Death Watch

by Unknown

  But when Valentine returned from the bar Shaw hesitated, unable to take him into his confidence. After all it had been Shaw himself who’d read the Riot Act to his DS about continuing with the Tessier investigation; now he was proposing to tell him he’d done just that. What if, instead, Shaw tracked down the lock-up itself? Then he’d need help, on the ground, securing any hard evidence they could, evidence they could both take to DCS Warren. That’s when he’d need DS Valentine – not now, with the Judd inquiry in full swing.

  Shaw drank his Coke. ‘So – what do we think? We can do Judd for arson and the break-in, but anything else? Is he tied up with the organ trade?’

  Valentine shook his head. ‘Not in my book. It’s a coincidence. They could have got Blanket out of the church without the power down. And the sub-station was attacked at noon, hours before the kidnapping. There’s no guarantee it wouldn’t have been restored by then. I don’t think Judd’s in on it – no way. The only thing on his mind was getting into Orzsak’s house.’

  Shaw was going to argue the point but stopped when he saw DC Lau’s Mégane turning into Erebus Street, tyres screeching. She pulled up, window-to-window with the Land Rover.

  ‘Sir. Audit team’s just finished running through the organ banks. Nothing in A, B, and C. They’re the NHS banks. But D’s full of surprises.’ She handed him a computer printout: a list of unmarked tissue samples; six organs with no documentation: five kidneys and a section of liver. ‘The doc in charge says there’s also a few yards of tendon, vein tissue, and skin. All commercial, apparently,’ she added. ‘All missing.’

  Shaw thought about it, flexing his arm. ‘Hadden?’

  ‘He’s down there now. They’re happy to hand it over as a crime scene. Doors are sealed and crime tape’s up.’

  ‘Peploe?’

  ‘Secretary says he phoned in ill this morning – left a message. Home address is one of the flats in the old Baltic Flour Mill on the quayside. I’ve got uniform checking it out.’

  ‘The yacht?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Monkey Business,’ said DC Lau. ‘Secretary says Peploe uses it for clients – whatever that means. Regular berth at Wells-next-the Sea – just off the harbour.’

  Shaw rang the harbourmaster at Wells, an ex-navy man called Roger Driscoll who commanded the RNLI’s hovercraft at Hunstanton. Shaw apologized for the call, but did he have any information on the location of the yacht Monkey Business?

  ‘Sure – but it isn’t a yacht, Peter. Think Jackie Onassis, but without any sense of taste. It’s got a flying bridge.’

  Shaw knew the type. Sleek gin-palace lines, smoked-glass cabin, then a second deck on top below the bristling sonar and satellite navigation gear. It was what any self-respecting yachtsman would call a ‘white boat’. He’d had Peploe down as a wooden-boat, chart-table, under-canvas man. But perhaps the yacht was just for the girls, or rich private patients. Or something else? He conjured up Pete Hendre’s description of the room he’d woken up in: the constant hum, the metal door, the flickering lights. Might he have been on board? But there’d been no movement, so if it was the yacht it would have had to have been in dock. Or beached?

  ‘Personally, I don’t go near any boat that’s got patio doors,’ Driscoll was saying. ‘But then I haven’t got half a million quid to waste.’ He said the log book showed Monkey Business had motored out of harbour on the late-evening tide the night before. She hadn’t any crew, but given the gear on the bridge she didn’t need any. The boat had been registered at the harbour for five years in the name of a company – Curiosent; there was a telephone number and an address. She left for the Med each summer for three months. He knew the owner only as Gavin.

  ‘Charming, tanned – there’s usually a girl too, and usually a different one for each tide,’ said Driscoll.

  Shaw heard a burst of static, a metallic conversation, then Driscoll was back. ‘Want me to find him? He’s got a transmitter on board and we’ve got his ID. Give me five?’

  Lau gave Shaw her iPhone, on which she’d tracked down the website for Curiosent. It was a company offering minor surgical procedures ranging from laser ops to cure snoring to vasectomies. Eight surgeons were listed; Shaw recognized three names from the list they’d been given at the Queen Vic – including Peploe’s.

  Shaw’s mobile rang. It was Driscoll. ‘Peter. Something’s wrong here. I’ve got a fix on Peploe’s boat. She’s about half a mile off Norton Hills.’

