Death Toll (22 page)

Shaw parked the Porsche on the sandy lane that led down to the sea, a mile south of the beach house and café. He sat in the sudden silence and let the face of his mobile light his face, punching in Paul Twine's number. In the background he could still hear voices in the incident room at the cemetery – and a computer keyboard being tapped. Two things: first, he wanted Twine to arrange a fresh interview, under caution, at St James's for Bea Garrison. She'd lied about not knowing the whereabouts of Alby Tilden. She took him his pension. He was local – how local? Second, he wanted the latest on Freddie Fletcher's condition, and he waited while Twine contacted the uniformed officer they'd left up at the hospital overnight. ‘Stable, but still in intensive care.' He felt a creeping anxiety about Freddie Fletcher's illness. If he died he'd lose a prime suspect. And his death would prompt a pertinent question – was there any reason someone would want Fletcher dead, and if there was, could he have been murdered? The answer to the first question was revenge, if he really was Pat Garrison's killer. The answer to the second question was surely no – unless the killer was prepared to risk murdering a hundred innocent people just to get at one man. Even then there appeared no logical reason why Fletcher should die – along with the ailing Charlie Clarke – while everyone else recovered. No, Fletcher's illness had to be a random event. But still the creeping anxiety remained.

Shaw killed the signal and drank in the dark and the silence. He thought about checking
Flyer
, but decided that was a routine he could do without. Snow lay thick in the dune grass, and along the unlit path which led down to the beach. He got out, threw his jacket on the back seat and started to run, his legs reaching out, eating up the yards. He knew that by the time he got to the edge of the dunes, the point where the beach opened out, the security floodlight on the new lifeboat house would thud on, and then – just a few feet beyond, the view north would be clear and he'd be able to see the light they always left burning on the stoop of the café.

At that precise point he picked up speed, so that when he saw – in the sudden glare of white light – who was waiting for him, the shock made him stumble, one knee taking the strain so that he felt a pain shoot to his back.

Robert Mosse stood on the line of dry weed and flotsam that marked the last high tide. He wore a full-length black overcoat, but his head was bare, and there were snowflakes in the luxuriant black hair, so that Shaw knew he'd been standing there for some time, waiting.

‘What is it – a mile?' he asked as Shaw stopped, looking along the beach to the house. ‘You must be fit.'

The solicitor's face was almost completely immobile. A snapshot would have shown a handsome man: Action Man looks, lean, with a good bone structure and taut athletic skin. But in real life the effect was oddly modified by the stillness. Only the eye movements – like the eyes on a Victorian doll – showed that he was alive. He'd kept himself fit and well, because he didn't look in his forties at all. The hair was still thick and dark, almost decadent.

‘Where's Jimmy Voyce?' asked Shaw, determined not to be kept off balance. He'd checked with Jacky Lau earlier and they'd called off the search at Holkham until daybreak – still no sign.

Mosse wore leather gloves, and he took one off to hold in the other.

‘That's why I'm here. I've no real basis for my concerns, but I do have concerns.'

A wind came off the sea and Shaw shivered, the cold cutting through to his skin through the white linen shirt.

‘You're cold,' said Mosse, taking a step forward so that they were just six feet apart, pulling a scarf from around his neck and holding it out.

‘Voyce?' asked Shaw, not moving.

Mosse sighed, as if with disappointment that they couldn't be friends.

‘Yes. He's here, in Lynn – did you know?' Mosse looked at him, and Shaw could see he'd picked his good eye to focus on. ‘We met at Hunstanton the other evening. Anyway, to cut to the chase, he tried to extort some money from me. Threatened me, actually, with violence if I didn't give him a cheque for £10,000. I said I would consider my response. I dropped him off at his car and drove to see friends at Snettisham – they can confirm that. He left me his mobile number. I've sent him a text with my response – I told him I'd go to the police.'

Shaw was thinking fast, trying to see what legal status this conversation would carry in a courtroom. It was informal, not under oath, but he'd have to admit it had taken place. He'd made a tactical error, not pulling Mosse into St James's. The warrant had come through that evening, but he'd decided to wait one more night. Now Mosse could claim that he'd stepped forward to alert the police.

