Death's Door

by Jim Kelly

  ‘There,’ said Valentine. A squad car was just visible in the grey mist, no light flashing. Shaw let the Porsche park itself, rolling to a halt, then dropped the window as the sturdy front-row-forward silhouette of DC Mark Birley appeared out of the fret. Birley was three years out of uniform, one of Shaw’s team, still a fish out of water in the world of CID.

  ‘Sir. It’s Roundhay, Sir. He’s about fifty yards up the slope – near the top hedge. He’s at the wheel of the car – a four-by-four. We had him under surveillance pending the DNA tests on Grieve’s bones. Early shift yesterday saw him leaving for work in the family car and followed him in. Late shift took over at two. He got a cab home after a few drinks in town. Must have slipped out overnight on foot over the back fence. The wife called St James’ at nine this morning and said he’d left a suicide note and that the car was missing.’ Birley pointed a once broken finger into the mist: ‘Just there – you can see the headlights.’

  Shaw and Valentine peered into the gloom. You could see the lights, but the beam was feint, shifting, as a light breeze tumbled the skeins of mist.

  Birley passed Shaw a mobile phone. ‘He left this for you, sir, with the note. Specifically. He said he’d ring you on it at 1.35 a.m. this afternoon, on the dot. You have one chance to answer.’

  ‘What did the note say?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Wife’s with victim support – she’s pretty much in pieces. She destroyed it. Fiona’s with her, but all she’ll say is it was private.’

  They could hear it now, the low rumble of the 4x4’s engine.

  Valentine leant over so he could see Birley’s face. ‘And we’re sure he’s not run the exhaust in? We’re not sitting here while he fucking does it, are we?’

  ‘Foot patrol said there was no sign of a pipe, tube, nothing. And the wife was sure he’d keep the promise – he’d call at one thirty-five p.m.’

  Shaw checked his watch. 1.32 p.m. and pretty much, according to his watch, bang on high tide for Hunstanton. The mist seemed to swaddle all noise. There was a thin swish-swish from the coast road, and shreds of a metallic tune from the fun fair.

  ‘Plan?’ asked Shaw.

  Birley nodded like he’d expected to be in charge. Valentine had noted this aspect of Shaw’s command: that at any moment he could offer control to a subordinate. It worked well because everyone had to keep on their toes, be prepared to take responsibility. ‘You take the call,’ said Birley. ‘Let him say what he wants to say. Then we rush him – I’ve got two squad cars here, other side of the hedge, half a dozen on foot up by the ticket machines. We’ve no idea what he’s got in there but the favourite has to be pills.’

  Pills. Shaw thought that if Roundhay was their killer after all then he might have a cyanide pill, in which case rushing the car was useless. But if they tried to get to him before the call he could crush a pill in a second. They didn’t have a choice. He’d take the call. ‘OK. Sounds good. We’ll get a bit closer,’ said Shaw, lowering the window, igniting the engine then inching uphill, trying to keep the dim headlights in view. They got within thirty yards. They could see the outline of the four-by-four’s windscreen, lit by the vanity light within. Roundhay, his head back on the rest, both hands on the steering wheel.

  ‘Well?’ asked Valentine. ‘What’s this about?’

  Shaw shrugged. ‘One minute we’ll know. Maybe it’s confession time. Maybe he knows we’ll get a match off his mates’ bones. Maybe we’re wrong about Coyle – what if he’s done a runner for some reason we don’t know, like debt? He’s clearly short of a few bob. Who knows?’

  Shaw peered through the fog. ‘I don’t like this, George. Not a bit.’

  The phone rang and Shaw almost dropped it, catching it at the second attempt.

  ‘Chris,’ he said, trying to keep his voice level. ‘Chris Roundhay?’

  ‘You out there?’ said Roundhay. Shaw thought the voice was a bad sign: cool, level and in control. He’d planned this, or something like it, and so far Shaw suspected everything had happened in the right order, at the right time.

  ‘Here,’ said Shaw, flashing the headlights.

  ‘I’m impressed. I didn’t think you’d find me in this fog. Don’t get any closer.’

  ‘OK. No problem. Whatever you want.’

