Death's Door

by Jim Kelly

  Shaw was quietly impressed. It had taken him an hour in bed just before dawn to work that out. ‘You remember Patch?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Valentine. The nick at Wells had a car park at the back so he’d never had to park on the quay. But he remembered the little caravan. He thought Patch had worn a hat – something jaunty – not a Tam o’ Shanter, a Trilby maybe. Then, one day, he was gone with his caravan, and the machines took his place, which no one could operate, so the council lost a fortune, and one day there was a new caravan, smart and modern, with an attendant.

  ‘Neighbours?’ asked Shaw. ‘Anyone see anything?’

  ‘They’re all down the parish hall. Jackie’s organizing. I’ve got some copies of Osbourne’s picture down there, just in case.’ They’d seen DC Lau’s Megane parked by the village green, racing red with go-fast stripes and bafflers. Spoilers too.

  They stepped out into the backyard. Like most cottages along the Norfolk hills it had a long, narrow garden plot, big enough for a family to grow its own vegetables. A small holding really, to bolster breadline agricultural wages.

  Patch was past gardening so it was rough lawn, cut around a line of fruit trees. Hawthorns choked the end of the plot. But a rough path led through, and when they were in the shadows they saw a small caravan, just a box on wheels, rust eating through a coat of white paint.

  ‘Christ,’ said Valentine. ‘You’d have thought he had enough of the sodding thing. Nearly twenty years and he takes it home.’

  ‘Not everyone hates their job,’ said Shaw, making a point of not catching Valentine’s eye. ‘Council probably thought they were doing him a favour. Plus it made way for the new machines.’ He tried the door and it gave effortlessly, part of the lock falling to the ground. Inside was a pull-down table, a fold-up picnic chair and an old paraffin heater. On a row of nails hung circular bands of tickets, the colours – pink, blue, and green – faded where they’d caught the sun. On a hook hung a Trilby. Shaw looked at his watch. ‘O’Hare’ll have the DNA results by now from Tom and the FSS.’ He imagined the chief constable opening the lab report with crisp, dry fingers. ‘I better get back – face up. Tell him about this too. Can you go back to The Circle? Let’s put someone on Patch’s friends – with East Hills in the news perhaps he said something. British Legion, neighbours, usual stuff. And see if we can get someone to help Fiona trace the source of these cyanide capsules. Priority. We’ll see Osbourne but not just yet. Let him stew a bit longer. I want to check something first. If he’s our man he’s a swimmer. So I’ll meet you at Wells Lido at ten. Ruth Robinson’s on duty.’

  TWENTY

  The lido was just beyond a fifties housing estate on the edge of Wells. A white art deco wall threw a sinuous embrace around an oval pool, a blue dolphin emblem over the entrance. Climbing out of the Porsche Shaw heard the unmistakable sound of an outdoor swimming pool – the splashing, the mock screams, the tinny jangle of musac over a public address system. And the smell, an instant Proustian rush as he walked towards the little ticket window – ozone and chlorine and damp towels.

  Valentine was sat by the ticket booth on a bench, his angular frame crowded into a tiny area of shade. Shaw showed his warrant card to the woman behind the grill and said they’d like to see Ruth Robinson – Marianne Osbourne’s next-door sister.

  She was just finishing a lesson, so could they wait?

  Valentine’s mobile rang and he walked away into the car park where the metal chasses baked under a rippling mirage. Shaw took the vacated seat on the wooden bench, watching the summer clouds build over the unseen sea.

  He tried to clear his mind of the interview he’d just had with Brendan O’Hare. The chief constable had summarized the paperwork on the East Hills mass screening and listened to Shaw’s own analysis of the state of the inquiry.

  It had taken O’Hare less than ten seconds to formulate a response. ‘The papers will be asking us about East Hills by when, Peter? I haven’t checked but I bet the press office has had calls already. We need to respond. The junior league approach would be to slip out a press release saying the mass screening had drawn a blank but that we were following up leads, etc., etc . . . But this lot are Fleet Street, not the local rag. They’d crucify us – me. No, what we need to do is give them a story. That’s your job, Peter. Let’s say 3.30 p.m. here at St James’, the Norfolk Suite, Thursday,’ he said, flicking open a laptop and tapping in a diary entry.

