diagnosis they’d sold up immediately and moved to the coast. The end had come a few hours ago. A sudden massive stroke as Dawid slept by the picture window. She’d been with him, watching his face change as gravity took control.
They’d taken the body away, leaving Justina a lonely widow in an empty house.
‘So I came here,’ she said. She paused then and Shaw sensed that if she didn’t go on immediately she’d cry. She took in a breath. ‘I had a favour to ask,’ she said. Her hand crept towards the tea cup, then pulled back. ‘I wondered — if you didn’t mind — if I could take Fran out. Not now,’ she added, laughing tightly. ‘I don’t know — once a week? Whenever it’s OK with you. Only, there’s no family, some cousins in Poland. But no family really. And I’d enjoy that. Only if she wants? We could walk the dogs.’
Fran nodded her head quickly. Justina leant forward, took a slice of simnel and put it on Fran’s plate.
Shaw stood. ‘I’m sorry. I’d have liked to have known Dawid better.’ He zipped up his jacket, looking back along the beach. ‘George’s waiting. I’ve got to go. I should be taking Fran to the Christmastide at Wells. But work …and Lena has to stay here. Work too.’
Fran studied her simnel cake.
Justina stood. ‘I’ll take her,’ she said, as Shaw had known she would.
‘I can drop you both off, but I can’t stay.’
‘Peter …’ said Lena, taking Justina’s hand. ‘For goodness’ sake.’
Justina stood. ‘I’d like that. That’s a good idea.’ She turned to Lena. ‘What else am I going to do tonight?’
‘There’ll be crowds — can you take that?’ cautioned Shaw.
‘Crowds are best,’ said Justina. ‘Really.’
Ten minutes later Fran got in the back of the Porsche, Valentine squeezed in beside her, while Justina took the passenger seat in the front, because Shaw asked her to sit and talk. When they were up on the coast road he was the first to speak.
‘This isn’t just for Fran,’ he said, looking in the rear-view. ‘It’s the case. I need you to tell me something, Justina.’ In the back he could hear Fran cross-examining Valentine about what he remembered about her grandfather. She’d always known Valentine had been a friend. When she asked Shaw she got the same anecdotes each time. She thought Valentine might know something new.
Justina’s body language was clear. Shaw was pretty certain she was in shock. Her left arm kept rising, the hand seeking a place to rest. But he didn’t have time to camouflage the question.
‘When I was at Hendon I did a course on poisons. But I’ve forgotten almost everything. I just need the basics — quickly.’ The road was Roman-straight for half a mile, so he took his eyes off the road and looked at her. ‘Tell me about toxic synergy.’
41
The Porsche purred in a traffic jam, and Shaw could see ahead the line of cars snaking down towards the waterfront at Wells-next-the-Sea. The car in front lurched, trundled six feet then braked sharply, the back bumper rising with the abruptly arrested forward motion. In the distance he could see the high mast of the Dutch barge by the quay, decked with fairy lights. On both sides of the line of cars children and parents walked past, bundled in winter clothes. Everyone was late. The snow had stopped, swelling the crowd, but the temperature had dropped with the loss of the cloud cover, and steam rose from the people as if they were cattle in a winter field.
‘Remind me why we’re here,’ said Valentine, leaning forward, while Fran looked out at the crowds. The car crawled past a shopfront where a man shared a match with a woman, the resulting halo of cigarette smoke embracing them both.
‘Because if our witness is correct, then a woman tried to dig up Pat Garrison’s impromptu grave,’ said Shaw, answering his question but speaking to Justina. He tried and failed to hide the excitement in his voice, the surge of adrenaline which had been triggered in his system by the pathologist’s brief description of the principles of toxic synergy.
He took a deep breath. ‘Up until now we had three male suspects for the murder of Pat Garrison: three suspects someone has tried to kill — so I suspect we weren’t the only ones who had them lined up for it. But the point is, we now have a woman involved. A woman suspect. Question: which woman?’
The line of traffic juddered forward and Shaw swung the car right, along the road which led to the nearest car park, giving up any chance of getting through the centre of town to Morston House.
Shaw struggled to concentrate, half of his conscious mind recovering from his memory a long-lost lecture on toxic synergy. It had been in the main lecture theatre at Hendon, an old-fashioned 1930s amphitheatre. The science staff at the college had substances in glass jars on the scarred wooden bench at the front. An overhead projector showed atoms and molecules colliding, reforming. And one image of a victim. It was a woman in her fifties, the body lying in a damp cellar, the limbs held in awkward semaphore positions.
‘So if we’re looking for a woman, then — again — we have three possible suspects,’ continued Shaw. ‘First, Lizzie Murray. Jealous, maybe — perhaps there was another woman? Sounds like Pat inherited his father’s eye for the girls. But it doesn’t look likely — first off,
‘Then there’s Bea. Motive? Maybe she hoped her son wouldn’t get involved with Lizzie. She likes Lizzie — no doubt about that — but she hates the Flask and all it stands for. And, of course, the two were cousins. Did she follow him out that night to try to cool him down only to find she was too late, that there was a child on the way? Perhaps tempers were frayed. Pat had come to England unwillingly — we know that. His mum had tried to keep him happy — there was always cash in his pocket. Did he blame her for the mess he was in? It could have happened. And there’s something else — I’m certain …’ He thought about that. ‘Yes, certain, that Bea helped Alby poison Fletcher and Venn, and that she’d have happily poisoned John Joe too. She thought the three of them killed her son because Kath Robinson told her they’d gone ahead to wait for him in the cemetery. Think about that, George. If Bea’s behind the killings, which are clearly an act of revenge by someone who thinks Fletcher, Venn and Murray killed Pat Garrison, then she’s pretty much clear of the original murder.’
‘Could have been a cover,’ said Valentine. ‘Perhaps she did both: killed Pat, then helped Alby take revenge on three innocent men — which threw all of us off the scent, didn’t it?’ Valentine held up both hands. ‘And how’d she target the three of them? How did she help Alby?’
‘OK — I’ll deal with that. But let me finish. Because that leaves the best suspect for Pat Garrison’s murder — Kath Robinson.’
The first firework went off in the clear sky over the dunes — a yellow expanding glove of light. Fran screamed in the back. They felt the thud of the explosion and then a long drawn-out cheer, like a wave breaking.
They were still bumper to bumper on the approach road to the car park. Shaw checked his watch: high tide, and 8.45 p.m. His temper finally snapped, because he couldn’t sit still with this much adrenaline in his bloodstream. He gently rolled the Porsche up on to the pavement, jumped out and retrieved a magnetic flashing warning light from the boot and put it on the roof, instantly quelling a protest from the driver behind — a father in a people carrier with children packed on the back seats and the head of a red setter sticking out of the passenger-side window.
They abandoned the car, cut down an alleyway between two shops and found themselves on the edge of the dockside. But they couldn’t see the black water for the crowd, already ten deep at the iron railings.
Shaw put a hand on Justina’s shoulder. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
Shaw showed her his mobile. ‘We’ll give you a lift home. Stay at the cottage tonight. Lena’s getting a bed ready. I insist. Fran, you help Justina have a lovely time.’
