Death Watch

by Unknown

  The Rosa was silent except for the dribble of a bilge pump into the black oily water. They strolled away from the ship, keeping to the shadows of the hawthorns that grew through the wire fencing, round the edge of the Alexandra Dock, to the gates into the Bentinck – the inner dock – aware that by now they’d be on the CCTV. On the far side of the dividing swing-bridge between the docks was a 1950s office block, two-storey, the upper one having a plate-glass window providing a view of the quays. A light shone, but half-heartedly, the blue glow of computer screens fluttering. A fascia board read CONSTABLE SHIPPING AGENTS.

  Valentine spoke into a crackling entryphone grille.

  ‘DS Valentine, sir. We spoke twenty minutes ago.’

  They heard the automatic bolts shoot back. Inside was a windowless room in which sat two women, both wearing thigh-length skirts – one leather, one red silk – stockings, and loose blouses – one in gold lamé, the other silver, spangled with red dots. One had a cut lip, the other a puffy eye; tears stained the make-up on both.

  Shaw thought they looked like hookers from central casting.

  ‘Girls,’ said Valentine. He knew them both, regulars from the small red-light district on the outskirts of the North End. Neither was older than twenty-five, but he knew they’d already been on the streets a decade.

  ‘Fuck off,’ said one, winking at Shaw. The other one hit her, but it was only a make-believe blow, and it made them both laugh bitterly. They clutched each other’s arms and glared at Valentine, united in their antagonism.

  ‘Come up,’ crackled a voice from the entryphone outside. They climbed to the office. The ship’s agent was called Galloway, a thick-set Scot with a permanent five o’clock shadow and short arms that hung like weapons from his shoulders. A Cairn terrier cross was at his feet, chewing the cardboard packet which had once held a beef sandwich. Galloway waved a mobile phone at them. ‘Just getting one of your mob out to take the girls in – bit of a bundle over a client.’

  Shaw shook his head. ‘Do us a favour – cancel. Tell them we’re here. Do it now.’

  Galloway did so and killed the call. He didn’t look that happy about being given orders in his own office. ‘Next?’ he said.

  ‘What would the security guard at the gate do if he spotted two men like us wandering the dockside and then turning up here?’

  ‘If he was awake, he’d ring me,’ he said.

  They stood in the silence. ‘He isn’t awake very often,’ said Galloway. ‘That’s how the girls get on here. We’re trying to keep the hookers off the dock. Mind you, these two were in the boot of a cab,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘Ship owners don’t like it. They like the vice onshore.’

  ‘That’s the girl we’re interested in,’ said Valentine, pointing at the Rosa. ‘What can you tell us?’

  Galloway punched some computer keys. ‘I’ve drilled down for the stuff you need… She’s a regular. Dutch owners. Basic run is from here to Vaasa – that’s Finland; godforsaken hole, too. You wouldn’t even get a shag there, let alone a drink. She takes grain, scrap metal, brings back timber. Three and a half thousand tonnes – which means she’s a neat fit for the Kiel Canal, so we’re talking five, six days, each way. Nearer six now the EU’s kicking up about energy efficiency – they have to trim their speed, burns less fuel. Then there’s a regular two-way contract to Rotterdam. She’s just come in from that, carrying…’ He checked on screen. ‘White goods – fridges, mainly.’

  ‘And she was definitely here Sunday night?’ asked Valentine.

  Galloway nodded, scooping up the dog.

  ‘Crew?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Er… standard seven. Captain is Juan de Mesquita – John to us. First Officer’s Dutch, engineer is a Pole, couple of Russian ABs, then two Filipino deck crew – one of ’em’s the cook. Good, too – I’ve had the grub.’

  ‘All aboard?’

  ‘Yeah. Probably. They don’t need permission not to be – except from the captain. EU nationals don’t need a passport. They’ll go into town in the morning, shop while she’s being unloaded. Then it’s grain to load, and she should make the tide tomorrow night.’

  Shaw shook his head. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘Technically, she’s Dutch sovereign territory,’ said Galloway, folding the short arms across a barrel chest.

  ‘The dock gates are British,’ said Shaw. ‘And they’re staying shut.’

