[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (16 page)

‘Mr Keyes, hello. Thanks for talking to me. Javi tells me you were friends with Ruby. Why did you like her?’

Shaw was pretty convinced Keyes had heard the question and he saw the light of understanding in his pale green eyes; but then, convulsively, the old man clasped the binoculars and raised them to his eyes, scanning the horizon: once to the west, once to the east, then once more back to the west.

‘The light’s good,’ he said, ‘low. So you can see shadows. I see a lot of seals at this hour, they break the surface.’

‘Is that what you’re looking for, seals?’

Shaw saw that Keyes’ lips were dry, cracked, like the survivor his father had once been. There was a suppressed tension in Keyes’ watching, the hint of active service, rather than an idle hobby.

‘Did Ruby like looking out to sea?’

‘Yes, yes. That’s it, you’ve got it. The others laugh – I know that, I see that. She had those eyes that get sharper with age. A precision, visually, that was quite extraordinary. Yes. Typically, she was gifted at that, telling people what was good about age, old age. This …’

He spread his hands out to indicate the width of the horizon, but somehow also encompassed his own personal predicament.

‘She’d keep a weather eye for me. She loved being outside, down near the beach. It was the landscape, the art of it; the seascape as well. If she saw a vessel from the terrace she’d shout – yes, even if they told her not to. She called me Mr Christian; that was our joke, from the Mutiny on the
Bounty
. No one else remembers.’

His bony fingers tightened on the brass rail and he pulled the chair closer to the edge, looking down on to the empty terrace below.

‘What was the name again?’ asked Keyes.

‘Shaw. Peter Shaw. I live on the beach to the east so I’m always looking out to sea too.’

He’d dropped the binoculars. ‘I’m on watch.’

‘Me too. I’m a lifeboat man. A pilot, actually, on the hovercraft.’

‘Good God. Well done. Well done.’

He lifted the binoculars and again swept west, east, west.

‘There. Coaster. See it? Fifteen miles, NNE.’ He seemed excited, revitalized, but Shaw also glimpsed a genuine fear in his eyes which he thought was rare in those of such an age, who often seemed to know that death was inevitable and so life had lost its terrors. Here was a facet of the Ancient Mariner’s dilemma which was subtly horrific; that the fear would be endless, because the look-out was immortal.

‘I’ve only got the one good eye,’ said Shaw, squinting. He could see the ship, a stern bridge, flat deck, probably a small container ship bound for Harwich or Felixstowe. Over a distance of more than twenty feet, having two eyes rather than one provided no actual advantage at all to anyone. Eyepatched pirates proved the point.

Keyes studied
his
face then, which was a strange reversal of roles, because the human face was Shaw’s area of expertise. ‘Yes, blind in one eye, I see that now.’ Without warning the concentration seemed to snap, so that Keyes fussed with the binoculars, the tartan rug, his cuffs, as if he’d been overwhelmed by instant senility.

‘Don’t forget the ship,’ said Shaw, pointing out.

As Keyes relocated the vessel, Shaw drew closer. ‘Did you know Ruby’s friend Beatty, Beatty Hood? Javi, the nurse, said you’d remembered something about Beatty.’

‘Hood was bad, not as bad as Live Bait. HMS
Hood
– they never did know why she blew up like that. Sometimes they show it on TV – a clip they call it. A clip; sometimes modern life is so cruel, isn’t it? Flippant. There she is, the
Hood
, and then she’s lost, in a single plume of water. What, two seconds? 1,415 dead. It’s callous, isn’t it, they shouldn’t do that, not with relatives watching – children, even. Still a mystery. Live Bait wasn’t a mystery. It was a scandal. Idiots thought it was a mine she’d hit. When the ship went, she rolled right over, turned turtle, with men running down the hull, like human ants. Not a sight you forget, can forget. A stricken ship is a savage sight.’

Shaw wondered then if he could see it as if he was there, if he’d taken his father’s memories and made them his own. It was a kind of haunting, because his father lived on, here at Brancaster, a century after the submarine attack. It struck Shaw that this was a form of immortality, that a memory could be instilled in a family and allowed to run on down the years, so that a single image, as of the sailors running across the turning hull of the overturned ship, would be as vivid now as it was a century earlier. Odd that a man with Alzheimer’s should be a vital component in the triumph of memory.

