At Death's Window (14 page)

A
n Indian summer morning on Old Hunstanton beach: a red ball sun, blue sky, a mist burning off a millpond sea. Shaw ran the mile from the Old Beach Café to the lifeboat house in four minutes forty-three seconds. On his back was a small haversack with a hard cardboard tube sticking up like an aerial. He let himself into the hovercraft bay and used the shower to change into his work clothes: white shirt, no tie, black cotton trousers, boots.

As he drove he kept glancing to the horizon on his left, trying to concentrate on the case but distracted by a conversation he’d had with Lena over coffee on the stoop. The topic, again, had been the plans to open a beach bar – or, as he called it, the ‘super pub’, while Lena preferred Surf Bar.

Tired, edgy, he’d been pushed into saying out loud what he felt: that he was distressed by the idea that his beloved, deserted childhood beach was going to be packed with hundreds of holidaymakers every summer’s evening. Lena, who’d enjoyed a sleepless night after the early morning call, argued that they’d be lucky to get a hundred customers. It was a mile walk to the nearest road at Old Hunstanton, and there were pubs there, anyway – three of them, and a wine bar. They’d attract walkers, birdwatchers, a few surfers. It had been a mistake, she conceded, showing him pictures of similar bars in Cornwall, packed out with lager drinkers, each one with dyed blond hair. This bar would attract a very different clientele.

‘They’ll be people like us,’ she’d said, exasperated.

Shaw kicked the Porsche into first and sped through a sleepy village.
People like us.
He’d always harboured the notion that they weren’t like other people, which was why they’d ended up living away from other people. Living lives that weren’t just average. They might not succeed, but it was something to aspire to.

Twenty minutes later he parked the Porsche outside the mobile incident room at Burnham Marsh. The team quickly assembled on the quayside along the grass verge: eight DCs, and George Valentine.

‘I’ll be brief. It’s day three of the inquiry. The murder’s now public. The burglaries will stay under wraps for another five days. The press office has organized a media conference at three this afternoon on the Mitchell’s Bank killing: TV, radio, the works. Fortunately, we have had two major breaks overnight.’

Shaw stood with his back to the water, a flotilla of six sail boats behind him using an offshore wind to slip out to sea below Gun Hill.

‘First off – and the centrepiece of the presser – we have a boat entering the village on the day of the burglaries and the murder – a boat which is no longer here. One of the D’Asti children clocked the name with his telescope: the
Limpet
. We need to find that boat today. So speed, please, and lots of communication. Harbour masters, RNLI, Coastwatch, the lot. We need to get an image of the boat and put it out for people to see.

‘Our second break is not for the press. The chief constable’s media blackout on the Chelsea Burglars is still in place. The good news is we have identified a vehicle which might be the one used by the thieves. The van carries the insignia of Norfolk County Council. Given that we also have the registration number, or part of it, we should be able to find the driver in short time. That’s our priority this morning. Find the van
first,
then the driver. That’s two different tasks. I want forensics on the van as soon as we have a location. I don’t want anyone wiping the van clean because they’ve seen us picking up the driver. Remember: it’s a gang. George and I will interview the driver if and when we have them in custody. Right. Anything I need to know? Paul?’

‘Basic legwork’s nearly complete,’ said DC Twine. ‘We’ve checked out Stepney’s alibi, and his Polish captains’, and most of the samphire collectors on the coast. Nothing’s watertight – but they all look good on paper. The pickers hired by the captains are proving more elusive. There are some gaps. We’re on it, but it’ll take time. We have found Painter Slaughden, Stepney’s local man, and he’s got a cast-iron alibi for the night in question.’

Cast iron
was the kind of casual cliché Shaw hated. And Twine knew it. ‘I say cast iron. I mean titanium. Hip replacement at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

‘We’re reviewing all the paperwork on the previous burglaries, interviewing all the owners here at Burnham Marsh – those in the UK anyway. I’ve got Mark trawling missing persons, in case our victim had been reported absent somewhere else. And we’ve talked to everyone we can find who spends time out on the marsh – harbour master’s office, HM Revenue and Customs, wildlife trust, twitchers, dog walkers – even lightning hunters. So far it’s a blank.’

Shaw clapped his hands: ‘OK. Coffee. Then let’s get to it.’

He took the small round lid off the cardboard tube he’d brought from home and slid out a large sheet of A3 paper.

‘You might as well see this. We need to get an ID for our victim, and fast. This is the best I can do at putting some life back into a dead man’s face.’

DC Twine took one corner, Shaw held the other. One or two of the new DCs whistled and clapped. It wasn’t just a forensic piece of artwork, it was art. The face of their victim looked out at them: the pale arresting eyes, the pumpkin head, the heavy skull bones, the deep-set, shadowy eye sockets.

