by Jim Kelly
‘God,’ said Whyte. ‘I …’ He held the bridge of his nose, his eyes tightly shut.
‘Sorry, did you think it would be pretty?’ asked Valentine. ‘At Peace. Gone Before. That kind of thing?’
‘Gentlemen …’
Shaw ignored the solicitor. ‘Maybe you should have gone and looked for him, Clem. If not for his sake then maybe for hers?’
An A4 shot, this one in colour, fuzzy from magnification, showing a child with black curls and green eyes.
‘That’s Kasia, the daughter, Clem. The name’s derived from the Polish for “pure”. She’s not going to remember him at all now, is she?’
Shaw rearranged the pictures of the butchered father and the laughing daughter.
Whyte let his eyes slide over both images. He added creamer to the coffee and began to study the strange, galaxy-like swirl of the white in the black.
‘You clearly don’t think we deserve the truth. How about her?’ asked Shaw.
He looked up into Whyte’s impassive face. ‘What really worries me about this is the assortment of motives. We know why you’re in it: political slogans. Plus a pleasant little sideline in top-of-the-range fittings and décor for council tenants. That must have been very satisfying. And presumably arson was next. But I still don’t see how this started.’
Whyte couldn’t stop his hand edging across the table, an extended index finger sliding the girl’s picture over that of her father’s mutilated skull.
Then he pushed both pictures away, as if making a final decision.
‘Stefan’s case file came to my notice,’ he said. ‘The Greenwood House flats are sought after, there’s a waiting list. Stefan’s …’ He searched for the right word. ‘Stefan’s plight was acute. The death of his wife was a tragedy. He desperately wanted his child back. He didn’t want to live in Poland. He’d taken night classes in car mechanics in Boston and qualified. The plan was to set up on his own – a garage, I guess, a repair shop. He had nothing.
‘I interviewed him at the council offices. He explained that if he could set up on his own, get six months of company accounts under his belt, he’d be in a position to apply for custody. The problem was cash. He needed fifteen thousand pounds seed corn to start the business. The bank laughed in his face. I asked him why they’d turned him down for credit and he admitted he had a previous conviction for burglary up in Lincolnshire.
‘My normal practice is to visit applicants. So I did. He had a room in the North End, a Rackman landlord, one toilet for sixteen rooms. I’d had time to think. The issue of second homes is very close to my heart. I wanted to do something radical, decisive. Something personal. I wanted to show these people – the Chelsea set – that they weren’t welcome. I wanted the media to focus on the homeless, the people driven out of the villages in which they’d been born and brought up. I said I’d recommend Stefan for the flat if he’d consider a joint enterprise.’
‘Burgling second homes?’
‘Yes. The key was getting in and out, and for that I needed professionals. Stefan was my key. He had friends, not just in Boston, but Lynn too. They’d turned over a few suburban semis. But the cash flow was hardly worth the risk. I said they’d get more out of one second home than fifty semis.’
‘What did you think when the media didn’t get the story?’ asked Shaw.
Whyte shrugged. ‘I thought you lot were sitting on it. Fine. I wasn’t going to stop and it was going to come out eventually – with all the more force if suppressed for so long. I was prepared to be patient. I was close to resorting to fire – very close. Then, maybe, a letter claiming responsibility. There were risks. I wanted to move forward gradually. Steadily.’
‘So you’re in this to fight the good fight for the homeless,’ said Shaw. ‘He’s in it to bank the cash so he can get his daughter back. Saints, the pair of you. But the other two are just thieves. That’s a volatile mixture of motives. Is that what happened – a fight? Did you all fall out over who got what? That’s the danger with the four of you splitting up the stuff – that needs a certain level of trust. Did you trust them? Did you trust Stefan?’
‘Yes. I did, until that night. Now I don’t know.’
‘What did you think happened?’
‘I said that I don’t know. We feared he’d stumbled on a resident and been caught. Or an accident. Trapped in a cellar, perhaps, or injured getting in through a window. Or – yes, maybe he’d found something he didn’t want to share and he’d done a runner. But we’d all agreed, if someone didn’t make it back within an hour of the deadline we’d split. No arguments.’
