At Death's Window (13 page)

D
arkness. The mobile buzzing on the bedside table. Shaw’s heartbeat already running at seventy – up from its resting rate of fifty-eight. Not the lifeboat; because he had a pager for the RNLI, and he’d set it to chime, and he’d hadn’t heard the maroon go off from the coastguard hut on the cliffs. Lena stretched and lay still, a black arm across the white pillow, a single exhaled breath indicating she was only just awake, poised to slip back into sleep. She’d always needed her sleep and deeply resented late-night calls. A month earlier Shaw had been struggling with a case involving street attacks on working girls which had led to a spate of late-night text messages. Lena’s patience had finally snapped and she’d made up a bed in the café. She’d only just returned, signalling a truce at least.

Shaw held the mobile screen to his good eye, then took the call.

‘George.’

‘Peter. The nick at Burnham Market runs a nightline. They clocked a call from Louise Wighton about an hour ago – she’s the wife of Geoff, the ex-copper who now babysits second homes?’

‘And …’ Shaw was already out in the corridor, gently closing the bedroom door.

‘Wighton set out late evening to check one of his properties. One of the security firm control centres phoned to say the alarm had been triggered. He hasn’t come back. Big posh manor house in a hamlet up by Burnham Norton. I’ve got a mobile unit on its way from Wells. She says he never – ever – fails to come home on time. As of now he’s eight hours late. His mobile’s taking calls but he’s not answering.’

‘A hamlet, you said?’

‘East Tines. Never heard of it, but I’ve found it on the OS. Postcode’s 4PG NN6 if you use the GPS. I’ll text it.’

Shaw dressed in the kitchen then ran the 1.4 miles to the lifeboat house. The Porsche purred in the night as he edged it up the lane towards the coast road. The dashboard clock read 04:05. He met a fox trotting down the track towards the beach, curiously unconcerned. The dunes loomed, pale and cold in the white security lights triggered by the car’s movement, revealing the new boathouse, a café, a row of converted fishermen’s cottages. Outside one stood a single bottle of milk. At the top of the lane a white owl sat on a fence post, the turntable head tracking the car as it slipped past.

The journey to East Tines was 8.46 miles – according to the car’s satnav, which led him along a narrow B-road bound for Burnham Norton, hugging the contour of the hills. Valentine’s Mazda came into view, slewed across the carriageway, 200 yards short of the edge of the hamlet. Down in the valley Shaw could see the church at Burnham Overy Town, its square tower rising out of a skein of pre-dawn mist which tracked the river.

‘Unit from Wells is on the other side … here,’ said Valentine, shining a torch on to a map spread on the Mazda’s bonnet. He indicated a small road on the far side of the hamlet.

‘Back-up?’

‘Sorry. I’ve pulled all the rank I’ve got and there’s a traffic unit on the way from the A10 but it’ll be half an hour – probably longer.’

The OS map revealed that East Tines constituted half-a-dozen buildings, two of them clearly once farms, with buildings set around yards, a single track in and out. They could see nothing against the horizon except a grain silo and a stand of pine trees. A dog barked down in the valley. A sky full of stars wheeled over their heads and Shaw succumbed to a regular illusion, that he could hear the heavens turning, as if they emitted the whisper of celestial mechanics.

‘We could wait,’ said Valentine. ‘If he’s run into the burglars he could be lying low waiting for them to move on. Or they might be doing several houses, and he’s keeping his head down until he’s sure they’re done. We could sit tight too, wait for the back-up unit. This might be our chance to nab the lot.’

‘Lying low for eight hours? If he’s here, George, he can’t get out. Plain and simple,’ said Shaw. ‘We need to get him out, and we need to do it fast.’

Shaw splayed his fingers over the image of the hamlet on the OS map: ‘Radio the mobile unit, George. Tell ’em to block the road with the squad car on their side and then proceed with caution. We’ll meet them in the middle.’

The map showed a short track leading out of the centre of East Tines towards the brow of the hill. Tines Manor was marked: a large house with two wings, and what looked like a walled estate garden. The remains of a medieval moat were shown as two parallel dotted lines.

Setting out along the lane their footsteps spooked something in the ditch, which scurried ahead of them and then bustled through a hedge. As Shaw’s eyes switched to night vision, the hamlet began to emerge from the shadows: two houses with low roofs to the right, one showing a light over a door. The silo stood to the left. A triangular rough green opened out to reveal a bench, a rustic water pump and a pair of cat’s eyes in the shadows.

