Death Watch

by Unknown

  There was a footstep, outside the room, on the uncarpeted steps, and a dog’s claws skittering. The Yale on the front door was so well oiled he hadn’t heard it open. He felt the euphoria drain away. He looked at his watch: 12.28 a.m. He’d been a fool, and now – unless he could construct a plausible story – he’d just chucked away that promotion. Shaw had laid out Superintendent Warren’s instructions in a formal letter: he was not to approach Cosyns, or any other witness or suspect connected to the Tessier case, either in person, by letter, or by phone. And here he was, standing by his bed. He walked quickly to the top of the stairs and threw the torchlight squarely into Cosyns’s face. ‘Don’t move – police. Back down the steps, please – hands to the wall.’

  Cosyns didn’t move; the man had the ability to maintain an almost eerie calm. ‘I live here,’ he said. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  Valentine pulled out his radio and let it crackle. It was on an open channel and they could hear a squad car calling in from a pub fight in the town centre.

  Cosyns backed down the stairs, flipping the light switch, leaving his hand there, as if he was considering plunging them back into darkness.

  There was a picture on the wall Valentine had missed because it was behind the door – Cosyns, with a girl aged six or seven, both sitting on the bonnet of the souped-up Citroën. Cosyns took it off the wall and held it out. ‘I live here – look.’

  Valentine got to the foot of the stairs. ‘We got a call – someone forcing the door. I live round the corner. It was open.’

  ‘Right,’ said Cosyns, smiling easily, and reaching down to unleash the dog. ‘But it wasn’t when I left.’ He examined the door jamb. ‘Nice job – clean as a whistle.’ He looked past Valentine and up the stairs. ‘Nothing up there, then?’

  Valentine shook his head, helpless now, knowing he was losing credibility with every passing second. He took a step towards the door and the dog growled, its lips peeling back to show black gums.

  ‘I didn’t see the warrant card,’ said Cosyns.

  Valentine took it out, wishing the light wasn’t on. Cosyns stepped forward quickly and held the wallet lightly, looking at the name and the picture. ‘Right. DS Valentine.’

  Cosyns stood to one side, back against the wall, a smile on his face. ‘Reggie,’ he said, and the dog cowered at his feet.

  Valentine walked past, pulled the door open, and looked out. ‘I’ll get a patrol car to keep an eye out – you need to check the contents.’

  ‘Right,’ said Cosyns, readjusting the position of a mobile phone which he’d left on the hall table. ‘Can’t be too careful.’

  Valentine made himself walk away without looking back. If he had, he’d have seen Cosyns at the front room window, the mobile in his hand, listening to the ring tone.

  The line picked up. ‘Bobby,’ he said, the tone familiar, but strangely threatening.

  33

  Wednesday, 8 September

  Shaw stood on the sixteenth-floor balcony of Vancouver House looking down on the Westmead Estate. The rising sun was on the far side, so he was in the dawn’s shadow; cool, almost chilly. Cars on the tarmac below looked like Dinky toys. In the flats opposite – a ten-storey block – lights were on in bathrooms and kitchens. Steam leaked from pipes, as if the insides of the flats were boiling. Shift work on the docks, or in the canning factories, meant that places like the Westmead didn’t do night and day like the suburbs did, just an infinite grey siesta. He could smell a breakfast cooking somewhere, fried bacon on the breeze, and something else, something spicier.

  He looked at his watch. He shouldn’t be doing this; he had to be at the Ark at eight, and he needed to know what Valentine had organized for Level One. Tom Hadden had already sent him a text about the knife he’d taken into the lab the night before from Father Martin’s bedroom: no traces of blood, but the inside of the sheath held microscopic traces of bloodwood – a broad match for the traces found on the MVR torch. It wasn’t a fingerprint, but it was a powerful piece of physical evidence linking Father Martin to the scene of the crime. He’d ordered a cast made of the knife-tip. Father Martin had given a statement and been released. He stuck to his original statement, and Ally Judd continued to provide him with an alibi for the time of the murder. Which suggested another way forward: a formal interview with Ally Judd, under caution at St James’s.

