At Death's Window

by Jim Kelly

  A thin moon shadow stood out on the white beach, thrown by a pile of stones, maybe a foot high, conical, made of concentric circles of pebbles in diminishing layers, tapering to a miniature peak. The cairn was plainly man-made. Its most remarkable quality was, however, unseen. As he knelt, the skin on his cheeks, chilled by the night air, detected a palpable wave of heat. Slipping off his thermal glove he touched the summit. It was hot, as were all the stones, not glowing, but radiating, a constant almost magical heat. A fire then, recently doused. But when he carefully dismantled the pyramid, all signs of the fuel – ash, wood, charcoal or flotsam – were missing, while the brittle, blackened sand itself radiated an unnatural heat.

  SEVEN

  The tombstone, harshly illuminated by the orange floodlight, read:

  Julie Valentine

  1953–1994

  Asleep

  George Valentine sat on the bench he’d paid for the day she died. It had been one of a dozen mindless tasks with which he’d filled the hours after returning home from the hospital. Then he’d gone to the Red House with Gordon Lee. That had been the first night he’d found it impossible to go straight back to the house on Greenland Street. Wandering the streets of the North End, he found a bench on the towpath. At last orders he’d bought himself forty Silk Cut so he just sat and smoked them all. At dawn he’d tracked the sun as it rose over the cannery at West Lynn. Then he’d gone home to make himself a cup of tea. He wasn’t desperate, or suicidal, or distressed, just keenly aware that this was the first day of the rest of his life.

  Now he often walked after going to the pub, and usually ended up here. Tonight was no different. He’d driven home from Old Hunstanton in the battered Mazda, the car chasing leaves down narrow lanes. North Norfolk went to bed early, especially on an autumn night, and he’d sped through villages in which no light showed. His mind ticked off the list of duties completed: DC Paul Twine would organize a mobile incident room for Burnham Marsh the next morning, complete with a cable internet link and generator. Several other officers had been contacted to be on site by six to organize the uniformed unit due to conduct house-to-house inquiries. Shaw had left him with a list of jobs to do at St James’ the next morning before he too was set to join the team at Burnham Marsh. Hadden and the rest of the forensic team would work through the night at the Ark – the force’s forensic lab. Valentine had driven home, content that another murder inquiry had begun, dimly aware that his life was in some ways illuminated by the deaths of others.

  When he’d got to his front door on Greenland Street he fully intended to go up the stairs – carpetless now as they had been for a decade – and throw himself across the double bed. He needed to be fresh for the morning, and he knew the hour spent by Julie’s grave was self-indulgent, slightly pitying. But a last draught of nicotine beckoned, so he’d walked to All Saints. He’d brought a small shell and crab’s claw he’d picked on Mitchell’s Bank and placed them on the top of the granite headstone.

  Now he was there, looking at her name in stone, he knew what he’d come to say.

  ‘It just seems disloyal,’ he said, out loud, but not shouting. ‘I didn’t want you to think I didn’t miss you any more.’

  He laughed, looking away, up at the dark east window of the church. All Saints, the lost member of the town’s trinity of great medieval churches, lay surrounded by an eggbox sixties housing development of heroic ugliness. The graveyard was a playground for dossers. A can of Special Brew stood on the tombstone next to Julie’s.

  He lowered his voice: ‘She’ll probably tell me to chuck my hook anyway. I’m old enough to be her father.’ He rearranged his raincoat to cover his crotch. ‘You’d like her. She’s good at listening too.’

  He threw a cigarette away still lit. ‘Anyway – it’s just a drink. Not a date, not as such. Like I said, she’ll stand me up. Just like you did the first time.’

  Valentine’s mobile throbbed in his pocket with a message from Shaw.

  See you at St James. Body on way to Ark. Autopsy 2 p.m.

  That was something to look forward to. It might be him one day, if he contrived to die unexpectedly, unnaturally, or even violently. Julie had told him many times that he wasn’t going to make old bones.

