At Death's Window

by Jim Kelly

  He bent down and snapped off a sprig of woody samphire and held it up against the blue sky so that they could see the vivid green of the autumnal growth.

  ‘Glasswort,’ said Shaw. ‘There’s a plaque up in All Saints which spelt it out. The salicornia – the salty seaside plants used by glassmakers to produce lustrous, quality glass. The Venetians were famous for it, but I don’t need to tell you that.’

  She laid one hand flat on the sand. ‘I can’t find the spot. There was smoke, so there must be ash. But I can’t find it.’

  ‘The lightning strike?’ asked Shaw, dropping to his knees, feeling the sand. ‘I missed that too, but I won’t be too hard on myself. Fulgurite is created by lightning turning sand into a silica mineral, otherwise known as glass, of course. God’s glass. No oven required. How much is it worth?’

  Her face unfroze, latching on to the question: ‘A thousand pounds, maybe fifteen hundred. Rings are sought after, cut from the fronds of stone. Fire rings. And gem shops pay well, even for the rough mineral.’

  ‘We shouldn’t be talking, of course,’ said Shaw, sitting. There was a gap in the dunes here and they could see the sea, the tide edging shorewards in a series of miniature white-water waves.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘My father is overprotective. I simply said I wanted my privacy back. I was badly affected by the burglary. I’d only just got over Mum’s death. He came up to be with me – I could hardly say no. He is my father, despite everything. He said that if he complained officially I’d be left in peace, and that’s all I want. We thought it would do no harm, to put down a marker. A line.’

  ‘In the sand,’ offered Shaw.

  She swung the bag of stones over her shoulder.

  ‘What you really wanted was revenge, wasn’t it?’

  She stood, ruffling her blonde hair into shape.

  ‘That’s what your statement implies, I think. What were the precise words? “I hope he finds his own hell, and that there’s no colour, or light, or beauty there.”

  ‘The irony is that I wouldn’t have read the statement if it wasn’t for your father’s complaint. I had no idea you were our witness. So I read it. Police work comes down to that so often. You have to make the time to read. Consider.’

  She knelt on the sand.

  ‘Why do you love glass?’ he asked.

  ‘It reminds me of my childhood, and Mum, and light, and being happy. It’s like a magical key – it takes me there.’

  ‘Is that why you killed Stefan Bedrich? Because he smashed the key?’

  She had her head turned to the sea. ‘I didn’t kill him.’ Her voice had lost its musical lilt.

  ‘But you know who he is, obviously.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘The motive’s clear. It’s the opportunity that I couldn’t fathom. But then there’s the samphire and the fulgurite. You collected samphire for the glass oven. There was a bed of it beyond Mitchell’s Bank, so you must have known the marshes well. It had to be unpremeditated, because Bedrich was on the run from someone else who wanted him dead. He set out across the marshes, wounded, disorientated, his hands bound behind him.

  ‘And he met you. Or, rather – you came upon him. And why were you out at night? You’d seen the lightning strike. From up at the house. It occurs to me you spend a lot of time there alone. Or do you sit out on the bench, your mother’s bench? You’d have seen it from there.

  ‘The lightning struck and you set out across the marshes towards Scolt Head Island, climbed over the ridge and found the spot, built your cairn, and were returning when you came upon poor Stefan. Had his energy given out? My guess is he couldn’t free his leg from the rope and weight. Was he trapped in the mud, perhaps, lying there, sinking, crying for help? He wanted salvation and fate brought him you. Was recognition instant? He’d shaved off a lot of the hair – but you’d seen his eyes, his face. This was the man who had deliberately destroyed the beauty of the great window. The man you wanted to see in hell. So you sent him there.’

  She’d stuck her spade into the sand and Shaw, kneeling beside it, examined the blade.

  ‘One blow. You’re a woman who works in a factory, after all – even if it is a glassworks. You have hidden strength. And he couldn’t move, could he? Trapped in the mud. Did you consciously see the image then – of St John’s head on the golden dish?’

  She shook her head, fumbling for her mobile. ‘I’m sorry, this is pure fantasy. I’m ringing Father. Clearly there needs to be a fresh complaint.’

