Death's Door (12 page)

Mrs Assisi began to brush the dead woman’s hair. ‘This is what she really hated. Working here. She used to sneak in and out as if anyone was bothered what she did. Brought a packed lunch so she didn’t have to go out and be seen.’ She stood, took a step back, to look at her work: ‘Mind you, she was good at it.’ She began to cry. It was so unexpected Valentine wondered if it was staged. ‘It’s just the thought,’she said, looking at the corpse lying in its coffin, ‘that she’ll be here, won’t she? One day soon, when you’ve finished, when the coroner’s finished. And then I’ll have to do this, for her.’

TEN

T
hey drove up to The Circle beside the field of sunflowers, the heads closing, unruffled by any wind. The incident room stood on the green like a gypsy caravan – next to the St James’ mobile canteen, an awning stretched out over a few plastic chairs, a hatch open, light spilling out, one of the St James’ canteen staff handing out tea in plastic cups to some of the door-to-door team.
CSI Miami
it wasn’t – and Shaw was briefly thankful that they’d kept the lid on publicity. The last thing the new chief constable wanted was his big media national paper splash overshadowed by a picture of his ace detectives clustered around what appeared to be a lay-by greasy spoon.

Inside the caravan unit there was a single interview room, a toilet and an office: three cramped desks, three computers online, with the West Norfolk’s logo as screen saver. The temperature had to be eighty degrees Fahrenheit, despite lengthening evening shadows. DC Paul Twine was at one of the desks, in shirtsleeves, a desktop fan almost in his face. Twine was in expensive casuals: Fat Face jeans, open-necked shirt from Next, leather shoes with a light tan, buffed not polished. Twine might be graduate fast-track entry, but he was smart enough to know he was twenty years short of the kind of street nous you needed to be a first-class copper. His strong suit was complex organization, management multitasking. Shaw was aware of his weak suit: that he was desperate to be good at things he wasn’t good at.

As Shaw jumped aboard the unit rocked on its springs. ‘This isn’t perfect, is it Paul? A tin box in August. We need to do something . . .’

DC Fiona Campbell was at one of the other desks, talking into a pair of headphones. She finished the call and stood up – all six foot of her, her neck slightly bent to avoid a collision with the tin roof. ‘I’ve sent details on the cyanide capsule to the Home Office, MoD, Department of Health and Interpol,’ she said. ‘We might get something. Tom’s analysed the rubber casing and reckons we’re looking at pre-1960. Maybe even older. And probably not British. You go online you can buy this stuff . . . Mostly former Soviet block – Poland, Byelorussia, Baltic states. 1940s – early fifties. As I say – all Soviet manufactured. It’s an interesting market.’

‘Paul, let’s talk outside,’ said Shaw. ‘We need a decent incident room – not an oven on wheels.’ They stood in the shadow of the canteen awning watching two uniformed PCs re-interviewing the elderly man who kept pigeons at No. 2.

Twine gave Shaw a sheet of paper – the top copy, off a wad of twenty or more. ‘This is the first return off the door-to-door. We’re going back to take statements, but this is a decent summary.’

Shaw took the paper but didn’t look at it. ‘We’ve done the obvious?’

‘None of the East Hills witnesses lives on The Circle,’ said Twine, ‘other than our victim. None of them are related to anyone who lives on The Circle, except the victim’s husband and daughter. None of them were interviewed in the original investigation.’

Shaw caught Valentine’s eye. Leaving the funeral parlour they’d discussed the news that the dead woman’s brother in law, Aidan Robinson, had been a secret lover back in 1994. If he wasn’t on the list of evacuees he could hardly be their killer. But that didn’t mean he and Marianne hadn’t been blackmailed by Shane White. They needed to talk to Aidan Robinson – and quickly.

‘And we’ve run all the neighbours through the system,’ said Twine. ‘In fact, all the residents of The Circle. Nothing screams out. Old bloke at No. 4 was done for assault in 1976 – domestic dispute.’

‘Prison?’ asked Valentine.

Twine speed-read a sheaf of A4 in his hand. ‘No. Six months suspended. I’ve got someone looking out the case notes.’ He rearranged the papers. ‘Woman at No. 2 was done for reckless driving in 2001. £1,000 fine plus a ban. And the victim’s daughter, Teresa, aka Tilly. She was arrested last year in London on the anti-war march.’

‘Charged?’ asked Shaw, trying to recall the news bulletin pictures of the crowds clashing in Trafalgar Square.

‘No. Processed at Bethnal Green, released under caution. No further action. I can get the papers up from the Met?’