  Galloway shrugged. ‘OK, but you’ll have to deal with the owners. Every moment she’s in the dock she’s losing money. I’d need authorization – I don’t know – the chief constable’s office, something like that. In writing. I’m not trying to be difficult, but this is what I do. I protect the owners’ interests.’

  Deck lights died on the Rosa, leaving just the bridge lit. Shaw called the dog, which nuzzled his hands. ‘We need your help,’ he added to Galloway. ‘I can’t tell you everything, but I’ll tell you as much as I can.’

  It took Shaw a minute to give him the bare burnt bones. The case in a nutshell: Judd’s death at the hospital, the other two bodies they’d found – both with evidence of transplant scars. The search for the operating theatre, the recovery rooms – somewhere that hums, that’s hot, with the service cables in the roof, and steel doors. And the nagging clue: MVR. The torch, and the wristbands.

  ‘You mean like this?’ asked Galloway, extending his wrist out from a shirt cuff. On it was a white band, and he turned it to reveal the tell-tale letters MVR. ‘Crew’s been flogging these for about six months. They’re raising cash for Mercy Ships – you know? Charity ships. They sail into some godforsaken port in Africa and start offering cataract ops for free, vaccination, that kind of thing.’ He jiggled the band. ‘It’s a good cause.’

  ‘It’s guilt,’ said Shaw. ‘Crooks can surprise you just like honest people do.’

  Galloway opened a drawer on his desk and retrieved a bottle of whisky. The label was Dutch. He poured it into three tea mugs and divvied them up.

  ‘So,’ concluded Shaw, sipping. ‘What I want to do is watch, see what happens. They may just keep their heads down – I would. They don’t know we’ve got the torch or the wristbands – although they may well know we’ve picked up the two floaters, so perhaps they’ve guessed. But they won’t know we’ve made the link. And I guess they have to come back, right? They haven’t got a lot of choice.’

  ‘None. She’s run by the owners. Contracts are in place. They want her in Lynn, she’s in Lynn.’

  Unless, of course, the owners were in on the game, thought Shaw. He made a mental note to check back on the ownership, on the ship’s history, and the captain’s track record.

  ‘They’ll know we’re up at the hospital turning the place over,’ said Shaw. ‘And the death of one of the surgeons – Peploe – has given us a conveniently silent prime suspect. If they’re greedy, or desperate, they might just think they’re in the clear. I don’t want anyone on the ship alerted. Let them think they’re sailing Saturday morning. Can we put someone in here…’

  Galloway looked round at the dishevelled office. ‘Sure. The glass is tinted so they can’t see in. I usually go aboard for the paperwork, so they don’t come here. You’d be safe. There’s a secretary, telephonist, but they’re good girls. Leave it to me.’ He walked to the glass and looked at the ship. ‘There’s dockside CCTV – a camera on the gate, one on the quay. There are screens at security. Mind you, the picture quality’s crap so don’t get your hopes up.’

  ‘I’ll get you that letter from the chief constable – and the Port Authority. You’ll be covered,’ said Shaw. He asked to borrow a pair of night-vision binoculars.

  The light was eerie, a kind of low-voltage purple. He focused on the security booth at the gate, two hundred yards away – a blaze of neon, the cap of the security guard just visible through the plastic counter glass.

  ‘He’s asleep all right.’

  Then he looked at the Rosa, tied to the quayside, the only link between the two worlds a thin gangplank. No, n
ot the only link, because there was the thick power cable as well, like a snake.

  Something clicked into place in Shaw’s mind, like a virtual plug into an imaginary socket.

  He sat down, composed the question. ‘How come the ship takes power off the quayside?’

  Galloway put his hands behind his head, revealing two large patches of sweat-stained shirt. ‘We’re a green port. That means once the ships tie up they have to switch to UK power, which is generated inland from biomass. Costs a fucking fortune – nobody likes it, but that’s the way it is. If the UK’s gonna meet its emissions targets this is the kind of nonsense we have to live with.’

  ‘So Sunday lunchtime, when the power went, they’d have to switch to the generator?’ Shaw tried to recall the dark shape of the ship beyond the dock gates, but he couldn’t see any lights in his memory.

