Death Toll (31 page)

‘He slapped Sam with that hand, the hand he'd touched him with,' said John Joe, breaking their silence. ‘He slapped him hard. Pat was a big man, powerful, and it took Sam down. And then Pat got Sam's leg and he dragged him through the spoil around Nora's grave to the edge of the pit and he let him slip in. I heard the splash – 'cos by then it was full of water. Sam was screaming, pleading, but when he went in he was silent. I remember that because I heard the choir again – from the pub.

‘I saw Sam's hands come up, scrabbling in the wet soil.' John Joe shook his head at the memory. ‘Pat stamped on them, kicked soil in. Then he laughed and turned to me, walking away from the grave. Sam got out then, hauled himself out, and ran – along the river …so there was just me.'

Ian gave him the hip flask to drink again.

‘I ran at Pat and swung the billhook; he swayed back, so I missed him. He just stood there, laughing in my face. I dropped the hook. I left him there, alive. I swear to God I did. I ran. Like we all ran.'

Ian held John Joe's head.

‘Later – when Pat disappeared we thought he'd just got tired of Lizzie. Then the baby came and we thought that explained it. He'd run for it too. And the three of us thought we'd helped push him away. Helped him run.'

John Joe looked at his wrists where the blood was beginning to ooze from the wounds made by the rope.

‘When they found Pat – Pat's bones – they thought I'd done it: both of them, Fletcher and Venn. I said I hadn't. I said I'd always told the truth, but they didn't believe me.'

Outside the door the snow had suddenly stopped, leaving the air clear, the horizon as sharp as a knife edge. ‘I don't know who killed him, Son – I really don't.'

Ian looked at the hip flask in his hand.

‘I do,' he said.

Shaw waited in the Porsche for Valentine, parked in the shadow of the industrial crane on the Lynn town quay side. Angular, black and towering, it stood out against a field of frosty stars. It seemed to reflect Shaw's mood of gloomy introspection. It had not been a good day: it had taken them until mid-afternoon to track down ‘Gav' – aka Gavin Andrew Peck – their one vital witness to the reopening of Nora Tilden's grave. He had been staying at a friend's house after an all-night party and had then gone to the Arndale Centre to hang out with friends in the warmth of the shopping mall. His recollection of the woman he'd seen that night was limited to her gender: he could recall no other detail. They'd taken him back to St James's but his memory had shown no signs of sharpening up. Could he estimate the age of the woman? ‘Not really – but it was obvious she'd never used a spade before. She was really struggling.' It was the one cogent observation they'd obtained.

After taking a formal statement from Peck, Shaw and Valentine had been called to separate preparatory interviews with DI ‘Chips' McCain – now in charge of the investigation into Bobby Mosse. McCain's approach, at least in Shaw's case, had been clinical, professional, and chilling. He and Valentine had not compared notes.

The bonnet of the Porsche was hot and free of snow, but as Valentine levered himself out of the car, the motion set free a lump of ice which slid down the windscreen. Shaw batted it aside with the wipers, hardly allowing it to displace the image that he'd begun examining in his head: a woman, alone, digging in the shadows of the Flensing Meadow, down into that crowded grave. Not just an image – a noise as well, the slicing of a spade through clay and grit. Which woman? Lizzie Tilden was involved in the search for her missing husband John Joe, so they'd leave her for the morning. Bea Garrison they'd see tonight, at her B&B on the coast at Wells.

Shaw focused on the Christmas lights along the front: sharp pinpoints of festive colour in the sea air which usually lifted his mood. The mobile chip shop had parked in a lay-by, side-on to the water, half a dozen figures crowded by the serving hatch, cradling teas.

Then his mobile rang and he saw it was home, so he picked it up, and knew instantly that it was his daughter, not his wife, because she took a breath before starting to speak.

‘Dad? It's OK – Mum said. We'll go next year.' Static blurred the next sentence.

