[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (13 page)

Tiffany had a pair of the art shoes, green and gold, with a classic 1950s baseball design.

On the video screen they saw a young man walking down a sidewalk at night, a pair of Skewville 2D sneakers sticking out of his jeans back pocket. They watched him dash out into the street, retrieve the ‘shoes’, then – holding one in his left hand, one in his right – launch them expertly up and over the wires running to a set of traffic lights. Applause, off-screen, was combined with a few excited whoops.

The snippet of film brought a memory to Jan. Some nights, when George worked late, she’d walk along the river bank, then back through the graveyard of All Saints. Here, five minutes from the house on Greenland Street, lay Julie Valentine’s grave. She’d see, always, a shell or a stone perched, defying the laws of gravity, and she’d imagine George visiting the spot, to think perhaps, about the past and the future. The last time she’d been on a walk she’d moved his shell aside and put her own razorbill in its place. She thought now that this was like the trainers on wires, that she was claiming territory, or – at the very least – trying to make the point, even if only to herself, that her life was important.

1. 7.
   Murder:
   again, rare, but documented. Usually associated with gang warfare over territory. The victim was stripped of his – or her – trainers, which were often then smeared with blood, before being tossed over the wires as a warning and a statement of intent: this line will be defended
   .
   The NYPD shoe squad had five US documented cases of murder inquiries in which a so-called ‘flying kicks’ appeared as forensic evidence in subsequent proceedings. Interpol had two cases: one from Australia, one from Japan.
   

Jan shifted in her seat. She was still taking flak from Chalker and the squad for sending the Lister Tunnel trainers to Tom Hadden for analysis. When they were officially told the result – pig’s blood, no more – she’d be roundly ridiculed.

1. 8.
   Meme.
   ‘This,’ said Detective Reason, ‘is a bit like a gene. Your guy – that Richard Dawkins – he come up with this in
   The Selfish Gene
   which you all read about as much as we have back in Brooklyn.’
   

This time the laughter was genuine, spooking the crows to take to the sky in a grey, squawking, halo of wings from their roosting spot on Greyfriars Tower.

‘But the idea’s good enough. It’s a fad, right? Or a fashion. And it just moves about between people in their heads. And it changes –
mutates
, is what the psychologists say. There’s a line I remember from this report we got commissioned from Colombia. “They seem to suggest themselves to each other”. That’s good in there, ’cos people see the trainers on the wire and they think they’ll do that too. Maybe not for the same reason at all. But it marks the fact that they’re alive, that they’re here, now. And every time they walk under those trainers they think: “That’s me,” and, of course, it marks the passage of time – what they’ve done since. Their lives.’

SIXTEEN

T
he Phoenix artists’ cooperative, housed in a former Hanseatic warehouse on Lynn’s waterfront, boasted a facade of limestone blocks and the original thirteenth-century windows, from which hung painted banners proclaiming: Festival ’15
.
The Co-Op Café was on the ground floor, with tables outside, set between various metal and wooden artworks: a framework hung with aluminium fish, an oak totem pole decorated with Gothic gargoyle faces and a cane windmill, with coloured Picasso sails, which whirred in the stiff breeze off the distant North Sea. A visitors’ floating quay had been built at this point on the water, a hi-tech metallic construction which rose and fell with the tide, offering cheap berths for yachts and inshore cruisers plying the north Norfolk coast.

Most of the warehouse windows were open after a long day of August sunshine. Spools of jazz, a sudden blast of KLFM radio, the sound of a drill biting into wood, spilled out on to the quayside. Shaw, whose degree in art had embraced months of work in the studios at Southampton, caught the distinct edge of turpentine on the air and what he could only describe as the smell of fresh air indoors, the reek of the open-window workshop. Valentine cast a bleary eye over an A-board listing ‘participating artists’ in the annual summer open studio festival.

Plate-glass windows opened into a scrubbed brick atrium two storeys high. A woman in multi-coloured jeans and a T-shirt made a beeline for Shaw. Clean-limbed, with a wide mouth and a sinuous step, she got close before handing him a flyer.

‘For the festival …’ she said. Yet again, Shaw was struck by the ability of art to defy time, or perhaps the regenerative effects of any obsessive behaviour. At a distance of two feet he could see her skin, the crow’s feet and the thin grey roots to the ebullient hair.