  Shaw pictured the coastline in his head. Norton Hills was a line of sand dunes off Scolt Head Island. It was a stretch of coast made up of a maze of marshy channels and miles of shallow water.

  ‘She afloat?’

  ‘According to my charts she can’t be. Tide’s nearly at the bottom so there’s four feet of water, less. She needs ten feet to get off the mud.’

  ‘Will she sit?’ It was one of the Norfolk coast’s lethal dangers. A traditional keeled boat caught on the sands will eventually tip over as the tide falls.

  ‘Don’t know. Some of those big boats have a split hull – but not all. We have to presume the worst. I’ve tried the radio. She’s receiving, but no answer. And there’s a haar building about a mile off, with an onshore wind. It’ll be over the sands by low tide. I’ve got radio contact with a couple of the local boats out there – visibility’s down to thirty feet already, and falling fast.’

  ‘A shout, then?’ asked Shaw. It was Driscoll’s decision, as commander, to call out the hovercraft. But he’d have heard the enthusiasm in Shaw’s voice. As pilot Shaw had been forced to resit a test after losing his eye. He’d passed with flying colours. As the examiner had pointed out, beyond twenty-five feet everyone effectively has one eye, the benefits of two just a few inches apart being confined to close quarters.

  ‘Right. I’ll get us crew,’ said Driscoll.

  ‘I’ve got a passenger,’ said Shaw. ‘See you at the landing.’

  He put the phone down. ‘George. Get your raincoat. You’re going to sea.’

  They took the Land Rover and Shaw slapped an emergency light on the roof. As he drove, Shaw felt his mobile vibrating as Driscoll set in motion the automatic call-out. Valentine watched the sea go by on the left as they followed the coast. He didn’t like the look of it – the sky was picture-book blue, the white waves gently folding on the sands, but further out there was a haze, and the horizon was gone, the sea and sky welded together without a joint.

  The Lifeboat House at Old Hunstanton stood on a track leading to the sands, a café opposite, with tables outside. Shaw had a picture of the landing taken in 1920 – a Model-T Ford parked outside, ladies in small hats and knee-length skirts running barefoot in the sand.

  The maroon had brought the usual crowd, holiday-makers keen to see some drama on an otherwise dull, hot afternoon. The RNLI shore crew was already marking out a path for the Flyer down to the sea, a distant smudge of blue over miles of dry sand. Shaw got his suit on, his helmet and a lightweight windcheater, and checked the radio link with the HM Coast Guard at Hunstanton. They ran up the doors on the new boathouse, and the hovercraft lay within, the skirt deflated, so that it sat like a cat in a basket. Shaw got in the pilot’s seat, fired up the two diesel engines, and felt the craft rise, swaying slightly, the sound a distant roar through the helmet buffers.

  He checked the controls, then swung round in the seat to see that the crew were in place: navigator, two crew, and Valentine, in a blue passenger’s weatherproof, crushed into a seat with a double belt. Driscoll, a late arrival, climbed aboard and took the seat next to Shaw’s in the cockpit. He flicked a switch, turning silent warning lights, then reported the launch to the RNLI tracking station. A sonar blade turned above them and the navigator reported that he had their position on monitor. A moving map lit up in front of Shaw, showing the hovercraft as a red circle on a see-through OS map.

  Edging Flyer out through the doors, Shaw flipped down the visor on the helmet as the sand began to fly, a cloud drifting, so that when he got clear of the old beach huts
he couldn’t see his house along the beach. They crossed the tidal sands in a cloud of sand and noise, Shaw juggling the joystick to balance the ailerons behind the two spinning propellers which drove the Flyer forward. The sea, when they reached it, was like liquid mercury, an unruffled expanse which looked oily, almost syrupy. Shaw swung her east, accelerated to top speed at 30 knots, and hugged the coast. Onshore he saw a pair of horses skittering near Thornham as the engine noise hit them. Off Brancaster they cut through a sailing race, scattering twelve-footers, as Shaw took a short cut across the sands off Scolt Head.

  Ahead he saw the incoming haar, a wall of phlegm-white mist, as unbroken as the white cliffs of Dover. They’d ride into it, settle her on dry sand, and try to find the yacht on foot.

