At Death's Window (20 page)

T
here was no answer to the door of Overy View because the hoover was making such a racket. Shaw peered through the bay window and told Valentine what he’d seen that first Saturday morning, the evidence of a party, the takeaway cartons thrown in the fireplace. They found the teenager at the rear of the property throwing a sports bag into the boot of a Mini Cooper. Designer jeans, white T-shirt, expensive Day-Glo trainers and a tan that looked Italian. The car registration number included 63 – indicating it was released in the second half of 2013. The paintwork was splashed with mud and hadn’t been through a car wash in months, if ever. An erratic digital beat was emanating from the sound system, the bass loud enough for Shaw to pick up the rhythm through his boots.

Shaw flashed a warrant card. ‘DI Peter Shaw.’

‘Seb – Seb Todd.’ His teeth were so good he could have been American. Or Canadian. And the muscles under the T-shirt had been invested in too – Shaw guessed an hour a day on weights at least. But he wasn’t muscle-bound. The workouts had been aesthetic.

‘Just a word if it’s OK – could we step back inside?’

‘Sure,’ he said, but checked his watch, a primary-coloured diver’s timepiece worn on the reverse of the wrist.

Todd took a smart phone from his jeans pocket and set it on a butcher’s block.

‘In a hurry?’ asked Valentine.

‘I need to get back to uni. Durham. It’s a drive.’

‘Right – what, two hundred and fifty miles? Why’d you come back?’

‘Just to tidy up.’ The kid wasn’t stupid so he knew he’d fallen for a sucker’s punch as soon as he’d answered Valentine’s question. He blushed, a vivid rose at the throat, spreading more slowly to the cheeks.

Valentine told him the facts: there’d been a party, he’d left the place a mess, and now he was back.

‘Why?’

The subtle blush intensified into a deep red flush. Shaw made a mental note of the condition: idiopathic craniofacial erythema. There were few curses more deadly to the teenager than uncontrollable blushing. Historically, doctors had diagnosed mental health issues as underlying the condition. The latest research suggested that an overactive sympathetic nervous system was at the root of the disorder. None of that was any consolation to Sebastian Todd.

‘Look, Seb, I know you were here earlier this week. I had a look round the house the morning after the burglary and there were a few things scattered about – and the fridge was open. Looked like a party.’

Todd was nodding. ‘Right. Thought I’d better clear up – Dad’s coming down at the weekend because of the break-ins, and the body out on Mitchell’s Bank. Mum’s freaked out, she says she won’t come back. I told him they didn’t touch the place. But he wants to see for himself.’ He shrugged, indicating the general mistrust of fathers in sons.

‘So you left in a hurry?’

‘They don’t visit often. I just thought I’d get it all shipshape next time I came down, a couple of weeks down the line.’

‘What night was the party?’

He touched his smart phone so it lit up. Shaw noted this emerging habit in those around him; Lena, even Fran, were guilty. Ask them a tricky question and they’d check their phone to buy time to work out a decent answer.

‘Wednesday,’ he said, but there had been a one-second hesitation.

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah.’ No blushing this time and something in the blue-grey eyes that suggested a more steely personality under the Oxbridge-reject veneer.

‘Not much of a party on your own,’ said Shaw. ‘Friends?’

‘Yeah – just a mate.’

‘Sex?’ asked Valentine, knowing the question would confuse.

Panic in the blue-grey eyes. ‘Oh, yeah – right. My flatmate, Pete.’

‘Pete who?’

‘Pete Schindler.’

‘Got a picture of Pete on your phone?’ asked Shaw. ‘We could eliminate him from our inquiries.’

Todd scrolled up and down then pushed the phone across the butcher’s board so they could see the picture. Pete was dark, stubbled, a black T-shirt, a diamond earring. He had a hand up against the glare of the sun so that they could see a leather bracelet with studs and a tattoo on his arm: Celtic symbols, intertwined.

‘Looks a bit old for an undergraduate,’ offered Shaw.

‘Look – what is this?’ asked Todd.

‘It’s a series of questions,’ said Valentine. ‘What’s so hard about that one?’

Todd’s Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘He’s post-grad, teaches in the department.’

‘Your dad mind you bringing friends back here?’ asked Valentine.

He was sweating now, a little crystal circlet of beads on his forehead.

Valentine didn’t like acting like a bully but he had a job to do. ‘Good friend, is he – this Pete? What’s in it for him – the trip and everything? Couple of cans and a chicken biryani? Good friends – how good is that?’

Seb looked like a rabbit in headlights.

Shaw held up a hand. ‘Look. Your private life’s your own, Seb, OK? But I want you to be absolutely sure you’ve got the right day here. You stayed over Wednesday night – and left when?’

‘Thursday, early. Pete had to be back for a staff meeting.’

Overy View was one of Wighton’s houses. The ex-copper had said he’d checked them all late on Thursday at about four o’clock. If the remains of the party were evident at that point Seb Todd was telling the truth. If not, the possibilities were much more interesting.

