Death Watch

by Unknown

  Following, he felt fleetingly happy, with the local radio giving out a forecast for the beaches, the heat making the plastic seats soft with that smell that brought back a memory of childhood holidays.

  They hit the ring road, went east, then skirted the town, so that Valentine was beginning to think they’d pick up the coast road, but then one roundabout short they cut back into town, round the Magnox power station, and into the Westmead Estate. Valentine’s breathing became painfully shallow, because in all the years since the Tessier case he’d never found a single line of evidence which linked Robert Mosse back to his childhood home and the scene of the crime – except for the disputed fur glove. In fact all the members of Mosse’s little gang had put as much distance as they could between the estate and their adult lives. Cosyns had moved away, Voyce had gone to New Zealand, Robins to the Midlands, then prison and a string of psychiatric hospitals. But here Valentine was, following Cosyns right back to where it had all begun.

  He dropped the Mazda back a hundred yards as they drove past the triangle of ground worn down to mud by kids’ football, the pitch where Tessier had been playing that summer’s day in 1997. A narrow slip road led beyond it, past low-level residential blocks built in the late eighties, then round the community centre into the dead ground between the estate and the old coastal railway – a deep cut full of dusty shrubs. Here were serried ranks of wooden lock-ups, access tracks of compacted dirt running between, and he saw the trailer turning into one, backing out to negotiate the corner, then disappearing. Valentine pulled a U-turn and went back to the football pitch, where he parked outside a Spar shop. He left his raincoat and jacket in the car, bought an evening paper and a fresh pack of Silk Cut, then strolled back towards the lock-ups. The battered BMW was parked in the third alleyway, the doors of one of the lock-ups just closing automatically on the trailer and Citroën. Blue doors once, now flecked in peeling paint.

  He walked down the alley, clocking the numbers on most of the lock-ups: some just painted, others broken. The garages were built in pairs, each sharing a centre wall of breeze blocks and each pair separated by a narrow gap. Keeping the front of Cosyns’s lock-up in sight he edged closer, then slipped into one of the gaps opposite. A goods train went past on the old railway line, but when the silence returned he could hear something in it: the low rumble of an engine, throaty and visceral, coming from the lock-up. He noted the number: 51. He backed further down the narrow gap, behind some rubbish – two old pushbikes and an ancient rusted pram. Behind him he had an exit if he got spotted. He’d wait for Cosyns to go, then check out the lock-up. The engine rumbled on. The noise was subterranean, but rhythmic, oiled, and flawless. So he should have wondered why, twenty minutes later, he could still hear it.

  Shaw watched the holiday traffic creeping west as he approached the outskirts of Lynn. His mobile buzzed in its holder on the dashboard. He pressed a key to open a picture message: Fran on the beach holding the string of a kite. Out to the north, over the sea, the sky was a vivid stretched blue. As he reached the ring road he fought and won against the temptation to return to St James’s. He had a fortnight’s holiday, and it started now. Lena had obtained planning permission for an extension to the cottage: a shower room and bathroom, utility room, and a boot room so they could come straight off the beach without leaving a ton of sand in the cottage. He’d been nominated site manager, which meant two weeks on the beach watching someone else work.

  He accelerated to 70 m.p.h., testing out his latest toy – £17,000 worth of second-hand Porsche 911. The car was a fifteen-year-old oddity he’d tracked down on the internet through a specialist car dealer. He’d seen a recommendation for the model on a website run by the Partially Sighted Society. It was one of the few relatively modern cars with a narrow ‘A’ bar – the strut between the windscreen and the side window. In new cars these ‘A’ bars were inches thick because they disguised a roll-bar. And they’d been edged forward for strength. The result was that any monocular driver had a serious restriction on visibility. The Porsche had an elegant, thread-like ‘A’ bar, set back, giving Shaw excellent vision on both sides. This was his new code, to deal with his disability rather than just muddling through and pretending it didn’t exist.

