[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (31 page)

‘We’re in triple time,’ said Birley, and as if to prove the point the moon rose rapidly, care of a celestial props department, towards the stars. Cars, caravans and camper vans began to fill the wide expanse of tarmac, directed into line by Day-Glo clad officers with reflective bats – the narrow lanes marked in giant letters: A, B, C to K, L, M.

‘Here she is …’ said Birley, tapping the screen with his biro.

The left-hand side of the screen had remained black, Stygian, with just a faint reflection of the speeding moon. It churned white now as a large ship’s stern came into view, ropes thrown from steel crow’s nests to port and starboard. Exhaust fumes, rising from the car decks, made it appear the ship was boiling on the inside, its heated guts seeping out into the cool night air.

HGVs first, the ship began to disembowel itself, until the line of vehicles became simply small cars, the faces of excited travellers peering out at a foreign quayside.

Birley noticed Shaw for the first time. ‘Sir. Dockside, Santander, night before last. Interpol released it to us an hour ago. You need to watch here …’

At the roll-on roll-off exit there were two gangplanks, metallic covered walkways, disgorging people. Birley scaled back the fast-forward to x2. One line carried rucksacks and climbers’ sticks, the other comprised a stream of men and women in the corporate livery of the ferry company, neat uniforms or overalls emblazoned with a dolphin motif.

Birley keyed a precise digital time into the frame finder on screen and they watched the crew file past until the automatic stop facility froze the image: then, defining a small rectangle with a cursor Birley magnified the image. ‘That’s him.’

The only crewman with a hoody and a pair of silver-white trainers. ‘Watch carefully, this is a bit of a three-card trick which I suspect he’s done before …’

The crew snaked their way around the waiting line of cars towards a one-storey building beyond which waited a coach.

‘This is Crew Alpha, just off a three-day stint, so they’re heading home after briefly checking out with customs and border security. All except our friend here …’

The single-file crew line began to coalesce into small groups, chatting, hugging, excitedly discussing plans for leave. Ahead of them the doors of the single-story reception building had opened and a uniformed police officer stood waiting. ‘Hoody’, a hundred yards back, stooped to tie loose shoelaces until he was last in the line, then, with purposeful steps, he slipped to one side between two large shipping containers.

The video stuck, then buzzed, before cutting out.

‘That’s it. The customs staff on the main gate watch this stuff live, especially during embarkation. At least that’s the drill. This time they spotted our friend and sent out a plain-clothed guard, who located him hiding in a large waste bin, where he was detained by two police officers. Interviewed on site at 20.35 hours, Spanish time, last night. This is the mug shot.’

It was Javi Copon. The jawline looked different; tauter, as if he was determined not to show any emotion other than inner strength to the camera.

‘They interviewed him for sixty-five minutes but got nothing. The crew was dragged back off their courtesy bus, but they all claimed that they thought he was a deckhand, and they change every crossing, so nobody thought an alarm needed to be raised. Copon was arrested and put in a cell in the reception block awaiting re-interview by immigration officials. The block has three cells. When they went back for him at 23.30 hours he’d gone, a hole kicked through the partition, the window to the next cell off its hinges. They closed the port for two hours but there was no sign of him; by which time the unloading lorries had all gone through the gate. Their guess is he had a mate on board, an HGV driver. Anyway, long and short of it is, he’s gone.’

The team seemed to let out a collective sigh. The inquiry’s big breakthrough, the arrest of Nano Heaney, had opened up the case like a magic key. They now knew that while Dr Gokak Roy was guilty of illegal euthanasia in the cases of the six Parkwood Springs victims, Javi Copon had brutally murdered Ruby Bright, Dr Roy himself – and had attempted to kill Heaney. It was all very well knowing what had happened, but the public and the chief constable wanted someone to pay. Heaney’s appearance in court, due in ten days, would spark a media circus, as her legal team sought to portray her as a principled campaigner for the right to die. The case itself, destined for the Old Bailey, could make legal history. But what Shaw’s team wanted, no,
needed
, was to put Javi Copon in the dock: a cold-blooded killer who might have been drawn to ending the lives of those in pain on a point of principle, but had soon found himself beguiled by the fortune that could be made.

‘We need to find him,’ said Shaw, simply.

