Death Toll

formal suit in charcoal, the skirt to her calves, and it didn’t suit her. The silver rings looked gaudy in contrast, and make-up buried her natural colour.

Shaw had already established the basic facts after making it clear they knew she’d lied to them about her relationship with Alby Tilden: she admitted that for the past year she’d been the one contact between the Murray family and Alby. She collected his pension and his post and took them to the Clockcase Cannery once a month. Every first Tuesday Alby would meet her up by the goods-in bay and they’d share a bottle of wine in the strange room he’d built in the basement. But when Alby’s former cellmate from Lincoln had been alive she’d sent all the letters to him to pass on to Alby. Even she didn’t know Alby was in Lynn. She’d pick up his pension, bank it to his account. That’s how he’d always wanted it — distant. He thought about his family every moment of every day, she said. But he didn’t want them to see him.

But when he did need a go-between, asked Shaw, why her? Why not Lizzie, or Ian, or John Joe?

‘Alby knows I don’t find his …’ she searched for the appropriate word, ‘his decline, upsetting. I’m ageing too, Inspector. But it’s more than that. It’s the seediness of it — isn’t it? The failure. He’s always wanted to protect them from that — and perhaps protect himself against the knowledge that he’d know what they thought, even if they pretended otherwise. And I’ve always thought he deserved our indulgence. And that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was important to your inquiry — but Alby’s privacy was important to him.’ It was an oddly formal word to use, thought Shaw. ‘I wouldn’t have wished Nora on anyone,’ she said. ‘And losing the child turned his mind — on top of the war. I think he’s suffered. I wanted to help. We all did.’

But Shaw was still struggling with the notion that this woman was so close to her sister’s murderer.

‘So — you’ve forgiven Alby? For what he did?’

‘Have I? Yes — I suppose I have. But what did he do? Pushed his wife down the stairs in a violent argument at worst? Or watched her fall down them accidentally after a row on the landing? Living with Nora was a sentence, Inspector. I know — I served my time. She was bitter, cold and calculating. Alby married her for money, so he never had my sympathy, but I liked him because he was everything she wasn’t. Warm, open, spontaneous. I was just a girl when I first met him. I was charmed, excited. I was always charmed. And he was colour-blind when it came to people. Again, a stark contrast with my sister.’

It was quite a speech but Shaw didn’t miss a beat. ‘When did you tell Alby we’d found Pat’s bones in Nora’s grave?’

They’d given her a sweet tea in a plastic cup and at that her fingers pressed in slightly, Shaw noted, distorting the shape.

‘Immediately. I went that night — unannounced. There’s a bell at the loading bay and he came and rolled the doors back. I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d do what he did …’

‘You told him Kath’s story?’

She looked from Shaw to Valentine, calculating. ‘Yes. Of course — Kath told me that afternoon, as soon as we’d got Lizzie to rest. It was an odd secret to keep all those years.’ She shook her head. ‘Stupid girl.’

‘And Alby’s reaction?’

‘Anger. I don’t think Fletcher and Venn made him angry. He knew them, of course, knew their deficiencies. He could despise them. But John Joe — that’s what hurt. Because as far as Alby saw it, you see, it was two crimes. He’d robbed us of Pat — robbed Lizzie, and Ian. And then he’d taken his place. A father’s love for his daughter is very intense, isn’t it? The thought that she’d spent her life with that man — touching him, letting him share her bed. Alby’s not mad — he’s ill. But that thought shook him, shook his mind.’

‘Did he tell you what he planned to do?’

‘No. Never.’

‘Kath’s a stupid girl,’ said Shaw. ‘But Alby’s not stupid, is he? And yet what he did was stupid …We were bound to find him in the end. He’ll go to prison. He’s unlikely to survive that experience at his age, and with his health. Is that clever?’

She set her hands on the wooden table, the rings striking the Formica.

