Death Toll

didn’t want a fuss — just asked people to keep an eye out. Then tonight I heard they’d found his boat was gone from the cellar wharf. I’ve seen him out in it — in the summer he goes up to the coast, but winter’s different. They’ve got a few of the locals together to check the river — moorings, marinas, that kind of thing. But nothing — not yet.’

‘Any reason he goes off?’ asked Valentine.

‘Moods — always has been a difficult bugger. This time it’s pretty easy to see why, isn’t it? He’s always been the hero, the decent man; stepped in to help Lizzie out, brought up the bastard half-caste.’ She winced at her own crassness. ‘Sorry — but that’s what they say. Now it’s different. Seems like the kid’s real dad didn’t desert the ship — that he’d have hung around if someone hadn’t stuck a hook though his skull.’

Valentine noticed for the first time in years that there was no shade on the kitchen light, and that the glare was unforgiving.

‘And that’s the other piece of gossip. Kath Robinson — Bea’s housekeeper up on the coast? Well, Kath comes down most days to shop for food and stuff, goes for the fresh fish by the dock gates there? Well, her mum’s still alive — I see quite a bit of her, she lives on Gladstone Street — and she’s been saying that Kath saw Pat Garrison leaving the Flask that night. That’ll be right, because she never took her eyes off that boy, I can tell you. But …’ She sipped her tea, milking the moment. ‘But …ahead of him, going out along the path to the cemetery, she’d seen Freddie Fletcher and Sam Venn together — this’d be ten, half ten, before the do was over. And guess who was with them, kidda? John Joe Murray.’

Valentine knew that Shaw had his doubts about casting Fletcher, Venn and Murray as killers. That it was all too easy with twenty-twenty hindsight to put them in the frame. But the picture they were building up was compelling. And unlike Shaw, George Valentine had nothing against an easy life.

‘Thanks, Jean,’ he said, wondering where John Joe was, and why he was running. But he found it hard to focus on the case. Jean had called him ‘kidda’ for as long as he could remember. She’d gone on calling him ‘kidda’ after he started courting Julie. But she’d never played the big sister. She and Julie had got on fine, and they’d ended up close, often, he thought, because they had one thing in common — trying to work out what was going on inside George Valentine’s head.

Valentine smoked, but his hand was unsteady as he lit up.

Jean stood, put the mugs on the draining board and kissed him on the hair by holding his face. She looked around the empty kitchen. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think. I’ve always had the key. Years.’

She let herself out and then he saw she’d left the key on the table, a dull gold. When she shut the door her hand slipped so that it banged shut, which made the silence that followed overpowering, so he got out his mobile and phoned Shaw. There was no answer, so he left a message, telling him what Kath Robinson said she’d seen that night. That they needed to get her into St James’s the next morning for a formal statement. He tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but he’d always found answering machines unnerving, and be sides, after all these years alone, he suddenly felt distracted by the empty house around him.

28

John Joe Murray adjusted the oars so that they just brushed the surface, like the legs of a water boatman, skating on the sea. Ahead, in the flooded moonlit marshes, he could see his destination: the old coal barn, brick built, on its island of sand and reeds. He didn’t look up, because he knew he’d see the lights of Wells if he did, and that would wreck his night vision which let him see the world in grey, black and silver. There’d be the lights inland too, along the crest of the north Norfolk hills. He’d known this stretch of coast all his life — all his life with Lizzie. They’d helped Bea choose Morston House back in 1983, and they’d come whenever they could to escape from the Flask. And as the years went by he’d come more often on his own, sailing up the river to the sea, then hugging the coast.

So if he looked up he knew what he’d see. The little seafront, Bea’s house by the boatyard, the tower, and its single lit room. Bea would be there at the window, waiting for him to signal from the barn when he was safe. Bea had always been there for him and Lizzie, and John Joe knew that was because she’d always wanted Ian to be happy, because the boy was all that was left of the mess she’d made of her life, the one thing she was proud to leave behind. She wasn’t proud of John Joe, she was tolerant, but he was thankful, even for that. So Bea hadn’t asked questions when he’d tied up after dark. But when he’d told her why he was there, Bea had said he was crazy, confused, because who would want to kill him? He couldn’t tell her the truth — she was the last person he could tell. So he’d told her nothing. Just that he had to get away, to vanish. She mustn’t tell anyone. Not Ian. Not Lizzie. It wouldn’t be for ever, or even for very long, but now — right now — he needed a haven.

