by Unknown
Out in the corridor a metal tray hit the floor like a cymbal.
Shaw didn’t say a word so Valentine ploughed on. ‘My guess is that Cosyns pushed his luck. Upped the ante. If we were that close to him, he let Mosse feel the heat too. Mosse doesn’t like the heat. He leaves the Norfolk Arena first, gets back, parks, and waits for Cosyns. I reckon it isn’t the first time he’s killed to stop us getting to the truth.’
‘Go on,’ said Shaw, aware now that his DS had been running his own private investigation. But he was hardly in any position to show his anger, or a sense of betrayal.
‘I checked it out. Robins died in Bellevue in May this year – cut his wrists open with a brand-new Swiss Army knife. The local nick got involved because there was a suggestion he had help – a visitor, day before they found him. Name and address left at the front gate were false. I showed the orderly a picture of Mosse. He couldn’t be sure – or wouldn’t. But it’s possible.’
Shaw closed his eyes. ‘Why?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Valentine. ‘But I do know whose name pops up in the visitors’ book those last few months – Alex Cosyns’s. What’d they talk about? Did he tell Mosse about the visits – turning the screw?’
A nurse came and put a tea cup in front of Shaw which he couldn’t pick up.
‘So that leaves Jimmy Voyce,’ said Valentine, holding up a piece of paper on which was written what looked like a short piece of code.
TK 1956
‘I found this scrawled on a note on Cosyns’s desk at his house. It’s a flight number. Stansted, last week, incoming from Istanbul, a connection back to Auckland. Passenger list includes James Anthony Voyce. Why the return trip? My guess is they’d talked about money. And how easy it is to get, if you know the right people.’
‘Where’s Voyce now?’
Valentine smiled, and Shaw realized how unusual that was. He looked twenty years younger.
‘Fuck knows. But Warren’s lifted the ban – said it didn’t seem to make much difference what he said anyway. The Cosyns case is open, so’s Tessier’s. We’re on it – with one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘We talk to each other.’
‘About what?’
‘About tracking down Voyce, and making sure we’re there when he tries to put the frighteners on Robert Mosse – because if he does do that, and that’s got to be why he’s here, then there’s a really good chance our man will kill again.’
‘Try to kill again,’ said Shaw, closing his eyes. He heard Valentine get up, open a window, and strike a match. A wave falling, exploding around him in white surf, was the first image in a dream. But he woke almost instantly, with a heart-stopping jerk, because he’d felt those hands again, locked round his throat, trying to take his life away.
The next time he opened his eyes Fran was standing there holding Cosyns’s terrier dog – the one he’d taken from the car that night, leaving the passengers and driver for dead. The one Jonathan Tessier had loved. For the first time Shaw wondered why Cosyns had done it, and whether it was a tiny act of contrition, to save the only life in that car they hadn’t shattered. And he’d have felt an empathy with the animal, because his father had bred them.
His wife was behind his daughter, trying to smile. ‘George had it in the car when he came round to tell us what had happened. It’s ancient.’ Lena shook her head.
She came to the bed and laid a hand on his forehead. ‘George said Fran could have it, if it was OK with you.’
Valentine had gone. Shaw was too horrified to speak.
‘Is it, Dad?’ asked Fran. ‘Is it all right?’
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank three people for bringing Death Watch into the world. My new editor at Penguin, Kate Burke, has swiftly created an atmosphere of calm professionalism which is reflected in the final manuscript. My agent, Faith Evans, has tirelessly driven forward the quest for better writing and more substantial characters. Midge Gillies, my wife, is a sure sounding board on all aspects of story-telling.
Special thanks go to Trevor Horwood – my copy-editor – who allows us all to sleep more easily at nights. Jenny Burgoyne, again, made sure Trevor gets sleep too. Bridie Pritchard provided belt and braces.
I have returned to a growing team of specialists to check details and seek advice. They include Paul Horrell on motorcars, Alan Gilbert on forensics, Martin Peters on medical matters and James Woodman for advice on clinical matters. This time round we have added Nick Bonsor, of Read & Sutcliffe Ltd, King’s Lynn, for advice on all things nautical and for a tour of the port. Without this help, Death Watch would never have been written.
As always the characters in Death Watch are fictional. I have played with place names to enliven the language and the plot. For the record, the Italian painter Patigno did not exist and neither, therefore, does his masterpiece The Miracle at Cana.