A pool of torchlight flickered into view along the sandy path and a voice asked, ‘DS Valentine?’

The uniformed police officer was called Richardson. Shaw knew the face because he’d won some kind of medal for clay pigeon shooting and had featured in the force’s newsletter. His partner, PC Johns, had stayed with the squad car, he said, and would deal with the traffic unit if and when it arrived.

‘No sign of Wighton?’ asked Shaw.

‘Nothing, sir. But we got a call from control. One of the residents here has phoned in to say there’s an odd noise coming from Tines Hill – that’s up there …’ He pointed north, to where the pine trees broke the starry horizon. ‘The big house is in the lee of the woods.’

They walked for two hundred yards and then Valentine called a halt. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the noise.’ He stood, hatchet head skewed to one side. Shaw had noticed his DS’s ability to hear beyond the normal range before: not high notes, but bass. It was as if his feet could pick up faint shockwaves in the earth. Perhaps it was the slip-ons.

In the silence they heard a rhythmic, regular chiming, like a toneless bell. Shaw measured the signal: once every four seconds. The note had a vibrant quality, as if it contained several tones, all in the same flat key.

‘There’s no church,’ said Valentine, effortlessly reading Shaw’s mind. Looking back down to the village they noted two more lights at windows in the cottages round the green and a single dog bark set off a necklace of answering howls.

Tines Manor came into view, framed by two dark cedar trees, which seemed to throw protective arms around the brickwork. The walls were seven foot high and topped with crushed glass. As they approached up the lane the rhythmic thud changed in nature. There was a more resonant edge now, as if someone was playing a tubular bell. The gates stood open, a security light illuminating the façade: twelve Georgian windows, a Downing Street door, a climbing wisteria.

‘It’s not an alarm, is it?’ asked Shaw. ‘The noise. Perhaps it went off and they just thumped it with a wrench to disable it, and this is what’s left.’

Valentine examined his phone. ‘Signal’s good. So that’s another question: why hasn’t he phoned home?’

Shaw took a step back and scanned the windows, shaking his head. ‘What’s your first name, Constable?’

‘Paul, sir.’

‘OK, Paul. I think we have a duty to try and find Geoff Wighton asap – and not just because he used to be a copper. So here’s what you do. Circle the house, get round the back, keep your eyes open, and try not to make too much noise. If someone does a runner follow them, radio for assistance, keep your distance. Otherwise, complete the circle and meet us back here. If we’re gone, we’re inside. Follow us in. No heroics. Got it?’

He nodded, readjusting his cap.

As Shaw and Valentine approached the front door, they heard Richardson’s boots on the gravel, then silence, as he stepped on to the lawn and disappeared into the shadows beneath one of the cedar trees.

Shaw stood on the step. The resonant drumming seemed to be radiating from the walls themselves. Placing his gloved hand on the door, he found it swung open, the polished black paint shimmering with a reflection of the stars. Inside all was dark and smelt of air freshener and wood polish.

Shaw played his torchbeam up the stairs. ‘Ground floor, George. I’ll take upstairs. Let’s keep talking.’

Shaw didn’t believe in creeping around in the dark. With one hand he flipped six light switches.

‘Police!’ He used his serrated voice, and the echo made a wall mirror vibrate. ‘Police! CID. Make yourself known. Now.’

Upstairs he counted five bedrooms and called out, in turn, that each was empty. Valentine checked two living rooms, a boot room, and a pantry. All empty. No evidence of burglary.

Valentine was waiting for Shaw at the foot of the stairs. Around them the constant drumming had gained in volume, and the beat was slightly quicker.

‘One thing you should see,’ said Valentine.

The kitchen, which was still in darkness, held a massive wide-screen smart TV on one wall. Someone had created a Word document and typed in an illuminated message, bold, in seventy-two point type:

WE’LL BE BACK

On the central island worktop there was an iPhone.

‘Wighton’s?’ suggested Shaw. He picked it up in his gloved hand and the screen lit up. He brought up messages and the first was from Standard Security Systems Ltd to say that the alarm system at Tines Manor had been tripped at 8.04 p.m.: a rear window in the garden boot room.

A torchbeam played on the windows and they saw Richardson standing beyond the double glazing. Valentine switched on all the lights and the garden lit up, revealing a large, sky-blue kidney-shaped swimming pool.

The constable shook his head quickly, then moved on.