But he did know why his life was in danger, even if he couldn’t share it.

The night of Nora Tilden’s wake he’d gone to Freddie Fletcher’s table and they’d talked about Pat Garrison: the black kid who’d dared to look at Lizzie like that, with his dark, watery eyes. The black kid who was going to get all this — the Flask, right in the heart of their community — get everything, said Fletcher, their fathers had fought for. And Sam Venn was there too. And he had his own little hateful song to sing: that God was watching, and God would punish them for wanting to mix their blood — the blood of cousins. So they’d drank some more and decided on a plan: they’d wait for the kid in the cemetery, corner him and teach him a lesson. Break a bone. Bruise that unblemished skin. But they needed a weapon. So John Joe slipped back behind the bar and found an optic bottle that needed changing — the malt whisky — lifted the ivory key ring so that he could unlock the cellar. He’d seen Alby the Christmas before with a gun: a grey metal revolver he said he’d salvaged off the Stanley. And he knew where he kept it — up in the attic, in a sea chest. So he slipped upstairs and opened it up: but the revolver was useless when he finally got it out of its box, more like a child’s toy than the real thing. Then he’d seen the billhook, and he’d stood there in the moonlight by the window, testing the heft of it, and liking what he felt.

When he got back to the bar Sam and Freddie were gone and he thought they’d lost their nerve. He sensed that both were cowards, because they had so much hatred in them, so much belligerent energy. Then he saw Sam through the bay window, out on the deck by the river. Sam whispered in John Joe’s ear so that he could smell the whisky on his breath. ‘He’s getting his coat.’ And Fletcher was there, whispering with Kath Robinson. The three of them slipped out to wait for him in the cemetery: Murray, Venn and Fletcher. And Kath had watched them go.

And now they’d found the kid’s bones in Nora’s grave.

If John Joe hadn’t felt so ill, so sick with worry, he’d have gone to the Shipwrights’ Hall lunch with Freddie and Sam, because they agreed they had to go on, live their lives as if nothing had changed. When he’d heard that Fletcher was in intensive care up at the Queen Victoria he’d felt not fear, but the ghost of a fear. Did someone know? He’d gone up to the hospital to see him and found him in a small side room off the main ward — and his fear blossomed, because he knew what that might mean, because that was where they put people they thought would die. He’d looked at Fletcher, sprawled on the bed, his skin like lard, swirled with black hair, and told himself that it wasn’t possible. This was chance, an accident. If death came for Freddie Fletcher it would be a random killing. He stilled his panic. To banish it he just needed to see Sam Venn, to check that he was all right. Davey Howe, the friend who’d bought his ticket, had told him that Venn had been sick at the Shipwrights’ Hall, but recovered and taken a cab home.

Venn lived in two rooms over the London Road Shelter. Downstairs the kitchen and meeting room were locked up for the night, although the smell persisted in the sticky doorway: cabbage and sweat and damp cigarette butts. He’d thumped his gloved fist on the metal grille. Looking up, there’d been no light, but he knew that if Venn wasn’t at the church then he’d be at home, and he’d seen Pastor Abney on Explorer Street, and he’d said the church was closed because only Sam could work the boiler, and he was ill, and it was freezing, wasn’t it?

So he had to be home. There was an alley down the back of the building and from there he could see a light — not in the bedroom, but dimly in the little window that let on to the stairwell.

The door with the sign that read warden was unlocked. He rested his hand on the brass handle and pushed it open; it flew back, banging on the concrete wall and then rebounding, almost back to closed, so that he’d seen what was inside for only a few seconds, and then the image was gone. Neat, swept wooden steps, and halfway up a jacket, then a scarf above that, and shoes at the bottom, discarded. He pushed the door open again and looked at