  ‘I needed you to know – for someone to know.’ Shaw could see Roundhay’s head working from side to side, as if trying to relieve stress in his neck. ‘The week Marc died in the car, I saw him. He called, said he wanted to see me, so we met down at Wells on the long beach, on one of the dunes. His marriage hadn’t worked out; he thought he’d made a mistake, denying things to himself, to me. We could meet, maybe. A day, a night, once a month – less if I wanted.’

  Silence, but looking ahead into the mist they saw a slight movement and then the sound of the Nissan’s engine died. ‘I said I didn’t want that. That I wouldn’t see him again. That I had another life. He said he’d kill himself because he had nothing else to live for. I didn’t believe him.’ An edge of emotion at last, thought Shaw, Roundhay’s voice catching on the last word.

  ‘So he did. I’m sure of that. I don’t think he planned it, but I can imagine his mind working like that. Just driving along and then the hopelessness of it taking him over, and then he’d just spin the driving wheel and know it was over. I wanted you to know . . .’

  Shaw looked at his watch, part of his mind worrying away at the coincidence: that Roundhay wanted to talk at 1.35 p.m., exactly at high tide.

  ‘As soon as I knew that he was dead I knew I’d made the wrong decision. That my life was hopeless too. But I buried that idea, like I’ve buried everything else. I carried on with my life. Now I can’t. You’ll know soon enough but it isn’t his DNA on that towel. Or mine. I told you the truth about that . . . So it’s over now.’

  Shaw covered the phone. ‘Tell ’em in the squad car, George. I hit the horn, they rush him.’

  Valentine cracked open the door, slipped out, letting it just hang open. Shaw heard his slip-ons squeak as he walked away into the mist.

  Shaw swished the droplets of fog off the windscreen. Peering into the mist he thought he could see Roundhay winding down his window then leaning over to do the same on the passenger side. Through the half-open door Shaw felt what Roundhay, perhaps, had felt too – a light breeze, promising a return of the sun. ‘Chris?’

  ‘The truth – finally,’ said Roundhay. ‘I saw that woman – Osbourne – walking along the beach. And White followed her. But that was it. We made up, Marc and I – lay in the sun.’ A two-second pause. ‘We were happy, and that’s the truth.’

  The line went dead. Shaw’s hand was poised over the horn, then he recognized a sound, a handbrake being released. He was out of the Porsche before the Nissan began to move. It inched forward at first, the headlamps appearing to widen like the eyes of a frightened cat. Roundhay let the car freefall, accelerating with the slope, quickly picking up speed, so that when Shaw got level the car had hit thirty-five mph, maybe forty mph.

  Shaw ran, stumbling over the rutted field, trying to keep the rear lights of the Nissan in sight. He knew now why Roundhay had chosen high tide. The sea came up to the cliffs at high water, so there’d be nobody on the beach, or the rocks: no one below.

  When the Nissan reached the edge the brake lights didn’t show and he’d hit fifty mph. There was a thud as the cliff edge caught the underside of the car, the front wheels dipping, so that the back flipped up in the air. Then three seconds of silence – stretched out, in which Shaw imagined the car turning in the grey misty air. There was no crash, just the thud of the roof hitting the water, a boom. When Shaw got to the edge it was still afloat, the tyres still turning, upside down, the water flooding in through the open windows. Then it sank, the lights still shinning for a moment in the green dark water, before shorting out.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Shaw stood on the edge of the pine woods looking down on The Circle. Here, inland, there was no hint of the mist that had shrouded the coast.
Lights shone from most of the houses, but the only noise came from the ruins of the Warrener’s Lodge were the team was coordinating the hunt from Tug Coyle. Chris Roundhay’s death and confession, which Shaw had no reason to disbelieve, and the DNA test on Joe Osbourne had removed two suspects from their list, which left Tug Coyle, and only Tug Coyle. Shaw’s team was on site to coordinate the hunt. The UK Border Agency was now actively checking airport departures, and the Channel Tunnel. Interpol had been asked to alert Continental ports in France, Belgium, Germany and Denmark.

