Death Watch

theatres — where? His mobile vibrated on silent mode. He looked at the number: Lena, ringing from the cottage. He was going to take the call but something made him stop — she’d want to know where he was because he’d forgotten to send her a text at five — a daily ritual. But he’d planned to go back to St James’s before going home, for one last run-through of the CCTV of the Castle Rising crash. He was still tussling with the decision whether to take the call when Valentine came back, summoning him with a cursory beckoning movement of a hand, pale now in the gathering dusk. Shaw pocketed the phone, promising himself he’d ring when they were done.

‘Why’s this character called Pie?’ asked Shaw, picking his way over a decade’s worth of fly-tipping — a fridge, a pram, the innards of a mattress. It was all Shaw knew about Valentine’s informant, that and the fact he’d been channelling information to St James’s for the best part of fifteen years.

‘You’ll see,’ said Valentine.

Shaw didn’t like the idea that Valentine was in control, and wondered if that was what was strangely unsettling about this sudden twist in the inquiry. He thought about demanding an answer, then let the moment pass.

‘Did Dad know this guy?’ asked Shaw instead, wishing instantly he’d kept the question to himself. And he should have used his name and rank. ‘Dad’ was too personal, an invitation to be intimate.

Shaw thought just how impossible it would be to take orders from George Valentine on a daily basis. And, for the first time, he wondered if Valentine felt the same way about him, and that if he did, then what a nightmare his life must be from the inside.

Soon a path appeared in the rubbish, trodden through the weeds and teasel heads, crushed glass catching the moonlight. It led to a break in the steel retaining wall at the foot of the old gas holder. They climbed through to find themselves looking down twenty feet into the circular base. A perfect O, eighty yards across, a rubble floor dotted with fires. Shaw thought of a Bronze Age encampment, the flames the only human light within a thousand miles. There was something about the homeless that always made him feel like the ultimate outsider. It wasn’t just a world he couldn’t enter, it was a world that frightened him, because it was the antithesis of home.

Cardboard-box sleeping shacks dotted the perimeter. There was a smell on the air: cider and warm dog. The nearest group — four tramps sitting on beer crates — stood, and one whistled a single, vibrating note. A terrier barked wildly until one of the men cuffed it with a rope. They listened while Valentine explained that they’d had a message from someone called Pie saying that they should come tonight, when the sun was down. They were alone. Valentine lifted his arms out, his raincoat over one.

They were ushered on, across the circle, to the ruins of a single-storey brick building. The roof and one wall had gone, but within the sheltered room which remained a large fire had burnt down to glowing embers. Shaw tried not to peer at the faces, a chiaroscuro world of watching eyes. And like the Mona Lisa’s, all of them following him.

The man Shaw took for Pie sat in what looked like the front seat cut out of a wrecked car, his legs out straight. His name was in his face. Black skin, Afro-Caribbean features, but marred by splodges of white, mottled flesh. One of the pale patches extended into his hairline, and there the black hair was streaked white too. The piebald man. A human magpie.

Shaw shook his hand, aware of the odd symmetry of their asymmetrical faces. His with one blue eye, one moon-blind; Pie’s with one eye surrounded by black skin, the other by white.

Valentine pulled up a crate and Shaw sensed that the exaggerated sense of ease was only partly manufactured — the DS was genuinely at home here, amongst the rootless. From his raincoat pocket he pulled out a full bottle of Johnnie Walker, twisted off the top, and put it on the warm ground by the fire.

Five tin mugs were filled — one each, and another for a man who sat back on the edge of the shadows, long hair covering his face. Only his legs were in the light, in pinstripe trousers, frayed, and stained.

Pie hadn’t said a word. He held a hand up against the

Shaw nodded.

‘The paper didn’t say much,’ said Pie.