Shaw put his hand on one of the large double radiators. ‘Sound’s coming from these …’

‘Loft?’ suggested Valentine.

‘Cellar?’ countered Shaw.

There was a Yale key in the lock of the door under the stairs. As Shaw began to turn it the thudding stopped dead. The breath of a cellar greeted them as the door opened; that particular blend of damp and rot, staleness, and coal dust.

A single light bulb illuminated bare brick walls. Geoff Wighton sat on a stool by the wall drinking coffee from a plastic cup held in his right hand. In his left he held a coal scuttle with which, it seemed, he’d been rapping a pipe which emerged from a large lagged boiler.

‘What took you?’ he said. He looked bored, and perhaps scared, but he was hiding that well. There was blood at his hairline and a definite bruising to the temple.

‘You all right?’ asked Shaw.

‘Oh, yeah. I might die of embarrassment, but nothing else.’

They helped him up the stairs to the kitchen.

Wighton directed Valentine to a drinks cabinet in the front room and the DS came back with three malts. Shaw added water to his but Wighton just knocked it straight down his throat and asked for a refill. Valentine went out to find PC Richardson and stand him down.

A minute later they were all back in the kitchen.

‘I got a call from the insurers about eight. Alarm tripped – rear boot room. So I came in here, put my mobile down – I won’t do that again – and went and checked the locks. It all looked good to me – no sign of damage, nothing. I went down to the cellar to reset the security panel. I’d got to the top of the cellar stairs, switched off the light, turned to lock the door behind me and my lights went out. Next thing I know I’m down at the bottom of the stairs, on my back.’

He tipped his head forward to reveal the wound on the top of his skull. ‘It’s not just the one blow, by the way – feels like they got in a second before I hit the ground. Bastards. Didn’t even see a shadow.’ He stood up, stretched, then sat down again quickly. ‘Sorry. Bit dazed.’

‘Take it easy,’ said Shaw. ‘Stay put. There’s an ambulance on the way.’

‘One thing,’ said Wighton. ‘I keep my eyes open. I never just turn up at a property. I park a bit away. I left the van down the far lane in a farmyard, then walked up, making observations. Textbook stuff. Down by the green there was a van parked.’

He licked his lips: ‘White van – Ford. Crest on the side said Norfolk County Council. I bet it ain’t there now.’

Shaw recalled the one empty bench, the water pump but no vehicles – vans or otherwise.

‘If you saw that parked in the street in daylight hours what would you think?’ asked Wighton. ‘Drains, council tax, street lights, council house rents. It’s the vehicle equivalent of standing around with a clipboard. You could go anywhere, park anywhere, and who’s going to notice? Pretty much perfect anytime between early morning and nightfall. Even at night on a street. Mind you, looks bloody suspicious at four o’clock in the morning in the middle of East Tines. My guess is it’s the vehicle of choice for the Chelsea Burglars.’

Wighton beamed. ‘Did I mention I got the reg? Well – I can remember a bit of it. DN10. Definitely DN10.’

He tore the page out of his notebook and gave it to Shaw. ‘Enjoy.’

A
doorstep, six-thirty, and the town soaked by a sea mist. The paintwork solid black, with a Georgian skylight, and an old gas lamp, now rusted. A foot-scraper too, with a pint of milk lodged in the hole. Valentine stood under the lintel and watched the water drip methodically an inch from his nose. He’d not returned to bed after the call-out to East Tines but had instead gone to St James’ and spent the last few hours in the CID room reading the case notes on the Chelsea Burglars. Two facets of the crimes stood out: their meticulous planning, and the graffiti. In his experience criminals – the rank and file – were heroically stupid. While they might prosper in the short term on rat-like cunning, reckless courage, or sheer chutzpah, they almost always did something totally brainless which allowed them to be scooped up by the police. This lot were different. One or more of them clearly possessed more than a GCSE in pilfering. And not only were they meticulous, well prepared and organized – they also felt the need to express political ideas. Or at least one of them did.

Which explained his presence on a doorstep in Adelaide Gardens: a backstreet half a mile from the town centre, with parked cars bumper-to-bumper on one side. Damp had got under the terrace façades and one or two of the narrow, four-storey houses were boarded up; almost all had multiple door buzzers, with the names of bedsit residents scrawled under the plastic. Valentine noted the nationalities implied: Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Romanian. There was a pub on the corner – the
Bathfield
– which looked like a hangover in brick: lightless, slightly off the vertical and the horizontal, waiting for opening time to bring it back to life.

