Death Toll (26 page)

‘Mr Tilden,' said Shaw. ‘I think you decided to kill Fletcher, Venn and Murray. I don't think you did any of this on your own. So we're going to take you upstairs now, and down to St James's, and we're going to have this conversation again. We're going to go on having it until I get the truth.'

As Alby Tilden dressed and packed a single holdall Shaw and Valentine looked around the room, then the furnace floor, and the single WC beside the lift. In the room they found a line of books on a bare plank shelf, held up on bricks. The titles were maritime – from
Hornblower
to
Master and Commander
– but there were surprises:
Typhoon
, by Conrad, and
Heart of Darkness
. It was as if Tilden had decided to live out the life he'd wanted through books from within his self-made cell.

In the furnace room they found a line of traps; in one a rat lay dead, its teeth as white as pearls. Valentine found the poison bin: a single wooden box with a padlocked lid and a stencilled skull and crossbones.

The key was in the padlock. Inside the box was a jar full of white powder. The label read
ALUMINIUM PHOSPHIDE
.

‘Bingo,' said Valentine.

But even as he said it they heard the scampering in the shadows. Shaw played a torch beam down the long basement floor and saw a chain of rats, nose to tail, emerging as if from the wall itself, dashing twenty yards, then disappearing. Shaw couldn't suppress the image that entered his head like a subliminal advert – the image of a rat that had taken the bait he'd laid under the cottage. He'd heard it shrieking, the poison shredding its nervous system, and when he'd found it with the torch beam he'd seen the blood was vivid, seeping from the nose and mouth. It had shaken itself to death, trying to throw off the pain, as if death was clinging to its back.

‘He wants to put more down,' said Valentine.

Then they brought Tilden out through the tarpaulin door, struggling now, the panic gripping. They heard his first scream rise in the lift shaft.

The interview rooms at St James's had been built in the fifties and smacked of utility Britain. No two-way mirrors, intercom or dark, non-reflective surfaces here; just tiled walls decorated with a single line of brown paint at knee-height, cheap furniture screwed down and light bulbs encased in miniature iron maidens. This was Shaw's third interview in an hour, and it was difficult to imagine they'd all been in different rooms. First: Kath Robinson. She'd reiterated the story Valentine's sister had heard. She'd seen Fletcher, Murray and Venn leaving the Flask at around ten fifteen on the evening of Nora Tilden's wake. She was sure of the time, because she'd gone back in to listen to the choir begin their second session, and she knew that was set for half past because Lizzie had said they'd keep to the timetable to allow the staff time to clear glasses and circulate sandwiches. But going in she'd bumped into Pat Garrison leaving, coat on and saying he was heading home.

‘He didn't say anything else,' she said. No bitterness, no recrimination, just a statement of fact.

Two questions: Did she tell Freddie Fletcher that night the secret she shared with Lizzie Murray – that Lizzie was pregnant?

She'd shrugged, seemingly confused by the straightforward question. She curled her bottom lip over her teeth. ‘I don't even like Freddie. I wouldn't share that with him. Would I?' In Shaw's experience that was a bad sign – answering one question with another.

And if it was true that she'd seen them all heading out towards the cemetery – and she'd just admitted she didn't like Fletcher – why didn't she raise some kind of alarm the next morning, or in the following days, when it became obvious that Pat Garrison had gone? Her answer, this time, was persuasive: yes, she'd suspected the three men were going to waylay Pat Garrison. A beating? Maybe. Worse? She didn't think so. Perhaps they'd run him out of town. But either way he deserved it, she said. She wasn't the only one he'd tried his luck with, and he'd been reluctant to take no for an answer more than once.

Had he forced himself on any of these girls? On her?

‘Never,' she said. ‘Not really …' she added, realizing perhaps that she'd gone too far. ‘He didn't force me to do anything.' For once the pale, translucent skin of her face reddened.

The second interview was with Alby Tilden. He'd made a statement repeating the story he'd told them at the Clockcase Cannery. He'd admitted industrial sabotage, denied he'd had an accomplice. During the later stages of the interview he began to show signs of distress: shallow breathing and chest pains. The on-call GP was with him within twenty minutes and recommended hospitalization. The paperwork was under way, and he'd been sedated and taken to the sick bay. Uniformed branch would provide cover at the Queen Victoria after his transfer. Shaw asked Valentine to have a chat with one of the hospital administrators to see if they could find him a room of his own. One with blinds.

