Death's Door (22 page)

The pool was crowded, inflatables clashing, children toppling off airbeds, balls being lobbed into screeching clusters of school friends. There was no shade except a single slash across the blue water – the silhouette of the high diving board. A grass perimeter was crowded too, this time with sunbathers, older teenagers, young adults. A cluster of toddlers with armband floats were being shepherded along the poolside and Robinson gently cleared a way forward with the calm assurance of an adult confident in the company of children.

Three sides of the pool were open, with the perimeter wall providing a windbreak. The fourth side was changing rooms. There was a single-storey café built into the perimeter wall – a long glass window displaying a rack of ice-cream flavours. Robinson went in through a side door and emerged with a cafetiere on a tray and three large cups.

‘I wanted to talk about Marianne,’ said Shaw. ‘But mostly about your brother-in-law, Joe.’

She didn’t look at him, but at the children in the shallow end. It struck Shaw that this woman, childless, spent much of her life with kids. He wondered if she’d tried for children with her husband Aidan. Ruth smiled, cradling the coffee. Shaw was struck that someone so benign, the word was difficult to avoid – wholesome – could also hint at something else, something slightly darker, because there was a calculating facet to her stillness: a stillness so like her husband’s. She looked up at the sky where a line of geese were heading out to the marshes.

‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Why would you be interested in Joe?’

Shaw ignored the question. ‘Your sister said, in her original statement back in 1994, that she’d planned to go out to East Hills that day with a friend, Julie Carstairs. But that, we now know, is a lie. Julie didn’t know she was going out that day. Why would Marianne tell that lie?’

‘I loved my sister very much, Inspector. But I don’t think I ever understood her. I don’t know why she told that lie. She told lots. I think she thought it was one of the privileges of beauty.’ She held one hand down on the table top with the other as if it might float away. Her voice was very light, lighter than air, and musical.

‘We think she met someone out on the island – a lover,’ said Shaw. ‘And we think there’s a good chance she was being blackmailed by White – the lifeguard who was murdered. Or, possibly, White
was
her lover.’

Ruth’s eyes were small and quick and they were on Shaw’s now, or glancing, sideways, at Valentine. ‘You don’t think Marianne was the killer, surely . . .’

‘No. But someone killed White. Which was good news for Marianne.’ Shaw let the espresso slip down his throat, following it quickly with the tap water. ‘Do you think Joe knew what was going on – that Marianne was playing the field?’ Shaw noted that despite the calm exterior the colour had drained from the woman’s face. He wondered if she really didn’t know about her husband and Marianne Osbourne. Could such secrets survive in a small town?

‘Marianne told him later about the others,’ she said. ‘Once they were married, once Tilly was born. She was proud of it – the lovers. I always thought that was a calculated cruelty because she didn’t have to tell him, did she? She made out that she wanted total honesty. I think
that
was a lie.’

‘But Joe might have known at the time?’ pressed Shaw, aware she hadn’t answered his question.

‘Yes. I think Marianne was torn – she wanted secret lovers, but she wanted people to know. Well, most of all she wanted me to know.’

‘Why did she want you to know about her success with men?’ Shaw asked.

‘Because it was a competition she could win. I was the clever one. I was the better swimmer, although Marianne was good, very good. But swimming was Mum’s passion and so we were close. That left Dad. She wanted his love, his affection, and she got it. And somehow she turned that idea – that she could compete for affection – into competing for sex. I was a bit bookish, shy. So she told me in her letters about the boyfriends. Not everything, but enough. She lied to Dad, said it was all just a kiss and a cuddle. So I guess that’s why she lied about that day, so he wouldn’t cause a fuss.’

‘Swimming was a big part of Marianne’s life?’ said Shaw.

‘Before East Hills – after that I don’t think I ever saw her in the water again.’

‘Anyone ever swim out to East Hills?’ He’d been saving the question. Robinson’s reaction was half-puzzlement, half-understanding.

She looked out over the pool. ‘It’s been done. Childish, really,’ She tugged at the tracksuit collar. ‘But when you’re young you never think you’re going to die.’

‘You’ve done it – swum out and back?’