‘We don’t know if his family is aware he’s back in Spain,’ offered Twine. ‘I’ve got the local police to watch their house at Zarautz. But he can’t be that stupid, especially now he knows the police are on his trail.’

‘I’ll try the Home Office,’ said Shaw. ‘We need to pull strings, apply pressure. The Spanish need to know what this man did: extortion, murder by knife, strangulation. I don’t want Madrid thinking we’re tracking down some kind of angel, a man who brought peace to the troubled and infirm. We’ve got this close, we need to lay a hand on him. We
will
lay a hand on him.’

Out the window Shaw caught sight of the Cut, the distant surf line of the sea. ‘Let’s remind Madrid he’s a surfhead too. They can alert Lisbon. Let’s have them scouring the Atlantic beaches.’

‘The bank’s come through, sir,’ added Twine, the Montblanc poised over a list of figures. ‘Copon had a hire car out on the day of the Walsingham attack. He used a bank in Cromer to clear out the Causeway Trust’s current surplus of sixty-two thousand pounds. All in fifties. The Met put a round-robin out at mainline currency exchange points and one at Paddington said they’d done a sterling to euro transaction for fifteen thousand pounds. So he’s got resources. Can’t help thinking he’s got something specific in mind, why change that large a sum?’

‘Pay off the HGV driver?’ suggested Birley. ‘Buy himself a ticket that gets him further away.’

‘We lose him now, we’ll never get him,’ said DC Lau. ‘It’s not about money. He’s got what it takes to disappear: a language he can use anywhere in the world.’ Lau was first-generation British-Asian, armed with at least three useful languages, not including immaculate English. ‘The girlfriend’s made it clear he doesn’t need a passport anyway. He’s got friends on the ships, in the union, so he can come and go. South America, the Philippines, North Africa, Mexico; he leaves Spain undetected, he’s a new man. An innocent man.’

Shaw closed the door of his office and put a call into the Home Office. Then he rang a former colleague from New Scotland Yard now at Interpol in Brussels.

As he waited for the call to be put through, he picked up a lurid seaside postcard lying on his desktop.

A slogan in blue read: BUDE FROM THE BREAKWATER.

He’d rung Julia Fortis after hearing Nano Heaney’s confession and told her he would not need to use the Coldshaw letter in the on-going inquiry. The postcard had arrived three days later. A neat hand in blue ink said simply: ‘A break with Mum. She loves the place. The job’s mine pending the court case, so we’ll see. Local barefoot ski club needs new members! Best. J.’

He finished his calls, adding one, with the chief constable’s blessing, to ACPO – the chief constables’ organization – requesting that their international secretary ring Madrid to put extra pressure on the senior officers in north Spain.

It was all he could do. It wasn’t, unfortunately, going to be enough.

The final call made he sat looking out over the rooftops, the window ledge crowded with dusty pigeons.

Valentine, knotting a tie, appeared at the door. ‘Peter. If you want to go it’s time.’

Shaw had put the Porsche through the St James’ car wash and was admiring the reflection of his charcoal grey suit in the paintwork when he heard his name called: Tom Hadden stood at the door of the Ark, one hand beckoning them inside.

‘Peter, George. A few loose ends. And maybe, a new beginning …’

In the centre of the old nave of the Ark stood the hospital drip stand retrieved from 32 Hartington Street, bagged in cellophane and labelled as a forensic exhibit. From a metal filing cabinet Hadden produced another bagged item, a hard plastic paint gun.

‘We needed to cross-match the prints on the gun with Parry’s, which was fine. Positive. There’s no doubt he pulled the trigger.’

He slid the cellophane off the drip stand and showed them the small aluminium tap which had been used to administer the lethal drug.

‘There was a print on this tap, a nice clear crisp one. The tap is lodged in the “on” position, by the way. We could surmise, although it would only be a surmise, that this print belongs to the person who precipitated the death of the last of the Parkwood Six victims, by allowing pentobarbital to flow into their bloodstream … You turn this tap, walk away, and your patient is dead in twenty-five minutes.

‘The hand that turned this tap, gentlemen, was Nano Heaney’s. We took her print under warrant when she was admitted to intensive care at the QE2. There’s no doubt, I’m afraid.’