‘Sorry – I just can't.' He hated apologies, thinking that they were what they were, valueless in themselves. What he needed to do was make sure that next year he kept his promise, and took her to see Santa floating in on the tide at Wells, and that he wasn't stuck in a car waiting for George Valentine to get him a tray of chips. And he left the real question in the air: would Fran want to see Santa next year, or had they missed the moment, another slice of childhood he'd never revisit?

‘We got the results back – from the hospital?' She sounded upbeat, so Shaw feared the worst. Her voice came and went.

‘It's some colour I'm allergic to – but they can't say which one …'

‘OK,' said Shaw. ‘Is Mum there?'

She gave him a long drawn out, sing-song ‘Bye-eee'.

Lena was sharp, businesslike. ‘Where are you?'

‘Quayside – signal's dreadful. Must be the storm passing through. I've got to see the team, get up to speed, complete an interview – then I'll ring. Case has just turned itself upside down, again.' She didn't fill the silence up so he pressed on. ‘Fran said the allergy clinic had results?'

‘Yup. Simple, really – it's something in milk reacting with something in one of the food colourings. Put 'em together and she gets an attack. Houghton – the consultant? He said it would wear off like the milk allergy. Meantime we have to avoid the E-number. I've got a note. But it's part of whatever makes a colour, not the colour itself. So it's not straightforward – but then it never is.'

‘Great. She OK?' In the background he could hear the old dog whining, jealous of the attention he was losing.

A further burst of static cut out some of the reply. ‘She'd rather be watching Santa float by – but she'll live,' said Lena, her voice floating back with the signal. ‘If you'd said earlier, Peter, I could have taken her, but it'll be murder down there now and I can't go out – I've got a shop full of stock and the Speedo rep's due any minute.'

‘I know. Sorry. That's where we're headed – Wells. But it's business, not pleasure, I don't think George believes in Santa any more. And you're right, it'll be packed, we're going to give it another half hour, let the crowds get in place at least. I'd better go,' he said, changing his voice, knowing that if he kept the conversation going he'd end up in an argument.

‘Me too,' she said. ‘Fran's just seen Justina out on the beach, so we're taking the dog out. Bye.'

The line went dead. He thought about the pathologist, the Labrador dogging her steps along the high-tide mark. Valentine pulled the door open and threw himself into the seat, cradling wrapped chips and takeaway tea.

They ate in silence. Then Shaw stopped, because he had that very odd feeling that his brain was working on something, processing detail, trundling towards a synthesis of images, a process sparked by what Lena had told him about Fran's allergy. He thought about the little pillboxes in a line in the bathroom.

He let three specific images float into his conscious mind.

First: Bea Garrison standing behind the dispensary counter of the store in Hartsville, North Dakota. Shaw imagined a white coat, her hair held up with pins, brown paper packets for the drugs. He knew it hadn't been like that, that this image was culled from 1950s black-and-white movies, but it was a vivid snapshot nonetheless.

Second: a soup dish on an abandoned table at the Shipwrights' Hall, some liquid left in the bottom, the out line of a cockle in the thick fishy sauce.

And the third image: Ian Murray, pushing his way backwards through the door marked staff into the dining room at the Flask, in his hands three plates loaded with food, heading for a table with three waiting diners.

He scrunched the chip paper and kicked open his door to walk to the bin. He could have stashed it in the car, but he wanted to think in the open air. By the time he got back to the Porsche he'd done thinking, and his body screamed for action. He'd hit 60 mph by the time he got the car to the end of the quay, leaving Valentine to pick chips off his lap.

Shaw left Valentine in the Porsche with what was left of the chips and ran to the café along the dark sands. He could have rung Justina but if they were out with the dogs the signal would be weak. And he wanted to get this straight. He needed the medical science, and he needed it now. Because if he was right, then this was the key, the lynch pin. The beach was empty, cleaned by the storm which had blown out, so that the only marks on the pristine moonlit strand were Justina's footsteps. The air was still, the dune grass was frosted, the edge of the sea just trembling on the sand.

He ran up the wooden steps and pushed open the café door.