‘Blackmail?'

Mosse laughed easily. ‘No, no. I'm a just man, Inspector. What could …' he looked for the word, ‘scum like Jimmy Voyce know about me that would expose me to blackmail?'

Shaw noted the use of ‘just', not ‘honest', and wondered what that signified. Perhaps Robert Mosse thought he was the judge of good and evil.

‘No. I had given some financial assistance to Alex Cosyns over the years. I think Alex must have told Jimmy. But Alex was an old friend, and he was in financial trouble. The money was a gift. Jimmy seemed to think he was entitled to some of the same. He said we “went back a long way”. Precise words, Inspector. And he got that wrong, because we don't go back. I never go back. The Westmead is where I was brought up. I have moved on, but Jimmy couldn't see that.'

‘He went out to see Chris Robins – at the hospital. Just like you did.'

Mosse pursed his lips, checked his watch.

‘I thought you should know that Voyce threatened me with violence – as I have said – and that he added that if I didn't pay up he'd go back to New Zealand, but he'd make sure he left us with a reminder that I'd let down an old friend. I wasn't the only old friend he'd looked up, you see. He'd gone to the Tulleys. He seemed to think they owed him something too – a very dangerous misunderstanding.'

Shaw knew the family: three brothers, a Westmead legend, making decent money from a protection racket which had been running for the best part of thirty years. Violence was the currency in which they dealt – calibrated, cynical injury. They'd never faced a court on a charge of murder, but there was a list of missing persons in the file at St James's, each one of whom had last been seen in their company. It was clear they had a reliable and efficient method for removing the unwanted.

‘I've not heard from him again,' said Mosse. ‘You should know that. Now you do.' He squinted along the beach towards the cottage. ‘I have a daughter too,' he said.

Shaw was shivering badly now, his jaw juddering. ‘I wonder what it was that Chris Robins knew, or had. Maybe I'll find it.'

Mosse's face was oddly pale, and Shaw wondered where the usual winter tan had gone. He thought about telling him he'd been called to the reading of Chris Robins's will, but held back, reminding himself that knowledge was power and that he didn't need to squander it.

‘You've never really considered the possibility that I'm an innocent man, have you?' said Mosse, the voice quite different – wheedling, and weak. ‘Have you thought about that? About
your
prejudices? I'm just a kid from the Westmead. Criminal by nature. But you don't actually understand what that's like – you don't understand the loyalty that comes with a life like that. I am a loyal man. Cosyns, Voyce, Robins – they were my friends. They did something I can't forgive. I did what I could to help. But I'm telling you this now – and you should believe it …' He stabbed a finger at his chest. ‘I did not do it. I was not there.'

Mosse took half a step forward, raising an arm. ‘If you continue to misunderstand this then you will pay as your father paid. That is not a threat. It is a fact.'

There was anger in his eyes, Shaw noticed, but the emotion failed to radiate, as if it was acted out rather than felt.

‘I have escaped the Westmead,' he said, and Shaw thought he detected a hint of a sob in the voice. ‘I have escaped them. I will not go back.'

The security light on the lifeboat house clicked out. In the sudden darkness Shaw swung an arm to trigger it again, but when the light flooded out Mosse was walking away, down to the sea.

At nearly midnight George Valentine walked past the house on the corner of Greenland Street. The sign was in the window, so the game was open, the game was on, but he wanted his bed. He walked on, looking at his shoes and the ice on the pavement. He'd spent the last hour with Freddie Fletcher in a room at the intensive care unit at the Queen Victoria. Visitors had come and gone but he hadn't said a word. The doctors said his body was in shock from the poison he'd ingested, that the dawn would show if he was winning the battle or losing it. Of the other five patients in intensive care brought in from the Shipwrights' Hall four were recovering fast, one was stable – all those five had come from one table, sponsored by Age Concern, and were aged between eighty-five and ninety.

He stopped outside his house. There was a light on, shining through the fanlight.