  ‘Any inquiries before that we can tell them to wait for the presser. Best-case scenario is that you have, by that time, found the killer, or uncovered some concrete evidence which will lead, inexorably, to his identity. Maybe this Joe Osbourne character you seem so struck with. If I was you, Peter, I’d get him in here. Plenty of pressure, see when he breaks.‘I take it we are still looking for a man, Peter? No change there?’

  ‘Sir. Sample X is a man’s DNA.’

  ‘Goodo. If you find yourself discernibly short of giving the press a thumping good story I would suggest you concoct one. Anything you like. Perhaps we can glean a lead from the statements taken as part of this exhaustive – and expensive – inquiry? Make it good. The press will run with it, we’ll knock it into the long grass and then we’ll have to rely on the goldfish-like attention span of Fleet Street news desks. I want something in writing three hours before the presser to my secretary or my email.’ O’Hare closed the laptop. ‘Great timing, by the way, Peter. We’re trying to cut ten million pounds out of the force budget without impacting on frontline services and you contrive to blow half a million quid on a dud DNA sweep. Well done.’

  Shaw had thought about interjecting the correct figure, but let it go.

  ‘Next month, if we don’t have the killer in custody, I will put out an internal memo to say that the senior officer in charge of the East Hill’s inquiry has requested a transfer,’ said the chief constable. ‘That’s you, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, because I certainly might have missed it. The internal memo will leak inexplicably to the press. George can pack his bags too. Wells’ nick is up to compliment – but I’m sure we can get him back in somehow.’ O’Hare glanced at his diary. ‘You can both attend the presser on Thursday. In fact, I insist on it. Back row. I’ll do the talking if there’s something to say. If not, you’re giving the presser and I’ll be in Whitehall; otherwise known as the West Norfolk golf course.’ He pushed his chair back on oiled castors and stood. ‘I think you should consider your future. Maybe a transfer isn’t for you. Your wife runs a business, I think, locally. Long-distance marriages do work, of course. Mine didn’t – twice.’ O’Hare smiled inappropriately and then touched the file on his blotter. ‘I see that following your unfortunate accident you were required to attend annual medical checks and a thorough ophthalmic examination. Should you fail to satisfy the police committee of your ability to continue in the job, certainly at an operational level, we would be in a position to recommend a disability allowance and pension.’

  O’Hare looked at him for the only time in their interview. ‘You’re a good copper, Peter. But even good coppers have to be lucky. Get lucky by Thursday, or you’re out. One way or another.’

  Shaw requested authorization to spend a further £7,000 on asking the lab to run a familial search through the national DNA database to see if there was a close match to Sample X, rather than a direct match. As long shots went it was pretty much intercontinental. The chances of the East Hills killer being randomly related to someone on the main database by family were slight. But could they afford not to do the obvious? It was the standard next step. If they got a close match at least they’d know where to start looking for the killer.

  O’Hare turned him down flat; in fact, he’d make a point at the press conference that he’d refused a request to chuck good money after bad. The next time the West Norfolk paid for a DNA mass screening the officer in charge of the inquiry would do his homework first, said the chief constable, talking to his blotter, and make sure they weren’t frittering away taxpayer’
s hard-earned income.

  Shaw had been wordlessly dismissed. The anger he’d felt at the humiliation was still with him. The sound of a bell echoed round the lido to mark the hour.

  Valentine reappeared, texting on his mobile.‘Lincoln CID,’ he said, waving the phone. ‘They tracked down Julie Carstairs – the girlfriend who stood Marianne Osbourne up on the day of the East Hills murder. She says that was a little white lie. She never intended to go out that day, and there’d been no agreement to meet. Marianne came to see her – she lived in Wells – the evening of the killing, after she’d given her statement to us at St James’. Told her what she’d told us: that she’d planned to meet Julie but she hadn’t turned up. She told Julie she’d lied because she was meeting a boy out there and she didn’t want her parents to know. Apparently she’d been out with Marianne a couple of times to East Hills because her Dad wanted her to have a chaperone. Julie was eighteen. She admits she didn’t exactly watch her every move out there. So I think we can read between the lines. She says the boys followed Marianne like gulls after a trawler. She’s got no idea who she was going to see that day. And Marianne didn’t say if she had met him. And no names.’