They were all sitting around a table, Lena and Fran and Justina, and on the polished floorboards over by the stove, the dogs. Lena had made tea and there was a plate of sliced cake in the middle of the table, but no one had taken any. So he knew something was wrong because the cake was simnel, his daughter's favourite, and her plate was clean.

Before he could sit down Lena shook her head.

‘It's Dawid, Peter,' she said. ‘He died.'

Justina looked pathetically grateful that someone else had said it.

Shaw knew that if he didn't touch Justina now he never would again: that it was one of those moments in a friendship when you have to redraw the boundaries.

He knelt beside her seat and put an arm around her shoulders.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. He saw Dawid, sat at this table, and the sudden unanticipated sight of blood on his gum.

‘It's not unexpected, Peter,' she said, but her eyes filled as she spoke, one spilling tears. But the shock was real enough, and had changed her face so that it was much more mobile than usual, the emotions running across it like a wind over wheat. She drank her tea, declining Shaw's offer to stiffen it with a whisky shot.

Dawid had been diagnosed eight months earlier, she explained. Polycythaemia vera, PV to a doctor. A rare blood disease in which the body makes too many red blood cells. The extra red blood cells make your blood sticky. The thickened blood flows more slowly through your small blood vessels and forms clots. They cause heart attack and stroke. They knew he wouldn't live – not for long; there isn't a cure, just treatment.

Dawid had always wanted to live by the sea. They'd been saving the move for retirement, but after his diagnosis they'd sold up immediately and moved to the coast. The end had come a few hours ago. A sudden massive stroke as Dawid slept by the picture window. She'd been with him, watching his face change as gravity took control.

They'd taken the body away, leaving Justina a lonely widow in an empty house.

‘So I came here,' she said. She paused then and Shaw sensed that if she didn't go on immediately she'd cry. She took in a breath. ‘I had a favour to ask,' she said. Her hand crept towards the tea cup, then pulled back. ‘I wondered – if you didn't mind – if I could take Fran out. Not now,' she added, laughing tightly. ‘I don't know – once a week? Whenever it's OK with you. Only, there's no family, some cousins in Poland. But no family really. And I'd enjoy that. Only if she wants? We could walk the dogs.'

Fran nodded her head quickly. Justina leant forward, took a slice of simnel and put it on Fran's plate.

Shaw stood. ‘I'm sorry. I'd have liked to have known Dawid better.' He zipped up his jacket, looking back along the beach. ‘George's waiting. I've got to go. I should be taking Fran to the Christmastide at Wells. But work …and Lena has to stay here. Work too.'

Fran studied her simnel cake.

Justina stood. ‘I'll take her,' she said, as Shaw had known she would.

‘I can drop you both off, but I can't stay.'

‘Peter …' said Lena, taking Justina's hand. ‘For goodness' sake.'

Justina stood. ‘I'd like that. That's a good idea.' She turned to Lena. ‘What else am I going to do tonight?'

‘There'll be crowds – can you take that?' cautioned Shaw.

‘Crowds are best,' said Justina. ‘Really.'

Ten minutes later Fran got in the back of the Porsche, Valentine squeezed in beside her, while Justina took the passenger seat in the front, because Shaw asked her to sit and talk. When they were up on the coast road he was the first to speak.

‘This isn't just for Fran,' he said, looking in the rear-view. ‘It's the case. I need you to tell me something, Justina.' In the back he could hear Fran cross-examining Valentine about what he remembered about her grandfather. She'd always known Valentine had been a friend. When she asked Shaw she got the same anecdotes each time. She thought Valentine might know something new.

Justina's body language was clear. Shaw was pretty certain she was in shock. Her left arm kept rising, the hand seeking a place to rest. But he didn't have time to camouflage the question.

‘When I was at Hendon I did a course on poisons. But I've forgotten almost everything. I just need the basics – quickly.' The road was Roman-straight for half a mile, so he took his eyes off the road and looked at her. ‘Tell me about toxic synergy.'