  Galloway thought, then frowned. ‘Well, the others did – the Ostgard, the Waverley, the Rufinia. They all switched to generators ’cos I had to go aboard to do the paperwork during the afternoon and they all had power. But I did the Rosa when she came in about ten that morning. Then I went home. I do that – just to frighten the wife. But Monday morning the bloke on security said there’d been a cock-up on the Rosa – soon as they’d docked and hooked up to the shore-side power they’d taken the chance to strip down the generator ’cos it was way past its maintenance date. So when the power went pop they were buggered. Took them till after midnight to get it up and running again.’

  Shaw and Valentine exchanged glances. At last, the link between the seemingly chaotic events on Erebus Street and the illegal traffic in human organs. Shaw tried to imagine the scene on board as the power failed at midday on Sunday: the frantic activity, the generator useless. He pressed his forehead against the tinted glass and looked at the Rosa. Then he scrolled down his mobile call list until he found the number for Andersen, the electricity company engineer they’d talked to in Erebus Street on the Sunday night. He answered on the third ring. Shaw guessed he had the kind of career where a call in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual. Shaw had a simple question: the power on the quayside, did it run through the Erebus Street sub-station, and if it did, where was it coming from now? Simple answers: yes, to one. Now it came from a divert they’d set up from the power supply on the Bentinck Dock.

  ‘Can you monitor the supply to a specific ship?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Andersen. ‘I’d have to get into the other sub-station – it’s over by the grain stores.’

  ‘Can you do that? This is confidential, so low key. Then let me know as soon as there’s a peak in the supply – anything substantial. The ship we’re interested in is the Rosa.’

  ‘Why?’

  It was a fair question and he needed the engineer onside. ‘It’s possible the Rosa has been used as a kind of floating hospital – an illegal floating hospital. If they tried an operation on board the arc lamps alone would chew up the power supply. I want you to tell me if there’s a peak like that.’

  Andersen said he’d be in position in an hour.

  Then Shaw swung the glasses round to the old gates at the bottom of Erebus Street. The light still shone from Orzsak’s bathroom, but it wasn’t the only light now. Above the Bentinck Launderette the lights were on, glimpsed through curtains, and only visible in the dark interlude when the 24-HOUR WASH sign wasn’t lit green – a livid light, echoed by the stark illuminated cross on the apex of the roof of the Sacred Heart.

  ‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘For now, we wait.’

  42

  Shaw took the first watch. He set up a desk by the observation window, put his mobile on it, a coffee cup alongside. From inside his jacket he produced the CCTV print he’d taken from the footage of the fatal road accident at Castle Rising which had killed Jonathan Tessier’s grandmother – and apparently set in motion a chain of events which had led to the nine-year-old’s murder.

  The print showed the Mini after the impact, parked in the shadows under the trees. The offside wing crumpled, but otherwise intact. The two-tone paint job, a radio aerial, and a roof rack. Raindrops speckled the windows, except where the wipers had kept the view clear for the driver.

  He sat back, letting his mind slip into neutral. Out on the quayside nothing moved. On a moonless night the shadows didn’t move. He tried to conjure up a memory of Erebus Street on that Sunday night: the fire burning, Blanket’s abduction from the church, the attack on the hostel, Ally Judd slipping home from the presbytery, and the ship, in darkness, just beyond the dock gates at the end of the street.

  Tiredness overwhelmed him, so that he slept for a nano-second, waking up with a heart-thumping start. He stood, both hands on the glass, looking out on the bleak dock. There was one vehicle parked in a bay by the grain store, an HGV, towing a container trailer which was empty. One of the Eddie Stobart fleet. Shaw guessed the driver had reached the legal limit on his hours and had been forced to leave his lorry and find a room for the night in Lynn. Or he was fast asleep in his cab. One of the floodlights bounced off the curved windscreen, which was filthy with dust from the docks, except where the glass had been swished clean by the wipers.