  Shaw slowed to 10 knots as Flyer slipped out of the sunlight. The mist smelt of ammonia and sea-salt, oyster-fresh. The density of it cut the heat so that it felt like they’d slid into winter, the sudden depressing grey ahead of them, the partly lit edge of the haar retreating behind them as if they’d stopped still and the mist was sliding over them. Shaw swung Flyer in a loop, tracing the edge of a bar of sand dried golden before the mist had swept landward. Then he cut the engines, the skirt sank, and they landed with a kiss.

  One crewman took the navigator’s seat and monitored the radio while the rest climbed over the skirt. A turning halogen beacon was activated on the cabin roof, the beam cutting into the mist, sweeping around them like a lighthouse beam.

  Driscoll was out on the sand last. ‘Right. Let’s do north, south, east, west. Don’t lose sight of the light. Take a hailer – ping it if you see her. You OK?’

  Valentine was watching the water form a moat round his black slip-ons. ‘Sure.’

  ‘That way,’ said Driscoll, pointing north. ‘There’s a compass on the cuff of the jacket.’

  Valentine looked at the little needle, then set out. Shaw went east, encountering only the skeleton of a conger eel in the first fifty yards. He stopped, looking down at the plastic cartilage, then back at the distant light. He walked another fifty, his eyes beginning to lose any sense of proportion or relative distance. It was like being lost in a giant sauna.

  The single electronic ping, when it came, was eerie, echoing round him. He ran back to the hovercraft and then saw the others heading north, along Valentine’s trail. With a measured stride he followed, hitting every other footprint. When he reached them he could see it too, a bizarre apparition, the million-pound gin palace high and dry. The hull had cut down into a small creek so that there was enough support to keep her upright. In a grey world Monkey Business was blindingly white. A light shone from one of the cabin windows on the first deck. Somewhere they could hear the crackle of a radio on an open frequency.

  Driscoll threw a weighted rope ladder up and over the deck rail so that it hung down uninvitingly. Shaw climbed first, then held it still for Valentine, who fought to hold on as it corkscrewed under him. The deck was clean, sluiced, spotless; the brass fittings managing a dull gleam despite the gloom.

  ‘Dr Peploe?’ Shaw felt an idiot shouting, and was unnerved by the echo bouncing back off the impenetrable fret. The first deck was largely enclosed in smoked brown glass. He walked to a glass door, tried to slide it across, but it was locked. He pressed his eye to the glass but could see nothing within except a fly on the inside: a bluebottle, then another.

  They climbed to the second deck up a teak staircase with brass runners. Half of this deck was open at the sides and housed the cockpit. It looked like the flight deck of a 747: a sonar pattern in vivid green on black, the radio signal mapped out in decibel bars.

  Red warning lights flashed on the engine monitor display.

  There was a hatch down into the deck below which opened with an expensive click. Four carpeted steps led down into a saloon the size of a volleyball pitch. The heat within was stifling despite the filtered glass. Two sofas in a crescent shape took up the main space, along with an exercise bike, a flat-screen TV and a wall of books. The room smelt of polish and not being lived in. Outside the tinted windows the mist pressed up against the glass.

  A central corridor led aft from the saloon, teak doors on either side, one into a dining room, another into a Jacuzzi. Another at the far end led to the master bedroom, the bed itself filling most of the cabin, the ceiling a single mirror. In the corner was a spiral staircase leading up to a perspex hatch marked SOLARIUM. A small electric illuminated sign read IN USE.

  Shaw climbed until he could get his shoulder up against the hatch. Then he paused. There was a sound, and he looked up through the perspex. Bluebottles, hundreds, wheeling in a demented reel, the iridescent colours making them look like creeping jewels.

  Shaw took a breath, pushed the hatch, and the hinges creaked. He climbed another step, bending at the waist, using his body as a lever. Another step, then all his strength applied to unfurl his body. He felt the air-pressure pop in his ears. Then he felt the flies, pouring past him, thudding off his skin in tiny percussions, probing his eyes, his nose, his lips. Forcing his legs to climb, he stumbled into the solarium. The roof was a tinted green-glass bubble, dotted with flies, the hum of the insects amplified in the bowl of the room.