And now the third interview. Bea Garrison didn't look good under a shadeless electric light. She'd chosen a formal suit in charcoal, the skirt to her calves, and it didn't suit her. The silver rings looked gaudy in contrast, and make-up buried her natural colour.

Shaw had already established the basic facts after making it clear they knew she'd lied to them about her relationship with Alby Tilden: she admitted that for the past year she'd been the one contact between the Murray family and Alby. She collected his pension and his post and took them to the Clockcase Cannery once a month. Every first Tuesday Alby would meet her up by the goods-in bay and they'd share a bottle of wine in the strange room he'd built in the basement. But when Alby's former cellmate from Lincoln had been alive she'd sent all the letters to him to pass on to Alby. Even she didn't know Alby was in Lynn. She'd pick up his pension, bank it to his account. That's how he'd always wanted it – distant. He thought about his family every moment of every day, she said. But he didn't want them to see him.

But when he did need a go-between, asked Shaw, why her? Why not Lizzie, or Ian, or John Joe?

‘Alby knows I don't find his …' she searched for the appropriate word, ‘his
decline
, upsetting. I'm ageing too, Inspector. But it's more than that. It's the seediness of it – isn't it? The failure. He's always wanted to protect them from that – and perhaps protect himself against the knowledge that he'd know what they thought, even if they pretended otherwise. And I've always thought he deserved our indulgence. And that's why I didn't tell you. I didn't think it was important to your inquiry – but Alby's privacy was important to him.' It was an oddly formal word to use, thought Shaw. ‘I wouldn't have wished Nora on anyone,' she said. ‘And losing the child turned his mind – on top of the war. I think he's suffered. I wanted to help. We all did.'

But Shaw was still struggling with the notion that this woman was so close to her sister's murderer.

‘So – you've forgiven Alby? For what he did?'

‘Have I? Yes – I suppose I have. But what did he do? Pushed his wife down the stairs in a violent argument at worst? Or watched her fall down them accidentally after a row on the landing? Living with Nora was a sentence, Inspector. I know – I served my time. She was bitter, cold and calculating. Alby married her for money, so he never had my sympathy, but I liked him because he was everything she wasn't. Warm, open, spontaneous. I was just a girl when I first met him. I was charmed, excited. I was always charmed. And he was colour-blind when it came to people. Again, a stark contrast with my sister.'

It was quite a speech but Shaw didn't miss a beat. ‘When did you tell Alby we'd found Pat's bones in Nora's grave?'

They'd given her a sweet tea in a plastic cup and at that her fingers pressed in slightly, Shaw noted, distorting the shape.

‘Immediately. I went that night – unannounced. There's a bell at the loading bay and he came and rolled the doors back. I'm sorry. I didn't think he'd do what he did …'

‘You told him Kath's story?'

She looked from Shaw to Valentine, calculating. ‘Yes. Of course – Kath told me that afternoon, as soon as we'd got Lizzie to rest. It was an odd secret to keep all those years.' She shook her head. ‘Stupid girl.'

‘And Alby's reaction?'

‘Anger. I don't think Fletcher and Venn made him angry. He knew them, of course, knew their deficiencies. He could despise them. But John Joe – that's what hurt. Because as far as Alby saw it, you see, it was two crimes. He'd robbed us of Pat – robbed Lizzie, and Ian. And then he'd taken his place. A father's love for his daughter is very intense, isn't it? The thought that she'd spent her life with that man – touching him, letting him share her bed. Alby's not mad – he's ill. But that thought shook him, shook his mind.'

‘Did he tell you what he planned to do?'

‘No. Never.'

‘Kath's a stupid girl,' said Shaw. ‘But Alby's not stupid, is he? And yet what he did was stupid …We were bound to find him in the end. He'll go to prison. He's unlikely to survive that experience at his age, and with his health. Is that clever?'

She set her hands on the wooden table, the rings striking the Formica.