The Porsche purred in a traffic jam, and Shaw could see ahead the line of cars snaking down towards the waterfront at Wells-next-the-Sea. The car in front lurched, trundled six feet then braked sharply, the back bumper rising with the abruptly arrested forward motion. In the distance he could see the high mast of the Dutch barge by the quay, decked with fairy lights. On both sides of the line of cars children and parents walked past, bundled in winter clothes. Everyone was late. The snow had stopped, swelling the crowd, but the temperature had dropped with the loss of the cloud cover, and steam rose from the people as if they were cattle in a winter field.

‘Remind me why we're here,' said Valentine, leaning forward, while Fran looked out at the crowds. The car crawled past a shopfront where a man shared a match with a woman, the resulting halo of cigarette smoke embracing them both.

‘Because if our witness is correct, then a woman tried to dig up Pat Garrison's impromptu grave,' said Shaw, answering his question but speaking to Justina. He tried and failed to hide the excitement in his voice, the surge of adrenaline which had been triggered in his system by the pathologist's brief description of the principles of toxic synergy.

He took a deep breath. ‘Up until now we had three male suspects for the murder of Pat Garrison: three suspects someone has tried to kill – so I suspect we weren't the only ones who had them lined up for it. But the point is, we now have a woman involved. A woman suspect. Question: which woman?'

The line of traffic juddered forward and Shaw swung the car right, along the road which led to the nearest car park, giving up any chance of getting through the centre of town to Morston House.

Shaw struggled to concentrate, half of his conscious mind recovering from his memory a long-lost lecture on toxic synergy. It had been in the main lecture theatre at Hendon, an old-fashioned 1930s amphitheatre. The science staff at the college had substances in glass jars on the scarred wooden bench at the front. An overhead projector showed atoms and molecules colliding, reforming. And one image of a victim. It was a woman in her fifties, the body lying in a damp cellar, the limbs held in awkward semaphore positions.

‘So if we're looking for a woman, then – again – we have three possible suspects,' continued Shaw. ‘First, Lizzie Murray. Jealous, maybe – perhaps there was another woman? Sounds like Pat inherited his father's eye for the girls. But it doesn't look likely – first off,
she
wanted to ring the police next morning, long before there was any real need, and long before she could be sure the grave had been filled in completely by Fletcher and his mate. And then there's the child – Pat's child, their child. She'd be unlikely to kill the father. And all the witnesses are clear on her state of mind later that evening: Bea said she was happy, and, more to the point, your sister Jean – our unbelievably valuable objective witness – said Lizzie was positively luminous that night. She didn't shut the pub till after midnight, and we can assume Pat was dead by then, because we've got witness statements from people who walked through the cemetery after closing time and didn't see him. So – we shouldn't forget Lizzie, but it's unlikely she wielded the billhook.

‘Then there's Bea. Motive? Maybe she hoped her son wouldn't get involved with Lizzie. She likes Lizzie – no doubt about that – but she hates the Flask and all it stands for. And, of course, the two were cousins. Did she follow him out that night to try to cool him down only to find she was too late, that there was a child on the way? Perhaps tempers were frayed. Pat had come to England unwillingly – we know that. His mum had tried to keep him happy – there was always cash in his pocket. Did he blame her for the mess he was in? It could have happened. And there's something else – I'm certain …' He thought about that. ‘Yes, certain, that Bea helped Alby poison Fletcher and Venn, and that she'd have happily poisoned John Joe too. She thought the three of them killed her son because Kath Robinson told her they'd gone ahead to wait for him in the cemetery. Think about that, George. If Bea's behind the killings, which are clearly an act of revenge by someone who thinks Fletcher, Venn and Murray killed Pat Garrison, then she's pretty much clear of the original murder.'

‘Could have been a cover,' said Valentine. ‘Perhaps she did both: killed Pat, then helped Alby take revenge on three innocent men – which threw all of us off the scent, didn't it?' Valentine held up both hands. ‘And how'd she target the three of them? How did she help Alby?'

‘OK – I'll deal with that. But let me finish. Because that leaves the best suspect for Pat Garrison's murder – Kath Robinson.'