‘And you expect us to believe that?’ asked Shaw.
‘It’s the truth.’
‘Isn’t it much more likely that when Bedrich didn’t return you sent someone to find him? Or did you go yourself? After all, there was no guarantee that if Bedrich was trapped, or the subject of a citizen’s arrest, that he wouldn’t name names once he was in police custody. That’s the deal I’d have made. A clean passport back to Poland in return for names, details, a statement.’
Whyte bent the little plastic stirrer close to breaking point, then set it aside.
Shaw folded his notebook. ‘We have further questions, Mr Whyte. We’ll be back. Several things are still unclear, and we have forensic results to evaluate. But one thing is clear to me. I don’t think you’ve told us the truth. And certainly not the whole truth.’
THIRTY-FOUR
An ambulance from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital had delivered Arnold Gutter Smith-Waterson back to St James’ with a nurse in attendance. Campbell had chosen the ‘good cop’ interview suite on the fifth floor, with a view out over Greyfriars Tower, and a distant glimpse of white water in the Wash. Valentine was the eponymous good cop. Smith-Waterson had asked for ‘the policeman with the raincoat’ to be present at the interview. He hadn’t asked for a lawyer.
As Valentine entered the prisoner was talking and clearly back on his favourite topic: ‘People get the neap tide wrong too,’ he was saying, looking down at the sheet of blank paper in front of DS Campbell, as if she was going to take a note. ‘It comes with the first and third quarters of the moon – so it’s the smallest of the high tides.’
When he saw Valentine the flicker of recognition was unmistakable. There was something childlike about the man, for all the grey hair and the stiff, arthritic knees and elbows, as if the years of cocaine abuse had expunged his adult life, leaving behind this innocent juvenile. The prisoner’s mutilated hand was in a white glove, resting on the table. Valentine couldn’t stop himself sampling the stale air in the room. Was it there, the sweet edge of decay? All he could detect was an acrid aroma of antiseptic cream.
‘DS Valentine has entered the room,’ said Campbell into the digital tape deck microphone mounted on the wall. As opposed, thought Valentine, to acting DS Campbell. One day, he knew, she’d pass him in the career fast lane, but he felt unperturbed by the thought. Fiona Campbell was a born copper. Her father had served as a DI at Norwich for twenty-five years, so she knew that promotion wasn’t just about a string of glittering exam results. The only thing that really annoyed him about Fiona was her height – six foot one in cork shoes. She often stood slightly hunched, as if trying not to stand out in the crowd. Valentine usually took on a fatherly note and told her to stand up straight.
He pulled up a chair and nodded a welcome. From the canteen he’d brought the prisoner a piece of cake on a plastic plate with a plastic serrated knife.
‘The spring tide …’ began Gutter, but stopped when he saw Campbell had produced a small cellophane packet containing a fine white powder.
‘Arnold,’ she said, and even Valentine had to admit she’d packed enough natural authority into that one word to chill the room. The old man licked his lips, as if the packet held sweets.
‘I know about your problems, Arnold. How difficult life is.’ She flipped open a folder of printed sheets. ‘Doctor Jackson has written me a report. I know that your memory isn’t very
reliable. There are several mental health issues which you’ve done very well to try and overcome. I know you find it very hard to concentrate. But I want you to try for a moment because it is possible that you can save the lives of several people here today, right now, in this room. Do you understand?’
Gutter moved a twist of grey hair from his face and tucked it behind one ear. ‘Yes,’ he said, the voice, for once, sounding like that of a stable adult, shorn of the usual wheedling note.
‘This is cocaine and we know from the blood tests that you’ve been taking this drug for several years. Possibly decades. This isn’t about that. I don’t want to send you to gaol for taking illegal Class A drugs. Although I could, Arnold. I want you to understand that. That would mean a cell, of course, indoors, for several months, if not years. Do you see that?’
Gutter nodded once and then started humming. Valentine thought he recognized a few notes, a florid phrase, reminding him of something English from the Last Night of the Proms. He pushed the plate with the piece of cake a bit nearer to Smith-Waterson’s good hand.