Shaw thought about what more he could say. They’d kept the details of the corpse they’d found on Warham’s Hole guarded for good reasons, principally to make sure they weren’t led astray in the inquiry by the usual telephone calls claiming responsibility or giving false information. ‘The body had been in the water some time — maybe forty-eight hours.’ Shaw took a breath, calculating that a risk should be taken. ‘He’d lost both his eyes.’ There was an intake of air around the little camp fire, a drawing back of feet from the heat. ‘We’ll have to wait for the pathologist’s report, but there’s every chance his corneas were surgically removed.’

Pie looked behind him into the shadows and the hidden man drew in his legs.

‘Pearmain,’ said Pie, then spelt it out. ‘That was his name. P-E-A-R-M-A-I-N. We called him John ’cos he was London, not ’cos it was his name.’

‘When was this?’ asked Shaw.

‘Six months ago. He disappeared overnight. He just wasn’t there any more.’

Shaw looked around. ‘Isn’t that what’s good about this life — that you can just disappear?’

‘He left stuff — a dog, a bag with boots. People don’t do that, even people like us,’ said Pie.

‘We don’t need the-o-ries,’ said Pie, stretching the word out. ‘We know what happens.’ Shaw watched as a line of whisky trickled from his lower lip. Valentine leant forward and put a 50 pound note under the bottle.

‘Every six, eight months,’ said Pie. ‘He goes out and finds them — two, maybe three. With Pearmain there were two more: one they called Foster, the other…’ He looked back into the shadows for help. The voice of the man in the tattered pinstriped suit said, ‘Tyler.’

‘Right. Three of them that time. The same night. We don’t know how they…’ He searched for the word. ‘Select. They’re offered cash. Fifty pounds there and then. A promise of the rest after the thing’s done.’

Shaw felt a desperate need to spell this out, to stop trading in euphemisms. ‘They’re being propositioned — to sell body parts. Organs? For cash?’

‘It’s a buyer’s market,’ said Pie. The man in the shadows laughed. ‘The promise is a thousand. A kidney. Bits of liver…’ He licked his lips. ‘Slices. That’s fifteen hundred. Skin grafts. Tendons. Veins. There’s a list. It’s big money — for us, a fortune.’

‘And these other two — we know they really did disappear, like Pearmain. They didn’t just move on?’

‘They hung out, the three of them. And they left stuff as well, in their shack. A Thermos, a wallet. Stuff you never leave, anywhere, unless you’re asleep, right there.’

‘Did they come back?’

Pie used a boot to rearrange the ashes in the fire. ‘No said was the deal. But if Pearmain can turn up on the sands… But the story they were given was straight-up: they get the money — cash; they get to recover, then a free trip to a new town. And they don’t come back — ever.’

‘Not ever?’ asked Valentine, offering Pie a Silk Cut which he turned down. ‘So how do you know what happens?’

Pie ignored him. ‘I’ve given you info. It’s good info. There were no strings, but I want a favour. I’d like a favour. For him…’ he nodded into the shadows. ‘Because he said we should tell you.’

The man in the shadows stood, shuffled into the light, then sat comfortably on his haunches, like a cowboy on the Great Plains. His hair was drawn back in a ponytail. Shaw recognized the man he’d rescued from the upstairs bedroom at number 6 Erebus Street, the man he’d seen curled in a bundle of fear on the floorboards as the house burnt beneath him, the man who’d walked out of the Queen Vic two days ago.

‘Mr Hendre,’ Shaw said. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

‘I can discharge myself, I just didn’t fill in the forms. I understand that you’d like to interview me — well, this is it.’ The voice was modulated middle class, and Shaw recalled Hendre’s original profession — accountancy. ‘You saved my life. This is the payback. Then that’s it.’ Hendre held the lapels of the pinstripe jacket together despite the heat of the fire. ‘I don’t go on the stand, and I don’t ID anyone. I’ll tell you what happened — you do

Hendre felt inside the jacket for a quarter-bottle of Scotch, then drank, keeping that for himself. He took two inches off the level in the bottle. Shaw recalled Liam Kennedy’s character sketch of Peter Hendre, and the observation that he was clean on drugs and alcohol.