Shaw had his warrant card out before she’d finished speaking. ‘Sorry. I’d love to. But we’re here on business, hoping to see Linas Jessop?’

A light went out in her eyes but she didn’t step back.

‘His studio’s not open today, but he might be in. Studio eight, top floor. If you have time do look in on some of the other artists. I’m Lee, studio three – it’s a video installation. I can offer tea too.’

She seemed to see Valentine for the first time. ‘You’ll struggle to get a cuppa out of Linas, unless he can deliver a jeremiad to go with it. Joyous welcomes aren’t his style. As I say – number eight – just seek out the sound of constant laughter …’

The old steps in the Phoenix had been replaced with steel staircases and glass walls, the plaster stripped from the medieval brick. The third floor lay directly beneath the original wooden hammer-beam roof, exposed and artfully lit. The doors to the studios stood open and as they passed they caught sight of the work within: a construction of wood and steel, a polished egg-like sculpture, a series of Rothkoesque block-colour oils.

Shaw’s mobile buzzed, signaling an incoming text.

‘Chief Constable,’ he said, showing Valentine the message.

Walsingham? Just had council CEO on the line – he says neither you or George attended the last meeting. DC Twine not adequate replacement. Do we still have our eye on the ball?
Joyce.

Shaw had sent Twine to represent CID at the council offices at Hunstanton, calculating that the clean-cut DC was the ideal stand-in for a hard-pressed superior officer. He’d been told to file a 1,000 word summary of the meeting to Valentine.

‘He does know this is a murder inquiry, right?’ asked Valentine. ‘For God’s sake, Peter. I could be dead in six months; I’m not wasting my time pushing a pen around. I’m a copper.’

‘I’ll sort it,’ said Shaw. ‘Send Twine’s report to me. I’ll make a few calls. It’s not a problem, George. Let’s get on.’ Valentine’s mood had been poor all day and Shaw guessed he was entering the next phase in his reaction to the diagnosis of lung cancer: anger.

Studio eight was very different from the rest; a carpenter’s workshop, with a series of drawing tables, framing squares, a heavy-duty guillotine, an industrial glasscutter. Against one wall stood timber and wood for picture frames and glass, while under the one, full-length window, finished work was neatly set on the floor: framed oils, sketches, prints, even a few photographs of the north Norfolk landscape.

Linas Jessop was in his fifties, lean, his jeans loose despite a leather belt. A shock of grey-streaked hair was combed back off his forehead like a Mohican. Most artists’ hands, in Shaw’s experience, were workmanlike, and Jessop’s were no exception, short, muscular, with a single Band Aid around his left-hand index finger.

Jessop sipped black coffee from a tin mug marked:
Je Suis Charlie.

‘How can I help?’ Even as he said it his eyes slipped away to a half-finished canvas. The mannerism was just a bit too smooth, Shaw felt, to indicate a genuine absence of stress, or even interest, in a visit from CID. Shaw felt a glimmer of optimism that at last they might make some real progress in the inquiry: was Linas Jessop their man?

It had been Ruby Bright’s solicitors, or more precisely her last will and testament, which had brought them to the artist’s studio. Shaw had a copy in his pocket, like an ace up the sleeve.

Shaw walked to one of the open dormer windows, looking out on the quayside, as a small coaster slid by on the Cut, its engines churning, trying to turn against the ebb to enter the Alexandra Docks. On a high tide the steel superstructure stood level with the window. It was like watching a block of flats slide past on invisible rails. Shaw noted a lookout on the exterior platform of the bridge, craning his neck to see the wharfside below.

‘Bad news, Mr Jessop,’ he said, his back to the witness but knowing Valentine would be noting how he reacted. ‘You were a friend of Ruby Bright’s, I’m told. You framed all her pictures – at least, I saw the Phoenix sticker on the back of the work.’

Jessop swilled coffee in a tin mug. ‘She’s dead. I heard, Inspector. The coast is a grapevine, if you take my meaning. The radio said there’d been a murder at Marsh House, but no name. I’m entitled to put two and two together, I take it?’

‘You don’t appear too upset at the news, sir,’ offered Valentine.