  He thought about driving straight home to the beach but decided there was one thing he needed to do first. On the dashboard there was a Post-It note with a number in black felt pen: 51. At the last roundabout on the ring road he pulled off to the left and ran into the North End, then round to the edge of town and onto the Westmead Estate. He drove past Valentine’s Mazda without recognizing it because the DS had put it through the car-wash that morning. Down by the community centre there was a telephone box under a security CCTV camera, so Shaw parked there. As soon as he’d robbed himself of the forward motion of the car the heat crowded back in. There was something about the architecture of housing estates which made the sun unbearable – the scorched grass, the reflecting windows, the blank concrete. But it was more than that. It was the way the estate captured the idea of being trapped. The sound of a lone ice-cream van seemed to make it worse, the reedy call-sign horribly harsh: the whistled theme from The Great Escape. He thought about staying in the car and going home, running to the cottage, getting back in the sea – leaving this until he was back at work. But Lena had been right, he needed to exorcize the ghost of Jonathan Tessier. This was a loose end, and he could tie it up in ten minutes. It didn’t cross his mind to ring Valentine for back-up, despite the fact he’d promised himself he would.

  He’d been a young DS, just posted to Lynn from Brixton, when he’d first been sent out to the Westmead to take a statement from a man who’d been attacked getting his car out of one of the lock-ups. The victim had been backing out when the driver’s door had been pulled open, he’d been dragged out, and hit with an iron bar. They’d taken the car – a Morris Minor in pristine condition. It had turned up at an auction in Retford eight months later, although that was its third sale since the theft thanks to a fake logbook and new plates. Shaw had asked to take the victim’s statement at the scene as soon as he’d got out of hospital. They’d worked it out then – that the thieves had been in the gap at the side of the garage, waiting for their moment. So he knew the layout, the ‘manor’, as his dad would have called it; because there were lots of different landscapes in the city, but one of the most thrilling was the landscape of crime.

  The lock-up at the top of the first row was numbered 160, the next 121, then 120, 81, 80, and then 41. He kept walking but glanced down the next alley and saw a battered BMW parked, but nothing else. He knew 51 was down there, but he felt exposed, approaching from the front, so he walked on past 40, to the last alley, looking to double back using one of the gaps. But there was a car in this alley and it didn’t look right at all. It was another BMW, but this one had a soft top, and its black paint-work was waxed to a patina which made it look like there was an invisible inch-thick layer of glass covering the paint. This wasn’t a third-hand BMW. This was new. It was a £40,000 motor car. He touched the bonnet, felt the warmth of the engine on his palm.

  He looked inside the car and saw a pair of reflective sunglasses on the passenger seat. The roll-top reeked of leather. Maybe, thought Shaw, the driver was just stupid, because if this car stood in this alleyway for another hour one of the Westmead’s locals would open it up like a can of baked beans.

  He chose the nearest gap between lock-ups, clogged with stinging nettles but easy enough to edge down. Brushing a path through, he stopped to untangle a thread of blackberry thorns. He could hear an engine, low and visceral; a big sporting engine. Each of the lock-ups had a small rear door, wooden, with a single window, although most were boarded up now for security. The one at the side of number 51 was covered in a metal sheet of corrugated iron.

  The throbbing engine made the iron door vibrate. Using the sound as cover, Shaw tried the handle and, despite the rust and the thick, flaking blue paint, it turned noiselessly, the door opening in on well-
oiled hinges like the lid of a musical box. The interior was gloomy and unlit, and appeared to be empty. He went inside and closed the door behind him, letting his eyes assemble the greys and blacks in the half light which came in through a mossy skylight. The air was laden with lead. He went to breathe, coughed once, then doubled over.

  Down on his knees the air was clearer. He wanted to call out but knew if he inhaled enough of the fumes to do so he’d pass out. Looking across the stained concrete floor he saw that the breeze-block wall between lock-ups 51 and 52 had been taken down and replaced by a steel joist. A trailer carrying a stock car stood sideways, beside it a Mini, up on blocks, the paintwork a rusted quilt – but Shaw could see the underlying colour, and it made his blood chill: mustard yellow, the colour of the microscopic globes of paint they’d found on Jonathan Tessier’s football shirt. The bonnet of the Mini had been removed, the engine cannibalized, the seats ripped out. A Mini: left-hand drive.