  Shaw had left them all working and walked away to think, to look down on the scene of Marianne Osbourne’s death, the place where for him this had all begun. In the sunflower field the blooms were shut, waiting for dawn. In the half-light he saw movement in the Osbournes’ garden, the back gate opening, a flash of white picket, then Valentine’s gaunt figure, climbing the hill as if it was the Via Dolorosa. The DS waved a brown envelope at Shaw when he finally got to the top of the slope. Pretending to survey the view, he let his heartbeat recover, his eye resting on the floodlights spilling from the medieval, glassless, windows of the Warrenners’ Lodge.

  ‘Something,’ he said, pulling a single sheet of A4 from the envelope. ‘I got Paul to trawl round the hospitals to see if there were any admissions on the day of the East Hills murder which looked like a knife wound, or any kind of violent wound. Not all the records survive – nothing from Hunstanton, they all got dumped when they closed the unit in 2000. What there was, we checked, and got a blank. I said we’d call it a day. Luckily Paul’s got more patience. He ran a check on the next day too.’

  He snapped his fingers, making the sheet of A4 crackle. Shaw noted that Valentine had declined a clear opportunity to take the credit for whatever breakthrough had occurred and instead had cited DC Twine. It was a typically generous reference and gave Shaw an insight into Valentine’s popularity with his CID colleagues. ‘This is a one-page form detailing treatment given at the Queen Vic’s A&E on that the day after East Hills,’ said Valentine. ‘At five that Sunday evening. The patient’s name is Ruth Jennifer Pritchard – a.k.a. Ruth Robinson, Marianne’s sister. She arrived with a heavily bandaged wound to her left hand, carefully described in the notes as ‘knife-like’ – across the palm, cutting down to the bone with a sharp, clean edge. She was seen by a doctor then stitched up by a nurse, sent home with a reference on to her GP. The doctor who examined her was called Sylhet, Arif Sylhet. ‘I’ll read you the doctor’s note,’ added Valentine, squinting at the squiggle. ‘Patient insists – that’s in italics, insists – that the wound is result of accident. No other obvious injuries. Not distressed. Cheerful, matter-of-fact. Student at home for summer with family. Low risk. Self-harm?? That’s with two question marks.’

  Shaw pinched the bridge of his nose. This case had a strange quality. The way forward seemed to be continuously cloaked. They had been unable since the mass screening results to adequately explain how their missing male killer had left East Hills. Now they had a female suspect who might have been on the island that day. And how did any of that fit in with the runaway Tug Coyle? The inquiry had not been assisted by the fact that virtually none of their key witnesses seemed to understand the concept of the absolute truth.

  Shaw’s patience snapped: a nanosecond of electricity which allowed him to make a decision without thought. ‘Let’s talk to her – now. I don’t care if it’s a bad time.’ He set off downhill, Valentine in his wake.

  They found the Robinsons still in their back garden at a picnic table. They’d lit half a dozen tea lights. Despite the two extended benches attached to the table they sat together, looking up at the woods. The chickens clucked amiably on the far side of the wire. As Aidan recognized the detectives his arm encircled his wife’s wide shoulders. Shaw felt again an almost tangible darkness in their relationship, as if they pooled their stillness in something less inert, something denser – not two people at all, just one couple.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Shaw. ‘I know this is a bad time. It’s late. How’s Joe?’

  ‘Tilly’s up there now. They think he’s developed pneumonia. He’s very ill – we’ll go later.’

  Their eyes met then looked away, but they didn’t break their embrace.

  ‘It was the questions – the stress,’ said Aidan. ‘You comfortable with that?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’d like to talk to Ruth alone,’ said Shaw, ignoring the question.

  Marianne soothed Aidan’s arm, brushing the dark hair downwards towards the hand.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Aidan, and Shaw saw, even in the half-light, the blood colouring his cheeks. Shaw thought about calling his bluff – he had enough to get Ruth down to St James’, into a cell. But for now they’d play it his way. He took a seat, blocking their view of the woods. ‘You should know that the mass screening of the East Hills suspects – the men – produced no results. No match at all.’

  They both watched him.

  ‘We’ve had to conclude, reluctantly, that the killer somehow left the island,’ said Shaw. ‘He probably swam ashore. Or tried to. Our question is, why did he leave the island in the first place?’