A figure appeared out of the mist. Slightly built, maybe five foot eight, with a large head on a thin neck and narrow shoulders. The footsteps were neat and businesslike, and he carried a leather satchel.

‘DS Valentine?’ The voice was authoritative without being in any way distinctive. A pair of glasses with metal rims caught the red glow of a street light which had fallen out of sync in its daylight, night-time routine.

‘Hope I’m on time. I live in the North End so I walked – don’t do that enough. Any of us.’

‘Thanks for making it so early – it’s a help.’

‘No problem. I’m an early riser. Always have been.’

He’d produced a key and the door was soon open, some pale electric light spilling out on the damp pavement.

‘Come in – make yourself at home, such as it is.’

There were no carpets inside, just a bare staircase, and a corridor festooned with posters: Troops Out, Defeat Thatcher, CND, and a framed one, a reprint from 1945, of a giant V on the landscape with the slogan: ‘And Now – Win The Peace’.

Valentine counted three bare light bulbs as they made their way to the first floor, then the second, and along a corridor to an office.

‘Clem Whyte,’ he said finally, offering a small, narrow hand. ‘Welcome to the citadel of freedom. Party’s been here since 1903. We’ve always shared it with the Trades Council – they’ve got a chamber upstairs, very grand – well, it was, before the Great War. Not exactly an idea whose time has come, is it? Trade unionism. Hasn’t seemed to stop the Germans making a modern country out of the same ideal. But there we are.’

Valentine wasn’t listening to a word he said. Politics, in the formal party sense, had never been of any interest to him. Faced with a ballot box he voted Labour, but only because he felt that it was expected of him.

Whyte had to be fifty, with a little bushy moustache, and a narrow face to match the shoulders. Shaw wondered if they made adult shirts with that small a neck measurement.

‘How can we help?’ he said, filling a kettle at a small sink. ‘I’ve got half an hour. Then it’s time for the work they pay me for.’

Valentine walked to the window and saw that the mist had thickened and the pale sun had gone.

‘Nothing exciting, I’m afraid, sir. We’ve got an outbreak of graffiti – house fronts, a few public buildings, bus stops. Petty, I know – but annoying, and the last thing we need is the taxpayers on our backs.’

Whyte took the one comfy seat behind a desk and steepled his fingers.

‘And the subject matter of the graffiti?’

‘Broadly anti-second-homes slogans. Go home bankers – that kind of thing.’

‘And you thought: I know, I’ll pop round to the Labour Party.’

‘I was hoping you might be able to give me a list of the current membership – purely for elimination purposes.’ Valentine knew he wasn’t going to get any such list. But the request gave him a reason to cross the threshold, and when Whyte turned him down he could gracefully concede the point, and then fish around for the details he was really after.

‘West Norfolk Constabulary can afford an anti-graffiti CID unit these days? Last time I looked, you lot were looking for a million pounds in cuts.’

Valentine detected a mild anti-police tone, but he decided not to retaliate. Besides, he was looking forward to a cup of tea.

‘It would be of help to our inquiries.’

‘I’m sure it would. And I’d love to help, but it’s not possible. Our membership details are confidential.’

‘It’s not an unreasonable inquiry, is it? I don’t suppose anyone’s ashamed of being a member, are they? I’m looking for a politically motivated campaigner – motivated enough to commit a crime, which is what it is. I thought you might have some young bloods in the party.’

Whyte looked up from making the tea. ‘We had our AGM last week, detective sergeant, complete with a visit from the junior shadow minister for agriculture. Twenty-one people. Eight of them OAPs. Socialism has never been that strong in East Anglia, and now, with UKIP, we’re just clinging on. I’m not sure parties within the party are a mathematical possibility.’

‘What’s the party’s view on second homes?’

‘We’re the party of aspiration. At least, that’s what we’re told. One day we might support a small rebate on the council tax – five per cent. The real issue is providing affordable housing in areas where local people can’t get a home. Last elections we urged the council to spend more. But that’s all we can do – urge.’

‘But what do the members think? The local members.’

‘Frankly – and I wouldn’t say this in public – most of us think second homes are what Sellar and Yeatman in
1066 and All That
would have called ‘a good thing’. Without tourism, and second homes, the north Norfolk economy would be dead on its rural feet. Every second home provides work for local people – tradesmen, cleaners, decorators, builders. All right – it might be nice if the Chelsea set spent a bit more in local shops, but they do spend money on high-end goods – organic meat, fish, veg, clothes, books, technology, cars. Just take cars: there’s a lot of specialist garages on the coast for MGs, Bentley, Rolls, BMW, Rover – old Rovers are big business. And what is the anti-second-homes lobby really saying?’