  One more cigarette. Looking for the lighter he found a set of unfamiliar keys in his pocket. The vicar of All Saints had given them to him only that morning in case, on his nightly visits, he’d care to check the church. Vandalism had always been a problem at all the town’s churches – especially here at hidden-away All Saints – but there had been a fresh twist this autumn. Someone with an air rifle had been taking pot shots at the stained-glass windows. So far there had been three attacks on St Margaret’s and one at St Andrew’s. Valentine, who’d taken on the case, had dropped by to warn the vicar at All Saints, who’d agreed to keep the floodlights on all night. Two lamps burned, one at the east end, one at the west. The light was weak and sickly, like Tizer, but it was better than leaving All Saints in the dark.

  The church crouched in the shadows. The original stonework had been plastered over, the tower had fallen a century ago – dilapidated, forgotten – while the glass was lost behind heavy metal mesh. Once All Saints had rivalled the town’s other great churches – St Margaret’s with its celestial tide clock, and the soaring St Andrew’s with its vast interior built for the merchants who made the town rich. Now it lay hidden, unseen and overlooked.

  Valentine felt sleep slipping further away. Restless, he stood, and walked to the church doors, unlocking the padlock on the wire mesh outer screen, and stepping into the porch. The inner wooden door needed two keys, and then fell open under its own weight. The smell of All Saints was quite distinct – that dampness of unread prayer books, and a hint of polish, but also something of its own, because the stone floor was lower than the graveyard, and it seemed that the rich aroma of decaying soil had slipped in through the door.

  The grandeur of the interior came alive when Valentine threw the master light switch. All Saints had been the heart of the maritime community of Lynn for centuries, and stood less than a hundred yards from the old wharves upon which the whalers had unloaded their bloody cargo, the blubber boiled in open vats along the riverbank. The walls of All Saints were sea-salt white, the lead in the windows strips of shell. Like all ports, Lynn held the promise of the foreign lands its ships served. It could have been a church in Lerwick, Hamburg, Riga or Den Haag.

  Valentine sat in the wooden choir stalls, pulling down a misericord on which to perch: he always chose the same one, three seats along the line, with a carved hare on the underside of the tipping seat. He lit a cigarette, enjoying the sense of sacrilege, balanced against the knowledge that he was a custodian, with special rights: a guardian angel on forty Silk Cut a day. It was this thought that made him look up to the east window, which he recalled showed at its apex a single angel, with high, muscular wings and golden hair.

  In daylight the window blazed with medieval light. At night it was cluttered with mesh and lead, the glass itself only dimly seen. Tonight was different, because the floodlight outside electrified the images: a glimpse of Jonah’s whale; Christ casting his net on Galilee.

  But the angel had gone.

  No – the angel’s face had gone, and in its place was a small opening through which the orange light flooded into the roof space above. It seemed that the vandals had finally found All Saints. Valentine felt an almost personal sense of violation.

  He walked the length of the nave until he stood directly below the window. Some pieces of shattered glass lay on the stone, but one piece, three inches square, had survived the fall. Picking it up, he examined the pale yellow glass upon which the medieval artist had drawn an eye. He thought of Shaw’s moon-eye, the ghostly white counterpart to the blue of the other, then slipped the shard of glass into his pocket.

  EIGHT

  Mitchell’s Bank, the scene of crime, appeared strangely spectral: a drying whaleback of mud at low tide, grey waters rippling around i
t like a tablecloth. A mist still clung to the marshes beyond. The police launch, beached at an angle, was moored to the distinctive black and white navigation buoy which marked the exact spot where the D’Asti family had come upon the victim. The only colours, other than the assortment of greys, were the pulsing red and green navigation lamps on the launch.

  The image refreshed, remaking itself digitally from the top to the bottom, and Shaw leant back in his chair, stretching out until he realized he was mimicking the position in which they’d found the victim – the diving man in reverse, rising up from the sea. The picture he was looking at was NT WEBCAM 6 – the camera fitted to an automatic weather station mast on Gun Hill. He’d found it after twenty minutes of trawling through north Norfolk webcams, most of which were installed to help weekend sailors and holidaymakers time a dash up to the coast.

