Death's Door (10 page)

‘And where does Marianne Osbourne fit into this scenario?’ asked Shaw.

Valentine didn’t answer; he was looking over Shaw’s shoulder, and a look of genuine horror was spreading over the DS’s narrow features. ‘You’re on parade,’ he said, ditching the cigarette.

Shaw turned to see the chief constable walking up the back street towards them.

‘Peter,’ he said, looking at Valentine. ‘Give us a second, George.’

Dismissed, Valentine went back into The Ark.

Brendan O’Hare was in a suit. He was bony, medium height with very short hair, not quite a crop. Shaw knew that he ran marathons for fun. He was fifty-one and the second youngest chief constable in the UK. Briefly, on the way up the career ladder, he’d been a DI here in Lynn. Six months was all it took to tick another few boxes in the perfect CV and leave behind a reputation for clinical self-interest. A retiring DI had marked Shaw’s card when the Home Office had made the announcement of his appointment as chief constable. ‘Gold-plated bastard, our Brendan,’ he’d said. ‘Sell his grandmother? He’d put her on eBay for the best price.’

Despite his almost inhuman self-control O’Hare had one uncontrollable tic. Before speaking he’d duck one shoulder, just a half inch, the chin would come across like a boxer’s jaw reflex, ducking an imaginary punch. It identified O’Hare for what he was: a street fighter in a suit.

‘Someone said you’d be here,’ he said. The jaw ducked. His accent still held a strong Northern Irish burr, which seemed to give everything he said a paramilitary edge. Shaw always thought that if he was cast adrift in an open boat with Brendan O’Hare, and a single bottle of fresh water, that there would be only one survivor. And it wouldn’t be Peter Shaw. ‘So, I got your overnight report on this woman at Creake. What do we think, and what do I need to know? I’m in Whitehall all day – Home Office. Spending cuts – again. I don’t want any surprises, Peter. Monday East Hills hits the headlines. We don’t need anything else in the way . . .’

They heard the ticking of an expensive engine and at the end of the street O’Hare’s car crept into view – the black Daimler, a driver in grey. Shaw noted that the belt-tightening hadn’t stretched to the chief constable’s perks.

‘I’ve got a minute,’ said O’Hare. He hadn’t looked at Shaw once. He didn’t do eye contact unless it was a fleeting and accidental connection.

Shaw thought about what he was going to say, then said it, slowly. ‘Two things. The woman found dead at Creake wasn’t alone when she died.’

O’Hare eyes narrowed dangerously. As he’d made clear, he didn’t like surprises, and that detail had not been in the overnight report.

‘She died, as you know, by crunching a poison pill – a cyanide capsule – between her teeth. But there’s clear evidence someone else helped her bite down on the pill. Her jaw had been broken. And . . .’

Shaw paused for effect and O’Hare couldn’t stop the jaw reflex filling the gap. ‘She was on our list of East Hill suspects.’

‘Christ,’ said O’Hare. ‘That’s all we fucking need.’

‘So, either she wanted to die and someone helped her,’ said Shaw. ‘Or she didn’t want to die but somebody wanted her dead, although there’s absolutely no sign of force being used up to the very last moment – the bite.’

O’Hare gritted his teeth.

‘Plus, one of the suspects today has changed his story. Male, name of Roundhay. Says he fancied the lifeguard, sat on his towel, chatted him up. We won’t let him out of our sights until we have the DNA feedback. He went out to East Hills with another man – that’s why he didn’t tell the truth first time round. But the other man is dead, involved in an RTA a decade ago, but we’ll check that out too. We’ll get the DNA match in twenty-four hours – less.’ Shaw couldn’t resist the rider: ‘No extra cost.’

‘Right. But none of that is going to break before Monday, is it?’

‘Sir, nothing substantial. I thought I’d give the local radio a tip on the cyanide and the woman at Creake. No link to East Hills, just the bare bones – lonely suicide, but where did she get the pill? That kind of thing, because someone might know – in fact, someone almost certainly knows. But otherwise we’ll take a view on publicity after Monday,’ added Shaw.

‘Yes.
I
will,’ said O’Hare. ‘And then
I’ll
decide when to call the next press conference, the press conference when we announce we’ve arrested the killer of Shane White. It’s your job to bring me that name, Peter. Leave the publicity to me.’ He turned to go, but then turned back. ‘I was given to understand you were North Norfolk’s brightest detective, Peter.’ He stepped closer, eyes studying the point where Shaw’s tie should have been. ‘Maybe, one day, Britain’s youngest chief constable.’

Shaw didn’t say a word because he hadn’t been asked a question. O’Hare seemed to take silence as insubordination. ‘Don’t fuck up. Don’t even think about it.’ He turned his back again and walked away, got in the back seat of the Daimler and opened a briefcase. Shaw had a sudden insight into O’Hare’s character, because generally he was charming and considerate with his officers, particularly junior ones. But Shaw understood for the first time this bristling antagonism towards him – in private. It was because the chief constable saw DI Peter Shaw as a rival. On the whole, he thought, that was a very bad thing to be.

EIGHT

C
hris Roundhay brushed thinning blond hair back from his forehead. He kept himself in good condition, thought Shaw: the tight white polo shirt showing off gym-conditioned chest muscles. His voice was a dull, flat monotone,
Blue Peter
-English, with a weak undercurrent of a Norfolk burr. He’d have been handsome but for an oversized jaw, which made the rest of his face look weak. The interview room was in the basement at St James, well away from the bustle of the Portacabins – windowless, airless, but cool.

