At Death's Window

by Jim Kelly

  ‘Glass kiln. The house was built and designed by a potter back in the 1920s – one of the Davenports. They’re famous. That’s why the chimney’s so big, because they had kilns in the house. They built it here, over the ridge, out of the wind, so that the chimney would draw. My parents bought the house from them. Mum was a glassmaker.’

  ‘Yes, Murano. The Venetian island famous for glass. Not a coincidence?’

  ‘Hardly. Not her name at all, she was from the Burnhams, a Simons, a local girl. My father was – sorry, is – an Italian glassmaker. His real family name is Benedicti, but he’s always had a good eye for business, so he changed it to Murano. They met at a trade fair in Bologna. Dad’s got a shop in Mayfair. Sorry – that’s a very long answer to a simple question. Anyway, when my parents got married they bought the house. I grew up here. Mum died last year. I’ve still got a shop in Burnham Market – very exclusive.’ She laughed again, but it still lacked genuine abandon. ‘There’s a flat there too – so I’m rarely here unless I’m working. It’s got too many memories – happy ones, unhappy ones.’

  ‘Right,’ said Shaw, nodding, but bemused by the subtext. He wondered if she always talked so much or if she had something to hide.

  ‘It’s extravagant, isn’t it? I don’t really agree with second homes.’

  ‘This hardly counts,’ offered Shaw.

  ‘No. That’s what I think really. It’s a factory, that’s how I look at it.

  ‘Now,’ she said, opening the sketchbook. ‘This is the angel that was damaged at St Andrew’s in May.’

  Flicking the page, she touched a finger to the next image: ‘And this the last from All Saints.’ The sketchbook was loose-leafed so she was able to spread the pictures out – six in all. The quality of the drawing was very fine, producing a three-dimensional effect despite the flat, jigsaw structure of the leaded glass.

  ‘You can see my point, I think. The medieval windows of Lynn have many, many angels – flying, praying, imploring, worshipping, annunciating, if that’s the right word. The ones this man has tried to destroy, however, are all the same. Precisely the same. The face is presented side-on, with only one eye visible, and the wings are folded and held high above the shoulders – that’s very distinctive, you see, in medieval representations, that buckled wing ridge, like some kind of heavenly backpack.’

  She seemed suddenly unsure of her own observations. ‘I’m sorry, it is probably just of interest to me and of no help at all to the police. It’s such a small thing – a detail. But I thought I should say. It felt like my duty to say.’

  ‘Can I take one of the sketches?’ said Shaw. ‘I’ll pass them on to DS Valentine – he’s taken a personal interest in the case, as you know.’

  She gave him the angel from St Andrew’s. ‘Have Gabriel,’ she said.

  ‘How can you tell it’s him?’

  ‘Him? There’s a lot of evidence that Gabriel was seen as a woman, or androgynous, and you can see that in this face, can’t you? It’s beautiful but sexless. The angel’s delivering a parchment, and that was Gabriel’s job really, to be God’s messenger. So Gabriel it is – although, to be frank, most so-called professional judgment is really just guesswork.’

  ‘Welcome to my world,’ said Shaw, and they both laughed.

  ‘They’re not all Gabriels?’

  ‘No. But they are all reminiscent of a famous medieval angel in the great west window at Winchester – the winged messenger. It was one of my mother’s favourite pieces. She hung the image in the hall …’

  She actually bit her lip. It was so maladroit as to be charming. What did this woman have to hide?

  ‘I’d love to see it,’ said Shaw, folding the sketch carefully into his satchel. ‘Could we?’

  The house smelt of wood, and something Italian seeping out from the kitchen – possibly a ragù sauce. The interior workshop, which contained the kiln, was like a corner of a museum of folklore, with its arcane tools, odd mechanical devices and a workbench studded with wooden vices. The kiln was cold, the door open, the interior carbon-black.

  The entire ground floor of the house appeared to be carpetless, but the boards were broad and had once been polished. This one facet of the interior – the wide original boards – made the place feel opulent and homely, whereas the bare boards in so many houses were narrow and mean, and made them feel raw and unloved. As far as Shaw could tell there was no sign of any form of modern heating in the house. He’d always found it an oddity of artists and crafts people, that they seemed to glory in working in an ambient temperature.

