Death

the white wood of each step charred at the edge. The chimney stack stood as well, but little else. To the corner stack was attached a piece of bedroom wall, the blue and gold stripped wallpaper untouched by the blast which had blown the floorboards through the roof, and the roof into the sky.

Valentine heard the low rumble of Shaw’s Porsche at the roadblock down on the main street. He’d called Shaw first thing to tell him what he’d discovered about Joe Osbourne’s secret life on the streets. A one-off incident, or a glimpse of a pattern? Joe had motive — Marianne’s sexual indiscretions — a flimsy alibi which no one alive could substantiate, so opportunity as well, and now a weapon. Shaw had been particularly struck by Valentine’s description of the incident, because in his experience the number of people who get through life without using physical violence on someone else was astonishingly high. It was just that those who did tended to make a habit of it.

Shaw made his way up the street, led through the rubble and broken glass by a fireman; Valentine noted the epaulette on his shirt — an impeller, a laurel leaf, then two smaller impellors, making him an Assistant Chief Fire Officer. Top brass. Shaw introduced him as Bill Harding, mid-forties, brisk and military. He gave them a two-minute summary report. The gas explosion had occurred at precisely 2.31 p.m. on Friday. Arthur Patch, aged eighty-seven, was the sole occupant. The house was rented. His wife Marie had died six years earlier. Social services had organized food and medical visits until last summer when Patch had elected to look after himself. Neighbours had rallied round. There had been signs of mild senility, but nothing worse.

The fire brigade investigations unit had made a preliminary examination of the scene. They’d concluded that the oven in the kitchen had been the source of the gas, but that the seat of the fire had been in the bedroom above, which is why the force of the blast had destroyed the upper rooms, torn off the roof, but left the ground floor virtually untouched. A single tea light beside the bed had probably provided the lethal spark. Given the power supply was uninterrupted for the area at the time the presence of the lighted candle in mid-afternoon was suspicious.

Initially, they’d tried to put together an innocent explanation for Patch’s death. He was a smoker, and may have used the candle to light up. There was no law against pensioners lying in bed smoking. But it wasn’t likely, and the neighbours reported that Patch was often seen in the daytime, and always dressed. A more likely scenario was that Patch had gone to bed Thursday night, died from natural causes, and it had taken several hours for the lethal concentration of gas to build up in the roof space and reach the candle. But what they had of the corpse was clothed: shreds of shoe, a jumper. So that didn’t fit. There had been enough questions to ask the pathologist to take a closer look. They knew the rest. Cyanide in the bloodstream.

‘Exit fire brigade, enter CID,’ said Harding. ‘My problem’s what happened when the smoke cleared.’

The explosion, he explained, had sent half a tonne of burning wood and masonry up into the sky. Bits of brick had come down nearly 200 yards away, but burning paper and wood sparks had drifted on the wind. At first they thought they’d got away with secondary fires even though the landscape was a tinderbox, waiting for a match. But last night they’d spotted flames about midnight, up on the crest of the hill. They had beaters out now trying to stop it spreading. There might be more embers just waiting to flare into life. And each fire created its own embers. If the wind picked up they’d have a real problem. ‘Which is why I’m here,’ said Harding, ‘and not on the beach with the kids. But I’ll leave Patch to you boys. . I think cyanide pills are way out of my league.’

The street looked like something out of the Blitz. The rest of the houses were still evacuated. None had kept their windows, and the two on either side of Arthur Patch’s houses would need rebuilding — the partition walls laced with cracks, a hole in one showing the corner of a bed, the linen white and crisp. The tarmac was strewn still with bricks and glass, a scene-of-crime tape keeping the inquisitive down by the corner.

Shaw stepped over the threshold, a wodge of daily newspapers under his arm. Taking them into the small front room he spread them out on the dining table, which was unmarked by the blast but covered in a thick film of brick dust. East Hills had made the front of The Daily Telegraph, The Times, Daily Mail and The Independent. The chief constable had got what he wanted in spades — which was good news, set to make the bad news even worse.