‘Right little Rosa Luxembourg our Tilly,’ said Shaw, shaking his head. But the details were hardly relevant. That was another piece of advice he’d taken to heart from his father: that one of the tricks with a big inquiry was to limit its extent, to take rational decisions, and to resist the temptation to follow every avenue. In the end too many investigations suffocated under their own weight.

‘OK Paul, good work. We’re pretty much stymied now until we get the DNA results – that’s going to be Monday. There’s not a lot we can do for now, and there’s no money for overtime, and certainly none for double time on Sunday. But I’ve got funding for one duty officer, so I’d like you to man the incident room just in case. That suit you?’

‘Sure.’

‘Any thoughts?’

Twine took a lungful of air and thought about what to say. It was a skill Valentine admired in others because he pretty much said what he thought without hesitation.

‘Well, given the blank on the door-to-door its odds on whoever was with Osbourne when she died came in via the woods,’ said Twine. ‘Tom found some pine needles on the bedroom floor too; it’s all in the initial forensics report which is up on the secure website. Each of The Circle’s gardens has got a back gate. The woods lead off up into the hills then down to some old estate – there’s a tumbledown wall once you get to the boundary. We’ve had a search team do the first hundred yard apron. There’s plenty of paths. Too dry for prints. So if someone came to see the victim from the woods, and left by the woods, they’d just disappear. If you want to take a good look up there Marianne Osbourne’s brother-in-law – at No. 6 – is your man.’

‘Aidan Robinson?’ asked Shaw.

‘Yeah. He played here as a kid; he’s always lived in the house. Grew up here. Knows every inch of the place – reckons himself as a bit of a countryman. He’s at home with the sister now looking after Tilly. Plus, he says he saw someone, someone suspicious, out the back about a fortnight ago. ‘Bout noon. He works on a poultry farm up the road but comes home for lunch. Not much of a description: medium height, build. Maybe fair. Says he watched him for ten minutes standing on the edge of the woods, looking down on the houses.’

‘Right,’ said Shaw. ‘First, we need an incident room we can breathe in.’

He led the way fifty yards over the green to the English Heritage ruin. The information board announced:

WARRENER’S LODGE

This twelfth century building is now unique in Britain – the only surviving example of a warrener’s lodge. The Romans brought rabbits to England, but it was not until the Norman’s organized artificial warrens that they were farmed. This lodge was home to an official appointed by the Cluniac Monastery at Thetford; the first recorded holder of the office was Roger de Lacy in 1176. He would have spent time here, but more probably appointed under-warreners to oversee his livestock. The warrener dug tunnels, often lined with brick or stone, for the rabbits, fed them in winter, and provided cover in snow by cutting timber and gorse. Rabbits were valued for their sweet flesh, especially in winter, and their fur. The lodge has arrow-slit windows and high walls because bands of poachers, especially in times of famine, would ‘walk the night’, often attacking warreners and their officials in a desperate attempt to feed themselves and their families. Some estates kept warreners into the 1950s. But the popularity of rabbit as food fell, largely due to their enforced inclusion in diets during the war, and the terrible scourge of myxymitosi, a disease introduced to reduce rabbit populations. Originally the lodge would have stood on a wide downland, dominating the landscape and providing visual confirmation that this was the lord’s property.

A metal sign hung on the kissing-gate, saying, simply: ENTRY FREE.

Shaw went in, through the overgrown plot and then under the arch, and Valentine and Twine followed. They stood together, looking up at tiny patches of purple-blue sky, seen through the branches of the cedar. Twine stopped at the door, examining the intricate stone-carved lintel. The air was deliciously cool, the heat kept back by the three-foot wide stonewalls and the multiple layered roofs provided by the cedar. It was a stone larder.

Shaw walked to what was left of a staircase and climbed three steps to touch a metal grill which barred the way up. He turned on the step and surveyed the interior of the lodge. The grass had been recently cut so the space was neat, contained, in deep shadow. ‘This’ll do us,’ he said. ‘Paul, ring St James’ – we just need to run the mobile unit to the gate, then a cable in for the computers and the kettle. We can’t work in that sauna. Drag the desks and chairs in. OK, let’s jump to it.’

DC Campbell appeared at the Norman archway. ‘Sir. Tom’s up at the house – he’s ready to let the team go. Wants a word first – just routine. Nothing spectacular.’ She thought about that, anxious to make clear that she hadn’t made the judgement. ‘His words,’ she added.