  The picture of the winged messenger of Winchester, in a gilt frame, was in the hallway, which was, in fact, a large room, reaching up two floors into the gabled roof space. A 1920s nod to a medieval hall. Set against one wall, about fifteen feet high, and opposite the winged messenger, was what looked like a Gothic window minus most of the glass. Shaw walked straight to it after glancing at the rather spare, cold angel of Winchester.

  ‘What’s this?’ He touched the ‘stone’ and found it was wood, very pale, the colour of oak.

  ‘An heirloom. My mother had it made – it’s an exact replica of the west window of the church at Burnham Marsh, ruined now, of course. It was called the window of John the Baptist – that was the main illustration – Salome, and all that. They took the glass out in the eighties when the sea threatened to destroy what was left of the building. Even then it was in bad shape, and a lot was missing. Mum had been brought up in the village and that window was very special to her. It was what made her a glassmaker. It was her inspiration. I suppose it made me one too. It was exceptionally vivid and fine. When they took it down she offered to restore it. The plan was to put it back if they ever managed to save the church. Which they might do, by the way. There’s a plan, but no money yet, of course. The thing is the window was made of local glass. Do you know Leziate – the village?’

  ‘Near Lynn?’

  ‘Yes. That’s where they got the sand; it’s the best in Britain. Fine silica – that’s our raw ingredient, you see. There was a picture of the original in the workshop here when I was a child. Mum dreamt of restoring it and putting it back in the church. A lifetime’s work. As you can see, she didn’t get far.’

  Shaw reckoned that less than a tenth of the glass space was filled. There was a spandrel showing a crown of thorns, a saint in one horizontal panel, a starburst in a roundel.

  ‘And now …’ she said, consulting an elegant watch.

  ‘Of course. Thank you. I’ll make sure the team knows we’re not after just any old angel. Only the winged messenger will do.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Shaw went to the CID room to collect Valentine for their appointment with Clem Whyte, but his chair was empty, a cold cup of canteen tea left on the blotter. The wall behind now held half-a-dozen A3 colour prints of the stained-glass windows damaged in the airgun attacks. They reminded Shaw of Stefan Bedrich’s flat in Greenwood House, where the living-room walls displayed that extraordinary riot of artwork, each page of which had no doubt been created by his wife for her migrant husband, trying to eke out a living for his family in a foreign and unwelcoming land. The style had been subverted Soviet, almost cartoonish, with the added vibrancy of the primary colours which left the rest of the flat’s rooms grey and drab, except for the scarlet Polish doll on the kitchen table.

  He found Valentine outside, smoking on the fire escape platform, five storeys above the street. The wind hummed gently through the steel steps. Another fine day threatened, although the Met Office was forecasting storms by evening and an electric finale to the Indian summer. Valentine had been up early, armed with a warrant, to pay Mrs Diane Whyte an unexpected visit at home.

  ‘Progress,’ he said before Shaw could speak, his thin hair blown into a vertical quiff like a wisp of smoke. ‘On the outside you’d think they were a model couple, the Whytes; they live in a nice semi off the Castle Rising road.’

  Shaw knew the spot, a Monkey-puzzle-tree estate of slightly wo
rn thirties villas.

  ‘She’s a nurse at a care home. She needs the car because it’s off the A10 down at West Winch. Two grown-up kids, both living away, both married. Nothing in the house. Well, nothing you wouldn’t expect. The garage, on the other hand, was packed with white goods: TVs, DVD players, sound boxes – all top of the range, none of it new. Plus a few pictures, mostly picked for the frames is my guess – but nice stuff, mostly originals.’

  ‘Stolen goods?’

  ‘Yeah. Mark’s already matched a few items with the inventories we’ve got on file. But I reckon the lot’s lifted.’

  ‘What does the wife say?’

  ‘That he told her it was all stuff being recycled from council flats – well, housing associations, whatever they’re called these days. And charitable donations. That was her line, that it was all stuff donated to brighten up the lives of council tenants.’

