Death Watch

‘I had a life once. I wanted it back. I stopped using about eighteen months ago. So I was looking for a new start — a bit of cash to get me out, and up. So I tried a couple of deals, and got caught. I was going down, whatever the lawyers say. I know enough people who’ve been down. If you supply it’s OK. But you use too — no one can resist that. I thought, if I go in it’ll kill me.’

He laughed silently, overcome by the irony.

‘The lawyer’ll tell you — we’re looking at a deal that’ll get us an open prison. One last chance. So I told Bryan we’d stop. I gave him a bottle of the Green Dragon — I told him if he wanted the stuff there’s a bloke on the docks can get it. But, like, it costs too — top end, two-fifty quid, more. It’s money he hasn’t got. But that was going to be his problem, not mine.’

‘What time did you see him?’

‘Three — maybe half past. I met him up on that ledge where he smoked. I told him again, that it was over. He wasn’t happy but, like, what’s he going to do about it?

Shaw sipped his Guinness. The Red House was silent.

‘So, there was a drugs trade. But Bryan Judd didn’t die trying to get out of it. He wanted in, not out.’

‘We believe this stuff?’ It was DC Lau, a bottle pressed to her lips. ‘What if they argued anyway? Judd might have gone for him, they struggle, and whack!’ She knocked the bottle on the table top.

‘What was there to argue about?’ asked Shaw. ‘Holme was going down — and they needed his expertise to do the switch. And we’ve checked his story with the brief and it all matches up. They’d agreed a change of plea, to guilty. There was too much hard evidence — CPS has the case, I’ve looked at the file. No, Holme was up for a plea bargain and there was a good chance he’d get it. There was nothing Bryan Judd could do about it.’

Chatter filled the room.

‘Let’s put drugs to one side,’ said Shaw, and the room fell silent. ‘I’m not saying forget it — I’m saying to one side, for now.’

Birley went to the bar to get refills, while Shaw nursed the Guinness, reading some of the reports from door- to-door. And three notes. The first was a progress report on tracking down Pete Hendre, the hostel resident Shaw had saved from the burning upper floor of number 6 Erebus Street, who’d slipped out of the Queen Vic

The second note was from Newcastle CID. He flicked over a few pages. They’d traced Ben Ruddle, the teenager who’d got Norma Jean Judd pregnant in 1992. He’d been released from Deerbolt, County Durham, in 1994, having been found guilty on the burglary charge. There was no record of him returning home. He was back inside in 2000, for burglary again. The case came up at Castle Barnard, County Durham — thirty-one other offences of a similar nature taken into account. Out eighteen months ago from Acklington, again County Durham. Probation service had a record of him working in a market garden, outside Middlesbrough. He went missing six months ago, after picking up his wages. Teesside Social Services had a record of him turning up in a homeless shelter: six nights. He was interviewed — then, next day, off the radar.

‘Middlesbrough,’ said Shaw, handing the note to Valentine to read.

The third note was from Twine. The Military Corrective Training Centre at Colchester, the military’s last remaining ‘glasshouse’, had contacted St James’s. They needed help tracking down Petty Officer Andrew Sean Judd, who had absconded from custody while serving

Valentine read that note, too.

‘Let’s dig a bit more on both of those,’ said Shaw. ‘This final Ruddle interview — with the social — see if we can get a transcript. And pictures. Colchester will have a mug of Sean Judd, and Acklington’ll have Ruddle. Let’s get both.’

‘What you thinking?’ asked Valentine.

‘I’m thinking I’d like to see the faces.’

Shaw stood, fished a handful of drawing pins from his pocket, and pinned a foolscap piece of white paper onto the jaundiced wallpaper. Someone whistled and a couple clapped. It could have been a drawing of anyone, but there was no doubt that in its own way it was a work of art. Shaw’s skills as a forensic artist were known to them all — he gave regular lectures at Hendon, the Met’s training centre, and was one of only half a dozen officers with the qualification in the country. He wrote articles for Jane’s Police Review. But seen in the flesh, as it were, the result was startling. This wasn’t a police ID with pencils. It was a living person, a classic example of the kind of animated graphic which was making forensic art part of mainstream police work around the world, replacing the disjointed jigsaw of the traditional photofit.