‘We know that someone is selling cocaine like this in Lynn. Dealers on the street are offering it just a little bit cheaper than the normal market rate. So it’s very difficult to say no, I can understand that too. But the problem is there’s a really good reason why you should say no, why everyone should say no. It’s not pure cocaine, Arnold. It’s been adulterated, mixed up with something much cheaper. This cheap chemical is called Levamisole. It’s a drug too – but a very useful one. Doctors prescribe it for people with cancer, specific types of the disease that you might find in the brain or the neck.’
Campbell straightened her spine an extra half-inch. She seemed to tower over her prisoner now, looking down at the drugs: innocently white in their bag, like icing sugar.
‘There isn’t much I can teach you about Levamisole, is there, Arnold?’
He shook his head. She’d emailed Valentine a précis of the Met file on Arnold Smith-Waterson, formerly a senior anaesthetist at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, who had been struck off in 1998 after a patient brought a complaint of malpractice. The woman had regained consciousness during a routine operation to remove a benign cyst in her breast. Smith-Waterson was initially admitted to an alcohol abuse clinic. In 1999 police at Kensington banned him from coming within a mile of the home of his ex-wife, who had remarried. Campbell had deemed three further facts significant: in the 1980s the Smith-Watersons had owned a second home at Wells-next-the-Sea; in 2000 Arnold had been arrested for possession of cocaine at home on the north Norfolk coast (fined £1,000 and given a three-year suspended sentence); and the former anaesthetist had an NHS pension worth £46,000 per annum, paid monthly, despite the disciplinary case which had ended his career.
‘You’ve probably worked out why you have necrosis, haven’t you, Arnold?’
Smith-Waterson swallowed a lot of air in a rush as if a memory of something shocking had filled his brain.
‘Levamisole suppresses white blood cells,’ he said. ‘Dampens the immune system. Leads to neutropenia, agranulocytosis and vasculitis.’
He covered his mouth as if he’d revealed a great secret.
Campbell spread three photographs on the table for him to see. Valentine let his eyes slide over the nearest, which showed a young woman, naked from the waist up, with one breast the same colour as Gutter’s finger. He fought hard for a few seconds to disguise the air he had to suck in, the shock of the image making him momentarily dizzy.
Smith-Waterson began to claw at the pictures with the gloved hand.
‘Someone is going to die, Arnold, unless we catch the person who is peddling these drugs. Someone has died – a young man, just twenty years old. Do you understand what I’m saying – what I’ve said? I need a name. Or a place. Or a mobile number. Give me something, Arnold. We need to find the source of this and stop it right now before someone else dies.’
He started to cry, head down, shoulders shaking. Valentine wasn’t particularly attuned to the emotions of others. Julie had always complained that she had to remind him to feel sympathy, or even empathy, as if there was a button he had to press. She, on the other hand, had seemed to have an open channel, always receiving, expertly holding the necessary wavelength. But even he could see that Smith-Waterson’s tears were the result of a deeply felt distress; a kind of despair, the roots of which lay somewhere in those lost years of addiction.
Campbell rapped a fist on the desk top and her prisoner jumped.
‘Arnold. Did you get your drugs from dealers? We think numerous dealers sold the adulterated supply. We have arrested several of them, but none of them remember selling drugs to you. Did you go direct to the source – the supplier? Is he – or she – here in Lynn? Or did you have to go somewhere else – Peterborough, perhaps, or Boston? How does the supply get into the country, Arnold?’
His head came up, the mouth hanging open. ‘I can’t remember anything. I just know the angels are to blame.’
Campbell edged a packet of paper tissues across the table and he took one, carefully, and dabbed at his eyes.
‘I know I’m letting everyone down, like I did before, at the hospital. So I know, in the end, that I’m the one who is really to blame. But it won’t last forever – the supply. It’s limited.’
Campbell and Valentine exchanged glances.
‘What do you mean, Arnold? Limited? How is it limited, and how do you know it’s limited?’
‘When I think about this I can’t face living. So I close it all down. I’m going to do that now. I’m going to close it all down.’
‘Arnold, wait,’ said Valentine, placing a hand on the glove. ‘Tell me about the angels, Arnold. Just tell me. No one else needs to know. I’ll keep you safe, I promise. Look at me, Arnold.’
