[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (4 page)

Marsh House’s driveway ended in a turning circle, surrounding a stone fountain depicting a dolphin, from which a dribble of water splashed into a mossy basin.

Valentine filled his lungs. ‘You know as well as I do this isn’t going to be a sodding murder. Some old dear will be dead at the bottom of a set of two steps and the house busy-body will have fingered a suitable villain. Motive? They’ve been bickering over the custard creams. It’s all they’ve got to think about, isn’t it? Food, and other peoples’ deaths. Takes their minds off their own.’

‘I think we should give PC Curtis the benefit, don’t you? Until proved otherwise.’

Valentine’s tendency to theorize on crime in the absence of evidence was just one of the aspects of being an ‘old-fashioned copper’ which tested Shaw’s patience.

‘You’re the boss,’ said the DS, stubbing one of his black slip-ons against the base of the fountain.

‘Yes, George. I am.’

A notice on the front door directed them to a side entrance, which lay down a short path behind a gaudy blue hydrangea, the blooms studded with mist drops. A glass porch held an entry phone and a security keypad, while overhead a remote-controlled camera chattered quietly, panning left and right, until it locked on Valentine.

‘You’ve scored, George. Big smile.’

The lock sprang with an audible release ten seconds before a woman appeared to greet them: dark suit, white blouse and a name badge which read: Julia Fortis: ADMINISTRATOR. Shaw estimated she was twenty-five, dressed like a fifty-year-old. The faux-tweed suit didn’t quite conceal the trim figure beneath. She had a silver brooch depicting lilies of the valley – symbols again, thought Shaw, this time of innocence.

‘Inspector,’ she said, offering Valentine her hand.

‘DS Valentine. This is DI Shaw. It’s an easy mistake to make,’ he added, smiling for the first time that day.

Shaw noted the briefest eye movement as she clocked his absent tie. Then she saw the mooneye, which seemed to unsettle her sufficiently to force a quick switch of attention back to Valentine, betraying a strange sensitivity for disability in a manager of a nursing home.

‘Sorry,’ she said, flustered. ‘It’s been a dreadful few hours …’ She waved a hand, the fingers shaking, although Shaw was pretty certain this little bit of theatre was pure am-dram, because there wasn’t a bead of sweat on her tanned, taut skin.

The hallway, dominated by a double sweep staircase, was decorated with purple and white balloons.

‘This was all for Ruby …’ Fortis’ eyes went down to the carpet, as if hiding an emotion. Loss, anger, irritation? There was something calculating in the soft green eyes when she did look up, as if the real her was simply looking out through someone else’s face.

‘Her party,’ offered Fortis.

‘One hundred today? Ruby …?’

‘Yes. Sorry – Ruby Bright. Our Ruby …’

They appeared to have become becalmed in the echoing hallway. ‘First thing,’ said Shaw, ‘no one leaves. Not until I say so – or DS Valentine does. OK. Absolutely nobody.’

‘Yes. I’ve spoken to the staff.’

‘How many staff?’ asked Valentine.

‘Eight. Nurses and catering.’

‘Cleaning staff?’ asked Shaw.

‘Not yet. They’re in at nine.’

‘Tell them not to touch anything. Keep them here, please, in the lobby, until our forensic team arrives. No work at all; no carpets, no floors, no bins, no washing up … Nothing,’ said Shaw, looking up the stairs to the first-floor landing.

‘And the rest of the residents are all accounted for?’ asked Valentine.

‘Yes. Nineteen in total. They’re all well, thank God.’

A sitting room had been cleared for a reception and a large iced cake stood in one corner on a gold disc: the lettering said ‘RUBY – A FINE CENTURY!’. There was a single bottle of champagne standing in a dry ice bucket.

French doors led out on to a terrace, slightly raised above a green lawn as unblemished as a snooker table. Shaw noted half-a-dozen discarded cigarette ends by a stone seat and an empty wine glass on a white-painted iron table. Several wicker reclining chairs stood on the stone patio, plus a large telescope with a tarpaulin cover and a fire pit full of damp ashes.

Dense sea mist lay over Brancaster Marsh, an expanse of reed infiltrated by channels which formed the watery maze between the house and the beach. On the map Shaw always thought the marsh looked like a cross section of the human brain. Into this wilderness ran a path of beaten bark between wooden boundary boards.

