Death Watch

frighten the wife. But Monday morning the bloke on security said there’d been a cock-up on the Rosa — soon as they’d docked and hooked up to the shore-side power they’d taken the chance to strip down the generator ’cos it was way past its maintenance date. So when the power went pop they were buggered. Took them till after midnight to get it up and running again.’

Shaw and Valentine exchanged glances. At last, the link between the seemingly chaotic events on Erebus Street and the illegal traffic in human organs. Shaw tried to imagine the scene on board as the power failed at midday on Sunday: the frantic activity, the generator useless. Rosa. Then he scrolled down his mobile call list until he found the number for Andersen, the electricity company engineer they’d talked to in Erebus Street on the Sunday night. He answered on the third ring. Shaw guessed he had the kind of career where a call in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual. Shaw had a simple question: the power on the quayside, did it run through the Erebus Street sub-station, and if it did, where was it coming from now? Simple answers: yes, to one. Now it came from a divert they’d set up from the power supply on the Bentinck Dock.

‘Can you monitor the supply to a specific ship?’

‘Sure,’ said Andersen. ‘I’d have to get into the other sub-station — it’s over by the grain stores.’

‘Can you do that? This is confidential, so low key. Then let me know as soon as there’s a peak in the supply — anything substantial. The ship we’re interested in is the Rosa.’

‘Why?’

It was a fair question and he needed the engineer onside. ‘It’s possible the Rosa has been used as a kind of floating hospital — an illegal floating hospital. If they tried an operation on board the arc lamps alone would chew up the power supply. I want you to tell me if there’s a peak like that.’

Andersen said he’d be in position in an hour.

Then Shaw swung the glasses round to the old gates at the bottom of Erebus Street. The light still shone from Orzsak’s bathroom, but it wasn’t the only light now. Above the Bentinck Launderette the lights were on, 24- HOUR WASH sign wasn’t lit green — a livid light, echoed by the stark illuminated cross on the apex of the roof of the Sacred Heart.

‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘For now, we wait.’

Shaw took the first watch. He set up a desk by the observation window, put his mobile on it, a coffee cup alongside. From inside his jacket he produced the CCTV print he’d taken from the footage of the fatal road accident at Castle Rising which had killed Jonathan Tessier’s grandmother — and apparently set in motion a chain of events which had led to the nine-year-old’s murder.

The print showed the Mini after the impact, parked in the shadows under the trees. The offside wing crumpled, but otherwise intact. The two-tone paint job, a radio aerial, and a roof rack. Raindrops speckled the windows, except where the wipers had kept the view clear for the driver.

He sat back, letting his mind slip into neutral. Out on the quayside nothing moved. On a moonless night the shadows didn’t move. He tried to conjure up a memory of Erebus Street on that Sunday night: the fire burning, Blanket’s abduction from the church, the attack on the hostel, Ally Judd slipping home from the presbytery, and the ship, in darkness, just beyond the dock gates at the end of the street.

Tiredness overwhelmed him, so that he slept for a nano-second, waking up with a heart-thumping start. He stood, both hands on the glass, looking out on the bleak

Shaw’s heart missed a beat. He looked at his CCTV print, at the window within a window cleared by the windscreen wipers. He’d seen it so many times — and yet hadn’t seen it. He looked out of the window at the HGV, back at the Mini, back at the HGV.

‘Jesus,’ he said, burying his head in his hands. He’d known all the time — or he should have realized he’d known. The paint he’d tracked down through forensics was for a batch of Minis for export.

‘Anything wrong?’ asked Galloway, who was playing computer games silently on his desktop PC.

‘No, just the opposite. Here, have a look.’

Galloway came over, his knees slightly arthritic, the mug of whisky still in his hand.

‘What’s the difference between this windscreen,’ said Shaw, touching the print, ‘and that…’ He pointed at the HGV.

‘This windscreen’s covered in water — that one’s covered in shite.’

Shaw shook his head. ‘Nope. This one…’ he said, letting his finger vibrate on the print of the Mini. ‘This one is left-hand drive. See — the shape of the cleaned area

‘Well done. So what?’

‘This picture was taken a few moments after a fatal crash. One man got out the driver’s side, two out the back. At least, I thought it was the driver’s side. But it isn’t. The driver is still in the car. There were four of them. But the driver’s smart enough to stay out of sight.’

He gave Galloway the surfer’s smile. He felt a flash of joy in his life, like a distant view of the sea. ‘Got any more of that whisky?’

43

Thursday, 9 September

Jan Orzsak stood on a chair in the hallway of his house, a picture of his mother, cut from the family album, held to his chest with one hand. He’d been standing still for nearly two hours and the pain in his legs was making them shake. Around his neck was a noose he’d made from a bed sheet, the end attached to the newel post of the banisters above.

The dawn sun shone through the 1930s stained glass over the front door. The light — blue and yellow — caught dust motes in parallelograms of colour. A heavenly beauty, he thought. And the fittingness of this thought made him smile.

He’d heard the six o’clock siren on the docks. He wondered if he could die by inaction, if he just stood and let the world grow old around him. He’d almost taken that decision when there was a sharp knock on the door.

The intrusion broke the spell. Whoever it was tried to flip up the letterbox, but he’d had it nailed shut after the latest dogshit package. ‘Mr Orzsak?’ said a muffled voice. ‘We saw the light. I’m sorry, can we talk? It’s the power engineers — from next door.’

The last twelve hours had been the worst of Jan Orzsak’s life, and he was determined — as a determined

He’d set the DVD player in his room to Chopin, a nocturne, playing in a continuous loop. It had reached the closing bars. There’d be silence in a minute and then all he had to do was step off the chair, and it would be over. But how many times had he listened already to those same closing bars? Twenty? Each time the beautiful music demanded another performance. A final curtain-call.

The knock at the door was more insistent. ‘Mr Orzsak. We need to cut the power. I can’t go ahead unless you agree. Ten minutes, sir, then we’ll be done and out of your hair. Sir?’

Beyond the front door he could hear the foreman muttering — stringing together profanities.

The music died.

Orzsak felt very cold, the blood rushing to his heart, the sudden certainty of what was to happen next making his vision clear. He gripped the picture to his heart and he thought what a child-like impulse that was, and that made him even more determined to go back there — before all this happened — back to a time of innocence.

He stepped off the chair into the spangled air.

Weightless, for a second, he felt sublimely happy.

Shaw rang the head of security for the docks, an ex-DI from Peterborough called Frank Denver, at 7.01 a.m. Shaw thought the timing was acceptable — but wasn’t surprised to discover otherwise. When Denver had stopped shouting about being woken up Shaw told him the good news: that there was every chance a series of major crimes had taken place within the docks, unnoticed by either his security staff or the Lynn CID. His cooperation was now urgently required. He didn’t have a choice.