‘This will be released this afternoon at the presser. For now we’ll call him Mitchell. I’ve got the budget for a thousand posters – uniformed are organizing – so get used to it. This face will haunt us until we can pin a name to it.’

The team dispersed.

Valentine got himself a mug of tea and went and sat on a wooden bench on the quay. It had one of those little metal plaques to commemorate a villager. They always made him feel uneasy, as if he was resting his legs sitting on a coffin. He lit his eighth cigarette of the day and considered – for the hundredth time – what Jan Clay had said to him the night before at Wells.

She didn’t want to live like that
again.

Was she trying to let him down gently? Or was it a call for him to clean up his lifestyle? It was a disturbing thought because he’d never thought he
had
a lifestyle. He liked the odd pint, but in thirty-five years of police work he’d never taken a surreptitious drink, let alone one from a vodka bottle.

The rest of their ‘date’ had been slightly chilly, as if some kind of invisible foreign border had been crossed. With Julie he’d always been confident that he knew what she was thinking, as she was thinking it, as if he’d been given real-time access to her brain. Jan bemused him, because she was able to maintain a façade, a mask. That’s what twenty-five years of living with DC Peter Clay had done to her.

What next? Did he ask her out again? Did he ring? He felt like a sixteen-year-old again, watching the girls dance round their handbags.

An unexpected noise snapped him back into the present, something he hadn’t heard out on the coast for years: a siren, on the distant main road. Several of the other DCs standing outside checked their mobiles. Then a second siren, and a third. Shaw was already trotting towards the Porsche.

Twine came out on the step to give them the news from the landline: ‘Major incident. Burnham Market. Police and paramedics. Roadblocks on all major routes.’

F
ish flesh had always unsettled Shaw. Not salmon, trout, smoked mackerel or any shellfish – but white fish on the slab: cod, monkfish, halibut or a plump piece of plaice. The paleness was too reminiscent of human flesh, and the bloodlessness was unsettling when you cut down into the meat. Add to that the slippery wet texture and the whole aesthetic was on an edge – between delicious and disgusting. And that’s what he felt now, standing in the fishmonger’s shop, looking at the fish through the immaculately clean glass counter-front.

The scene was luridly lit by one of Tom Hadden’s scene-of-crime lamps. The tarpaulin window blind was down. Outside a small, almost reverent crowd had parted to let Shaw and Valentine in through the front door. Paul Twine’s final text had been direct to the point of a newspaper billboard:
Code 66 opposite Burnham Arms.

A Code 66 was an unlawful killing. The narrow green at the heart of the town held three squad cars, an ambulance, and Hadden’s SOCO van.

The corpse lay on the marble slab under the glass counter with the fish. Naked: white-blue, the black body hair streaked as if he’d swum into the shop and simply washed up on the crushed ice and sprigs of samphire and oyster shells. The face looked out through the glass, the eyes as dead as those of a large grey mullet which lay beside his neck. Some small black eels had been draped over the legs; the toes rested in a pile of sprats.

Shaw noted condensation on the curved glass of the counter and wondered if that meant the body had been warm when pushed into its see-through tomb. Or had the victim still been breathing?

‘Hell of a catch,’ said Valentine. ‘I reckon he’s six foot three, two hundred and fifty pounds? Name’s Henry Davies, by the way, local fisherman, according to the bloke who found him. That’s Cobley – the fishmonger – he’s around somewhere.’

It was smart of his DS to gauge the victim’s stature, set as it was, horizontally, against a few dead fish. Valentine was right: this man, alive, on his feet, was an everyday giant.

The killer’s attempt at ironic black art, placing the victim on the cold slab, was completed by a bloodstain on the glass where the body had hit it, and been pulled back into place. The red smear reminded Shaw that this man’s heart had been pumping away as busily as his own just a few hours earlier. The source of the blood was not difficult to track down. The body was twisted round to reveal a gunshot wound, where most people think the heart isn’t – pretty much central, and high enough to be almost part of the lower throat. A black residue and burn mark around the neat hole revealed the gun had been fired at point-blank range.

Given the nature of the wound, there was surprisingly little blood. But there was a trail of it, which led them back down a short corridor to a goods-in entrance with roll-up doors, which in turn opened into a back lane, where they’d discovered an old Post Office van. A work area by the doors was dominated by an industrial fridge unit, stainless steel sinks and two counters. Four large oil drums stood to one side, a large fish tail just emerging from one. An area of the hardstanding concrete had already been taped off around a conspicuous bloodstain.

