[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (18 page)

‘If you’ve secreted the chains about your person, perhaps you’d let me add time and date to this as it may be my last. This is about Beatty Hood, of course. Not an unexpected visit.’

The sketch was in watercolour washes, broad free strokes of green and blue. The sky, equally uninhibited, showed a summer chef’s hat cumulus, billowing up into the stratosphere.

‘It wasn’t about her, no,’ Shaw replied. ‘It was about Ruby Bright. But if you feel the need to confess … You knew Beatty Hood?’

‘Yes, of course, I knew Beatty. In
her
youth she was a bit of a smasher, between you and I. Art school, the Slade, I think. She was good, very good. Her and Ruby were great friends – companions really, although it sounds old fashioned now, but that was it. Husbands dead, but they had each other. Odd, actually, because we all had something in common. Only children. And what that does is, I suspect, make you relate to friends. You end up surrounded by people you can actually love or admire for no other reason than themselves. It’s odd, isn’t it, that as a society we attack so many prejudices – colour, sex, age. But we still think it’s necessary to value those who share our closest DNA. What’s so
admirable
about that? You tell me, because I don’t know, and never have. What’s the Luther King quote: “The content of their characters”. I’m getting a bit tired of that speech, but that bit’s worth the preachy exhortation of the rest.’

Jessop licked his lips. ‘Anyway, it was only a matter of time before you discovered that Beatty, like poor Ruby, left me a bequest. No?’

‘We are exploring her financial background.’

‘Ah. Well, there we are. I could have volunteered the information, but what the hell.

‘A small lump sum. Five hundred pounds. Is that motive enough? I put it in the bank by the way, that’s how dull my life’s become. I can’t even spend a windfall.’

He feigned a sudden look of horror. ‘Of course. This makes me a
serial killer
to boot – preying on old ladies and then murdering them for their pots of gold. Fame at last indeed!’

‘You were disappointed with the five hundred?’ asked Shaw. He hadn’t tracked out to the sea’s edge to question Jessop, quite the opposite, but something about the lost life and lonely death of Beatty Hood seemed to hold the echo of a greater truth. Perhaps it was her death that held the key to the mystery of Marsh House.

‘Disappointed? Not really. She left her house to some charity she supported. That was all she had, so I can’t argue with her priorities. The Causeway Trust, I think – the name stuck because it’s another one of those awful euphemisms: a narrow bridge between life and death, perhaps?

‘She was a good woman,’ Jessop went on. ‘Given the pain of her last few years, she bore them well. She went blind, you’ll know that, and it’s a cruel fate for the painter – the loss of light must be difficult to take, day after day. But Beatty was always optimistic, alive to the moment. She spent a lot of time at the Phoenix, mainly with one or two of the sculptors, but form – in the three-dimensional sense – is no match for colour.’ He looked out to sea. ‘To the outside world she showed a brave face.’

For a minute he worked quickly with the wet paint he had on a tin palette. Satisfied, he stood back, staring into the middle distance. ‘There was a little cash left over after my bequest, I recall, which caused some excitement because most of it went on some memorial to mark her family grave. It was partly her own stone work. Quite a thing, I’m told. That’s out at Old Hunstanton, in the village. St Mary the Virgin. I’ve never bothered to visit since. I’m not a dutiful bunch of flowers kind of man, really. I went to the funeral but there’s no stone at that point, is there, just a hole in the ground.

‘There’s a James Thurber cartoon I’m very fond of …’ He turned to Shaw then, the face relaxed, honest, and open. ‘Thurber – you know Thurber?’

Shaw nodded.

‘He sketched this graveyard, glimpsed through railings, the pavement crowded with determined men and women walking to the left, to the right, clutching shopping bags, briefcases, pushing prams. The caption read simply:
Destinations.
Devastating, really.’

‘I didn’t come to ask you questions about Beatty Hood,’ said Shaw. ‘I brought good news. You said you lived a life without alibis. For a while I thought that was very suspicious because it was as if you were saying don’t even try to find out if I’m telling the truth. And then I thought it can’t be true, because if you come here every day, or nearly every day, at the same “atmospheric” moment, then someone knows, someone sees. And I was right.’

Looking south they could see the line of high ground that marked the apron of the hill country inland. Along this modest cliff-line they could see at least two churches in the far distance, and occasional roofs and chimneys and one tower: modern, in brick, a curved observation window set just below a party-hat roof.