  ‘Do you always carry secateurs, or scissors, just in case you come upon some samphire? You knew the Polish migrant workers were trying to corner the local market. There’d been trouble at Morston – boats vandalized. So you sent us off on a false trail. That was quite a cold, premeditated action. That won’t play well in front of a jury.’

  Fingers shaking, she abandoned the attempt to use her phone and slipped it back in her pocket.

  ‘What you don’t know is why Bedrich did it, do you?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘He was a thief. He envies what others have. He violates the homes of innocent people …’

  Her voice had risen but broke on the word innocent.

  ‘Not so. There was a lot of beauty in Stefan Bedrich’s life,’ said Shaw.

  His phone held several pictures he’d taken in the flat at Greenwood House, of the room decorated with the artwork of his wife, the exploding colours, the interlocking designs. He held one up for her to see.

  ‘This was painted by his wife.’

  He scrolled through the album: ‘And this.’

  He put the phone away. She’d abandoned any attempt to flee.

  ‘We’ll never know what was in his mind that night, of course,’ said Shaw. ‘It doesn’t really matter. I think his story speaks for itself …’

  Murano’s face was perfectly composed but Shaw noted that it was wet with tears. ‘Tell me.’

  So he told Sonia Murano Stefan Bedrich’s story: his marriage, his journey to the UK to earn money, the accident on the streets of Gdansk, the daughter – alone – cared for by grandparents. The devoted wife who’d sent him pictures to keep his spirits high.

  One detail, he said, had convinced him of Stefan Bedrich’s motives that night at Holme House, when he’d taken a crowbar to the splendour of the window of St John the Baptist. The burglary was on the night of the seventeenth of July. The Polish official at the Peterborough consulate who’d informed him of his wife’s death had rung him – via the Lynn Polish Club – on the evening of the sixteenth.

  When he’d told her everything he knew, they were both silent.

  ‘I think the sight of the window was too much for him,’ said Shaw eventually. ‘It reminded him of the colour, the beauty, and of his wife, of what he’d lost. He couldn’t be with her ever again so he destroyed it. Difficult to forgive, but not difficult to understand.’

  ‘So not envy at all,’ she said. ‘Just despair.’

  She didn’t leave, despite the path which led away towards Holme.

  ‘I don’t think your father made his complaint because he was worried about what I’d find out,’ said Shaw. ‘I think he complained because he was terrified you’d tell me what really happened if I asked. It’s what you want, isn’t it? The relief of the confession. I’d give you time to think about that but I can’t risk losing the forensic evidence. I need the spade, and the Barbour you’re wearing, and the boots. So I’m going to have to ask you to walk back with me … to my house. Twenty minutes at most. I have to insist.’

  She didn’t speak at all.

  They walked together, side by side, the advancing waves just to their right, the sunset too.

  Shaw considered Murano’s childhood at Holme House, the blissful years seen only with hindsight; and how misguided it was of her to seek to preserve such a distant happiness, and to think that it could be relived, while the future was denied. She’d compressed all her memories into a single object, an icon, until the window had been her childhood. But
as Lena had pointed out, glass was such a brittle treasure.

  As they came in sight of the Old Beach Café he saw that the holiday crowds, excited by the electric storm, had flooded out of Hunstanton to enjoy the blue skies which had opened overhead. Lena had reopened the café and Fran was clearing tables. The crowds ate, drank and watched the sunset. The café’s tape of Beach Boys classics came just within earshot. He imagined the same scene at nightfall, the beach deserted, and for the first time since he’d moved back to the coast he felt that might be enough.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Eight Months Later

  A twenty-five-foot-high wind turbine turned lazily on its tower, throwing late afternoon shadows across the sands in front of Surf! – north Norfolk’s newest bar/restaurant. It had been Fran’s idea to paint the turbine blades in primary colours to mimic a child’s beach mini-windmill. After a brief tussle with the local planning authority, which also objected to the decking for seating, permission was grudgingly given, although plans for a single neon sign, pulsing the word Surf!, were rejected without comment.