  This ‘live’ picture, online thanks to the National Trust, was remade every thirty seconds, and the next image revealed a transformation. The sun had broken through, the water for the first time taking on a blue sheen, and the steel fittings on one of the boats off Burnham Marsh glowed like underwater gold.

  The image wiped, blacked out, and then returned.

  DC Mark Birley appeared at Shaw’s door, which was permanently wedged open by a pile of paper supplies used for forensic art reconstructions: reams of A4, A3 and tinted Canson Mi-Tientes paper, ideal for pastel work, allowing Shaw to recreate skin tone. Plus reams of rough paper for witnesses to sketch on – especially children, who always responded to the freedom of the blank page, and matte acetate overlays, foam core board for courtroom displays, and finally quality vellum, for preparing finished work as evidence. A large easel stood to the side of the window, a dustsheet covering whatever lay beneath.

  Birley, a rugby player, fifteen stone and built like the Tate & Lyle sugar-cube man, always seemed on the verge of bursting the seams of his suits. Ex-uniform, meticulous, with an ability to maintain focus for long periods of time, he’d joined Shaw’s team five years earlier and was now an experienced evidence sifter: pictures, video, CCTV. The visual image seemed to be his medium of choice.

  Shaw swung his screen round so that Birley could see the webcam image.

  ‘Scene of crime – on film,’ said Shaw.

  Birley’s eyes bisected the screen, searching, establishing the frame of what he was seeing. ‘Paul’s got me up to speed,’ he said, saving Shaw the wasted effort of double-briefing. Twine’s team role as ‘point’ for the murder investigation meant it was his job to be the communications hub, to keep everyone informed.

  Shaw tapped the screen with his pencil rubber. ‘The webcam’s on top of Gun Hill. National Trust owned. Takes a shot every thirty seconds. We think the victim died after dark the night before last – but who knows, we could be wrong by three hours, which would just get us into daylight. So far three sets of footprints on or near the scene: one going out to the sandbank from Burnham Marsh, one going up the beach on Scolt Head Island, one coming back. Or possibly the other way round. I’ve marked the spots on the map outside – can you bring it when we transfer down to the scene? George and I are off in twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Mark—’

  ‘I’ll get through to the National Trust,’ said Birley. ‘Big question is, do they keep the film, and if they do keep it, for how long? Scientists tend to keep data. The Trust’s doing a lot of work tracking seal colonies. Well, it’s providing the data. So we’ve got chances, sir. Good chances. Next question – do they let the camera run through the hours of darkness? Most don’t. Some do. We need to be lucky.’

  Birley crossed his fingers and turned away, back into the ‘room’, CID’s open-plan main office. George Valentine’s desk was out there too, but the last time he’d been seen sitting at it was at the New Year’s Eve party when he couldn’t stand up.

  The Mitchell’s Bank killing wasn’t the only major case on Lynn CID’s patch. At the far end of the room a whiteboard had been set up with suspect pictures, maps, family trees and SOCO shots. Acting DS Fiona Campbell was talking to the team assigned to tracking down the source of adulterated drugs being sold on the streets of the town. Three local dealers had been arrested and charged, but none was prepared to name their original source of the adulterated cocaine. Several addicts had been admitted to A&E suffering from the side effects of the supply. One had died. The supply to the street had stopped, but that might not last. Campbell’s team was working twenty-four seven to try and trace the origins of the drug before more users died.

  Shaw, standing at his door, let his eye rest on a full-length mortuary shot of the victim – the left arm below the elbow jet black where the skin had died, while the rest of him had still been alive. This symptom, known as necrosis, was a telltale sign that cocaine was being mixed with Levamisole – a drugstore medicine used to help control cancer. The problem with Levamisole was that it could wipe out white blood cells, leaving the extremities to ‘die’ while the patient fell sick. The resulting necrosis – of hands, feet, arms – was so characteristic of drug abuse that very few of its victims would willingly present themselves for treatment at A&E, preferring to suffer instead, hoping against hope the skin would rejuvenate. It never did. Dead skin was dead skin for life.