It was pretty clear the victim had been shot here, at the back of the shop, and then dragged to the front for display: and that’s what it was, a very public pillory, as blatant as the body on Mitchell’s Bank, tethered to its buoy. There was no sign of the victim’s clothes. Or a murder weapon. No one local had heard a shot or seen anything unusual that morning or overnight.

Shaw retraced his steps back to the shop and knelt down at the glass counter-front. One of the victim’s arms was caught under the body, the other thrown behind. Standing so that he could see inside the claw-like hand, Shaw noted that the killer, or killers, had laced a sprig of samphire between the fingers.

‘Subtle,’ he said.

‘I thought samphire was out of season,’ said Valentine.

‘It keeps,’ said Shaw. Lena had done some research because she wanted to offer it as a local delicacy in the café. Better fresh, but perfectly edible after six months in a deep freeze.

‘Looks like tit-for-tat,’ said Valentine.

‘Or they want us to think it’s tit-for-tat. Bit heavy handed, don’t you think – even for the East End?’

The door to the shop opened and they saw that screens had been put up to block the crowd’s view of the interior. A large man in a fishmonger’s white overalls was ushered in. For a moment Shaw thought he was going to fall down: the blood drained from his face and he pressed his thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of his nose.

‘Mr Cobley?’ asked Shaw. ‘Shall we talk out the back?’

They let him lead the way down the short corridor. Valentine, curious, poked his head into one of the oil drums. Catching movement in the tail of his eye he jerked his head back just in time to avoid a lunging fish head with needle teeth, the jaws clamping in mid-air with a dull plastic click.

‘Careful,’ said Cobley. ‘Rock Salmon – eel to you and me. Isn’t safe till you lop its head off.’

‘Christ,’ said Valentine. The fish reared again, revealing a snake-like body as thick as a weightlifter’s arm. One of the other bins clicked with crabs.

Cobley pulled out a metal stool and sat down. ‘Sorry, bit shaken. I found him but I can’t get over the sight of it. He was such a big bloke. I could see it was him from the face but he just looked so …’ he struggled for the word to match the image, ‘… insubstantial.’

‘What time are we talking?’ prompted Shaw.

‘I usually get in at seven but Shrimp’s had his own keys for years. Drops his catch early if that’s how the tides run. Bream, Lemon Sole, a few crabs, lobster, eel.’

‘So this is his catch – in the bins?’

Cobley nodded, a hand covering his eyes.

‘Tell me about
Shrimp
,’ said Shaw, emphasizing the affectionate diminutive.

Cobley needed a bit more time to pull himself together so they went outside into the yard. There was a small patch of garden, and a stone seat sequined with shells. Cobley turned down a cigarette from Valentine but said he could murder a coffee from the café next door: cappuccino with an extra shot, nutmeg not chocolate. So much, thought Shaw, for the simple old-fashioned village fishmonger.

Henry ‘Shrimp’ Davies, they were told, was a fisherman, born and bred in the Burn Valley. He lived in a cottage in Docking – one of the inland villages where property prices were less eye-watering than the Burnhams – although he often slept with his boat down at Brancaster Staithe: a fifteen-footer, which provided him with a decent living, as it had his father. He drank in the Railway at Docking, lived alone, ex-Merchant Navy. A dog called Penny had once been his constant companion. His age was a secret he’d never divulged, according to Cobley. Stature alone made it difficult to guess.

‘I’d say the wrong side of sixty,’ said the fishmonger. ‘Strong as a horse, mind. But yeah – I know for a fact he supplied my father back in the early seventies. Then he went in the Merchant. They’ll have the facts, I guess.’

‘Girlfriends?’ asked Valentine.

‘Not really. Shy type – all right chatting with his mates on the dock, but otherwise he’d just clam up. One or two of the younger lads said he’d been spotted in Lynn, near the docks, in the pubs. Well – I guess that’s shorthand for them all being down there. Fishing doesn’t leave you a lot of time for picking up girls. They tend to take the more direct route …’

‘Prostitutes?’ asked Shaw. ‘Boys or girls?’

Cobley held up both hands. ‘Girls. I’m just saying you wouldn’t go down there otherwise. So that’s my guess. I can give you some names for the other lads. They’re a bit wilder. Shrimp tagged along.’

‘So, we’re saying he kept himself to himself,’ said Valentine, cheerfully churning out the usual cliché. Further evidence that other people led lives as dull as his was always welcome, even if there were hints here that something more interesting might lie beneath the surface. He tried to imagine the hulking Shrimp Davies slipping into one of the street corner pubs in Lynn’s red light district.

‘And he delivered to you – what, daily, weekly?’ asked Shaw. The detective was having trouble concentrating because the smell of fish – especially fresh fish – always held a hint of iron. It was odd that cold blood seemed more pungent than hot.