‘Someone pushed her wheelchair down this path,’ said Fortis, shivering now, without a coat, as the mist caressed her shoulders. ‘Ruby was still active and she could get around the house on the ground floor, on the lino and the parquet – but there’s no way she had the strength in her arms to use the path alone. Absolutely no way.’

She led the way into the mist for two hundred yards, each hand clutching opposite elbows. Ahead they could hear the open sea, still building towards high tide. The air was freighted with ozone, the scent of white water. The marsh channels were brim full, trickling and sighing, as the sea edged its way into pool after pool, with a gently rhythmic surge, as if the ocean had a pulse of its own. The path took an artistic, looping curve, then a double twist before decanting into a circular area marked by a set of three iron benches. Another telescope stood here, mounted on a concrete base.

‘Residents come here for the view,’ offered Fortis.

Valentine used his hand to wipe away a sheen of water droplets from his face. The damp seemed to reach down his throat and into his lungs, prompting a rib-wracking cough.

The viewing circle was slightly elevated above the marsh ahead, enough, in this flat world, to allow them to see over the blanket of mist, which hugged the earth. Ahead, like the distant rounded peaks of some fabulous mountain range, a line of humped-back dunes floated on a skein of fog. Also poking through stood a line of rotting wooden mooring posts, marking the passage of the main channel.

A sea breeze stirred and the pale disc of the sun broke through, lending a pink tint to this white world.

They could see Ruby Bright’s head and upper body about thirty yards ahead: a visual shock because Shaw, unforgivably, had presumed she’d drowned. He’d braced himself to find her corpse curled in a tidal pool, a nightdress tugging with the current. Or lying in a black muddy creek, the body half-submerged. But there she was, still in her wheelchair – the high metal back visible and catching the light – her back to the house, looking out to sea. The lower curve of the wheels and her body were lost in the mist. Beside her stood a partly disembodied police constable, visible above the belt, also looking seawards, the sudden glow of a mobile phone in his hand as if he was checking for a signal. The scene was oddly theatrical, as if the curtain had just gone up on an outdoor stage. The sun, brightening, began to burn off the mist as they watched, revealing with each passing second more of the chair, which was set slightly at an angle, so that Ruby’s head too was tilted to the right, like Christ’s on the cross. Wisps of shredded mist rose up, twisting in the sunlight.

The constable must have heard a noise because he turned, saw them watching, and began to pick his way back through the grass. They waited, and he didn’t hurry, which was impressive in itself. No more than twenty-five, his movements were nonetheless deliberate, measured, as if he moved underwater.

‘Sir. PC Curtis. I can give you what I’ve got, but frankly, I’d recommend you take a look first.’

Shaw led the way, the view widening, the sea filling more and more of the way ahead as the channel widened and the sun shone, until the thought surfaced that if he had to pick a place to die this might be a contender. It was an aspect of the coast, of this edge of England, that he’d never confronted before, that it might delineate the border between life and death. Some half remembered tale of mythology came to mind, of a boat being rowed away, carrying the dead to hell, or heaven.

Ten feet short he stopped to consider the victim from behind: the head tilted at perhaps ten degrees from the vertical, arms tied behind the back of the wheelchair with what looked like a dressing gown cord, knotted round the wrists. A baby-blue housecoat showed at her neck and there was a glimpse of a naked foot to the left. One hand showed a wedding ring, a gold charm bracelet and a bright pink charity band; and, vividly, in the loose skin below the elbow the little purple bruises of a series of injections. She might have been asleep, dreaming of her party cake, but for the ugly angle of the dangling foot. Her hair – fashioned into a tight helmet of crimped grey – seemed to glisten, reflecting the sky and the dancing sunlight, as if she might be wearing a shower cap.

Taking three steps past her, Shaw stopped and turned on his heel. Valentine held back, with PC Curtis. In the far distance Shaw could see Fortis, looking east towards Wells, as if she couldn’t bear to watch the moment.

Ruby Bright had most certainly been murdered. Her head was completely covered with a plastic bag, bunched below her right ear. The bag’s open edge was arterial red – zippered, like a freezer bag. Shaw was vividly reminded of a painting, not a subtle north Norfolk watercolour but Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
;
except that this tortured face was embellished with a pair of large, rather stylish glasses, the lenses still misted with what must have been Ruby Bright’s last breath.