  A banner proclaiming GRAND OPENING stretched between two volleyball posts. Children had been allocated a square, fifty feet by fifty feet, in which to enter the sandcastle competition. An entry ticket cost one pound and purchased you six square feet upon which to build a fairy-tale castle. Fran had joined forces with Lucilla, her new best friend, an alliance which had inevitably embraced Paulo and Cornelia. Duties had been assigned: Paulo had been sent off to collect lolly-sticks and any other useful ‘found objects’ from the high water mark, while Cornelia had been given the Sisyphean task of ferrying plastic buckets full of sea water to the moat around their creation – a scale model of Hogwarts.

  A lifeguard on a high chair judged a junior surf competition in waves no higher than three feet, while a crowd of about two hundred milled around on the sand with drinks, or sat at the dozen circular metal tables. Lena supervised a team of ten waitresses, hired for the event. Leo D’Asti oversaw the kitchen and the bar, in between pressing the flesh of the VIP guest list: local councillors, press, environmental health and planning officers, and the entire staff of the local Tourist Information Centre. The café itself and every table outside was adorned with flowers sent up from Juliet D’Asti’s shop on the King’s Road.

  D’Asti Senior had wandered into the café one Sunday morning a month after the arrest of Sonia Murano. His children had slurped hot chocolate while he’d offered a protracted, and sincere, thank you to Shaw – and the rest of the crew of the Flyer – for plucking them off Mitchell’s Bank. D’Asti had gone on to explain that the family now lived permanently in Burnham Market and that Lucilla and Paulo would be attending the primary school for the new term, and that Cornelia would follow after nursery school. Fran and Lucilla would be in the same year. Meanwhile he would be a ‘house husband’, while Juliet commuted up from London for weekends, although he had his eyes open for a good local business opportunity.

  Lena was away that day in London, seeing old friends, taking a break from the beach, so it had been Shaw who had broached the idea of D’Asti investing in the expansion of the Old Beach Café. As long as he could have his beach back at midnight, he was now more sanguine about the prospect of Lena creating a trendy ‘oasis’ on the lonely coast. His childhood memory of the spot, bathed in a golden sunshine that almost certainly never shone, was best kept inside his own head. Besides, Surf! would make Lena happy, and protect Fran from the crippling influence of boredom.

  By the time Lena got back from London that night after dark D’Asti was prepared to invest £250,000 in the business for half the equity, following an independent audit of the accounts. Most of the cash was needed for the wind generator, a second 4×4, a sewerage and water plant, and alterations to the shop and cottage, including a ten-foot covered extension to the verandah. D’Asti wanted nothing to do with the day-to-day management of the business, although he was more than prepared to stand in behind the bar or even in the kitchen. While the kids were still young he wanted time to spend with them. However, he was prepared to take on advertising, purchasing, branding, and any of the paperwork needed if they took on full- or part-time staff.

  The plans had become bricks, mortar and wood with almost indecent haste. And now the big day had arrived.

  Shaw stood apart from the crowd, watching wind yachts speed silently along the sands. He didn’t see Valentine until his DS was ten feet away. The raincoat and black slip-ons had been ditched for a pair of chinos and a blue shirt, hardly Hawaii Five-O, but an improvement nonetheless.

  ‘George. Jan?’

  ‘She’s helping out in the kitchen. Frankly, this kind of thing freaks her out. Me too.’

  ‘Any news?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Letters go out on the first of the month, but she’s been tipped the wink. I think she’s in. Training starts at Hendon in October.’

  ‘PC Clay, then. Blimey. You want to watch out, George. She might outrank you one day.’

  Valentine tried to hide his bare feet in the sand.

  ‘Let me show you something by the bar,’ said Shaw.

  A minute later they both had drinks: Shaw the standard half of Guinness, Valentine something red with an umbrella sticking out of it. They were standing in front of a framed picture, an abstract jigsaw of primary colours.

  ‘I chose this one,’ said Shaw. ‘I reckoned two hundred and fifty quid was a decent price. I used the money to frame three others and sent them all to Interpol in Warsaw. They’ve passed them on to the grandparents. One day the kid can have them. She’ll grow up with them anyway. It’s something. Childhood images are important.’

  ‘Remind me of the name,’ said Valentine.

  ‘Kasia.’