‘Prison holds no horrors for Alby, Inspector. Quite the opposite. And with the Clockcase closing, perhaps he understood that. Perhaps he wanted you to find him. And that night – the night I told him – he asked about Kath, about whether she'd tell her story to you, to everyone. I said she wouldn't. Which is what she'd promised me. I thought the past should be a closed book. But she didn't keep her secret, did she? I don't blame her, really. But there we are. If she had kept it to herself, Alby thought you'd have never known about the three of them lying in wait for Pat that night. So what happened at the Shipwrights' Hall might have ended up being what it started out as – simple food poisoning. So perhaps he isn't that stupid after all. Just unlucky.'

It was a neat summary and Shaw wondered how long she'd had it prepared. Because he didn't believe that was how it had happened.

‘This is nonsense,' he said, standing. ‘I think Alby wanted to kill the three of them – Fletcher, Venn and Murray. I don't know how – but I think you do, and I think you helped him. Because where's
your
anger? The anger of a mother who discovers that her son has been murdered.'

She reacted physically to the words, rocking back slightly on the chair, but she didn't speak. To buy herself time she tried to smooth out the skirt over her knees.

‘My sergeant here will take a statement – but remember, if you are lying, that's an offence in itself, and the law will take no account of your age.' He leant over the table so that he could see her eyes. ‘I'd ask you to imagine what it will be like for Lizzie and Ian if they have to visit
you
in jail. If they have to watch you die there. Ask yourself if they'll survive that. If the family will survive that.'

Shaw waited for Valentine in the CID suite on the top floor.

It took his DS twenty minutes to take the statement which he slid across Shaw's desk. ‘She's sticking. No change. We have to let her go.'

‘Yes, we do. But here's what we do next,' said Shaw. He asked Valentine to get the incident room to liaise with Interpol, the US Bureau of Immigration and the North Dakota State Police. He wanted everything they had on Bea Garrison's life in Hartsville during the sixties and seventies. It was a big slice of her life, and it was missing. Did her story really add up? Something she'd said about her life back then, when they'd first talked to her at the Flask, still jarred in Shaw's memory. Infuriatingly, he couldn't recall the detail, but it was something about that small town in the Midwest. Something that didn't fit. Something about the little drugstore. He tried to imagine her life with Latrell, the GI returned home, but the picture wouldn't form.

The neon lights hanging from the wooden roof beams of the Ark made a sharp contrast with the day outside: stillborn, fading to an early dusk. Tom Hadden was at his desk and Shaw guessed he hadn't slept properly since they'd found Pat Garrison's bones. He was pale, his red hair losing its colour too, the freckled skin as lifeless as masking tape. Shaw reflected that he'd known Hadden for three years and that the sum of his knowledge of this man's life was less than what he knew about their victim.

‘I've been working on MOT – the letters on the scrap of paper we found in the victim's wallet?' said Hadden. ‘Well, it isn't an MOT certificate. Paper's all wrong. Plus his mother tells us he didn't drive. So, we've done all the usual searches and got nowhere. Ministry of Tourism? MOT is the New York Stock Exchange symbol for Motorola Corporation. I guess that's possible – they're based in Chicago, which in US terms isn't that far from where the kid came from. But why? Other than that, it's a blank – sorry.'

Shaw looked at a sheet of white A4 paper lying on the desk in front of Hadden, in the centre of which he'd written MOT. Shaw couldn't help thinking that if it had just been
any
three letters the puzzle would be simpler – that it was the association of the Ministry of Transport vehicle test which was clouding their thinking. They should be thinking sideways. He picked up Hadden's pencil and wrote MTO, then ACB, HTV, ZCO. That was better. He didn't have the answer, but he felt closer to it. He picked up the paper, made a ball and lobbed it into the basket.

Beyond the plastic swing doors they heard Justina Kazimierz and her assistant preparing for the autopsies following the Shipwrights' Hall poisoning. As Shaw parted the doors he felt his heartbeat quicken, as it always did. Both mortuary tables were covered by sheets. Over them, on the east wall of the original church, the stone angel stood on its niche, both hands pressed to its eyes.