Keyes lifted the glasses but then brought them down swiftly. ‘Beatty – Ruby’s friend Beatty? She wasn’t a resident, you know that? No, no. Just a visitor. She died, last year, year before that? No more. That was a blow for Ruby. You won’t know this yet but life stops when you’ve got no one to tell; no one to
receive
. We’re like radios, I think – transmitting and receiving, but if there’s just you, what’s the point? It’s not death, but it’s the beginning. You see something, hear something, and the joy of it rises up and then … dissipates, like that …’ He raised a finger towards the large aluminium pipe which expelled fumes from the kitchens. ‘Hot air. Even if you do tell someone, a nurse, a doctor, they don’t listen. It’s not deliberate, is it? It’s just they’ve got their own people still. They’re not on your wavelength. They’re not alone.’

Using his hand, he tried to get closer to the brass rail, but the wheelchair was hard against the edge. Looking back Shaw could see Copon in the upstairs lounge, dispensing pills from a trolley.

Keyes locked his elbows into position on the arms of the chair and then clamped the binoculars into his eye sockets.

Shaw could see tears on his face, running down, as if the binoculars were weeping. Shaw waited, strangely confident that this tortured man wanted to tell him something if he could just keep in check the anxiety which drove him to look, constantly, to the sea.

‘She’s gone,’ said Keyes, his shoulders slumping at last, the effort of concentration still holding his neat, naval features at attention.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, fidgeting with the binoculars. ‘I can’t get my mind to work as it once did. I’ve enjoyed your visit. I’d ask your name, but I suspect you’ve told me already. But you came about Ruby – yes, of course. I told Javi, so I’ll tell you.’

Dragging his eyes from the sea he looked Shaw in the face. ‘Ruby said Beatty was murdered. The word she used – I’ll not forget it. That’s what she told me, Mr Shaw. And then she asked a curious question: “They killed her, Christian. But who can I tell?”’

TWENTY

T
he Shack
stood on the banks of the Fisher Fleet, a rickety hut built of recycled ships’ boards, with a flop-down counter and a few plastic chairs outside on the quayside. High tide; so the fleet jostled with trawlers, floating free of the muddy banks, a chaos of masts and rigging, hawsers, winches, sonar and radar. The dock road, jammed with lorries to take the morning’s catch, laid down a base soundtrack, as freezer units laboured to ice the fish. On the breeze Valentine detected the thin aroma of cold blood.

For the first time in thirty years Valentine could actually smell the Fisher Fleet; usually he successfully cut the stench with nicotine, the Silk Cut positioned directly under his narrow nose; a tactic so successful that he’d often been able to tackle a bacon sandwich as well as a cup of the Shack’s tepid, double-builder tea. He needed the tannin, after a night in which he inexplicably slept like a child, untroubled by either his illness, or the ham-fisted attempt to scare him off the deserted streets of the Springs
.

Gordon Lee, chief reporter with the
Lynn Express
, was sitting on one of the plastic chairs staring vacantly into his smartphone. Lee, a Londoner, had been part of the great sixties exodus from the East End; early fifties, bald, short, bustling, almost heroically awkward. As Valentine pulled up his own chair, Lee glanced up – a three second appraisal – and then returned to his mobile internet screen.

‘Given up the fags, then?’ he said.

‘All those years with the Royal Observer Corps not a waste, eh Gordon.’

Seagulls, in a screeching airborne bundle, descended on a trawler as its catch spilt from a net on to the deck.

‘I ain’t got a lot of time, George. Editor’s conference at ten thirty. The new bloke’s still keen. Jackson used to let us go get the stories, then we could have a conference to decide what to do with ’em. Teenage Boy Wonder wants it the other way round.’

‘How old is he really?’

Lee shrugged and picked his mug up from the gravel by his shoe. A man of annoying habits he proceeded to aspirate his tea, drinking it at the same time as drawing in the damp fishy air, creating a sustained slurp.

‘I don’t care. We just want him to win an award, then he can fuck off to Fleet Street, which will then gobble him up, and spit him back out to the provinces, where he will promptly become a cynical old hack like the rest of us.’

Valentine gave him a copy of the ESDA print-out of the imprint left on Ruby Bright’s blotter.

‘Right,’ said Lee, holding the A4 sheet as if it might be impregnated with a lethal poison. ‘I told you, George, on the blower. I’m a busy man. Have I come all the way out here for a pissing cup of tea to be asked the same question again?’

‘I just need to be sure, George. It’s press day, right? There aren’t going to be any surprises, are there? I wouldn’t like to read something you’d regret writing. Anyway, there’s been developments – I wouldn’t want you to miss the real story.’