It had been seventeen years since his wife had died and in those years he'd never come home to a light. He opened the front door and looked down the short corridor into the kitchen. For a second – which he tried to stretch – he thought it was Julie sitting there, her hands on the table top around a mug, the steam from it hanging in the air like smoke from a gunshot.

‘Georgie,' said Jean Walker. ‘I'm sorry, kid. I didn't know how to get you – they give you my message at St James's?'

Valentine shook his head, walking towards her, concealing as he did so that the shock had made his knees weak, trying to remember when he'd given his sister a key. He put his mobile on the table. He'd switched it to silent when they'd been in the Flask and forgotten to switch it back. The little message symbol flashed.

He felt the pot. ‘What's up?' He turned his back to pour himself a cup.

‘Gossip is all it is. But I knew you'd want to know.' She watched him sit down, the cup in two hands, so she looked away in case his hands shook.

Valentine sipped the tea.

‘First off, there's a real panic on at the Flask, Georgie, 'cos John Joe's on walkabout. They didn't see him overnight. Not the first time, mind you, but before they've found him pretty quick – down at the Globe or the Sailing Club.' She shook her head. ‘Lizzie's always taken him back. Christ knows where he sleeps when he's out overnight. But this time there's no sign of him. Ian was sent out to check the neighbours, round the streets. He said they didn't want a fuss – just asked people to keep an eye out. Then tonight I heard they'd found his boat was gone from the cellar wharf. I've seen him out in it – in the summer he goes up to the coast, but winter's different. They've got a few of the locals together to check the river – moorings, marinas, that kind of thing. But nothing – not yet.'

‘Any reason he goes off?' asked Valentine.

‘Moods – always has been a difficult bugger. This time it's pretty easy to see why, isn't it? He's always been the hero, the decent man; stepped in to help Lizzie out, brought up the bastard half-caste.' She winced at her own crassness. ‘Sorry – but that's what they say. Now it's different. Seems like the kid's real dad didn't desert the ship – that he'd have hung around if someone hadn't stuck a hook though his skull.'

Valentine noticed for the first time in years that there was no shade on the kitchen light, and that the glare was unforgiving.

‘And that's the other piece of gossip. Kath Robinson – Bea's housekeeper up on the coast? Well, Kath comes down most days to shop for food and stuff, goes for the fresh fish by the dock gates there? Well, her mum's still alive – I see quite a bit of her, she lives on Gladstone Street – and
she's
been saying that Kath saw Pat Garrison leaving the Flask that night. That'll be right, because she never took her eyes off that boy, I can tell you. But …' She sipped her tea, milking the moment. ‘But …ahead of him, going out along the path to the cemetery, she'd seen Freddie Fletcher and Sam Venn together – this'd be ten, half ten, before the do was over. And guess who was with them, kidda? John Joe Murray.'

Valentine knew that Shaw had his doubts about casting Fletcher, Venn and Murray as killers. That it was all too easy with twenty-twenty hindsight to put them in the frame. But the picture they were building up was compelling. And unlike Shaw, George Valentine had nothing against an easy life.

‘Thanks, Jean,' he said, wondering where John Joe was, and why he was running. But he found it hard to focus on the case. Jean had called him ‘kidda' for as long as he could remember. She'd gone on calling him ‘kidda' after he started courting Julie. But she'd never played the big sister. She and Julie had got on fine, and they'd ended up close, often, he thought, because they had one thing in common – trying to work out what was going on inside George Valentine's head.

Valentine smoked, but his hand was unsteady as he lit up.

Jean stood, put the mugs on the draining board and kissed him on the hair by holding his face. She looked around the empty kitchen. ‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I didn't think. I've always had the key. Years.'

She let herself out and then he saw she'd left the key on the table, a dull gold. When she shut the door her hand slipped so that it banged shut, which made the silence that followed overpowering, so he got out his mobile and phoned Shaw. There was no answer, so he left a message, telling him what Kath Robinson said she'd seen that night. That they needed to get her into St James's the next morning for a formal statement. He tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but he'd always found answering machines unnerving, and be sides, after all these years alone, he suddenly felt distracted by the empty house around him.