Death Watch

sized picture. He slipped it out now. Jonathan Tessier, just nine, an uncanny resemblance to Shaw himself at the same age: the wide high cheekbones, the tap-water eyes. He went to knock, hesitated, knowing that once the door was open he’d have lost control of events. But he had to do it; he’d promised Lena he’d do it — for them.

He’d arrived home the night before elated at the progress they’d made. He’d spent twenty hours a day on the murder inquiry from Day One; but when he got home all he wanted to talk about was the Tessier case, because he’d gone back to St James’s and watched the CCTV again. It was like a living memory now, those black and white images, shuffling around the floodlit junction.

He’d sent a text ahead and she was there to meet him on the beach. She’d brought a bottle of white wine from the fridge and two chilled glasses. The stoop was pine, the wood cool and worn, so they’d sat on the steps. Low tide, so the beach seemed to stretch to the horizon, where a necklace of lights marked the anchorage for freighters, waiting to slip into Lynn when the tide turned.

‘You look tired,’ she said, pouring his drink.

‘I watched the tape,’ he said, as the almost colourless

‘There’s something I’m missing. Something that’s not right.’ He readjusted the picture so that she could see, but she was staring out to sea. ‘Lena?’ he asked. But she still didn’t turn to him, and he knew by this gesture that tonight they wouldn’t make love. On the drive home, and the walk along the beach, he’d realized how much he wanted her, and the transformation that it always brought — the energy it released, the sudden alteration of everything, like a thunderstorm.

She was dressed in a loose sweater, with her arms out of the sleeves but tucked inside for warmth. She pulled up a leg and curled it under herself so that he didn’t see her hand slip out until it had put something on the wooden stoop.

It was a small tub of yoghurt: Madagascar vanilla.

‘What’s that?’ he said, but already he could feel the blood rushing to his heart. She held herself away from him, as if he was a fire and she didn’t want to get burnt. And he didn’t recognize her face, the focus on the middle distance, the ugly broken line of the mouth; and it made him realize that for a long time — he couldn’t guess how long — she’d arranged her face for him, like a screen around a hospital bed. But he was too desperate to know the answer to his question to ask himself what she thought she was hiding, what it was she didn’t want him to see.

‘What do you mean?’ His voice was loaded with anger; and guilt, because he knew he’d done nothing since he’d got back to the beach but talk about his work, not the daily work of the CID but his own private case, the one he’d inherited from his father, the one he’d promised to end.

She turned to him then, her face slumping, her mouth open in a silent scream. ‘It’s what nearly killed Fran,’ she said again deliberately, knowing that despite the word ‘nearly’, this was still a form of punishment.

‘Lena — tell me. Tell me now.’ He’d have given anything to keep the threat out of his voice.

Her eyes blazed in response. ‘Now.’ It was close to a shout. ‘Now — it’s convenient now? What about five hours ago when I phoned — I never phone, Peter. You know I never phone.’

He’d been waiting in the dark on the edge of the gas holder for Valentine. He’d clocked the number; why hadn’t he rung back? He’d been in two minds because he’d promised himself that second viewing of the CCTV from Castle Rising.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, knowing instantly that he’d done the right thing — got the word out before it was too late. ‘Jesus. Lena — what happened?’

‘She ate the yogurt,’ she said, hitting out, knocking her glass over, sending the carton out into the sand.

‘Get it back,’ she said. ‘The nurse said we should keep it. Make a note.’ Her voice was cold and hard, the anger washing out of it like the tide over the sand.

Shaw fetched it, then sat down on the wine-damp wood, not quite touching her.

‘How bad?’ asked Shaw, quickly throwing an arm round Lena’s shoulders, tight enough so that she couldn’t pull away.

‘Bad. It’s my fault. This crowd was in from Burnham Thorpe — a family of six. They all wanted suits, they all wanted boards — the final bill was nearly four thousand pounds — so I did her a pizza and put it out in the kitchen and just called her in off the sands. So when I found her…’

She covered her mouth, rocking slightly with the memory, and Shaw understood that part of this was her guilt, not just his. ‘I didn’t know if it had been too long. If she was… So I felt for her pulse. I couldn’t find it. And she was puffed up — the way she used to — her eyes closed. And there’s no Piriton in the cupboard.’ She kicked out, sending a sheet of fine sand forward like a shell burst.

‘I rang you. Then I rang Scott on the mobile — he ran down with some from the lifeguard post at Hunstanton. And then, just for no reason, she was conscious — right then, when he got here. So we gave her the Piriton.’ She laughed, and Shaw felt her shoulders relax an inch, the blades moving beneath the skin. ‘Five minutes later she was running about like a rabbit.’ She laughed again,

‘I’ll check,’ he said, lifting a knee.

But she held on to him. ‘I have — every ten minutes. She’s sleeping. Leave her.’

She let out a long breath, like a death rattle, and buried her eyes in the crook of his neck.

‘I want you to end this obsession with the child,’ she said. ‘One way or another. Either drop it or end it quickly, one way or another. Solve it, Peter, or walk away.’ She lifted her head and looked into his good eye. ‘Jack destroyed his life for this, Peter. And we know why — because the boy looked like you, because it could have been you. Have you ever thought why that was — why he was…’ she searched for the word. ‘Unbalanced by that?’ She held his head. ‘It was guilt — because he’d let you grow up without being there. He couldn’t be there for you, so in a rush he thought he’d make up for it by being there for Jonathan Tessier. Which was selfish, because it only made him feel better, not you. Don’t let this happen to us.’

Later, as he lay in bed, listening to the sea creep back up the beach, Shaw realized how much of a relief that word had been: ‘Us.’

34

He’d woken at dawn, listening to the seagulls scratching on the roof. He didn’t need to recall specifically what had been said between them — it was there, already part of the memory bank he’d carry with him for the rest of his life. And it wasn’t his life that was the point. It was Fran’s. She could have died, and that would have destroyed them, because he wouldn’t have been there. He always answered if Lena phoned. But he’d been blinded — she was right — blinded by the conflicting pressures in his life, between his home and his job, and between his case and his father’s case. And the Tessier killing was an obsession; dangerous and disfiguring in so many ways. His problem was that he could no more walk away from it than walk away from himself. But in the darkness before dawn he had made a fresh appraisal of his failure to solve the case so far. Was it really such a baffling crime? Or was his inability to make progress really a reflection of his own inner conflict: the fear that if he found the truth, it would be an uncomfortable one?

He’d swum then, at dawn, seeing now that Lena was right, he’d overlooked so many more direct avenues of inquiry. It was a case he’d worried at, like a sore. Watching his hands rise above his head as his backstroke took him out to sea, he decided he must return to first principles, and talk to those with a direct recall of the night Jonathan would walk away. For Lena’s sake he’d walk away — even if he did leave part of himself behind.

He’d decided to start here, on the Westmead, because he wanted an answer to Lena’s original, and perceptive, question: why would a gang caught on CCTV at the fatal crash at Castle Rising go on to murder a nine- year-old boy just because he stumbled on them respraying the car? There had been reports of the accident in the local paper, and on the radio and TV — but why would a boy take any notice of that? It was nothing to do with him, or the small world in which he was living out his summer holidays. Even if he had sensed something sinister, and children were certainly gifted at that, he could have been bought off with a crisp?10 note. There had to be another