  He let some cigarette smoke seep out of the gaps between his teeth.

  ‘I think she knew what he was up to. I told her she was talking nonsense, that forty-two-inch smart screen TVs aren’t standard council issue. She said if I didn’t believe her we could take a look for ourselves, because he’d been overseeing a refurbishment at Chaucer House – another old block like Greenwood, but on the riverbank by the cemetery?’

  Shaw nodded.

  ‘There’s a warden on the ground floor and he gave us the keys – Whyte had organized work on two flats, empty, newly decorated, and she’s right, they’re full of the same stuff, state-of-the-art TVs, a couple of nice watercolours on the wall. Posh rugs. One had a digital radio, for God’s sake. Warden said Whyte told him it was all recycled as part of a council initiative to try and get tenants to look after the place better by “investing in their environment” – his words.’

  ‘Serial numbers?’

  ‘Yup. No problem – I’ve got Paul organizing a view tomorrow for a few of the owners. But it’s all over, Peter. This is the stuff all right.’

  ‘A modern-day Robin Hood then …’ said Shaw.

  ‘Robin Bastard, more like it. I reckon this lot’s his share. It’s still stolen goods, Peter, whatever the intention. And the rest of the gang must have fenced their shares. So that’ll be cash.’

  ‘Whyte’s council van?’

  ‘Birley says they’ve got a preliminary match with the tyre marks left at the Old Manor, Burnham Marsh. We’ll know by close of play today. Plus the council’s given us the log for when Whyte had the vehicle out. Matches the burglaries almost to a tee. I’d like to hear him talk his way out of it now, Peter.’

  In the distance Shaw’s eye tracked a trawler coming down the Cut towards the docks. He could just make out marker flags flying from the crab and lobster pots on the deck. The prospect of a long interview with their suspect in a windowless room made him feel suddenly claustrophobic.

  Valentine launched his cigarette butt into a long descent into St James’ Street. ‘One thing: in his front room, over the fireplace, there was this oil painting: row of cottages, a bit of rough thatch, and a lane leading off down towards marshes, and the sea. Peasants outside – you know the deal, smocks and that. I recognized it – well, I bet the houses don’t look like that now, but I know the place, because you could see the sea wall and it’s definitely Wells – got to be. According to the wife, Whyte was brought up in one of the cottages in the picture. Idyllic, she said. That was his grandfather’s place, but then the old man couldn’t pay the rent and the whole family got the heave-ho. Can’t bear to go back, apparently. Wife says that’s his big problem – he harbours grudges. Can’t forgive, can’t forget.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  They’d put Clem Whyte in the ‘tough cop’ interview room down in the basement: tiled, no windows, with a uniformed PC standing by the door. The interview suites upstairs were modern and bright, painted in pastel colours. This was fifties austerity policing; a match for the cells down the corridor. Valentine brought a cup of coffee for the prisoner down from the canteen with three sachets of sugar, a little plastic tub of fake milk and a useless brittle plastic stirrer.

  Whyte didn’t even let them sit down before he made his opening statement: ‘I’ll tell you about what I did, and what Stefan did, but that’s it. I’m not naming any other names. I’m sorry to be unhelpful. I think there’s an important principle at stake.’

  Shaw wasn’t surprised by this tactic. He’d only met Whyte once, and they’d probably only swapped a few hundred words in total, but he’d discerned a certain preachy morality. Criminals who claimed they acted in the interests of others were, he found, the most devious. The absence of a sense of guilt also made them particularly dangerous, and arrogant. Whyte’s manifesto of intent made it slightly more likely, in Shaw’s judgment, that it was he who had killed Stefan Bedrich. Or that he knew who had.

  The duty solicitor, a young man called Sawyer who was often on call at St James’, sat beside his client and seemed mildly shocked by Whyte’s announcement. He whispered in Whyte’s ear, but the prisoner just shook his head.

  Valentine switched on the recorder and voiced the appropriate preamble. Shaw helped himself to a mint from a small dish on the table. He held it on his tongue while he considered his tactics.

  ‘DS Valentine will outline the facts as we see them,’ said Shaw, pushing his chair back so that the metal legs screeched on the concrete floor.