As he reread the headlines Shaw felt a slight pain in his damaged right eye. That morning, at eight precisely, he’d seen the eye specialist at the Queen Elizabeth. There was no sign of deterioration in his good eye, and no indications of disease in the blind one. But the blurred vision was clearly a worrying symptom. Any repetition would warrant consideration of enucleation — surgical removal of the blind eye. If he was really worried about what a ‘fake’ glass eye they could fashion one to mimic the damaged one — a synthetic moon-eye. He’d given Shaw numbers to ring if the symptoms returned. With flexibility on his part they could have him in for the operation within forty-eight hours. There was no guarantee the procedure would arrest any decline in the good eye, but in eighty-five per cent of cases it did. As odds went, for Shaw, they were good enough. He looked up through the charred rafters of the house and saw the daytime moon: mountains, craters and seas, in sharp focus. Natural optimism, his default setting, reasserted itself, like a caffeine rush.

Valentine walked into the hall and down into the kitchen. The oven was still in place, held by the heavy cast iron of the range. The door had gone, the steel box of the oven itself distorted into a ragged hole. Shaw crouched down on his knees and looked inside.‘So, George. Off you go. .’ he said, his voice echoing slightly. ‘Tell me what happened.’

Valentine wasn’t particularly interested in playing games. ‘Killer gets in — walks in, ’coz this kind of street no one locks their doors,’ he said. ‘He forces the pill down him — maybe cracks his jaw too. We’ll never know because every bone he had is now cracked like an old teacup. Then the killer carries the body up to the bed — let’s say that’s Thursday night — sets the candle, then turns on the gas. It took all night and half the next day for the gas to build up in the loft, the ceiling space. My guess is that’s a lot longer than he thought it would take. But he’d closed all the windows so it was gonna blow eventually. When it does it takes Arthur into space. Our good luck was that some of him came back down.’

Valentine thought about the picture he’d painted then shook his head. ‘Only thing that doesn’t work is the candle — it’d have to be eight foot tall to burn all night. So maybe the killer came in the night? But then, that doesn’t work, ’coz the old bloke’s in his daytime clothes. That morning, perhaps — the Friday. Same day Marianne Osbourne died.?’

‘That’s better,’ said Shaw. ‘The key question is why — why did Arthur Patch have to die?’

They’d been advised not to climb the stairs but Shaw said he’d take a chance, edging up, the wood creaking. Valentine stood at the foot, dizzy with sympathetic vertigo. Ten steps up Shaw could see into what was left of the back bedroom. Part of the floor was left; on it stood a small bedside table on which they’d found the saucer and all-night candle. Part of the headboard of the bed was left imbedded into the wall. There were stains there, on the dark wood, so Shaw looked away. The glimpse reminded him they were dealing with death, and as always that focused his mind, making the real world clearer.

‘Why’d he die?’ asked Shaw again, feeling the gritty dust on the banister.

‘He saw something. .’ offered Valentine, opening a file he’d got biked out from the council offices in Wells. Arthur Patch’s employment records: 1951–1994. His last day on the payroll was October 1 — two weeks after the East Hills murder. He’d been the senior car park attendant at the quayside for eighteen years. ‘Imagine what he had in his head,’ said Valentine. ‘All the locals, plus their cars. ’Coz it’s the only place to park on the quay, so it’s not just tourists. Most of the towns got double-yellows, so even the residents have to use it. He’d know everyone, they’d know him. Dangerous man if you’re a killer trying to cover your tracks.’

‘So you’re saying Patch died so he couldn’t come forward and give us an ID, and that the same man helped Marianne Osbourne take her life to stop her telling the truth when she got into St James?’ It made sense but Valentine didn’t react, so Shaw tried another question. ‘If that’s what happened why didn’t Patch die in 1994?’

Valentine didn’t miss a beat. ‘Because in 1994 everyone thought the killer was one of the seventy-four people taken off East Hills. Whatever Patch saw wasn’t suspicious in itself, only in retrospect. The killer knew we’d draw a blank with the mass screening — that we’d widen the net. There’d be publicity. We’d want witnesses, fresh witnesses, who’d seen anything suspicious that day. That’s when the killer feared Patch would come forward.’

Shaw was quietly impressed. It had taken him an hour in bed just before dawn to work that out. ‘You remember Patch?’ he asked.

‘Maybe,’ said Valentine. The nick at Wells had a car park at the back so he’d never had to park on the quay. But he remembered the little caravan. He thought Patch had worn a hat — something jaunty — not a Tam o’ Shanter, a Trilby maybe. Then, one day, he was gone with his caravan, and the machines took his place, which no one could operate, so the council lost a fortune, and one day there was a new caravan, smart and modern, with an