  From the incident room at the Warrenner’s Lodge they heard laughter, quickly stilled. Shaw could feel the tension in the air; the question seemed to have baffled the Robinsons. Aidan worked one of his massive hands into the suntanned muscles of his neck: ‘Because he didn’t want to get caught?’ He tried a laugh and Ruth smiled, but he knew he’d hit the wrong note because he rushed to fill the silence that followed: ‘Why wouldn’t he swim for it? Makes sense. Surprised you didn’t think of it back then.’

  ‘Well, for the record,’ said Shaw, ‘we – the police, that is – didn’t think of it in 1994 because seventy-five people went out to East Hills and seventy-four came back, plus Shane White’s corpse. So if the killer swam for it, how did he get on the island? You see, it’s trickier than it looks.’

  Aidan licked his lips and Shaw thought his head – big-boned and broad – looked precarious despite the thick, muscled neck.

  ‘We think he swam because he fought with White, perhaps for the knife, and in the process he picked up an injury – something which showed, something which would have prompted questions – questions he didn’t want to answer. So a wound – on the face, perhaps, or the hand.’ Shaw held his hand out and Valentine gave him the A4 medical form. ‘You – Ruth,’ he said, locking eyes. ‘You went up to A&E the day after East Hills to have a wound on your hand stitched. A knife wound.’

  He’d tried to catch her off guard and succeeded, because she was still gaping at him as he leant over the table and flipped over her left hand – across the palm was a thin white line of scar tissue.

  ‘She’s always had that,’ said Aidan quickly, squaring his shoulders.

  ‘No she hasn’t,’ said Shaw. ‘She's had it since the day she was seen by . . .’ He reread the A4 sheet, ‘Dr Arif Sylhet. His notes make it pretty clear that in his judgement the wound was caused by a knife. Whose knife, Ruth?’

  ‘Look – what is this?’ asked Aidan.

  ‘Well, Ruth? It’s a good question. What is this?’ asked Shaw. Neither of the Robinsons seemed ready to speak. ‘Shall I tell you what this is?’

  Ruth raised a hand to stop him: ‘No. I’ll tell you. I went swimming that afternoon, the Sunday. We always did – the family. Dad and Mum, Marianne and I. But she was in shock over what happened the day before at East Hills, so she stayed with them on the beach and I went in alone, at Brancaster. There’s a wreck out by the point. There was a swell, a rip tide that I didn’t judge right. I just wanted to rest, climb out of the water, and I put out a hand and it just got ripped by the metal. It was Dad said I had to go get it stitched – I wasn’t bothered. The salt cleaned it up.’

  Shaw still held her fingertips. ‘The scar’s straight. Dead straight. Dead clean.’

  She wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘I was lucky,’ she said, drawing her hand back.

  You were
there.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, course. I remember,’ said Aidan. ‘After East Hills, I had to drive you up to the Lido for work after you got it stitched.’

  ‘Now I’ll tell you what actually happened,’ said Shaw, ignoring Aidan. ‘I think you, Ruth, went out that day on the boat with Marianne to East Hills. You were friends with Tug because he was Aidan’s cousin, so it’s my guess you never had to pay for a ticket. Unlike Marianne. She’d come to you for help, hadn’t she, because she was being blackmailed by Shane White. She always came to you for help and it was your job – your role, really – to be there for her. You followed Marianne into the dunes and confronted White. Threatened him – but you weren’t alone. You needed support. Aidan couldn’t help – not with his leg injury. So you asked Tug, asked him to be there, to add muscle – a hint of real threat.

  ‘So he anchored the boat and swan ashore. But it went wrong and Shane ended up dead. Who killed him? My guess is Tug. But I think you both tried. Then he swam back, but your problem was the wound you’d picked up in the fight. Then you realized there wasn’t a ticket, so you could disappear. The boat was full of trippers – no one had recognized you. So you swam back. And Tug kept the secret. With Marianne.’

  ‘What does Tug say?’ asked Aidan, a smile disfiguring the thin lips.

  Night had fallen and a bat fluttered over them like a dying neon light, attracted by the candles.