  They heard light steps on the tiled floor. ‘DI Shaw?’ Ruth Robinson was in a tracksuit and her skin was dry and flushed despite the heat, so that he guessed that she’d just done some lengths and showered. The subtle reflection of Marianne’s Pre-Raphaelite looks was stronger in daylight. Shaw actually shook his head, trying to dislodge the image of Marianne on her deathbed. Ruth had to be twice the weight of her sibling, possibly three times. Despite that she had a strange buoyancy, as if she could float in air as easily as she no doubt could in water. She held her arms and hands away from her body as if they too were floating free. Mass she had, he thought, but not weight. An attractive woman, because she seemed to wear her size well. Happy, thought Shaw, in her own skin.

  The pool was crowded, inflatables clashing, children toppling off airbeds, balls being lobbed into screeching clusters of school friends. There was no shade except a single slash across the blue water – the silhouette of the high diving board. A grass perimeter was crowded too, this time with sunbathers, older teenagers, young adults. A cluster of toddlers with armband floats were being shepherded along the poolside and Robinson gently cleared a way forward with the calm assurance of an adult confident in the company of children.

  Three sides of the pool were open, with the perimeter wall providing a windbreak. The fourth side was changing rooms. There was a single-storey café built into the perimeter wall – a long glass window displaying a rack of ice-cream flavours. Robinson went in through a side door and emerged with a cafetiere on a tray and three large cups.

  ‘I wanted to talk about Marianne,’ said Shaw. ‘But mostly about your brother-in-law, Joe.’

  She didn’t look at him, but at the children in the shallow end. It struck Shaw that this woman, childless, spent much of her life with kids. He wondered if she’d tried for children with her husband Aidan. Ruth smiled, cradling the coffee. Shaw was struck that someone so benign, the word was difficult to avoid – wholesome – could also hint at something else, something slightly darker, because there was a calculating facet to her stillness: a stillness so like her husband’s. She looked up at the sky where a line of geese were heading out to the marshes.

  ‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Why would you be interested in Joe?’

  Shaw ignored the question. ‘Your sister said, in her original statement back in 1994, that she’d planned to go out to East Hills that day with a friend, Julie Carstairs. But that, we now know, is a lie. Julie didn’t know she was going out that day. Why would Marianne tell that lie?’

  ‘I loved my sister very much, Inspector. But I don’t think I ever understood her. I don’t know why she told that lie. She told lots. I think she thought it was one of the privileges of beauty.’ She held one hand down on the table top with the other as if it might float away. Her voice was very light, lighter than air, and musical.

  ‘We think she met someone out on the island – a lover,’ said Shaw. ‘And we think there’s a good chance she was being blackmailed by White – the lifeguard who was murdered. Or, possibly, White was her lover.’

  Ruth’s eyes were small and quick and they were on Shaw’s now, or glancing, sideways, at Valentine. ‘You don’t think Marianne was the killer, surely . . .’

  ‘No. But someone killed White. Which was good news for Marianne.’ Shaw let the espresso slip down his throat, following it quickly with the tap water. ‘Do you think Joe knew what was going on – that Marianne was playing the field?’ Shaw noted that despite the calm exterior the colour had drained from the woman’s face. He wondered if she really didn’t know about her husband and Marianne Osbourne. Could such secrets survive in a small town?

  ‘Marianne told him later about the others,’ she said. ‘Once they were married, once Tilly was born. She was proud of it – the lovers. I always thought that was a calculated cruelty because she didn’t have to tell him, did she? She made out that she wanted total honesty. I think that was a lie.’

  ‘But Joe might have known at the time?’ pressed Shaw, aware she hadn’t answered his question.

  ‘Yes. I think Marianne was torn – she wanted secret lovers, but she wanted people to know. Well, most of all she wanted me to know.’

  ‘Why did she want you to know about her success with men?’ Shaw asked.