What if Seb and Pete were enjoying a private party on
Thursday
night when Stefan Bedrich tried to break in? Had violence broken out? Shaw was supremely uninterested in young Todd’s sex life but the youngster was clearly less than at ease with answering questions about it. What precisely might have happened if Bedrich had burst in on the two friends? Had they thought Bedrich was a lone thief?

‘Seb,’ said Shaw. ‘One last time. Wednesday or Thursday?’

‘Wednesday.’

‘Right. We’re going to need a statement to that effect. And then we’re going to have to check it out. I think uni’s going to have to wait a day. OK?’

A
n ambulance stood in the graveyard of All Saints, its driver reading the
Lynn Express
at the wheel. Shaw knew its destination: Holbrook Hall Secure Psychiatric Unit on the bleak southern shore of the Wash. Taking a prisoner there one evening a year earlier Shaw had waited by the car until the man had been taken inside. A Georgian façade, eighteen windows, all barred, all reflecting the grey waters of the sea. As the door opened he’d glimpsed a male nurse, a staircase, white walls. Holbrook was about to become home for Arnold John Smith-Waterson, aka Gutter, who had made two desperate attempts to kill himself during his transfer back to the hospital, when he’d been left alone in the rear of the ambulance: one with a length of oxygen pipe, the second with a plastic serrated knife.

Acting DS Campbell had been advised that once transferred he would no longer be available for interview with regard to adulterated drug supplies. Given permission to question the sixty-three-year-old one last time, she’d asked Shaw to sit in, and he’d chosen the venue. He wanted to confront Smith-Waterson with the victim of his crime: the shattered angel in the east window.

Shaw stood in the shadow of the church and checked his phone. Valentine had volunteered to double-check Seb Todd’s version of events at Burnham Marsh with his former colleague, ex-DS Geoff Wighton. Meanwhile, Paul Twine was checking out Todd’s flatmate, Peter Schindler, through Durham CID.

A text from Valentine read:
Wighton not at home. Not answering mob. Neighbour says wife admitted to pulmonary unit, Luton. Will monitor.

Shaw entered the church and was overwhelmed by the sense of the sea
indoors.
The white walls, the clean, cold smell of the stone, the small carved wooden ship over the pulpit. He could see why Valentine cherished the place, and not just for the sanctuary of his wife’s grave in the shadow of the east window.

All Saints had retained its pews, fine benches in oak, carved with fishes and birds, and whales, and boats. In the side aisle at the front sat Smith-Waterson next to a male nurse in uniform. Behind the altar, scaffolding obscured the damaged east window. Ladders led up to a platform near the apex, where Shaw was surprised to see Sonia Murano, the glass expert, trying to repair the damaged face of the angel. At the foot of the ladder stood a man, looking up, a full head of silver hair catching the light.

DS Campbell was in the front pew, half kneeling, so that she could turn and look her prisoner full in the face. As Shaw approached he could just hear her speaking, holding the man’s undamaged hand, speaking so softly the church’s excellent acoustics could only just pick up her voice.

‘I know you can hear me, Arnold,’ she said. ‘I know you can understand. There’s lots of things in your head now – I know that. But there’s room for this too. This last time. We need to know where you got the adulterated cocaine, Arnold. If you don’t tell us it will take us much longer to find the source and other people may suffer, like you suffered.’

She put his hand down but she hadn’t given up. ‘It’s been painful, hasn’t it? Not telling us, bottling it up. Why not let it out?’

The old man nodded once and the nurse slid an arm round his shoulders.

‘I know that you want to tell us but something’s stopping you. That must mean you’re afraid to tell us. Someone’s threatened you. That’s right, isn’t it?’

The old man’s head didn’t move but the nurse peered into his face and Shaw heard a sob.

‘I’m sorry, Arnold,’ said Campbell. ‘I know you’re afraid. But Jon here is going to look after you now – there’s a big house on the coast, and you’ll have your own room. There’s views of the sea. Lots of fresh air. Miles of open space. You’ll be so safe I think that very quickly you’ll regret not telling me what I want to know. If you like you can ask Jon – or one of the other nurses – to let me know if you want to talk. Will you remember that?’

Shaw sat in the front pew. Smith-Waterson had his eyes shut, pressed so tightly the minute muscles in the eyelids quivered with the effort.

‘Arnold,’ said Shaw.

The eyes came open. They were a watery blue and seemed to shine with guarded intelligence, and even a slightly hooded curiosity.

‘They’re repairing the angel,’ said Shaw, pointing up at the scaffolding.

The detective unfolded a piece of paper and let it fall on Smith-Waterson’s lap. It was Sonia Murano’s sketch of Gabriel, from one of the other damaged churches.

‘It’s always a certain kind of angel, isn’t it, Arnold? The high, folded wings, the single eye, the message in the hand. Why those angels, Arnold?’

Smith-Waterson was looking up at Murano working and the effort began to make his skull shake. Above they could hear her tapping the lead, the slight screech of the glass being edged into place.

‘Arnold, they’re repairing the angel now,’ persisted Shaw. ‘So soon it will be as if you hadn’t taken your rifle and shattered the glass. You hate them, don’t you? Does it make you sad to see the angel back? The source of the drugs is back too, you know that. Even if the supply has dried up, he’ll be back. Other people will end up like you – with blackened, dead skin. You don’t want that to happen, Arnold. I know you don’t.’