The first firework went off in the clear sky over the dunes – a yellow expanding glove of light. Fran screamed in the back. They felt the thud of the explosion and then a long drawn-out cheer, like a wave breaking.

They were still bumper to bumper on the approach road to the car park. Shaw checked his watch: high tide, and 8.45 p.m. His temper finally snapped, because he couldn't sit still with this much adrenaline in his bloodstream. He gently rolled the Porsche up on to the pavement, jumped out and retrieved a magnetic flashing warning light from the boot and put it on the roof, instantly quelling a protest from the driver behind – a father in a people carrier with children packed on the back seats and the head of a red setter sticking out of the passenger-side window.

They abandoned the car, cut down an alleyway between two shops and found themselves on the edge of the dockside. But they couldn't see the black water for the crowd, already ten deep at the iron railings.

Shaw put a hand on Justina's shoulder. ‘I'm fine,' she said.

Shaw showed her his mobile. ‘We'll give you a lift home. Stay at the cottage tonight. Lena's getting a bed ready. I insist. Fran, you help Justina have a lovely time.'

‘I promise,' she said seriously, taking the pathologist by the hand and leading her away.

Valentine stopped, lit up.

‘Why Kath Robinson?'

‘Come on,' said Shaw, cutting along the back of the crowd, talking over his shoulder, forcing himself to slow down so that Valentine could keep up. ‘Lot of reasons, but most of all because she's the wellspring – if she hadn't conveniently recalled what she'd seen that night, Fletcher and Venn would still be alive. It's a vivid picture, right – seeing the three of them set out, planning to teach Pat Garrison a lesson, and then she bumps into the victim leaving the Flask, just at the right time. And who'd she tell? The family – talk about lighting the blue touch paper.'

They heard a firework, like machine-gun fire.

‘Then she comes down to Lynn and tells her mum – who's one of Jean's best friends, the widow of a copper, the sister of a copper, someone she could trust to pass the information along. If not straight to us then out into the community, out into the rumour mill. The only person who wasn't going to hear it was John Joe. No one's going to tell him, are they?'

Shaw looked over the heads of the throng towards the waterfront, past the brightly lit fish 'n' chip shops and the pubs towards Morston House. He pressed on through the crowd. Fireworks thudded with a regular beat now, and somewhere down by the harbour office a brass band played ‘In the Deep Midwinter'.

‘And Kath had a motive, George,' he said, suddenly brought up short by a family of six strung across the pavement, holding hands. ‘I don't think Pat raped her, or even touched her. I just think he may have been her first love. Whatever happened changed her life. Rejection is what happened, and she's not exactly well equipped to deal with emotion, any emotion. Perhaps she's telling the truth, perhaps Fletcher and Venn did talk to her that night, telling her what was up. And maybe that was the trigger. That and being told – by Lizzie herself – that there was a baby on the way. Perhaps she didn't want to spend the rest of her life watching Pat and Lizzie play happy families. Maybe that was a prospect she couldn't live with. I don't think she set out to kill him, but she must have been angry. Burning angry. And she could have gone upstairs just as easily as John Joe. She'd have seen Alby wielding the gun. She could have taken the billhook.'

They skirted round a stage which had been set up to welcome Santa Claus when his boat came in on the tide. As they did so, more fireworks broke over the sea and they could see the white yachts along the channel, most of them lit with Chinese lanterns.

Valentine put a hand on Shaw's shoulder from behind, a rare physical contact. ‘And Bea – how
did
she target them? How'd she get them and not the rest?'

Shaw was going to tell him then, but he was looking across the road, back up the little high street that led away from the water, a narrow cobbled lane crowded on either side with old-fashioned shops, lit by a zigzag string of white lights.

Looking their way, but past them out to sea, was Kath Robinson. There was a sudden cheer and she smiled, because out along the channel, near the lifeboat station, Santa's ship had come into view, pulled by a pair of inflatable reindeer and surrounded by a flotilla of small boats. Then she turned and began to walk away, pulling a suitcase on wheels.