  So, he really didn’t have time for this. He looked at the door he was standing outside: Flat 163. His wallet held a small see-through pocket in which he usually carried a picture of Fran, but behind it was another passport-sized picture. He slipped it out now. Jonathan Tessier, just nine, an uncanny resemblance to Shaw himself at the same age: the wide high cheekbones, the tap-water eyes. He went to knock, hesitated, knowing that once the door was open he’d have lost control of events. But he had to do it; he’d promised Lena he’d do it – for them.

  He’d arrived home the night before elated at the progress they’d made. He’d spent twenty hours a day on the murder inquiry from Day One; but when he got home all he wanted to talk about was the Tessier case, because he’d gone back to St James’s and watched the CCTV again. It was like a living memory now, those black and white images, shuffling around the floodlit junction.

  He’d sent a text ahead and she was there to meet him on the beach. She’d brought a bottle of white wine from the fridge and two chilled glasses. The stoop was pine, the wood cool and worn, so they’d sat on the steps. Low tide, so the beach seemed to stretch to the horizon, where a necklace of lights marked the anchorage for freighters, waiting to slip into Lynn when the tide turned.

  ‘You look tired,’ she said, pouring his drink.

  ‘I watched the tape,’ he said, as the almost colourless Chablis filled his glass. ‘The CCTV of the car crash a few days before the Tessier boy was murdered?’ He felt inside his RNLI jacket and produced a black and white print of the scene – the wrecked Ford, the Mini pulled up in the shadows, the three blurred figures of the young men in baseball caps.

  ‘There’s something I’m missing. Something that’s not right.’ He readjusted the picture so that she could see, but she was staring out to sea. ‘Lena?’ he asked. But she still didn’t turn to him, and he knew by this gesture that tonight they wouldn’t make love. On the drive home, and the walk along the beach, he’d realized how much he wanted her, and the transformation that it always brought – the energy it released, the sudden alteration of everything, like a thunderstorm.

  She was dressed in a loose sweater, with her arms out of the sleeves but tucked inside for warmth. She pulled up a leg and curled it under herself so that he didn’t see her hand slip out until it had put something on the wooden stoop.

  It was a small tub of yoghurt: Madagascar vanilla.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said, but already he could feel the blood rushing to his heart. She held herself away from him, as if he was a fire and she didn’t want to get burnt. And he didn’t recognize her face, the focus on the middle distance, the ugly broken line of the mouth; and it made him realize that for a long time – he couldn’t guess how long – she’d arranged her face for him, like a screen around a hospital bed. But he was too desperate to know the answer to his question to ask himself what she thought she was hiding, what it was she didn’t want him to see.

  ‘It’s what nearly killed Fran.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ His voice was loaded with anger; and guilt, because he knew he’d done nothing since he’d got back to the beach but talk about his work, not the daily work of the CID but his own private case, the one he’d inherited from his father, the one he’d promised to end.

  She turned to him then, her face slumping, her mouth open in a silent scream. ‘It’s what nearly killed Fran,’ she said again deliberately, knowing that despite the word ‘nearly’, this was still a form of punishment.

  ‘Lena – tell me. Tell me now.’ He’d have given anything to keep the threat out of his voice.

  Her eyes blazed in response. ‘Now.’ It was close t
o a shout. ‘Now – it’s convenient now? What about five hours ago when I phoned – I never phone, Peter. You know I never phone.’

  He’d been waiting in the dark on the edge of the gas holder for Valentine. He’d clocked the number; why hadn’t he rung back? He’d been in two minds because he’d promised himself that second viewing of the CCTV from Castle Rising.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, knowing instantly that he’d done the right thing – got the word out before it was too late. ‘Jesus. Lena – what happened?’

  ‘She ate the yogurt,’ she said, hitting out, knocking her glass over, sending the carton out into the sand.

  ‘Get it back,’ she said. ‘The nurse said we should keep it. Make a note.’ Her voice was cold and hard, the anger washing out of it like the tide over the sand.