  Shaw’s heart missed a beat. He looked at his CCTV print, at the window within a window cleared by the windscreen wipers. He’d seen it so many times – and yet hadn’t seen it. He looked out of the window at the HGV, back at the Mini, back at the HGV.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, burying his head in his hands. He’d known all the time – or he should have realized he’d known. The paint he’d tracked down through forensics was for a batch of Minis for export.

  ‘Anything wrong?’ asked Galloway, who was playing computer games silently on his desktop PC.

  ‘No, just the opposite. Here, have a look.’

  Galloway came over, his knees slightly arthritic, the mug of whisky still in his hand.

  ‘What’s the difference between this windscreen,’ said Shaw, touching the print, ‘and that…’ He pointed at the HGV.

  ‘This windscreen’s covered in water – that one’s covered in shite.’

  Shaw shook his head. ‘Nope. This one…’ he said, letting his finger vibrate on the print of the Mini. ‘This one is left-hand drive. See – the shape of the cleaned area is reversed. It’s about the only external difference you’d see in a British car converted to left-hand drive. If you didn’t switch the wipers the driver would have the diminished vision, not the passenger.’

  ‘Well done. So what?’

  ‘This picture was taken a few moments after a fatal crash. One man got out the driver’s side, two out the back. At least, I thought it was the driver’s side. But it isn’t. The driver is still in the car. There were four of them. But the driver’s smart enough to stay out of sight.’

  He gave Galloway the surfer’s smile. He felt a flash of joy in his life, like a distant view of the sea. ‘Got any more of that whisky?’

  43

  Thursday, 9 September

  Jan Orzsak stood on a chair in the hallway of his house, a picture of his mother, cut from the family album, held to his chest with one hand. He’d been standing still for nearly two hours and the pain in his legs was making them shake. Around his neck was a noose he’d made from a bed sheet, the end attached to the newel post of the banisters above.

  The dawn sun shone through the 1930s stained glass over the front door. The light – blue and yellow – caught dust motes in parallelograms of colour. A heavenly beauty, he thought. And the fittingness of this thought made him smile.

  He’d heard the six o’clock siren on the docks. He wondered if he could die by inaction, if he just stood and let the world grow old around him. He’d almost taken that decision when there was a sharp knock on the door.

  The intrusion broke the spell. Whoever it was tried to flip up the letterbox, but he’d had it nailed shut after the latest dogshit package. ‘Mr Orzsak?’ said a muffled voice. ‘We saw the light. I’m sorry, can we talk? It’s the power engineers – from next door.’

 
; The last twelve hours had been the worst of Jan Orzsak’s life, and he was determined – as a determined man – to make sure the agony did not persist. He’d lived a private life, and it was a kind of death to have people crawling all over it. He’d take what was left of his privacy to his God. He’d been a just man, and he’d kept God’s law, so he didn’t fear meeting him. There was only one great sin, and he knew God would forgive him for that.

  He’d set the DVD player in his room to Chopin, a nocturne, playing in a continuous loop. It had reached the closing bars. There’d be silence in a minute and then all he had to do was step off the chair, and it would be over. But how many times had he listened already to those same closing bars? Twenty? Each time the beautiful music demanded another performance. A final curtain-call.

  The knock at the door was more insistent. ‘Mr Orzsak. We need to cut the power. I can’t go ahead unless you agree. Ten minutes, sir, then we’ll be done and out of your hair. Sir?’

  Beyond the front door he could hear the foreman muttering – stringing together profanities.

  The music died.

  Orzsak felt very cold, the blood rushing to his heart, the sudden certainty of what was to happen next making his vision clear. He gripped the picture to his heart and he thought what a child-like impulse that was, and that made him even more determined to go back there – before all this happened – back to a time of innocence.

  He stepped off the chair into the spangled air.

  Weightless, for a second, he felt sublimely happy.

  44

  Shaw rang the head of security for the docks, an ex-DI from Peterborough called Frank Denver, at 7.01 a.m. Shaw thought the timing was acceptable – but wasn’t surprised to discover otherwise. When Denver had stopped shouting about being woken up Shaw told him the good news: that there was every chance a series of major crimes had taken place within the docks, unnoticed by either his security staff or the Lynn CID. His cooperation was now urgently required. He didn’t have a choice.