  Shaw tore his eyes away and back to his screen. He’d recommended Campbell for promotion to acting DS, and he had to let her run her own inquiry. Delegation was a key skill. He just hoped Campbell didn’t let him down, mainly because he didn’t want to see another corpse disfigured by necrosis, but also partly because he’d sensed Valentine’s discomfort at her elevation. Playing second fiddle to Shaw on a murder inquiry was never going to be George’s idea of job satisfaction, and he’d have relished the freedom of running the drugs inquiry, but Shaw needed him: he had a murder inquiry to run, alongside the highly sensitive investigation into the second-home burglaries. And besides, he knew George Valentine well enough to realize that he only really came alive when the victim was dead.

  He sent his DS a text even though he could guess he was only fifty feet away – on the top floor, in the canteen.

  I’ll pick you up.

  Shaw left his door open and took the fire exit steps up to the canteen. Valentine had a favourite table right by the door so that he could enjoy a cigarette outside. The wire mesh platform was littered with cigarette stubs.

  On the table, which was long enough to seat ten officers, the DS had arranged what looked like a jumble of shattered stained glass. There was also a large oval plate reserved by the canteen staff for the fabled St James’ full English breakfast. A clean plate, save for a smear of ketchup. Shaw had a sudden image of three scallops, a sprig of samphire and a lone new potato.

  Valentine sat at the table, but standing at its head was a woman Shaw didn’t know. Petite, almost gamine – a street urchin in suede boots and jeans. Her face was symmetrical, like a computer hero’s, but saved from being anodyne by a wide bone structure which seemed to stretch her skin. Shaw knew enough about the psychology of faces to know he was attracted to this woman’s because it was a feminine reflection of his own. She was drinking from a bottle of spring water and had ignored Shaw’s arrival, her eyes focused down on the coloured glass.

  Valentine leant back in his chair. ‘DI Peter Shaw,’ he said. ‘Sonia Murano – glass expert. She’s helping us with the case.’ He indicated the shards of shattered window.

  The smile was warm, almost a full beam, but she shut it down too quickly, as if she’d swapped a pair of Greek theatre masks. Joy for sorrow. There was a sadness in her slightly crumpled body language, the nervous rearrangement of her short blonde hair, and the intense academic focus. Even now, a few seconds after being introduced to Shaw, she was examining a piece of the shattered red glass with an eyeglass as if it was the only object in the room.

  Valentine, getting up and shrugging himself into his raincoat, passed Shaw a single piece of yellow glass punctured by a single hole.

  ‘What’s the story, George?’

  ‘Not much of
one. Some kid with an air rifle’s wandering round town in the small hours taking a pop at church windows. This one’s from All Saints. Town night squad’s got the case files.’

  The night squad was a unit of uniformed officers responsible for the medieval town centre after dark. They had an office on the Tuesday Market which was lit up like an all-night kebab bar. Shaw knew All Saints, and that Valentine spent hours on a bench beside his wife’s grave, chatting to the dead. Julie Valentine had been a shadowy presence in his own childhood, closeted away in the kitchen with his mother, while the men talked shop in the front room over whisky and cigarettes.

  ‘They’ve tried to keep a bit of glass from each church to help ballistics,’ said Valentine. ‘So we know it’s an air gun, low velocity. A popgun really. Couple of times the pellet’s hit the lead – see …’

  He showed Shaw a piece which was almost solid lead, depicting a crown of gold, the pieces of glass just slivers for jewels. The impact was marked by a crater in the soft metal.

  Valentine held up an evidence bag, the flattened pellet visible inside.

  ‘Ms Murano’s been appointed by the diocese to do the repairs. I asked her to bring the stuff in – I thought it would help, and it has.’

  ‘Lucky to have an expert on hand …’ ventured Shaw.

  ‘I’ve got a shop in Burnham – glassware,’ she said, her voice much lower than Shaw would have guessed. ‘But my degree’s art history – MA in medieval church glass. It’s a hobby really, and I’m too busy, but I couldn’t say no. Lynn’s glass is second to none. Look …’

  She held up a single piece of blue glass so that it caught the light.

  ‘We have to fly,’ said Valentine. ‘Thanks for bringing it all in. How long can we hold on to it?’