Lee smiled, revealing wrecked teeth. ‘Look. She never sent me a letter, all right? Think about it. She was gonna be one hundred – big deal –
not
. These days, two a penny, George. Even you’ll make ninety, thanks to the marvels of modern science. I think she just planned to tip us off by letter, bit old-fashioned, but then she was born just after the First World War. But we were on to it and rang the home. The palace lines us up if there’s a message from Her Maj. We’d have contacted the home sometime last month, so I reckon she just binned the letter, or never wrote it.’

The reporter sucked some more air and tea through his thin moustache. ‘Why the long face?’

‘It was worth a try. We had hopes, Gordon. This is a tough one to crack. But that’s life. Anyway, there’s a suggestion, and you can use this but no names, not even police sources, agreed?’

He waited for Lee to nod.

‘There’s a
suggestion
that she knew a killer was about. That he’d struck before. We’re on to it, but it’s just one aspect of our wide-ranging inquiries etc., etc., etc.… ’

‘Serial killer, George? Still my beating heart.’

Lee had got his notebook out and actually licked his lips in anticipation. Shaw and Valentine had talked it through and decided that floating a serial killer story – especially one they could instantly dismiss as speculation – would gain the inquiry much needed attention. A high media profile would radically increase the likelihood a vital witness might step forward. They were setting up a hotline for information manned 24/7.

‘You can call it what you like, Gordon. We’ve got one murder. But you can speculate that we are looking at two other deaths.’

‘Two? At Marsh House?’

Valentine thought about that. ‘Linked to Marsh House, no more at this stage. Don’t go mad, Gordon. It’s not the Norfolk Ripper or anything.’

Lee wasn’t listening. ‘And this line, the other murders, that going public, is it?’

‘Nope. All yours, but as I said, no source please, otherwise your car will be unable to travel more than a hundred yards without attracting a speeding ticket.’

Valentine, bent double, dealt with a fresh bout of coughing, then ploughed on: ‘In fact,
you
won’t be able to go a hundred yards without getting a ticket. Just be aware that once you hit the streets all we are going to do is issue a brief line saying it’s pure speculation.’

‘But no denial?’

This time it was the reporter’s turn to wait for clear confirmation.

‘No denial, Gordon. Be careful about Marsh House, it’s owned by a corporation hiding behind a trust, and they can afford lawyers, Inns of Court lawyers. So be afraid.’

Lee rubbed his left cheek, as if trying to revive a stroke victim. ‘Why didn’t Bright tell someone what she knew?’ A light went on in the reporter’s eyes. ‘Oh I see, you think she told us. It would have been nice, George, but no.’

‘Perhaps she did tell someone. Maybe she told the wrong person.’ Valentine checked his mobile. ‘As lovely as this is, Gordon …’

‘Hold up, George. One good turn and all that, I’ve got something for you. Thing is … That’s what they say now, right?
Thing is
… We’ve been getting threatening phone calls in the newsroom. Some ice-cold nutcase saying that if this ‘World’ pilgrimage goes ahead as planned someone’s going to get hurt.’

Valentine sipped his tea. ‘Precise wording?’

‘Ah. Sore point. New office junior took the first one. He was on lunch duty so nobody else about. He’s got a 2.1 in Applied Mathematics apparently, but his Pitman 2000 is currently thirty-five words a minute. He took a full note, but it might as well be the Gettysburg Address.

‘Second time they got the news desk secretary, again at lunchtime, and she told him to ring back! Which is quite funny when you think about it. A bit like telling a bank robber to pop in next time the safe’s open.

‘Third call he got Eric Johns on the subs bench, what’s more he got him when he was awake. Eric wouldn’t know a news story if it bit him on the arse, but he’s still got one hundred and eighty-words-a-minute shorthand. He took a note and promised to pass it on. By this point I’m guessing chummy’s having second thoughts about the glamour associated with playing Deep Throat. But, listen up …’

Lee flipped open his notebook.

‘Eric’s description of the voice was pretty decisive,’ said Lee. ‘Calm, monotone, reading. A man certainly, but no way he could estimate the age beyond twenty plus, so not a kid. So this is verbatim …’ Lee filled his lungs. ‘Just get this down, all right?’ Then a pause: ‘“Pilgrims used to travel in groups for a good reason. Wolves, wild boar, outlaws, thieves, cutpurses. That was the good old days. This pilgrimage has gone back in time. They want to outlaw gays and lesbians, they want to make abortion murder. Well, if they want to live in the past they can have the full experience. They should travel in packs because the paths are dangerous. Who knows what lies in wait on the old ways? We – reborn as the Wolves – are waiting for them. We bring stones and knives and fire and retribution. We lie in wait.”’