The man with the silver hair climbed the ladder into the scaffolding and delivered some tools to Murano, before carefully returning to earth.

‘Who should we be looking for?’ asked Shaw, drawing close. ‘Do they look like angels? They don’t have wings, do they? That can’t be right. Is he a good person perhaps – or someone who looks like a good person? Is that it?’

He shook his head.

‘Thank you, Arnold, for answering that question. You see, you can help us without speaking. That way you don’t even have to make a single sound. You don’t have to actually tell me anything. You just have to say if I’m right or wrong.’

Shaw looked up at the window.

‘Is it a priest, Arnold? Or someone who works in the church? Or a messenger – a postman, perhaps? Or someone in authority – a social worker or a charity worker?’

He shook his head several times.

‘I can’t,’ he said.

‘People will die,’ said Shaw, unable to stop his voice hardening.

The old man pressed his eyes closed with his fingertips.

The sun broke through the cloud and lit up the window so that they were all splashed with light.

‘Look at the colours, Arnold,’ said Shaw.

But he wouldn’t open his eyes.

S
haw kept his seat in the front pew until he heard the ambulance pulling away. He wondered if Smith-Waterson had cast a last glance back at All Saints, and its angel window. Sonia Murano was still aloft, a silhouette against the glass. The elderly man with the silver hair sat at a hardboard workbench, a wallpaperer’s table, polishing shards of glass. A radio played something soothing, a Gregorian chant, the volume of which was now turned up so that the sound filled the great white space of the body of the church. DS Campbell asked if Shaw wanted a lift back to St James’ but he said he’d sit awhile. That small part of him that was conventionally religious had suggested an idea: that if he watched the angel being installed again in its rightful place the mystery of Arnold Smith-Waterson’s obsession might be revealed.

When he heard the church door bang shut he stood, and letting his boots clip the stone floor, he advanced on the east window until the man looked up from his work. Tanned, blue rectangular spectacles and an expensive tailored white shirt, open-necked. He inspected Shaw’s warrant card with a cursory glance, as if irritated by the intrusion.

‘DI Peter Shaw.’

When he said nothing Shaw offered his hand.

‘One moment, please.’ He held up a hand as a stop signal, sorting glass with the other, then making a note as if he’d forget some vital piece of information if he didn’t commit it to paper immediately.

Shaw stood and waited. On the wall a plaque had been put up marking the restoration. It included a brief summary of the history of medieval church glass. Shaw noted one paragraph:

Modern technology has established that glass is an extremely complex substance. Before 1500, and right back to Roman times and beyond, glass was a material made by fire from a mixture of sand and plant ash. In the Mediterranean area and further East, the ash used was that of maritime plants of various kinds, notably those of the
salicornia
family. These are rich in soda, and this alkali tends to give a more lustrous and quick-working ‘metal’, the best properties of which may be seen in perfected Venetian ‘crystal’ of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.

Medieval Glass-Making in England

R.J. Charleston

Shaw noted that one line: ‘a material made by fire’. It made glass sound magical, unearthly.

At last the handshake was completed: ‘Pietro Murano,
Inspector.’
Shaw concluded that he either had a low opinion of British detectives, or the police in general. So this was the father. The way his daughter had talked of him had led Shaw to conclude he was hardly a part of her life. Of his potted life story he recalled only a Mayfair shop and a messy divorce.

‘Father.’ The voice floated down from above and they looked up to see Sonia Murano’s face, framed in a trapdoor in the wooden platform on which she worked.

‘The yellow, Father.’

‘Excuse me, Inspector.’

He collected a shard of the yellow glass, marked – Shaw noted – with the eye of the angel. Carefully stowing it in a small leather satchel, he climbed the ladder.

Shaw heard a murmured conversation above, against the backdrop of the plainsong. Standing here, within the pool of coloured light, he realized how hot it must be up close to the glass itself. He could just see Murano’s head, the short fair hair, the pale face, but only in profile, as if she too were one of the angels, with its single eye.

Murano Senior returned. ‘I must say this,’ he said, cleaning his hands on a rag soaked in white spirit, the fumes heady and pungent. ‘
We
must say this. The church is closed for repairs. There is a notice on the door – agreed with the diocese. My daughter does not wish to work in public. She wishes only for her privacy. And yet you bring this man here; this vagrant, this madman, who uses a gun to destroy the glass. This is most insensitive.

‘The woman officer asked us – but already, it was too late. The man was here, with his nurse. What could we say? She is upset, Inspector. She asks if you have questions of her again. If so – respectfully – she asks please for you to send an email to the shop. That is all. She does not wish to speak. I am sorry.’

He held his arms wide over the glass.

‘And now back to work.’

Shaw turned on his heels and walked the length of the nave, turning smartly to the north, towards the door in the porch. Abruptly, without warning, he stopped dead and looked to the east window. Sonia Murano had her back to the coloured glass, a silhouette, watching him leave.