Whyte had slipped into a rhetorical mode, as if addressing a public meeting. Valentine was fighting the urge to cut him short.

‘That if rich people didn’t buy them they’d all go to the locals? I don’t think so. There are bigger issues. Much bigger issues, like migrant workers. UKIP’s gaining ground. Immigration in this part of the country is a divisive and corrosive issue – as I am sure you are well aware. We need to help people to understand the economics, the politics, and get a real grasp on the facts. We need people to stop being afraid and angry.’

Whyte had tea bags in mugs with spoons, sugar in a bag.

‘Bugger. I’ll just get the milk; I left it on the step.’

Valentine reckoned he had sixty seconds. Whyte’s answers had been comprehensive and to some extent persuasive. But the DS had checked the
Lynn Express
archive online at the office and found three news items covering protest events, organized by a Socialist splinter group, against second homes – or more accurately, in favour of a local surcharge: two dated in the summer of 2011, one in 2012. The proposal was for second homeowners to pay ten per cent on top of the standard tax. Not recent protests, it was true, but hardly the distant past either. Valentine wondered if Whyte was protecting someone, or a group, who took a harder line on the issue than their local Labour Party.

He pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet and found a box of Typhoo tea bags. The second drawer held membership files. The newspaper report on one of the anti-second-home protests came with a picture of the demonstrators – who, according to the caption, had declined to be named. The first file was marked on the front with the name Archibald Booth. He flipped it open but there was no ID picture required; just standard details. Picking another file at random from the H’s, he double-checked. Still no ID picture.

Swearing briefly, he slid the drawer back into the cabinet.

He heard footsteps on the bare boards and a tuneless whistle, which might have been ‘The Red Flag’.

They chatted over tea until Whyte suggested Valentine might like to see the Trades Hall. Cradling their mugs – Valentine’s held a portrait of Nye Bevan – they climbed to the top floor.

The two drawing rooms of the original Georgian house had been knocked through to make a grand hall, framed at either end by full-length sash windows. The walls were panelled and a gold copperplate script listed the chairmen of the Lynn & District Trades Union Council. Commemorative boards marked visits by dignitaries – Atlee in 1950, Feather in 1973, Benn in 1978, Kinnock in 1983. There was a fine cherry wood table, and matching chairs, and in pride of place, on the long unbroken wall, the council mace in a glass box.

‘Impressive,’ said Valentine politely. He’d have made his excuses and left by now but he forced himself to be patient, only dimly acknowledging that this was because he knew Shaw would have stayed and listened. There was something dutiful about the DI’s attitude to policing which was mildly contagious.

There was a noticeboard at one end of the room and an old sideboard holding three rows of cups and saucers. Posters for Unite outlined the benefits of union membership for fishermen, field workers, pickers and workers in the new offshore wind farm industry.

‘That’s the big issue here,’ said Whyte. ‘The footloose workers, migrants, the rural poor. Getting them to join a union’s tough work. They won’t admit it, but a lot of gangmasters refuse to take on unionized workers. So these people – a lot of local people as well as Poles and Roma, or Bulgarians or Portuguese – end up being exploited. That’s an easy word to use, I know. But it means blighted lives. Damp rooms, sordid toilets, old shoes, cheap alcohol, poor food, kids with lice. It isn’t pretty. That’s the problem with the landscape – the golden beaches, the picture postcard villages. They hide so much.’

Whyte’s voice had changed, losing its pleading note. Valentine could see his small grey eyes had hardened. It struck him for the first time that Whyte was probably one of those people you wouldn’t want as an enemy. Valentine could imagine him being dogged and single-minded – even bloody-minded.

‘What about samphire pickers? They got a union?’ he asked.

Whyte laughed, taking off his glasses to polish the lenses. ‘No chance. They’re more interested in giving the taxman the slip. I don’t think they’d entirely embrace the TUC motto, ‘Unity Is Strength’, do you? They’re loners, adrift. And do you know what they’re adrift in? The underclasses. Everyone talks about the big cities and the poor, but if you want to find the black economy in Britain today, sergeant, try walking round a seaside resort with your eyes open. But that’s not going to make any tourist posters, is it? Golden Sands. Black Economy.’