‘I’m on my way,’ said Shaw. ‘And Fiona, can you pop into the sister’s house? I need to speak to the husband, Aidan Robinson.’ Shaw checked his watch. ‘I’ll be with him in half an hour. Fix it, please.’

Shaw checked dispositions with Twine: the team could knock off, back on site at six thirty Monday. In the meantime everyone was on call. Shaw would get any news from the lab via Tom Hadden. They’d have Chris Roundhay’s result first, probably within twenty-four hours. If it was positive then they’d have to call everyone into St James’ for a briefing; pick up Roundhay, get him charged – maybe a holding count, not murder. But Shaw said he thought that was a long shot. He thought Roundhay had told the truth. If the result on Roundhay was negative they’d wait for the full mass screening report, which would probably land Monday morning. Any earlier Shaw would contact Twine, then they’d work out the next move.

Valentine watched his superior officer walk away towards the victim’s house. Apparently, Valentine had been dismissed too – just another part of the team. He had a grudging admiration for Shaw’s abilities as a copper, but he thought now, and not for the first time, that a quick booster module in man management wouldn’t be a total waste of time. He was as keen to know what Tom Hadden had to say as Shaw was, and as the unit’s lynchpin DS it would have been pretty efficient for him to be included in the briefing. Besides, he was reluctant to face the rest of the weekend alone. He enjoyed his own company, but only by choice.

Shaw found Hadden in Marianne Osbourne’s bedroom. With the body gone the room had lost its tension. It was like a room in a museum, thought Shaw. English interiors: 1970–2000. Again Shaw was struck by the innate sadness of the house, especially this room. Perhaps, he thought, it was the view that did it: the distant sunflowers, their faces closed now, the pine woods, dark and still. All that beauty, and freedom, outside, but the windows painted shut. ‘Are all the windows stuck shut?’ he asked, fighting the urge to walk over and force the frame.

‘Yeah. She had hay fever, allergies. Husband says that’s how she dealt with it. Wouldn’t have worked, but there you are. We’re all creatures of habit.’ Hadden had fled London and a career at the Home Office to escape a messy failed marriage. He had a capacity to forgive the faults of others.

‘Did she have a desk anywhere?’ asked Shaw. Hadden was on his knees, lifting fibres from the carpet.

‘Dressing table doubled-up. We’re running through the computer memory now down at The Ark. Fiona’s given us some keyword targets to track on the cyanide but there’s nothing yet. And we’ve done the obvious,’ he added.

‘And?’ asked Shaw, letting his eye roll quickly over the empty bed, stripped down to the mattress.

‘Nothing yet. We’ve collected emails off the East Hills survivors as they came through the Ark – work, home, the lot. No matches with anything on her hard drive or in her email account. Most of the traffic is with a mail-order cosmetics company in Lincoln.’

‘Fingerprints?’

Hadden sat back on his haunches. He closed his eyes – a tic – which indicated he was thinking carefully about the reply. ‘Family mostly – a few we can’t identify but we’re still on to the daughter’s friends. She’s next door by the way with the aunt – dad went to work this morning, slept all afternoon.’

‘
Work?
’

‘That’s how it takes some people, Peter. He’ll probably carry on for a month, a year, even two. Then one day he’ll wake up and he won’t know how to tie his laces up. Then he’ll find himself sitting on the beach, but he won’t remember how he got there. Then he’ll fall to pieces. Doesn’t mean he’s a hard bastard, or that he didn’t love her.’

It was quite a speech, the longest he’d ever heard from Tom Hadden.

Shaw thought about the locked-up locksmiths shop in Wells. When they’d driven past it didn’t look like the dust had been disturbed for a week, let alone a few hours. If he hadn’t gone to work, where had he gone?

‘On the kiss, by the way,’ said Hadden. ‘I couldn’t get any material out of the moisture left on the glass. So no chance of a DNA profile. But, for what it’s worth, I’d say we’re looking at a man’s lips. Adult. Height – if he didn’t bend down, or stand on tiptoe – somewhere between five nine and six foot.’

They walked back out into the evening air, Hadden carrying a cardboard box of files and papers. He put it down on the low front wall. ‘This was on the floor behind the dressing table.’ The CSI man pulled out a manila A4 folder marked: EXAMS. Inside were random certificates: GCSEs, a diploma awarded by Avon for a course on cosmetic science, registration forms for her work at the funeral parlour, an application form – untouched – for a residential course on skin care. Shaw put the file back and picked out another marked CV. With the documents and newspaper cuttings was a plastic see-through holder with a DVD inside marked SHOOTS.