Gutter hung his head. ‘The neap tide for Lynn today is at four fifty-six p.m,’ he said, sighing. ‘I’ve learnt all the depths, heights and times. It’s useful information in my life. It’s the kind of thing you have to know. It’s a matter of life and death.’
He shook his head. ‘Tomorrow’s high tide will be at five-fifteen p.m.… ’
THIRTY-FIVE
Burnham Marsh had come back to life. Several owners had returned to check out their properties and make insurance claims. A few pretended to tend gardens while watching their neighbours and the police. A teenager at Overy View, down near the church, was tying up waste bags and putting them out. A woman, exuberant hair tied up in a headscarf, was washing the windows of the pub, although it still looked closed. A carpenter’s van was parked by the war memorial.
DC Twine, at the mobile incident room, was organizing a second thorough examination of the eight properties Clem Whyte claimed had been allocated to Stefan Bedrich on the night of the burglary. This area of the village – less than 500 yards square, was the new focus of the investigation. Bedrich may have been murdered by Whyte, or another member of the gang. If not, he almost certainly met his killer in one of these houses – or nearby.
Tom Hadden’s SOCO unit had almost finished an overall risk assessment of the scene of crime, which encompassed thirty-three separate properties, plus outbuildings and garages. An annual budget of £1.2 million would not stretch to a full forensic examination of an entire village. But they’d evaluated every building. And every room. The trawl for evidence had so far netted encouraging results. They had two partial fingerprints, one from a broken window pane at Marsh Cottage, plus a nearby bloodstain on a tablecloth. Neither were a match for Bedrich or Whyte. They’d also recovered a plastic water bottle found in the public waste bin on the sea wall. Wrapped around the bottle was the standard Highland Spring label and a set of fingerprints from a left hand. The council emptied the bins on a Thursday afternoon. There were three in Burnham Marsh. All were completely empty – except for the litre bottle of still water. Had one of the burglars taken a minute’s break, removed a glove to open the bottle then finished it before throwing it into a bin he presumed was full of litter? Ot
her than the prints they had a few cotton fibres on a hawthorn at the rear of one of the fifties semis, and the tyre marks at Old Manor. Now they planned a fingertip search of the eight key properties – once Shaw and Valentine had made a preliminary check.
Shaw found Hadden outside the incident room with Twine, gathered round a picnic table they’d requisitioned from the pub. Hadden’s deputy, Dr Elizabeth Price, was just debriefing them on the position at Burnham Market where she was in charge of the examination of the fishmonger’s where Shrimp Davies had been shot dead. The news was not as encouraging: other than the bullet, retrieved at autopsy by Dr Kazimeirz, the scene was a blank. ‘Which of itself is interesting,’ said Dr Price, smiling at Shaw’s arrival. ‘An exceptionally professional killing. Floor hosed down, gloves used throughout, locks cleaned, van virtually polished. The one mistake was the bullet. A small mercy.’
Shaw liked Price. She was sixty years old and looked as if her real career was her hobby, teaching piano, specifically Bach to promising teenagers. He wondered how many of her students watching her long, delicate fingers playing over the keys knew what she really did for a living.
‘What’s the odds on the bullet not exiting?’
‘One in a thousand – ten thousand. A fluke. But one the killer will be cursing,’ she said.
They had one positive development in the Shrimp Davies inquiry. Lynn uniformed branch had tracked down three of his drinking partners in the Retreat, one of his dockside haunts. Two of them were in possession of cannabis. A round of fingerprints revealed that one of the two, a trawler hand off the Fisherfleet, had left the same prints inside John Jack Stepney’s garage on the night his fleet of vehicles was vandalized.
‘So that throws some light on how this all got out of hand,’ said Shaw. ‘Stepney punches a hole through half-a-dozen boat hulls at Morston Creek. Shrimp Davies tells his mates what’s afoot and one – or more – of them, no doubt well oiled on beer, set out for Stepney’s warehouse to teach the London bastards a lesson. My guess is Davies, or his mates, did a bit of bragging later in the pub. Two days later Davies is dead.’