‘Prison holds no horrors for Alby, Inspector. Quite the opposite. And with the Clockcase closing, perhaps he understood that. Perhaps he wanted you to find him. And that night — the night I told him — he asked about Kath, about whether she’d tell her story to you, to everyone. I said she wouldn’t. Which is what she’d promised me. I thought the past should be a closed book. But she didn’t keep her secret, did she? I don’t blame her, really. But there we are. If she had kept it to herself, Alby thought you’d have never known about the three of them lying in wait for Pat that night. So what happened at the Shipwrights’ Hall might have ended up being what it started out as — simple food poisoning. So perhaps he isn’t that stupid after all. Just unlucky.’

It was a neat summary and Shaw wondered how long she’d had it prepared. Because he didn’t believe that was how it had happened.

‘This is nonsense,’ he said, standing. ‘I think Alby wanted to kill the three of them — Fletcher, Venn and Murray. I don’t know how — but I think you do, and I think you helped him. Because where’s your anger? The anger of a mother who discovers that her son has been murdered.’

She reacted physically to the words, rocking back slightly on the chair, but she didn’t speak. To buy herself time she tried to smooth out the skirt over her knees.

‘My sergeant here will take a statement — but remember, if you are lying, that’s an offence in itself, and the law will take no account of your age.’ He leant over the table so that he could see her eyes. ‘I’d ask you to imagine what it will be like for Lizzie and Ian if they have to visit you in jail. If they have to watch you die there. Ask yourself if they’ll survive that. If the family will survive that.’

Shaw waited for Valentine in the CID suite on the top floor.

It took his DS twenty minutes to take the statement which he slid across Shaw’s desk. ‘She’s sticking. No change. We have to let her go.’

‘Yes, we do. But here’s what we do next,’ said Shaw. He asked Valentine to get the incident room to liaise with Interpol, the US Bureau of Immigration and the North Dakota State Police. He wanted everything they had on Bea Garrison’s life in Hartsville during the sixties and seventies. It was a big slice of her life, and it was missing. Did her story really add up? Something she’d said about her life back then, when they’d first talked to her at the Flask, still jarred in Shaw’s memory. Infuriatingly, he couldn’t recall the detail, but it was something about that small town in the Midwest. Something that didn’t fit. Something about the little drugstore. He tried to imagine her life with Latrell, the GI returned home, but the picture wouldn’t form.

33

The neon lights hanging from the wooden roof beams of the Ark made a sharp contrast with the day outside: stillborn, fading to an early dusk. Tom Hadden was at his desk and Shaw guessed he hadn’t slept properly since they’d found Pat Garrison’s bones. He was pale, his red hair losing its colour too, the freckled skin as lifeless as masking tape. Shaw reflected that he’d known Hadden for three years and that the sum of his knowledge of this man’s life was less than what he knew about their victim.

‘I’ve been working on MOT — the letters on the scrap of paper we found in the victim’s wallet?’ said Hadden. ‘Well, it isn’t an MOT certificate. Paper’s all wrong. Plus his mother tells us he didn’t drive. So, we’ve done all the usual searches and got nowhere. Ministry of Tourism? MOT is the New York Stock Exchange symbol for Motorola Corporation. I guess that’s possible — they’re based in Chicago, which in US terms isn’t that far from where the kid came from. But why? Other than that, it’s a blank — sorry.’

Shaw looked at a sheet of white A4 paper lying on the desk in front of Hadden, in the centre of which he’d written MOT. Shaw couldn’t help thinking that if it had just been any three letters the puzzle would be simpler — that it was the association of the Ministry of Transport vehicle test which was clouding their thinking. They should be thinking sideways. He picked up Hadden’s pencil and wrote MTO, then ACB, HTV, ZCO. That was better. He didn’t have the answer, but he felt closer to it. He picked up the paper, made a ball and lobbed it into the basket.

Beyond the plastic swing doors they heard Justina Kazimierz and her assistant preparing for the autopsies following the Shipwrights’ Hall poisoning. As Shaw parted the doors he felt his heartbeat quicken, as it always did. Both mortuary tables were covered by sheets. Over them, on the east wall of the original church, the stone angel