  The murder of Stefan Bedrich had left little Kasia an orphan. Murano’s trial for his murder was due to start at Peterborough Crown Court in three weeks. She had made a full confession on the evening Shaw had walked her back along the beach from Holme. The court proceedings were expected to last less than a day. The Director of Public Prosecutions had spent some time evaluating the file on Pietro Murano, but had concluded that there was little chance of securing a conviction for conspiracy. Neither would give evidence against each other. There was little doubt they were complicit after the fact, but complicit in what? It was a waste of public money trying to find out.

  ‘Hey up,’ said Valentine, nodding over Shaw’s shoulder.

  Out on the edge of the crowd on the sand John Jack Stepney stood with a glass of white wine.

  ‘Cheeky fucker,’ said Valentine.

  ‘It’s a free country, George. Surf!’s open to all. I think he likes to keep his enemies close. All very Al Pacino.’

  Stepney was examining his mobile, no doubt bemused by the almost total absence of a signal.

  ‘Latest?’ asked Valentine.

  ‘Not good,’ said Shaw. The forensic sweeps of Stepney’s house in Balamory, Highlife, and the Palace Arcade had drawn a blank. The licensed owner of the slot machines turned out to be a woman based in Brighton who ran three other arcades on the South Coast. The motorcycle gunman, Leslie James Hales, had made a slow recovery from his heart attack at Brandon Creek. Ballistics had identified the gun found in his leathers as that which had killed Shrimp Davies. Hales also had a pocket of loose change, among which were three fifty-pence coins, two ten-pence coins, a one-penny coin and a token from the Palace Arcade. The prints on the cellophane wallet containing the five thousand pounds were those of Emilia Stepney, John Jack’s daughter. She had also been identified as a courier by Interpol, used by various Stepney associates, to ferry documents to and from a house in the hills above San Sebastian, La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, as well as three addresses in Poplar, East London.

  ‘DPP says it’s not enough,’ said Shaw. ‘We could get Stepney into the dock all right, but it won’t stick, because we can’t physically link Hales and Stepney and the cash. Hales will say anything Stepney’s lawyers tell him to say. However, all is not lost
, George …’

  Shaw had spotted the arrival of the guest of honour: Max Warren, with his wife. The media coverage of the Chelsea Burglars had been low-key, their petty crimes overshadowed by the Mitchell’s Bank killing, and the murder of Shrimp Davies. The only fly in the ointment was the county council’s police committee. It had taken umbrage at not being informed of the news blackout ordered by the chief constable, and planned an in camera hearing. But the Home Office had expressed its gratitude to Warren, and eventually, inevitably, so would the Palace.

  Half an hour later Shaw was able to sit the chief constable down in a canvas chair, alone, near the sandcastles. The bar staff had rustled up a glass of Glenfiddich with a little water, and Warren was holding it up to the sun when Shaw told him that he had been to see Leslie James Hales at HMP Wandsworth.

  ‘I hope you haven’t done anything stupid, Peter. I realize there are unresolved aspects to this case, but life’s not perfect. At least mine never is, so I don’t see why yours should be any different. Hales will go down for life, but he’ll be out in fifteen. So, as far as I can see, job done. All right, I know he’ll come out to a nice little nest egg, care of Stepney and Co. But that’s the way of the world.’

  ‘That’s not quite how it looks from his point of view, sir. Hales has a wife and three children – two boys and a baby girl. Medical tests have revealed that he has a congenital heart defect. His life expectancy has been put at between five and ten years. He might be lucky, of course. But then he might be unlucky. He could serve fifteen and then drop dead on his first day out.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘He’d turn Queen’s evidence, at least he says he would, if we could offer witness protection. I’m sure you don’t need me to quote the precedent, sir. Serious Organized Crime and Police Act 2005 would be a good start. He wants a new identity now, to serve time in a Scottish prison, then witness protection once he’s out, anonymity guaranteed. Witness protection for life.

  ‘For that he’ll tell the court how Stepney’s brother made contact in the first place about Davies, how he got instructions, and then how he picked up the cash from Stepney in his office at the Palace. The cellophane wallet was inside a brown A4 envelope. Stepney handed him the envelope. I’ve taken him through it, and my opinion is that he’d make an excellent witness. He’s got a good memory for detail.’