‘Well, you can’t really deal with the sea like that, Inspector. If it’s blowing they won’t go out. But most days in summer he’d leave two or three of those oil drums just inside the shop. There’s ice in the fridge boxes and he’d chuck a bit in to keep it all fresh. That was it. And the samphire, of course – a drumfull in season.’

Valentine carried on asking questions but Shaw returned to the shop. The pathologist, Justina Kazimeirz, lay half inside the glass counter, just one toe on the ground, reaching in to examine the victim’s skin in situ. She was currently brushing his thin hair with a fine-tooth comb, edging anything lodged between the follicles into a small glass dish. Shaw’s arrival did not divert her from the task.

Shaw, on his haunches, studied Davies’ face. The paleness of death was not quite complete, so that there was a rustic echo in his complexion of a life spent in the elements, at sea, or on a beach, running cod on a line.

Eventually disentangling herself from the counter, Kazimeirz slipped a muslin face mask down to her chest. She wore a head-lamp and a complete forensic white suit. For a moment the heavy Polish features were animated by genuine pleasure in seeing the DI, and Shaw caught a hint of the beautiful girl she once must have been. Then, like a digital image reloading, her face emptied of feeling.

‘Shaw,’ she said. ‘I think there is one question for which you seek an answer,’ she added, a hand to her back. ‘The clothes?’

She beckoned Shaw closer, so that he was on one side of the glass counter front and she was on the other, her head-light picking out the wound on the chest.

‘A point-blank shot,’ she said. ‘Residue on the skin here …’ She used a metal stylus to tease at the torn flesh. Shaw made himself focus on the point, reminding himself that the best chance he had of catching this man’s killer was to use his body as evidence.

‘At this range you’d expect fibres of the shirt, coat, whatever he was wearing, caught in the wound,’ said Kazimeirz. ‘But it is clean. Totally. I think at this point, when the shot is fired, he was naked.’

Outside they could hear the murmur of the crowd which had gathered beyond the scene-of-crime tapes. A single laugh was followed by a sudden hush of respect.

‘Tom tells me there are bloodstains out in the back alley by a van? The back of the skull shows bruising, and two wounds. One is a glancing blow, the other smashed the skull. Certainly enough to lead to unconsciousness – even for a man of this strength.’

‘So he was unconscious when the shot was fired?’

‘Perhaps. I think he gets out of the van, goes about his work, the blow is delivered, he falls, the second blow knocks him out. Or – and this I prefer – this first blow is not enough. There is a scuffle, perhaps he fights back. Only then does the second blow end it. The clothes are removed. Then a single shot to finish it.’

She stood back, evaluating the body. ‘But the nakedness is the key, yes?’

‘Locard’s Principle,’ said Shaw.

Kazimeirz shrugged but it was difficult to see any other reason why the victim had been stripped of his clothes. Locard’s Principle of
exchange
was the basis of forensic science. Every killer took evidence away from a crime scene, and left evidence behind. There was a swap – between killer and victim, or between killer and crime scene. Destroy the clothes and you radically reduce the chances of leaving behind trace evidence on the material. The killer, or killers, knew they had to manhandle Davies, so they took his clothes off, probably using gloves. By now those clothes would be ashes.

‘They took their troubles,’ said the pathologist, mildly mangling her adopted language. ‘Perhaps, too, there was blood. Not just his blood. In the fight he may have wounded them. This too could have been on his clothes.’

‘Professionals,’ said Shaw. A turf war over samphire, with locals like Shrimp Davies taking on London-backed hoods like John Jack Stepney. Which could mean Davies was not just a victim, but a killer. He certainly had the strength to deliver the devastating blow which had cleaved the skull of the man on Mitchell’s Bank. Was this his personal pay-off? And all for a slightly salty sea asparagus? No, not just samphire – next year protection money, perhaps, then slot machines, drugs, contraband. None of which helped Shaw answer the pivotal question: what was the connection – if any – between the murders and the ransacking of Burnham Marsh?

‘One mistake,’ said Kazimeirz, smiling. ‘I think he – she – they, used a silencer on the gun.’

‘Why is that a mistake?’

‘It can reduce the speed of the bullet.’

She knelt again, beside the glass. ‘One shot, through the heart, point blank. They hold the victim down on the floor – a hard floor, cement or brick – planning to collect the bullet, or what is left of the bullet. Two mistakes then: they use a silencer, which slows the bullet, and they underestimate this man. He has a mighty chest. The bullet hits the ribs, loses speed, hits the spine, it lodges. There is no exit wound, Shaw. This is a big mistake because we have a bullet. We will have the bullet, once I open his chest. Then, perhaps, you can find the gun.’