  Shaw fetched it, then sat down on the wine-damp wood, not quite touching her.

  ‘I gave it her for tea. I didn’t think – I haven’t bothered since she was tiny.’ At birth Fran had been allergic to milk – all milk. The first reaction had been the worst – not quite fatal, but her throat had swollen, blocking the air supply, the eyes and face bloated. After that they’d kept her clear of milk products for five years – then, gradually, they’d edged them back into her diet. There’d been no reaction of any kind for three years.

  ‘How bad?’ asked Shaw, quickly throwing an arm round Lena’s shoulders, tight enough so that she couldn’t pull away.

  ‘Bad. It’s my fault. This crowd was in from Burnham Thorpe – a family of six. They all wanted suits, they all wanted boards – the final bill was nearly four thousand pounds – so I did her a pizza and put it out in the kitchen and just called her in off the sands. So when I found her…’

  She covered her mouth, rocking slightly with the memory, and Shaw understood that part of this was her guilt, not just his. ‘I didn’t know if it had been too long. If she was… So I felt for her pulse. I couldn’t find it. And she was puffed up – the way she used to – her eyes closed. And there’s no Piriton in the cupboard.’ She kicked out, sending a sheet of fine sand forward like a shell burst.

  ‘I rang you. Then I rang Scott on the mobile – he ran down with some from the lifeguard post at Hunstanton. And then, just for no reason, she was conscious – right then, when he got here. So we gave her the Piriton.’ She laughed, and Shaw felt her shoulders relax an inch, the blades moving beneath the skin. ‘Five minutes later she was running about like a rabbit.’ She laughed again, looking around as if to recapture the image of the moving child.

  ‘I’ll check,’ he said, lifting a knee.

  But she held on to him. ‘I have – every ten minutes. She’s sleeping. Leave her.’

  She let out a long breath, like a death rattle, and buried her eyes in the crook of his neck.

  ‘I want you to end this obsession with the child,’ she said. ‘One way or another. Either drop it or end it quickly, one way or another. Solve it, Peter, or walk away.’ She lifted her head and looked into his good eye. ‘Jack destroyed his life for this, Peter. And we know why – because the boy looked like you, because it could have been you. Have you ever thought why that was – why he was…’ she searched for the word. ‘Unbalanced by that?’ She held his head. ‘It was guilt – because he’d let you grow up without being there. He couldn’t be there for you, so in a rush he thought he’d make up for it by being there for Jonathan Tessier. Which was selfish, because it only made him feel better, not you. Don’t let this happen to us.’

  Later, as he lay in bed, listening to the sea creep back up the beach, Shaw realized how much of a relief that word had been: ‘Us.’

  34

  He’d woken at dawn, listening to the seagulls scratching on the roof. He didn’t need to recall specifically what had been said between them – it was there, already part of the memory bank he’d carry with him for the rest of his life. And it wasn’t his life that was the point. It was Fran’s. She could have died, and that would have destroyed them, because he wouldn’t have been there. He always answered if Lena phoned. But he’d been blinded – she was right – blinded by the conflicting pressures in his life, between his home and his job, and between his case and his father’s case. And the Tessier killing was an obsession; dangerous and disfiguring in so many ways. His problem was that he could no more walk away from it than walk away from himself. But in the darkness before dawn he had made a fresh appraisal of his failure to solve the case so far. Was it really such a baffling crime? Or was his inability to make progress really a reflection of his own inner conflict: the fear that if he found the truth, it would be an uncomfortable one?

  He’d swum then, at dawn, seeing now that Lena was right, he’d overlooked so many more direct avenues of inquiry. It was a case he’d worried at, like a sore. Watching his hands rise above his head as his backstroke took him out to sea, he decided he must return to first principles, and talk to those with a direct recall of the night Jonathan Tessier died. He’d made a pact with himself. Six weeks. For six weeks, he’d rake over the ashes of the case once more, and if, at the end, there was no prospect of fire, he would walk away. For Lena’s sake he’d walk away – even if he did leave part of himself behind.