Which, subtly, changed everything. Shaw still hoped that one day a court would deal with Javi Copon. Apportioning guilt, or blame, in the six Parkwood Springs’ killings required the wisdom of Solomon. He’d always imagined Copon as the enforcer, Dr Roy as the technician, capable of the coldest of cold-blooded killing. And Nano Heaney? He’d seen her as aloof, the creative force, striving for what she thought was merciful, working in the background to provide organization and finance. She’d denied ever being in the house at all. The fact that she’d been there, at the moment of death, transformed the crime.

FORTY-SIX

N
ano Heaney had been transferred overnight from the QE2 hospital at Lynn to a private clinic near Sandringham. A prominent, wealthy campaigner for the legalization of euthanasia had stepped forward, publicly, to pay the bill for her care. The police were secretly delighted to be offered a chance to increase security around Heaney, who had been arrested and charged in connection with the six Parkwood Springs deaths. A large crowd had mounted a vigil of support at Lynn from the moment the story broke, occasionally taunted by Pro-Life counter protestors. Fleet Street had, largely, portrayed Heaney as a hero, who’d tried to bring peace to tortured souls, her good intentions corrupted by Dr Roy and Javi Copon: a view reinforced by casual racism. The quality press had devoted feature pages to the problems faced by doctors in the wake of the Shipman scandal, too nervous of prosecution to provide the kind of palliative care which had allowed so many in the past to die peacefully in their sleep.

Shaw let the Porsche swing past the photographers at the gates of Orchid Lodge Hospital, and Valentine adjusted his tie for the TV cameras. The BBC news that morning on Radio 4 had suggested that there was now a majority in the House of Commons, across all parties, for a change in legislation to approve euthanasia and assisted dying. There was also growing support to enact, immediately, changes to the law suggested after Shipman’s arrest which would create a new post – of Medical Examiner, a kind of investigative coroner’s officer. An un-named source in Downing Street had indicated that a vote might take place in the new year. The case of Nano Heaney was cited, and indeed credited, with sparking a wider public debate. The BBC’s
Moral Maze
would tackle the subject in its next edition.

Shaw and Valentine had interviewed Heaney twice under caution at the QE2, and established a clear picture of her role in the six Parkwood Springs deaths. She had never been to Marsh House, she had never been to Hartington Street. She had helped Dr Roy and Javi Copon identify possible candidates for euthanasia: those in chronic pain or mental anguish. She had never, personally, approached patients. She denied, point-blank, that any other health care officials were involved in the conspiracy. Her share of the financial proceeds had been transferred to the Causeway Trust. The price of euthanasia, in each case, had been set after a discussion with the patient and reflected their resources. However, in no case was it less than £9,000. In several cases, including Beatty Hood’s, it was in excess of £80,000. The victims were assured, Heaney said, that most of the proceeds would be used by the Causeway Trust to campaign for a change in British law.

Heaney had been allocated a room on the first floor, decked out with flowers, with a view over Castle Rising woods. A heart monitor beeped as they entered. Heaney herself was sitting up, cushioned by pillows, a laptop open. The duvet cover was littered with cards and letters, and a complete set of daily newspapers.

‘Shaw, Valentine …’

Shaw noted ice white pajamas, with thin blue stripes. Six days of medication had reduced her weight, so that her bones looked heavier, as if her skin was slightly wasted.

‘I always saw you as a NHS supporter, a stalwart …’ said Shaw, his eyes scanning the room: the coffee table with fresh fruit, a glass cafetière, an Indian rug, the faint echo of classical Musak.

‘The law needs to change, Shaw. The NHS is standing in the way, it represents the Establishment’s red line, across which we cannot step. The private sector’s got a lot to offer in radical, innovative procedures.’

‘Lucrative procedures,’ offered Shaw, taking a seat. ‘Not for your personal gain, for sure. But it was for the campaign, the cause. So it is difficult to argue that you did not profit at all …’

A silence followed. ‘Are we under caution?’ she asked. ‘The lawyers are downstairs in the conference room. A statement’s being drafted on today’s news from Parliament. I should ask for a representative to be present.’

According to that morning’s
Daily Telegraph
a London law practice had offered to act for Heaney, pro bono.

‘I just wanted to ask a question,’ said Shaw, as she reached for a bedside phone. ‘I wondered, really, if it was straightforward perjury, or if there was a degree of self-delusion, or even
clinical
delusion. My money, for what it is worth, is on a straightforward lie.’