The assistant removed the first sheet as if uncovering a sofa in a dusty summer villa.

Shaw reminded himself of the short conversation he'd just had with Valentine as they'd walked across the yard of St James's towards the Ark. They'd decided to leave the pathologist to come to her initial findings before telling her of the link between the victims. That way they'd get a clear scientific judgement, unclouded by a conspiracy theory. It was what Justina Kazimierz would have done, but that wouldn't make her any happier that they'd done it.

Freddie Fletcher lay naked, the black swirls of his hair covering most of the body, a tattoo revealed on his shoulder: Royal Artillery. He'd died, as they'd known he would, shortly after they'd left the hospital. Shaw recalled he'd talked proudly of his father's military record. He thought it was probably one of the many tragedies of Fletcher's life that he hadn't been able to fight for what he believed in – however misplaced that belief had been.

‘Gentlemen?' asked Kazimierz. The assistant set the Stryker saw whirring and handed it to her. Valentine concentrated on the moving hands of the clock on the wall, trying to imagine the mechanism within, the cog wheels interlacing, the steel parts clean, oiled and precise.

Shaw watched the saw slicing through the bloodless flesh, the breast bone severed, the ribs cut, the chest plate lifted clear to allow access to the principal organs. His own work in forensic art had entailed many hours alone in the morgue at Quantico – the FBI's training centre in Virginia. He'd very quickly learned to see a corpse as simply the body in death – the once-living chamber of the soul. He didn't believe in God, but he'd always believed in souls; a contradiction he'd be happy to die with.

Fifteen minutes later the pathologist stood back, picked the bloodstained gloves from her hands and poured a dark black coffee from a Thermos into a small glass.

‘This man was a dying man,' she said. ‘There's evidence of the initial stages of lung cancer – the left lung. The heart is diseased. The brain shows signs of a recent stroke, but it isn't the first he'd suffered. But none of that killed him. Whatever killed him, however, did so very quickly. According to the witness report …' She snapped a single sheet of A4 upright in her hand. ‘The sequence of events was thus: nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, internal bleeding, shock, then a period of nearly twenty-four hours in which his body tried to fight back. His lungs filled with fluid, then death. Even after death the toxin has continued to attack the kidneys – they would have failed if he'd lived long enough.'

‘The poison?' asked Shaw.

‘Aluminium-based – possibly a phosphide. The chemistry here is very difficult, Shaw. I've sent a blood sample away, but we'll get a better reading from the organs. Tom says there was an industrial rat poison at the Clockcase Cannery, so that could be it. But there's no way at the moment I can be sure. Also, a phosphide is usually delivered as a gas – for fumigation. In powder form, such as our poisoner would have used, I don't know what sort of concentration we're dealing with.'

‘But it's lethal?' said Valentine.

‘Well, no, clearly it isn't, is it?' She glared at Valentine. ‘Because several people ingested large quantities and are still alive. But in this case it is the patient's
reaction
which proved lethal, if I can put it like that. And I don't understand that either, entirely. But as I say, he was already a dying man. So we'll have to wait for the lab report. Clear?'

George Valentine had an answer to that, but he kept it to himself.

They moved to the second mortuary table and the sheet was removed to reveal Sam Venn. An identical autopsy was completed in half the time. Venn turned out to be a much healthier corpse than his one-time schoolfriend Freddie Fletcher.

Justina took them out into Tom Hadden's lab, to the desk she used when in the building. She sat on the edge of it and drank more of the black coffee.

‘Similar – but different,' she said. ‘Different because his body has reacted violently to the ingestion of the poison, but over a longer period of time. There may be complications related to his cerebral palsy, or possibly any medication he took to relieve pain in his muscles or bones due to the disease. I'll check. Similar because I suspect the actual cause of death was pulmonary oedema – essentially, a build-up of fluid in the lungs, like our other victim. I think death occurred not long after he got him self to bed – six hours perhaps, maybe ten. So that would make the time of death somewhere between ten last night and two this morning. I did a quick blood test and we have traces of the same poison in Venn's blood as Fletcher's – though at a somewhat lower concentration than many of the diners. But again we need expert toxicology, and for that we need to send away, and for that we need you to sign the forms, Peter.'