  Suspended in a semi-circle were four sun lamps, like operating-theatre lights, the panels emitting a soft cherry-red glow.

  Gavin Peploe lay on a sunbed in a pair of yellow beach shorts. His skin was tanned, taut, and his chest and legs showed the well-toned muscles, but even on a million-pound yacht death was ugly.

  The flies, spooked by the open hatch, were beginning to return to their meal, massing in the eye sockets and around the nose. Sweat sprang from Shaw’s skin. He walked to the wall where a thermometer hung: 49°C, 110°F. The surgeon’s skin had burnt on the upper surfaces of the knees and chest – a red burn, black at the edges.

  He heard Valentine gagging below. Shaw pulled up the windcheater so that it covered his mouth and nose, zipping it closed.

  When had he last seen Peploe? Twenty-four hours ago. If he’d come across the corpse at a crime scene in the open air he’d have guessed it had lain there a week, maybe more. In the oven-like solarium, under the tanning lamps, Gavin Peploe’s body was already in an advanced stage of decomposition.

  He heard Valentine’s footsteps on the short staircase. He appeared, holding a grey handkerchief to his mouth.

  They stood either side of the corpse. A glass, empty, was on the bedside table beside an iPod and a mobile phone, the concentric rings edged down the side of the beaker showing that the water had evaporated by degrees.

  Peploe lay flat, his head supported by a velour inflatable pillow. There was a thin patina of vomit on his lips and chest. The eyes were open, crowded with flies. Shaw tried to close the eyelids, brushing the insects aside.

  ‘I’ve radioed,’ said Valentine, coughing as something crawled into his mouth.

  Shaw felt dizzy in the heat, sick at the sight of such a vibrant, churning death. But he made himself take an inventory of the scene, so that he saw what was in Peploe’s right hand. The fingers had come open so that the object they held had almost dropped free onto the sunbed. It was a plastic sweet dispenser in the shape of a dragon – a cylinder in which candy could be stored, then flipped up into the dragon’s mouth, then knocked out like Tic-Tac mints. It was Play-Doh yellow, with red and blue stripes. The dragon’s mouth was open where the next sweet should be, but they could see that instead of a sweet there was a pill – blue, oval, resting on the plastic pink tongue, like an offering.

  38

  Who really knew Gavin Peploe? Within six hours they’d built a picture of the man, a picture not entirely consistent with that of the carefree high-living bachelor. Peploe’s ex-wife collapsed when informed of his death by a WPC on her doorstep in Virginia Water, Surrey. She’d remarried but had maintained regular contact with her former husband. She told a DI from Windsor CID that they’d simply married too young. Peploe was an epileptic, she said, who had taken AEDs – anticonvulsants – sin
ce adolescence. He also had a mild marijuana habit – a well-known recreational means of controlling seizures. His harelip had been corrected by surgery at the age of thirteen. Up until then he had had a severe facial deformity the removal of which, his wife said, enhanced a tendency to personal vanity and a need to prove himself as a man who could attract women. It was a vice she’d grown to understand, but could never forgive.

  Initial forensics from the yacht were inconclusive. Justina Kazimierz’s examination of the victim in situ found no wounds. The burning of the skin under the lights and the sun had been post-mortem. She suggested either an accidental or deliberate overdose as a possible cause of death. Some of the pills from the dragon dispenser had been sent for analysis at the Forensic Science Service. Hadden’s CSI team had found no evidence in the solarium, or anywhere else on the yacht, of its use as either a floating operating theatre or a recovery ward. The ship’s galley stores were empty except for a few cans of beans, vegetables, and cooked meats, as well as a small supply of bottled water. The engines were in working order, the warning lights on the bridge indicating simply that the screws were out of the sea.

  ‘If Peploe was running a black-market trade in illegal transplants, where are his customers?’ Shaw asked Valentine. They were at the Costa Coffee stall in the entrance to A&E at the Queen Vic, in the queue, taking a break from the murder incident room which was running at full tilt. Shaw had just briefed the team on the discovery of Gavin Peploe’s body. Outside night had fallen and a revolving emergency light on an ambulance lit the forecourt. ‘The rest I can see, George. But how do you get your clients? You can’t advertise – or perhaps you can. Online? We should check that out.’