‘I asked the local copper – PC Curtis – to see if he could find you that elusive alibi. He’s one of those people who walk around as if they’re under water, unhurried, but very thorough.

‘For the past ten years you’ve been out here mimicking John Sell Cotman, while the man in that house’ – he pointed to the distant tower – ‘has watched you, in between tracking the flights of migrant birds at dusk. On a landscape like this you need landmarks, especially if you’re chronicling the movement of creatures as mobile as the oystercatcher. You’re a landmark, Mr Jessop. Curious, isn’t it, that you thought you were a man with no alibis and actually you turn out to be virtually on the map …’

Shaw produced a small tube of watercolour paint: sepia, in the Winsor & Newton ‘student’ range, branded under the name of ‘Cotman’.

‘A small gift from me. Our birdwatcher was particularly interested in the reaction of his beloved waders to the supermoon. He noted your arrival that night, the night Ruby died, and indeed your departure, setting out west towards Lynn. A perfect alibi, after all.’

Jessop accepted the paint with a small theatrical bow.

‘Good news indeed. Can you keep a secret, Inspector?’

‘Depends.’

‘Well. If you can’t I’ll deny I ever said it – don’t suppose we’re bugged out here. Unless you’ve got young PC Curtis hiding in the reeds. No. I think I’m pretty safe. You see, I
did
know Ruby intended to cut me out of the will. I can say that now, of course. But at the time I thought it best to forget.’

‘She told you?’

‘Yes. The last time we met, down by the waterside below Marsh House. Straight to my face, too. She had guts, Ruby, you’d have to give her that. She asked Javi Copon to give us some space, so he walked off to smoke in the dunes. She said I seemed to be pretty “thick” with the Spaniard. That’s a good old-fashioned notion – “thick”, like we were ingredients in a stew. I said we shared politics, ideas … ideals, even. She said I could enjoy my ideals without the benefit of her money. Fifty thousand – she told me the exact amount just to rub it in. Never said another word. I presumed she’d got round to changing the will – but clearly not.’

‘I think you owe PC Curtis a present,’ observed Shaw. ‘Given that without your alibi you’d be an irresistible prime suspect, especially in the light of that little confession, on or off the record. He lives along at Wells, so perhaps a seascape, or even one of the sketches from here …’

They both considered the wide horizon.

‘It’s nearly sunset and I need to work,’ said Jessop. ‘I feel inspired, you see – energized, even. It’s not the money, which is all the sweeter for knowing Ruby didn’t want me to have it. It’s the thought I might not leave anything worthy behind. So if you’ll excuse me …’

Shaw walked away, inland, thinking about Beatty Hood, the artist plunged, eventually, into a world of gathering shadows, but living life to the full. Despite that upbeat picture, Jessop’s verdict hung in Shaw’s mind:
To the outside world she showed a brave face.

TWENTY-THREE

J
an Clay had never worried about fashion, but she knew she had a sense of style. At five foot five, with a boyish close-cut blonde hairstyle, she’d always favoured trousers, rarely dresses, unless she was aiming for a ‘glam’ effect. She’d been able to turn heads when she wanted to, but she liked the anonymity a uniform brought. She felt compact, fit, but most of all at ease, as if she’d simply been awarded the insignia after a lifetime of working in CID. Which, in an odd way, was part of the truth. The first time she’d set the cap on her head it felt like she’d already deserved its aura of calm authority. The lace-up black leather shoes, with the low heels, gave her an intense sensation of being, literally, grounded.

So when DS Chalker had told her to write a five-hundred-word analysis of the trainers they’d picked off telegraph wires in the last week, she’d thought the request typically crass; she was a woman: it was apparently axiomatic that she could write about shoes. If there was anyone in the shoe squad qualified for the job it was PC Wolinski, who she’d spotted one evening on the Saturday Market in a complete designer outfit plus Ray-Bans. Even on patrol he wore black leather brogues which must have cost a week’s wages. His haircut, while regulation, was finely layered, with a hint of an asymmetric cut.

But the assignment was Jan’s, care of DS Chalker’s prejudices, but also by way of punishment, for tying up forensics to examine the trainers recovered from the Lister Tunnel. Chalker had said it was pig’s blood, and it was. Let that be a lesson to them all.