  The DS intoned a list of the evidence accumulated so far against Whyte on a specimen charge of burglary under the Theft Act 1968: the stolen goods, the vehicle sightings, the possible tyre mark match at Burnham Marsh. Valentine casually added that the maximum sentence for the offence, when committed in a dwelling, was fourteen years.

  ‘No cut-rate for second homes, I’m afraid,’ he added.

  ‘Really, Detective Sergeant. Is that necessary?’ Sawyer made an ostentatious note.

  Outside in the corridor they heard a cell open down the corridor, a single foot scuffing the floor, before a door slammed shut.

  ‘Let’s put that aside,’ said Shaw. ‘At least for this, our first interview. The important question is this: how did Stefan Bedrich die? And why? Did you kill him, Mr Whyte?’

  One shake of the head. Nothing more.

  Shaw produced a passport shot of Bedrich taken from documents found in the flat at Greenwood House, and set it on the table upside down so that Whyte could get a clear view.

  Whyte’s small grey eyes blinked behind his spectacles. That narrow, tortoise-like neck seemed to telescope, allowing his head to move forward, closer to the picture.

  ‘How did Stefan Bedrich die?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Whyte. ‘When we got to the village that night we went our separate ways. I had a plan – marked on an OS map – and we’d divvied the place up. I’d been pretty sure the place was deserted, but you can’t be certain. I knew the pub was closed, that’s what made me look at it in the first place. So we each took a quarter of the village, but approached the properties as if they might be inhabited.’

  ‘How many of you?’

  ‘Four. But as I say – no names.’

  The solicitor tried for a second whisper but Whyte waved him away.

  ‘Why did you think the village might be empty?’

  ‘I didn’t. I knew every house was a second home and it was the third week of October on a Thursday night. And as I said, the pub was closed. We always worked on the assumption someone might be at home. If the place was a ghost town, all the better.’

  Valentine handed Shaw a file. He opened it to reveal a closely typed list of addresses.

  ‘We found this in a desk at your house. Your wife unlocked it for us. It’s the council’s own list of properties claiming relief on their council tax as second homes. Must have made choosing a target a little easier.’

  Whyte’s head shifted on his narrow neck as if his collar was too tight.

  ‘My client has the right to remain silent,’ said the solicitor.

  ‘It’s about right and w
rong,’ said Whyte, ignoring Sawyer, who gently set down his biro and leant back in his seat. ‘And about degrees of right and wrong. I don’t think it’s right for people to have two homes when so many people have none. I think it’s wrong that people can’t grow up in their own homes. We’re a rich society, but we have very little concern for the lives of others.’

  ‘Great, now speeches,’ said Valentine. ‘Can this get any better?’

  Shaw leant forward. ‘Talk us through exactly what you did from the moment you arrived at Burnham Marsh on the night of the seventeenth of October. I presume you were the transport – so four in the van, yes?’

  Whyte licked his lips and Shaw guessed he’d been relishing the prospect of a dispute on the ethics of the situation, a conversation he was not going to get.

  ‘Yes, by the war memorial. I parked the van there. I cut the lights and we briefly double-checked that we all knew what we were doing.’

  ‘Where did Stefan go?’

  ‘The quayside down to the old church. I had the quayside and the road out of the village; the others went over the sea wall and did the houses on the old marsh.’

  ‘Time?’

  ‘One o’clock. We had to be back at the van by two. Everyone came back but Stefan.’

  ‘What next?’

  ‘We had a plan for that. We waited one hour. If there was any sign he’d been caught we’d just have driven off. Sixty minutes, then – only then – we called his mobile. No answer, although it rang. We gave him fifteen more minutes and rang again, same status. So we left.’

  ‘You just drove away? You expect us to believe that?’

  Whyte stirred his coffee.

  ‘I don’t think any of this adds up,’ said Shaw. ‘You and Stefan Bedrich don’t add up. Tell me how this started.’

  Whyte looked at the clock on the wall then shook his head.

  The morgue shots of Bedrich, which Shaw had picked up from Dr Kazimeirz, were graphic, showing the deep wound which had almost severed his neck. He put three down on the interview table.