It was a striking face. The principal feature was the gap at the bridge of the nose, especially wide, pushing the eyes apart. One of the front teeth was chipped. The bone structure was heavy, the hair thick and black; but the jaw

Shaw was proud of this because it was the first time in a live investigation he’d used the techniques of age- progression to produce an image. And it was the first piece of work he’d done since losing his right eye a year earlier. He’d been told by the occupational therapists that his ability to sketch — and to take photographs — would actually improve with monocular vision. In effect he didn’t have to close one eye, the classic artist’s pose. What he saw now, with one eye, was a 2D flat image — exactly the image he could transfer to the sketch pad. He hadn’t believed them, but now he could see the proof.

Shaw cut the chatter by tapping his Guinness glass with Twine’s Mont Blanc.

‘OK. I’ll come back to our friend here. But first — the big picture. We’ve all read the briefing note, so I won’t waste your time. The last few hours of the inquiry have opened up two possible ways forward. First, Jan Orzsak and Andy Judd. They’re tangled up together in the case of Norma Jean. Did one of them go up to the hospital last night — the anniversary of her disappearance? We need to re-examine the Orzsak alibi minute by minute; that’s a priority for tomorrow. The father’s still an outside possibility — let’s dig some more. George will put together a team. And when we can, let’s gently see if we can get Ally Judd and the priest to talk — what if Bryan Judd knew about their affair? Come to that, is it an affair, or is it just gossip?

‘Which leaves our major line of inquiry: illegal organ disposal. A human kidney was found under Judd’s body

‘One — clients. The rich, the unscrupulous. So far we’ve haven’t had a whiff. So let’s think about that. Two — donors, either willing, or unwilling. Pete Hendre, the man we got out of the top floor at number 6 when the place was on fire, said he didn’t want to come out because there was someone in the street he was afraid of: the Organ Grinder. Just that. I said afraid, but terrified is closer. Hendre’s done a runner — we need to find him. And we’ve got a missing person, violently abducted. The man with no name except Blanket. Someone came and found him under cover of darkness. Someone offered him a “deal” — which he declined to take. And there’s a chance that that someone was Bryan Judd’s killer. Obvious question: was Blanket, is Blanket, an unwilling donor? If he is we need to find him, fast.’

Shaw put a finger on the sketch. ‘I think this is what he looks like. We don’t know his name. He’s a tramp who says he’s spent most of his life in Middlesbrough but has no accent to match and, according to Liam Kennedy, an unnerving amount of local knowledge. He was never seen without his blanket coat. Last night he was dragged, unconscious, out of the Sacred Heart of Mary by an unidentified man. The coat — which was left behind — was marked on the back with a rough sketch of a candle. I

They all studied Blanket’s face. Campbell, her six foot two inches perched on a tiny stool, asked the question they all wanted answered.

‘This image — where did it come from?’

‘Blanket’s possessions included a snapshot of a small boy in 1984. The picture — like most from that far back — is actually very high quality. I blew it up, then aged it thirty years. It’s not rocket science — but then it doesn’t have to fly.’

Everyone laughed except George Valentine.

‘How do you do it?’ asked Birley.

‘The FBI leads the world in this. In the eighties they started using it to track down missing kids. Usually there are two methods combined. On one hand you study the family and see if you can pick out genetic patterns. On the other there are general principles of craniofacial development — it’s obvious stuff, just look at your own kids if you’ve got any. Their faces grow down, and forward. Stuff like that. But the good news for us is that

He sipped his Guinness. ‘Lecture over. The health warnings are clear, though — we’ve got no DNA input here, no parentage to feed into the mix, and I’ve used my instincts not a computer program to run the progression