The trainers, boots and shoes were all stored beneath St James’ in the old magazine chambers built by the military during the Napoleonic Wars. Police headquarters had been constructed over the ruins of the old town walls and a labyrinth of subterranean tunnels and vaults. Brick, curved, like London tube tunnels. There were six large chambers in total, three in daily use as the force’s records unit. Chamber one, once a series of metal-partitioned Victorian cells, was now used as a store for traffic division’s signage, but was otherwise empty. Jan requisitioned the keys from the duty officer and ferried all the shoes into the cellar in cardboard boxes. It took her twenty minutes to re-stack a set of
Road Closed
signs and the force’s supply of pedestrian barriers, clearing a space twenty foot square.

Locking the door she drew an outline in chalk of the town perimeter, adding the Cut and main railway line and the inner ring road. The floor was brick too, the chalk lines wobbly, so she was relieved nobody could inspect her cartography.

Each pair of shoes had an attached label indicating where they had been found. Using an A-Z map where her local knowledge failed, she placed each pair out on the chalk map until all were in position, right down to the blood-spattered specimens from the Lister Tunnel. Then she got a chair from the record office and sat looking north, the town in front of her, the sea to her right.

She checked her watch; she’d been given two hours to write the report, then she was due back with the squad in the North End. Abandoning the chair, notebook in hand, she began to pace the map. It took her less than five minutes to discern one clear pattern: the South End was characterized by cheap trainers and out-of-date styles – Karrimor, Lonsdale, Slazenger, Everlast, Dunlop. Her iPhone gave a snapshot of a few prices – £22.99, £19.99 – the cheapest at £9.99.

The reverse was true of the North End, where most pairs fell into the categories of expensive and nearly-new. Top of the range was a pair of Lanvin crystal-embellished leather sneakers, which new cost a whopping £505. There were two pairs of Balenciaga leather and fabric trainers, retail price £276. Other upmarket brands included Nike Air Max, Asos Domino, Vans SK8 and Ash. Furthermore, all the customized trainers were found in the North End – NikEid, Kapow, Vans R, Converse. (Unfortunately, none of them customized to the point of carrying their owner’s names.)

The shoe squad was due to clear the shoe tree Valentine had reported on the Springs, but Jan doubted they would in any material way alter the clear pattern she’d identified. She used her laptop to knock out a summary report, based on an initial hypothesis, that whatever lay behind the outbreak of flying kicks had something to do with class. What jarred with this analysis was the geography: most of the expensive, new shoes had been found flung over wires in the North End and the docks, a traditional working class area; while those in the south were cheap and worn, despite the fact that most were found in the leafy suburbs beyond the town walls.

Jan concluded with a possible explanation: the trainers marked ‘incursions’ by gang members into ‘hostile territory’ controlled by rival gangs. Was this what lay behind the jigsaw of footwear? A gang war? Or at least skirmishes. She printed out a copy of her report at the duty desk, pocketed it, and took a squad car out to the North End, where she found the shoe squad having a coffee break outside the North End Café, a greasy spoon famous – or notorious – for its duck egg sandwiches. The cherry picker stood idle, the council driver at the wheel, reading his latest issue of
Mayfair.

Jan was twenty feet away when DS Chalker announced her arrival. ‘Here she is, lads. Feminism’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. The woman who single-handedly tracked down the phantom rasher slayer of Lynn!’

The squad, five strong, grinned, although she noted that Wolinski had the good grace to look at his highly polished black patent shoes.

Chalker gave her Hadden’s SOCO report, formally identifying the blood stains as porcine, and got her a cup of tea – a real cup, with a saucer, not a mug like all the rest.

‘Hard luck, love. Let’s hope the chief constable doesn’t spot the four hundred and thirty pound bill for spectrograph analysis, eh?’ said Chalker, adjusting the tea cup just so.

The DS didn’t say another word, but limited himself to whistling his signature tune: ‘Young Girl, Get Out Of My Life’
.

Jan gave him her report. ‘If you’re happy, it needs a signature.’

As he read it, Jan watched his lips move.

‘Right. So it’s a pissing contest between kids. The rich go north and piss on lampposts, the poor go south and piss on theirs.’ He made eye contact with Jan – a rare glint of respect evident – and his voice was warmer, cosier. ‘Good job. I’ll get it to his office tonight. Any luck we’ll be back doing something useful by Monday.’ He beamed at his foot soldiers. ‘She’s done us a favour, boys. Someone’s going to have to buy her a drink. It might even be me.’