‘I’ve known Ruby for the best part of forty years. A good woman and a wealthy one. She married into the Bright haulage family. New money, well, Victorian new money, although they always claimed a tenuous link to Henry Bright and the Norfolk School; fifteenth cousin five times removed, that kind of thing. People think creativity is in the DNA. Hogwash, I’d say, but then my father was a bricklayer.’

The artist tipped his tin mug back so that they could see his throat, the skin stretched over a jagged Adam’s apple.

‘They collected art, Ruby and the family. I framed it. Sometimes we talked about art, Ruby and I. She had a good eye, especially for the landscapes.’

Valentine knew Shaw would pick that precise moment to tell Jessop the real reason they were in his studio, so he studied the man’s face, waiting to see the micro-emotions flood the nervous system, signifying what? Surprise, delight, guilt, avoidance?

‘She left you £50,000 in her will, sir. We thought you’d like to know.’

It was the closest thing they’d found to a motive so far. Uncovering the CCTV scam had simply cleared the picture, revealing a vicious calculated murder, and an unlikely victim. They were back to question one: why kill a centurion? The dull answer was money, even if it was often the right answer.

Even the smile, the flash of joy in the jaundiced eyes, was dulled by an almost instantaneous cynicism.

‘Christ. Fifty thousand – that would have actually been useful twenty years ago.’ He walked to a large deal cupboard and pulled out a draw, extracting a bottle of malt whiskey, a Talisker. He poured a slug into his empty mug.

‘How do you know what’s in her will, Inspector, if I may ask?’

‘Stapley and Howard solicitors were persuaded to share the details with us. Given Mrs Bright was murdered, and it’s difficult to see a motive for that crime beyond financial gain, they were most forthcoming on the details. It’s a lot of money. Why do you think she left it to you?’

‘I’m a suspect? How thrilling. I haven’t been anything important for years.’

Jessop drained the tin mug and re-filled it with a fresh slug. ‘I suspect she left me the money because she liked my work, although nobody else shared her judgment, and therefore I have to spend my time framing the art of others, which is a faintly degrading and damaging process, if lucrative. It earns me enough money to afford the rent here but leaves me little time to do my own work. That’s irony for you. She always said I shouldn’t give up. She envied talent, of course – a common failure amongst those who have none.’

‘Any of your work here?’ asked Valentine, catching Shaw’s eye and the slightest of nods, indicating that they’d give this interview the time it deserved. The more Jessop talked, the more he revealed.

On the way into Lynn, in the Porsche, Shaw had tried to dampen Valentine’s excitement. ‘Jessop can’t be that stupid,’ said Shaw. ‘She’s clearly been murdered, she’s got her head wrapped in a freezer bag. The first thing we’re going to look at is who gains. It’s him. So it’s crazy, unless he’s set himself up the mother of all alibis. Is he really going to kill her when he could wait a year and pick up the money when she finally dies a natural death in one of Marsh House’s plush armchairs? By the time you hit 100 your chances of being alive at your next birthday are less than fifty–fifty. All he had to do was wait.’

Then, parking on the wharfside, Shaw had got a second telephone call from Stapley & Howard. This time it was Jonathan Howard, the senior partner. He thought they should know he’d had a call from Mrs Bright, an old friend as well as a client, asking for an appointment to discuss
changing
her will. Howard had agreed to drive out to Marsh House. The appointment had been for three o’clock today.

Jessop had found a canvas, a wide seascape, under a winter sky. Shaw recognized with an almost visceral shock that it was precisely the view from the dunes behind his home, The Old Cottage at Hunstanton, looking across the Wash. Shaw’s educated eye noted the expertise in the brushwork, the brilliant attention to shade and colour, the sheer depth of space recreated on a two-dimensional canvas.

‘It’s good – isn’t it?’ he said to Jessop. For a moment the prickly exterior softened and the artist seemed overwhelmed, so that they shared a nanosecond of mutual respect, but then it was gone.

‘Yes, not bad. But as I said, times change, fashions go, fads arrive. I was out of kilter in 1960, never mind now. Most artists are in thrall to the trend, desperate to be part of a school, a movement, a generation. It goes with the territory, which doesn’t make it any less reprehensible.’

He poured himself more whiskey. ‘But back to Ruby. You think I killed her for money, eh? I’m a patient man, Inspector. Do you think I’d resist the temptation only to buckle on her one-hundredth bloody birthday?’