Shaw had his head in his hands, elbows on one of the desks, trying to think.

‘Why didn't he raise the alarm – call a doctor?'

‘Well – we'll never know,' she said. ‘My guess would be that he felt ill, went to bed because he thought it was just food poisoning. If he'd slept at all, or even lost consciousness, then the oedema would have accelerated. By the time he knew he was in trouble it was too late.'

‘But the way we found the body – the Bible – it was like he'd laid himself out,' said Shaw.

‘Yes. I agree. I can't explain that.'

But Shaw could. He couldn't dislodge the conviction that Sam Venn had accepted death.

‘Overall, then – taking the three deaths together – what can we say?' he asked. ‘Did you do the other victim?'

She shook her head. ‘John Blacker examined Mr Clarke's body – but I've got the file. The first victim was exceptionally frail – any kind of body shock would have killed him. It did.' She took off her hairnet. ‘We've got a hundred and three people exposed to the danger of poisoning by an aluminium-based toxin. Sixty-one ingest poison – in varying amounts, but at a constant concentration. It could be a batch of faulty cans – but the coroner's officer tells me there are suspicions of foul play? Sabotage? Well. Maybe. But the three who died did so because they were susceptible to any shock to the system.'

‘So, a random poisoning. Three victims die due to physical weaknesses, but each weakness is different,' said Shaw.

The pathologist nodded. ‘If you like. But as I say – that's a guess at this stage, and not my finding.'

‘There's something we didn't tell you,' said Shaw. He said it quickly, unsettled by the thought that the pathologist was his friend and that he'd led her astray.

He looked away, watching Hadden working on-screen, so that he wouldn't catch her eye. ‘Well, several things. First, the cans didn't fail; a toxic substance was added to each before they were sealed. We have the culprit in custody. Second, two of the three victims – the two next door – are suspects in a murder case. A third suspect should have been sitting at the same table for lunch. The chances we have two random victims who are our suspects is one in ten thousand. George worked it out – he's good with numbers. And we know the poison was definitely the powder used to kill rats at the cannery, and that it was aluminium phosphide.'

The pathologist glared at them, then turned her back, refilling her coffee cup. Shaw estimated it would take her twenty seconds to work out they'd done the right thing. Now, armed with all the facts, she could come to a scientific conclusion.

It took her ten seconds. ‘Right. Well, my position is clear. It is entirely possible that sixty-one people given a metal-based rat poison would survive. Such a poison is not even completely effective on rats. But if we're saying these men were targeted then there must be a secondary factor. Without the information that the victims were linked I – or any other competent pathologist – would have been happy to rest with the causes of death I've outlined. Clear?'

‘Crystal,' said Shaw. ‘But what do you mean by “secondary factor”?'

‘Well, it appears, doesn't it, that someone knew these two men would be particularly susceptible to the poison. Someone knew them well – better than they knew themselves. A doctor? Family – friends? Even if they did know their medical history, however, there is no way they could have been sure the dose would be lethal. The human body isn't that predictable.

‘Or maybe it was the way in which the poison was ingested. Did someone put poison in their drinks, for example – the same poison? That might mean that while they each took a similar dose it was ingested more quickly. I need to know more about the toxicology – and as I've said, that will take time. Tom needs to be brought up to speed – I hope we've got all the relevant physical evidence from the scene – cups, plates, seating plan?'

Shaw nodded, hoping they had, too.

‘And the third man – the intended third victim – what happened to him?' she asked.

‘John Joe Murray. He gave someone else his ticket. The man he gave it to was poisoned instead, but has recovered.'

‘It would be instructive to medically examine Mr Murray. Is he old, ailing, ill? In other words was he – is he – susceptible to such a poison?'

‘About fifty. Drinks and smokes, but otherwise fit,' said Valentine.

‘Problem is, he's missing,' said Shaw. ‘We're on his trail, but currently there's no sign of him.'

Shaw's phone buzzed, and he heard Valentine's ring tone – a Bakelite-telephone bell. Simultaneous calls – always a bad sign. They had the same text, from DC Jacky Lau: BODY FOUND IN WOODS AT HOLKHAM.