went back to the party. Half an hour later they were walking through deserted backstreets towards the car park at St James’s. Opposite the police station was a park, stone griffins on each gatepost, the Gothic ironwork hung with icicles. Inside a necklace of white lamps led through the darkness across unblemished snow. On a bench a tramp slept, the snow a blanket.
Shaw checked his mobile. He had one message — Justina Kazimierz. The US Wildlife laboratory in Ashland, Oregon had identified the venom she’d extracted from Terry Brand’s arm. A spider: the Indian white jacket. Very rare, very nasty. On the black market they’d fetch $3,000 each.
‘Justina,’ he said to Valentine. ‘She says our man on Ingol Beach was bitten by a spider. Rare, valuable, fatal bite.’
‘Terrific,’ said Valentine. British household spiders made him jump. Anything bigger and he’d be running before he knew he was scared.
Shaw looked through the park gates. ‘I used to meet Dad here sometimes in the summer holidays,’ he said. ‘A half?hour lunch hour. I’d walk in from the North End, wait for him down by the pond. I had a sailboat. It was the one place he’d go without the radio — here and the beach. I’d bring a football, or a Frisbee, like we were by the sea. He’d sit and describe the view from Gun Hill, as if he was there. He’d bring chips. A can of beer. I’d play in the