FOUR

P
PC Jan Clay clung to the safety rail on the cherry picker as it rose in a series of heart-stopping judders towards the high telegraph wire. She’d been nominated for this role because, stupidly, she’d revealed a lingering anxiety over heights. As an aspect of the police force, this constant, laddish humour was beginning to wear her down. Not that she couldn’t cope; she’d been a policeman’s wife for twenty-one years, and played that secondary, supporting role, with aplomb. The police force was institutionally sexist, but she’d always seen that vice as a reflection of wider society. It wasn’t an excuse, but it was an explanation. Faced with prejudice, she’d fight back, but she was no whistle-blowing mole. Instead she’d developed a memory capable of coolly filing away slights and – especially – the patronizing tone of the middle-aged man. When the time came, she’d be happy to take a timely revenge. She was slightly disappointed, however, to find that DS Chalker, in charge of the shoe squad, was her principal protagonist.

‘Come on now, PPC Clay. Let’s see a smile on that pretty face.’

Chalker, thirty feet below her, beamed.

The hoist engine whirred, operated by a council workman in a Day-Glo jacket, who seemed to find the sight of an airborne woman police officer fabulously amusing.

Jan was in the narrow, enclosed ‘basket’ of the cherry picker. So far that morning the shoe quad had retrieved six pairs of shoes/trainers/boots from various locations across the North End, the network of terraced streets once home to the town’s fishing community, including the dock road leading down to the Fisher Fleet. None of the trainers were actually shop new, but several were high quality designer shoes which
could
have been resold, or passed on to new owners. There was one pair of boots, Army issue, according to PC Goldsmith, who was in the Territorials. All had been expertly lobbed over so-called telegraph wires, mostly phone company cables, and a few power lines. So far they didn’t have a single witness to the actual act itself, what DS Chalker, who had a way with words, referred to as ‘galosha tossing’, but which Jan knew the kids called ‘flying kicks’. The town had a network of CCTV cameras, but so far the budget allocated to the shoe squad did not stretch to having the tapes retrieved, or an officer detached to watch several hundred hours of tedious, indistinct footage.

This particular pair of trainers, now six feet from Jan’s grasp, had not been on their original list, but their location had been phoned in by a squad car. This pair was unique; in that the shoes weren’t hanging from telegraph wires, but from a power line slung through a road tunnel, which had once lit a series of overhead lights. The ‘tunnel’ itself ran under a railway bridge, was no longer than fifty yards, and was now largely disused, as it had been dug through a high embankment to provide access to Parkwood Springs – a Victorian suburb, now in various stages of dereliction. A skip, full of building waste, stood to one side in the shadows.

Jan’s grandmother, Iris, had been born and raised on what everyone called the Springs
.
An old manor house had once stood on the site, she’d told Jan many times, but all that was left was an old iron water-pump, the origin of the name. The old estate had found itself cut off from the town by the railway, the new Alexandra Dock and the muddy silted creek of the Crab Fleet. A Victorian speculator called Lister bought the land for thirty shillings (Iris’ version stipulated the precise amount, which Jan suspected was a fiction, designed to equate the hated entrepreneur with Judas Iscariot). Issuing shares in a private company, he raised the capital needed to tunnel through the great embankment and liberate the lucrative real estate beyond. A picture of the work in progress had hung in Iris’ front room: a wooden cradle holding up the earthern roof and track as half-naked Irish navies toiled below with picks. Once Lister had his access he applied for planning permission to build houses, complete with two corner pubs, two corner shops and other amenities. In an act of public charity he allocated one plot for a Methodist chapel, a gesture which earned him an alderman’s seat. Complete, the Springs
was a miniature walled city state: with one way in and one way out through its single gate, the Lister Tunnel.

For a while, as Iris grew up, got married, rented a house on the Springs and raised a family of her own, the neighbourhood thrived; the nearby docks providing enough jobs to pay the rents, which were set just below the level of those in the rest of town. The tunnel-back houses, fetid in summer, churned coal-smoke into the sky in winter in a doomed attempt to eradicate the damp. But the community had been close, safe and self-contained. Jan recalled the rent book in Iris’ kitchen: tea-stained, dog-eared, set always on the sideboard, held down by a glass paperweight, which kicked up a snow storm around a miniature church if you turned it upside down.