  Could that be true? Could this be the car that had crashed at that lonely crossroads thirteen years earlier? After the murder of the child they’d have been too scared to move the car, even if they had resprayed the vehicle. Perhaps they’d never finished, traumatized by what they’d had to do, and focused on the desperate need to get rid of the boy’s body. Robert Mosse would have been in custody for the killing – but they must have hoped, even then, that the case against him was fatally flawed, but most of all that he wouldn’t talk. If they kept their nerve, sat tight, they might get away with murder. After Mosse was freed the vehicle was too hot to put on the streets. A double fatal hit-and-run was one thing, but child murder was in a different league. They’d have been paralysed, so they’d just waited, hoping. And Jack Shaw’s myopic investigation had let the moment slip, because he should have turned the Westmead over, looking for more evidence, but he was convinced he had his man, and that was all the evidence he’d need.

  Shaw heard something else then, a whimper. Unexpectedly close, a dog barked. Still crouching, he made his way round the trailer until he saw a figure lying on the floor, spreadeagled, face obscured under the vehicle below the exhaust pipe, which was churning out blue gas. A small terrier dog snuffled at his trouser leg, pulling at a pair of racing overalls.

  Shaw grabbed the man’s feet and dragged the body towards the door he’d entered by, where the air was clearer, the dog barking now in a rhythmic pattern of yelps. He felt for the pulse: none. The man’s face was the colour of wallpaper paste, a thin line of saliva running from the corner of the mouth. Shaw knew Alex Cosyns from his mugshot. He recognized him now, even as he took the jawbone in one hand, putting his other over the man’s nose, and opened the airway, bending down. He was looking down the pale throat when two hands clamped around his own throat from behind, closing on his windpipe, locking. Instantly he had no air, and the force of the grip made one of his vertebrae crack. He didn’t panic. He worked his strong legs against the floor, trying to get the toe of his right boot to grip so he could get some upward leverage. At the same time he used his elbows to strike upwards. He heard a rib snap, and was pretty sure it wasn’t his. He got his other foot into a corner of something – he’d seen an old bookcase against the wall, the shelves crowded with paint, bottles, jars. The dog, silent, gripped his trouser leg in its teeth and hung on despite the violent outward kicks, but he managed to make a decent contact with the wooden bookcase, because he heard it fall, a cacophony of broken glass. He struggled on, but now – shockingly – he knew that he was watching himself struggle, as if he’d floated clear of his own body. He was aware with a kind of pathetic insight that what his body was doing – the crab-like violent star-kicks – was not enough. He didn’t black out, he faded away, as if the image of his own struggle was a film clip he didn’t have the time to watch. He took one thought with him, left in his brain like the line a firework traces in the sky on bonfire night. It was a laughable, trite thought. He should have gone straight home.

  Shaw knew he was still alive when he heard the sound of a trolley wheel squeak. It was mundane enough to rule out the possibility he was in heaven, or, for that matter, hell. If he opened his eyes he knew there’d be pain, but he steeled himself and tried anyway. His eyelids parted stickily, and through his good eye he saw a hospital room. White sheets, white walls, a blanket exactly the colour of the one that used to cover his bed as a child – a sort of nursery blue. He wasn’t lying down, not flat, but perched up, with something holding his neck almost vertical, so that he could see forward to the foot of the bed.

  The second time he woke up he knew he was alive because of the pain: like cramp, but in the muscles at the base of his skull. He was aware of a surgical collar, lifting his chin, locking his head into position. There was a small wheeled trolley at the foot of the bed with some greetings cards on it, one a seascape in the precise shade of green his daughter always used. On a chair by the trolley sat George Valentine. He had his legs crossed and Shaw noticed he’d bought himself a pair of new shoes: black slip-ons.

  ‘Cosyns?’ asked Shaw, but he didn’t hear anything, so he tried the word again. His voice sounded like a pencil sharpener.

  ‘Dead on arrival,’ said Valentine. ‘Staged suicide is my bet. You got in the way. It’s early days, but Tom says there’s traces of morphine on Cosyns’s lips, in the nostrils.’

  ‘I should be dead,’ said Shaw, irritated now by the collar, which made his head feel like a medicine ball, the weight crushing his spine.

  ‘I heard the bookcase fall – I was opposite, staking the place out,’ said Valentine. ‘I tried to get the door up, heard something inside, and the dog yelping. By the time I ran round the side the back door was open. You were inside on top of Cosyns. He was dead. You’re not.’

