23
The Red House had been the CID’s out-of-office office for nearly thirty years. Its principal original attraction had been the rarity of its public telephone in the corridor leading to the loos — a vital link with the outside world before the advent of the mobile phone. Now it had no attractions at all. There were four drab rooms, a tiny bar in a lobby by the door. Its local trade — mainly stall-holders from the town’s two markets — crowded into the front bar. The CID took the larger of the back two, a room dominated by a lithograph of the Guildhall and an old photo of the city walls before they had been demolished to make way for St James’s police HQ.
Shaw always got a thrill walking over the threshold, having spent many childhood evenings sitting outside on the kerb, waiting for his father, bought off with crisps and squash. Its interior had been part of his father’s secret world. Now it was his world.
‘Mark,’ said Shaw, nodding at the door. DC Mark Birley wedged a stool against it.
They were crammed into the room. Pints and alcopops bristled on the table tops. No one was on fruit juice, and everyone would drive home; one of the police force’s abiding ironies. Everyone had a single-sheet briefing note from Twine — all the major developments summarized.
Shaw sat on the wide window ledge, his back to the stained-glass picture of the pier at Hunstanton. He took one sip of Guinness, annoyed to find a shamrock doodled in the white head.
‘Anything we should know that’s not in the note?’ he asked.
DC Campbell waved a lime-green bottle of alcopop.
‘MVR — Motor Vehicle Repair. The garage appears completely legit, they don’t issue torches. Staff of thirteen. We’re talking to everyone who was on duty yesterday, nothing yet.’
‘OK. But we don’t have an alternative, Fiona, so let’s dig deeper. What about the vehicles themselves? All accounted for? Any out over the weekend — that happens. Nice little sideline. Bit of pocket money. They rent out the hospital vans for forty-eight hours and no one’s the wiser — as long as someone’s fiddling the mileage. Really dig — OK?’
‘We’ll check it,’ said Campbell.
Twine stretched his legs under a round iron table, leather boots screeching on the wooden floor. ‘Door-to- door picked up plenty of gossip on the Judds’ marriage. Tongues wag — mainly because Ally Judd seems to spend most of her spare time dusting Thiago Martin’s bedroom furniture.’ That got a laugh.
‘I’ve got a file getting fatter on the priest — he’s right about not being welcome in his own country. There’s a police record. He’s been telling fibs about his medical
‘Why was he struck off?’ asked Shaw.
‘He tried to prove that a contaminated water supply in one of the shanty towns was causing lead poisoning in children. He ran a study based on blood and urine samples. The parents worked for the company that supplied the water. He didn’t get their permission. When he tried to publish there was a legal action. Big money talks — he got struck off. The church wasn’t too pleased either. His own parish, in one of the up-market suburbs, hadn’t seen him for eight months.
‘We’re checking his movements yesterday. He helped someone move house early evening, out of council care, but he was back by seven. He says he’s doing an MA with the Open University and was upstairs studying. He says he was alone. Ally Judd says she went to the presbytery to sweep and wash the floors while the light lasted early evening. She says she left her gear there, thinking the power cut would end and she could go back and carry on. When it didn’t she went and got her stuff. Says she called up the stairs to the priest both times — once at 7.30, then about 10.30. Which is convenient as it provides a neat alibi.’
He leant forward, elbows on the table. ‘And just to say we got hold of Norma Jean’s medical records. Her baby was due in early 1993. So we tracked down abandoned babies for the Eastern Counties — nothing even close. And certainly no record of a regular registered birth in hospital. There’s also a blank on bank accounts, driving
A thunderstorm had been brewing for an hour and now it broke, rattling the windows, chugging in the downpipes. The room got darker, the wall lights warmer, and they could smell the sea.
‘And one loose end,’ added Twine. ‘Bill Creake says the floater who fetched up on the storm grid down in the docks looks like a suicide from Cleethorpes. Wife says he went for a walk four days ago along the beach, didn’t come back. Left his dog tied to a post in the dunes, his shoes and socks neat and tidy. Age is about right — mid- fifties. He’d just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They’re getting the dental records down.’
Shaw thought about the body in the mortuary at the Ark — the single arm protruding from the shroud, the marks at the wrist. ‘OK — thanks.’
Then he stopped himself going on, annoyed that he hadn’t tracked down that detail. ‘Just one thing — ask Bill to ask the wife if he wore a watch. Perhaps he left that on the sands too? Only there’s a mark on his wrist — odd. Maybe one of those copper bands to guard against rheumatism. Just let me know.’
Twine made a note, the Mont Blanc’s nib scratching on notepaper.
The chatter in the room had begun to rise so Shaw pitched his voice just a little louder. ‘Right. George and I have just interviewed Aidan Holme at the hospital,’ said Shaw. ‘He was brimful of pain-killers, but he
The room in intensive care had been like one of Jan Orzsak’s fish tanks. Tubes bubbled, air tanks hissed, and the light was a sickly low-spectrum blue. Holme looked like he’d been smuggled out of the Valley of the Kings: bandages around his chest, throat, and one half of the skull — the right. The left half was red with the heat in the room, the visible eye encrusted with sleep.
Holme’s voice was a whisper, but clear enough, if Shaw sat with his head bowed down to his lips, like a priest. Valentine had sat opposite, trying to take a note, and hadn’t asked a question.
‘I’m going to die,’ said Holme, before Shaw could speak. They’d been briefed in the corridor outside by the consultant who said the patient’s vital signs were poor. The burns had put a burden on his heart which had not responded to medication. He had a lung infection, septicaemia, and internal bleeding inside his skull where he’d struck his head on the road. He was too ill to survive an operation to relieve the pressure on the brain.
‘You’re in good hands here, the best,’ said Shaw, resisting the urge to take his hand. On the side table by the bed were two cards, stiff and slightly formal, both asking the recipient to ‘Get Well Soon’. There was a bowl of fruit and a bottle of Lucozade, unopened.
Shaw outlined what they knew. Holme listened with his eyes closed, each swallow making his Adam’s apple creak.
When Shaw had finished he realized that Holme had been saving his strength, because when he opened his eye it was clearer, brighter.
‘You put it together in the basement of the house…’ said Shaw, recalling the chemistry lab equipment. He got his lips close to his ear. ‘But how did you do the swap?’
‘I got inside. Inside the machine. There’s a maintenance door, you can slide in by the belt, so you’re right there, just before the inner doors of the furnace. It’s hot — too hot to touch anything. But it only takes a few seconds. When the stuff came through I’d take a stash; not all — just one canister, maybe two. That’s the trick — don’t be greedy. Then I’d put the package I’d made up on the belt. Straight swap. Once the last batch was on the belt the coppers were off anyway — so I’d only be inside for two, three minutes, max. Bry would knock and I’d slip out. I never told him how easy it was — best that way.’ He tried to wink, the encrusted eye jerking open.
‘How’d you get into the hospital?’
‘Up the ladder, where Bry smoked. Foolproof — you just walk in off the street into the goods yard and wait until they take a break. You don’t have to wait long. They
He closed his eyes.
‘But then Bry wanted out? Like the family says?’
The eye came open, angry. ‘Shit. No.’ He shook his head despite the pain. ‘That’s Bry’s story because they all