‘No. We’d go one way – back, usually. It’s very difficult to go there and back because of the tides. So we’d all go out on the boat and whoever was up for it would leave their stuff for us to bring back. I did it once; I’d have been sixteen. No lifeguard back then so that made things easier. It’s actually pretty scary. We’d have a word with the boatman because they always check the tickets, to make sure they’re not leaving someone out there.’

Another lie, this time Tug Coyle’s.

‘What about the rip-tide?’

‘Golden rule: never swim against the tide. You have to go with it. The trick is to swim out, away from the island towards the north-east, and then catch the current back towards the main beach at Wells. So maybe half a mile out, a bit more, then all the way in. Mile and a half to two miles in total. It’s a challenge.’

‘And Joe – he doesn’t look like he could swim a length,’ said Shaw, smiling, looking out over the water, proud of the way he’d constructed the interview in reverse, so that the crucial question came last.

‘Joe was one of the best,’ she said. ‘Champion here – age of fourteen, fifteen. Long-distance freestyle. Sickly kid – really bad. Asthma and stuff. But that’s how some people react, isn’t it? They’re kind of aggressively fit, to compensate. He’s skinny, not much muscle, but it’s stamina you need and guts. That’s Joe. I think he did it a few times.’

TWENTY-ONE

S
haw had the whole team assembled beneath the cool shade of the cedar tree, the midday heat penetrating only in a scatter of sunspots on the beaten grass. A thick cable of PC wires, taped together, had been slung out through one of the stone arrow-slit windows of the Warrenner’s House to the mobile incident room. The temperature back in the metal box was 110 Fahreneheit and still rising. Twine had two nests of desks set out in the shade, a Perspex information board covered in SOC shots from Osbourne’s bedroom and Arthur Patch’s house, plus a poster from the original East Hills inquiry showing Shane White’s handsome, if forgettable, face.

Overhead, ash drifted from the woods above The Circle. Another fire had sprung up, sparked by the gas explosion, as the fire brigade had feared. It had been doused, but the woods were still thick with clouds of acrid fumes from the smouldering pine trees. The drifting embers had kindled at least one other blaze – over the hill, deeper in the woods, beyond the reach of the fire brigade’s hoses. The council beaters had been sent in, the workmen in dayglo jackets picking up gear and clothing from an open lorry parked on the narrow lane which led up to The Circle from Creake village. Under the cedar tree, inside the thick walls of the medieval ruin, the air was breathable enough. But they could all taste it, despite the thick, dark coffee from the St James’ mobile canteen: a bitter burnt essence of pine needles on the lips and tongue.

The team had been told the result of the East Hills mass screening, or rather, the lack of a result. They all knew the inquiry was in trouble. So Shaw had called them together to tell them that it was time to refocus. They had three days – just – to find the East Hills killer. Their prime suspect was now Joe Osbourne.

‘We need to drill down on this guy,’ said Shaw. ‘I want to know everything about him and I want to put pressure on his alibi – sorry,
alibis
– until they crack. Where was he when Shane White died? Where was he when his wife died? Where was he when Patch died?’

Drill down
– it was one of Shaw’s favourite phrases, and seemed to encapsulate his own particular brand of intellectual precision.

Shaw pinned a picture of Osbourne to the board. ‘Joe has motive, he had opportunity, he had means, and we now know that two years after the killing it was his habit to always carry a knife. In 1994 he said he was in his father’s locksmith’s shop all day. He’d been out the back in the workshop. His father had manned the counter. His father is now dead. On the day his wife died he says he was in the same lock-up. No customers till nearly noon, and that was someone he didn’t know looking for electric time locks which Osbourne doesn’t sell. The earliest time we can place him in the workshop is at 3.15 p.m. when a uniformed officer from Wells told him his wife was dead. So, as an alibi it makes threadbare look like thick pile. Plus, we know he was capable of swimming back from East Hills. In fact, he might even have managed it both ways – or he could have got a free ride out on the ferry from Tug Coyle. Were they friends, maybe? Eventually they’d be family.’

Shaw searched the faces amongst the fragmented shadows of the cedar tree. ‘George and I will interview Joe Osbourne now. Let’s get down to Wells to the locksmiths. If Joe’s our man then he wasn’t at the shop that afternoon in 1994, and he wasn’t there on the day his wife died sixteen years later, unless she was dead before he left for work. See what the other shop owners know in that street – what the routine is. Where does he go for lunch? Marianne doesn’t sound to me like a dutiful sandwich-maker. And we’re told they never met in the day, even though they worked less than a few streets apart. Get on to Swansea and find out what Joe’s driven in the past as well – he was eighteen at the time of East Hills. Did he have a motorbike? A car? If Patch died because he knew something about that day then there’s a good chance it was something to do with a vehicle. Let’s find out what vehicle we’re dealing with.’