  He’d decided to start here, on the Westmead, because he wanted an answer to Lena’s original, and perceptive, question: why would a gang caught on CCTV at the fatal crash at Castle Rising go on to murder a nine-year-old boy just because he stumbled on them respraying the car? There had been reports of the accident in the local paper, and on the radio and TV – but why would a boy take any notice of that? It was nothing to do with him, or the small world in which he was living out his summer holidays. Even if he had sensed something sinister, and children were certainly gifted at that, he could have been bought off with a crisp £10 note. There had to be another motive.

  In the block of flats opposite an alarm rang, the sound travelling across the concrete canyon to Shaw as he stood on the balcony outside Flat 43. A seagull glided between the high-rise blocks, below him, so that he could see the feathers on its back ruffled by the breeze. The digital numbers on his watch flashed seven o’clock, so he knocked on the plywood door, knowing she’d be up, because he’d checked out her shift pattern with a quick call to the Queen Vic.

  Angela Tessier, the dead boy’s mother, answered the door with a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry – I wondered if you had a few moments. DI Shaw – Lynn CID. It’s about Jonathan’s death.’

  She turned on her heel without a word and walked into the shadows of the flat. Shaw followed, down the corridor into the front room, which faced east and caught the full sun. There was a flat-screen TV, sound-deck DVD/CD player, a poster of Amy Winehouse.

  ‘You’ve got a minute,’ said a voice, echoing slightly in a bathroom. She came in, bustling, picking up a mobile, an iPod. Shaw knew from the file she was forty-three, a nurse at the Queen Victoria. But she looked thirty-five, the face animated by a sense of purpose. Her waist was narrow, circumnavigated by a thick leather belt. She’d looked after her figure and her eyes were a stunning green, like snooker-table baize. They looked at each other, and she didn’t seem fazed by Shaw’s lunar eye. She went out, then came back with a small cup of pitch-black coffee.

  ‘Fifty seconds,’ she said, but her voice wasn’t unfriendly.

  In the file on the Tessier killing there’d been a husband mentioned, Mike, a salesman with a carpet warehouse. But this was her world now, and Shaw sensed there was no one else in it, not even the ghost of Jonathan.

  She read his mind. ‘Mike left. We didn’t handle what happened very well. But we still talk – we’re friends. So – if your question’s for him, I’ve got a number.’

  ‘No.’ Shaw hesitated, suddenly aware that he was unprepared. He didn’t know where to start, so he had to tell the truth.

  ‘My father was DCI Jack Shaw.’

  ‘I know – I figured that out. Shit happens. I think he got the right man, so does Mik
e. But he fucked up.’ She looked around, and Shaw thought she was trying very hard not to relive the past. ‘And now life goes on.’ She straightened out the smart blue uniform, adjusting a fob watch. ‘And on.’

  ‘I think Jonathan – on that evening – I think he went after the ball but got distracted, and he ended up on the far side of the estate by the lock-up garages. I think he saw a car there – and some men, working on the car. I’m pretty sure that’s why he died.’

  ‘Mosse was one of those?’

  ‘Yes. I think he was.’

  She put the cup down. ‘It’s a bit late.’

  ‘I know. It’s the car that’s important. Was he interested in cars? Would he have been able to recall the make, for example? You know how some kids are fixated on machines.’

  ‘No. Jon wasn’t like that. Some boys, they just don’t like boys’ stuff. Football, maybe – but even that was just something to do. Books were the thing. That kit he was wearing was from his grandad – Celtic. But he didn’t really care.’

  Shaw didn’t understand. ‘But he’d played all that day…’ He stopped himself saying it was the day he died.

  For the first time Shaw saw that she was distressed by trying to recreate the memory. Holding the fragile Italian coffee cup with both hands she stared into the bottom. ‘He wasn’t in the flat because we had my father with us – Mum had just died. It was very difficult here. He sort of broke up on us – so we got Jon out. If we’d known better, we’d have let him stay, share the emotion. But that’s hindsight. At the time it was too raw for us, let alone a kid. It was just one of those things.’