  ‘Because it was a competition she could win. I was the clever one. I was the better swimmer, although Marianne was good, very good. But swimming was Mum’s passion and so we were close. That left Dad. She wanted his love, his affection, and she got it. And somehow she turned that idea – that she could compete for affection – into competing for sex. I was a bit bookish, shy. So she told me in her letters about the boyfriends. Not everything, but enough. She lied to Dad, said it was all just a kiss and a cuddle. So I guess that’s why she lied about that day, so he wouldn’t cause a fuss.’

  ‘Swimming was a big part of Marianne’s life?’ said Shaw.

  ‘Before East Hills – after that I don’t think I ever saw her in the water again.’

  ‘Anyone ever swim out to East Hills?’ He’d been saving the question. Robinson’s reaction was half-puzzlement, half-understanding.

  She looked out over the pool. ‘It’s been done. Childish, really,’ She tugged at the tracksuit collar. ‘But when you’re young you never think you’re going to die.’

  ‘You’ve done it – swum out and back?’

  ‘No. We’d go one way – back, usually. It’s very difficult to go there and back because of the tides. So we’d all go out on the boat and whoever was up for it would leave their stuff for us to bring back. I did it once; I’d have been sixteen. No lifeguard back then so that made things easier. It’s actually pretty scary. We’d have a word with the boatman because they always check the tickets, to make sure they’re not leaving someone out there.’

  Another lie, this time Tug Coyle’s.

  ‘What about the rip-tide?’

  ‘Golden rule: never swim against the tide. You have to go with it. The trick is to swim out, away from the island towards the north-east, and then catch the current back towards the main beach at Wells. So maybe half a mile out, a bit more, then all the way in. Mile and a half to two miles in total. It’s a challenge.’

  ‘And Joe – he doesn’t look like he could swim a length,’ said Shaw, smiling, looking out over the water, proud of the way he’d constructed the interview in reverse, so that the crucial question came last.

  ‘Joe was one of the best,’ she said. ‘Champion here – age of fourteen, fifteen. Long-distance freestyle. Sickly kid – really bad. Asthma and stuff. But that’s how some people react, isn’t it? They’re kind of aggressively fit, to compensate. He’s skinny, not much muscle, but it’s stamina you need and guts. That’s Joe. I think he did it a few times.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Shaw had the whole team assembled beneath the
cool shade of the cedar tree, the midday heat penetrating only in a scatter of sunspots on the beaten grass. A thick cable of PC wires, taped together, had been slung out through one of the stone arrow-slit windows of the Warrenner’s House to the mobile incident room. The temperature back in the metal box was 110 Fahreneheit and still rising. Twine had two nests of desks set out in the shade, a Perspex information board covered in SOC shots from Osbourne’s bedroom and Arthur Patch’s house, plus a poster from the original East Hills inquiry showing Shane White’s handsome, if forgettable, face.

  Overhead, ash drifted from the woods above The Circle. Another fire had sprung up, sparked by the gas explosion, as the fire brigade had feared. It had been doused, but the woods were still thick with clouds of acrid fumes from the smouldering pine trees. The drifting embers had kindled at least one other blaze – over the hill, deeper in the woods, beyond the reach of the fire brigade’s hoses. The council beaters had been sent in, the workmen in dayglo jackets picking up gear and clothing from an open lorry parked on the narrow lane which led up to The Circle from Creake village. Under the cedar tree, inside the thick walls of the medieval ruin, the air was breathable enough. But they could all taste it, despite the thick, dark coffee from the St James’ mobile canteen: a bitter burnt essence of pine needles on the lips and tongue.

  The team had been told the result of the East Hills mass screening, or rather, the lack of a result. They all knew the inquiry was in trouble. So Shaw had called them together to tell them that it was time to refocus. They had three days – just – to find the East Hills killer. Their prime suspect was now Joe Osbourne.

  ‘We need to drill down on this guy,’ said Shaw. ‘I want to know everything about him and I want to put pressure on his alibi – sorry, alibis – until they crack. Where was he when Shane White died? Where was he when his wife died? Where was he when Patch died?’