Shaw put his hands together as if in prayer and touched the tip of each index finger to his lips. ‘That’s a thought: Ruth Robinson reckons that if you swam to the mainland from East Hills the only way to do it and live to tell the tale is to go out, then come back with the tide to the main beach. It’s late evening on a hot August day so you can wander around a bit in your trunks, but pretty soon you’ll stand out.’

‘Unless you had a vehicle ready, or you could make a call, get help?’ said Campbell. ‘Or walk back into town, but then you would stand out.’

‘There’s the big beach shop out there, behind the woods,’ offered Jackie Lau. ‘If you had cash you could buy shorts, a T-shirt, then get a bus, or call a cab, or walk. Key question: was it planned?’

‘OK, let’s think all that through,’ said Shaw. ‘But it was eighteen years ago. I’m more interested in kicking the tyres on Osbourne’s alibi for this Friday, the day his wife died and the day Patch was murdered. If Osbourne is our killer then either he stopped at The Row, at Patch’s house, on the way down to Wells, or came back to the village. Again, let’s check out his transport options. If he’s on the British motorbike someone will have heard it – you can hardly miss it.’

They left Twine to organize a DNA swab off Joe Osbourne after their interview. Shaw wasn’t even going to ask O’Hare to OK the costs of that. This was still Shaw’s inquiry, and he could authorize expenditure under £5,000 without going up the line of command.

Out on The Circle a marked police car was parked outside No. 5. The porch of the house was crowded with bouquets and wreaths, dominated by a single bunch of sunflowers. Shaw looked at the card and saw they were from Kelly’s, the undertakers, Ella Assisi’s signature scrawled across an embossed card.
Best Wishes.

Again, thought Shaw, a curious lack of love.

Inside the house, Joe Osborne stood in the hallway. ‘What’s this about?’ he said.

His fair hair was unkempt and his hands, slender, almost feminine, hung by his sides, smudged with oil.

‘A few questions,’ said Shaw. ‘Routine. There’s been some developments.’

Osborne looked into the front room, then towards the bedroom, as if trapped in his own house.

‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He looked at his feet; his shoulders slumped.

Shaw waited. ‘There’s a workshop,’ volunteered Osborne. ‘Down the garden, we can go there. I often go there.’

A picket fence just two feet high separated the back gardens of No. 5, and the Robinson’s next door at No. 6, which was mostly chicken-run. The Osbourne’s was dominated by the allotment vegetables and a patch of rough grass, leading to a wooden workshop – almost the width of the garden, with just a narrow alley left to a gate which led out to the pine woods.

One of the padlocks on the workshop was proving difficult to open and the frustration seemed to be too much for Osbourne. He dropped his hands, eyes closed, as if trying to hold himself together. He tried again, and the lock gave. Inside, the workshop was a surprise – more a study or a den. Books lined one wall; there was a leather battered armchair in one corner, a gas heater for a kettle, a digital radio, a desk with pencils neatly lined up beside a mug. There was a workbench too, and Osborne took the wooden seat beside it. As he sat he slipped an inhaler out of his pocket and took two surreptitious breaths.

‘What developments?’ he asked.

Shaw told him about the explosion at Arthur Patch’s house, the traces of cyanide in the old man’s blood, his tenuous link to the East Hills murder. Then he told him that they now thought the East Hills killer might not be amongst the thirty-five men on the island that afternoon in 1994.

Did he know Patch? Did he ever use the little car park by the quayside?

Osbourne laughed. ‘Everyone knew Arthur. Bit of a character. He was in that caravan, or sat outside it, every working day of his life. ’Course I knew him. Never needed to park though – always had the bike. We have deliveries but I know the wardens and they turn a blind eye for twenty minutes, so no, I never used the car park.’

‘Mr Osbourne,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ve also discovered some new information about Marianne, about the day she was out on East Hills. I’m afraid she didn’t tell the truth – not the whole truth – about that day.’