  Shaw told Valentine what he’d done, up until the moment he felt the hands round his neck. A summary as compressed as a black hole; all that mattered rolled into a tight ball. How he’d tracked down the lock-up number, how he’d found the link with the fatal crash at Castle Rising, how he knew now that Mosse had been at the wheel, and that was why the other members of the gang had a hold over him. And the black BMW with the soft top.

  ‘Was it Mosse who attacked me?’ he asked, when he’d finished.

  ‘Probably, though we can’t prove it. You didn’t get the number of the BMW?’

  Shaw went to shake his head but the pain stopped him dead so that he closed his eyes, tears spilling out of one.

  ‘We shook down Mosse’s house last night,’ said Valentine. ‘And the car. Nothing. Wife says he was home at the time. Domestic bliss.’

  Shaw thought about the hands round his neck. ‘I thought I broke his rib.’

  ‘’Fraid not. Bruised – but he plays Sunday football for a side out at Wisbech. One of his mates says he took a knock last week.’

  ‘Why were you there?’ asked Shaw, but even as he heard the words he slipped out of consciousness. Then his eyes were open and it was getting dark outside, and the blanket was red not blue. But Valentine was still there – or he’d gone and come back.

  Shaw closed his eyes, trying to remember the question he’d asked and had no answer to. When he opened them again George Valentine was still there, the bedside light on, and the DS had a new sticker on his lapel: Alcoholics Anonymous.

  ‘You advertising now?’ he asked, nodding at the badge.

  ‘Your wife was here – she’ll be back in an hour.’

  ‘Why were you there?’ asked Shaw, knowing he was picking up where he’d stopped.

  ‘I followed Cosyns home from the Norfolk Arena. I’ve been tracking him, seeing what came up. I didn’t know where they kept the trailer. It seemed like a loose thread. I haven’t got a life, so I thought I’d tie it up. Mosse left the arena first – in a BMW soft-top.’

  ‘What does Warren say?’ asked Shaw. Detective Chief Superintendent Max Warren had made it clear to both of them that the Tessier case was a closed file. He’d clearly failed to make it clear enough.

  ‘When he stopped shouting he
was pretty good about it,’ said Valentine. ‘He said if we were going to work on the case it was probably about time we got some fucking results. Because if we’re right, Mosse is clearly prepared to kill to make sure he never pays the price for what he did to that kid.’ Blood flushed Valentine’s face.

  Shaw went to speak but Valentine held up a hand. ‘Let me do the pitch – I’ve done it once with Warren. He went for it, so hear me out.’ He heaved in a double lungful of air, and Shaw wondered, for the first time, if he’d live to see the end of the case.

  He put a cigarette, unlit, between his teeth.

  ‘It’s a cold case – an ice box. We ain’t gonna get any fresh forensics. No one’s going to tell us anything we don’t know. We’ve got to move on from Tessier. Find a new way in.

  ‘There were four of them – Mosse, Cosyns, Robins and Voyce. Once the case against Mosse collapsed they went their own ways: Voyce to New Zealand, Robins into crime – he went to Ashworth in the end, a secure psychiatric unit, and then to Bellevue, here, on the edge of Lynn. That left Cosyns and Mosse in town. Mates – whether Mr Up-and-Coming wanted it or not. That’s the crucial bit, ’cos Cosyns isn’t in that league – divorced, a job keeping a hearse on the road. It doesn’t take a lot to see what’s happened. Cosyns leans on Mosse for help – just a bit perhaps, then more. Because he isn’t gonna starve, is he – not while Mosse needs his silence. I’ve been asking a few questions about our Mr Mosse and it seems he’s no ordinary solicitor. He’s studying for the Bar. Should be called later this year. That’ll treble his earning power – there’s already a new house, the new BMW, kids at private school. Warms your heart – just a snotty-nosed kid from the Westmead. So he’s got all that to lose.

  ‘Then we turn up, fresh as daisies, trying to reopen the case.’ Valentine ran a finger round the tight collar of his grey shirt. ‘I had a look round Cosyns’s house. He’s been getting money from Mosse – cheques at a grand a pop. He came home while I was there. It’s not black-mail exactly, but it’s as good as. In thousand-pound instalments.’