George Valentine came back into the room with a tray of three teas and a plate of Nice biscuits: six, canteen-issue, arranged in a neat fan by the woman who he sometimes met out in the car park having a smoke, always still in her green hairnet. It occurred to him as she’d arranged the biscuits on the plate that if he didn’t smoke he’d have no friends at all.

Chris Roundhay had already told them his story, and it had been lucid and convincing. He was seventeen years old that day in 1994. His birthday. His father, a builder, had bought him a second-hand Suzuki motorbike – 175cc. His mother had got him a new set of binoculars because he spent so much time out bird watching. He’d gone to East Hills with a friend – eighteen-year-old Marc Grieve. Grieve already had his own bike – a Triumph Bonneville. They had been at school together. Roundhay was an outsider, not many friends, and Marc was lonely – he’d been in council care, then adopted, an unhappy child. As thick as thieves, they’d recognized each other as loners. Marc was a trainee-driving instructor at Holt that summer; Chris was with a firm of accountants in Lynn. The two of them had been to East Hills before. They didn’t talk on the ferry and went to separate spots on the beach. Then Chris would take his binoculars and go off into the pines to spot waders on the far sands. He’d find Marc in a hollow, where the north wind had carved out a valley in the sand. The deserted dunes and marshes beyond the thin partition of pine trees gave them the privacy they wanted. The privacy – said Roundhay, meeting Shaw’s good eye – that they had a right to enjoy.

But that day, on the trip to the beach, Marc had broken their routine, sitting beside him on the ferry, telling him that he was thinking of moving to Norwich to join a driving school run by a mutual friend. It became clear that this plan had in fact moved well beyond the ‘thinking about’ stage. Roundhay had been upset by the news. By the time they reached East Hills they were hardly talking. Abandoning their usual routine they’d thrown down their towels on the far end of the beach and Grieve had gone swimming while Roundhay had sunbathed, listening to the transistor radio. Radio One. They ate lunch in silence – a brace of Cornish pasties, Mars bars.

Roundhay said he knew Shane White by sight. He’d chatted to the lifeguard once or twice. That day he’d wandered up the beach to the edge of the dunes to strike up a conversation, principally to inspire jealousy in Grieve. He’d told the young Australian it was his birthday but he seemed not to hear. The lifeguard had two large towels, Roundhay recalled. Valentine had noted the detail and double-checked the original inventory, finding that they’d found only one towel with the Australian’s other things after his death.

Roundhay said they’d talked about the surf on the distant beach across the tidal cut where they could see the summer holiday crowds. White had surfed at Bondi, and he told Roundhay an anecdote about a shark attack which he hadn’t believed: a leg washed ashore, parents dragging children out of the white waves. During their conversation White had periodically used his binoculars to scan the beach, talking about the girls. After about ten minutes Roundhay had gone back to Grieve. They’d brought some cans of beer with them and they started to drink. The mood thawed. They swam, larking, then stretched out on their towels. Roundhay had fallen asleep. He’d been woken by the shouts and screams, when someone had found the Australian’s floating body. Grieve had been in swimming again and he came out of the water, a thin trace of blood across his skin. They stood, trying to clean it away, Grieve retching.

‘These girls he was looking at with the binoculars,’ said Shaw, pushing the picture of Marianne Osbourne in her bikini across the table. ‘Recognize her?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ He frowned, as if something he’d feared would happen had happened.

‘He took a special interest in her?’ pressed Shaw.

Roundhay looked at each of them, perhaps trying to work out where the questions were leading. He reached inside his back trouser pocket and put a thin wallet on the table, expertly picking out a colour snapshot of a family on a beach – Greece, probably, white houses like sugar lumps on a green hillside beyond a sickle-beach. Two kids, with Roundhay, sat beside a woman in a bikini. She looked older than him, with slightly greying blonde hair, and laughter lines splayed from both eyes.

Shaw thought carefully about what he was going to say next. Early in his career he’d been tempted to cut deals, make promises he couldn’t keep. It was almost always unnecessary. Roundhay sensed he was being drawn into the case, that he might end up giving evidence in court. He wanted anonymity, protection, but it was too late for that.

‘I can’t make any promises,’ said Shaw, and he felt Valentine stiffen, leaning back, away from the interview tape. ‘If you want a bit of advice instead, I’d recommend telling the truth. It’s what you should have done that day in ’ninety-four. This girl . . .’ He tapped the picture.

Roundhay readjusted the snapshot so that he could see it clearly.

‘We’re not interested in what you did,’ said Shaw, his voice half an octave lighter. ‘We’re interested in what you saw.’

Roundhay just stared at the snapshot.

‘Chris?’ prompted Shaw.

Roundhay said he’d been sitting with White and the lifeguard had just completed a sweep of the beach with the binoculars. He’d put them down and nodded to the far north end of the beach where a girl was lying on a towel. She’d got up right then, adjusting the straps on her bikini top and the edge of the bikini bottoms where the sand had got under the material.

Roundhay said he remembered what White had said. ‘Just watch.’ Just the two words. So they did. White retrieved a valuables bag from a shallow hiding place in the sand underneath one of his sandals and found a watch. ‘’Bout now,’ he said.

She went for a swim – just a dip in the waves breaking – and then came back and dried herself, still standing. Roundhay said she’d done it very elegantly, as if she enjoyed the touch of the soft material on her skin. Then she’d walked north, towards the point. And Roundhay remembered
how
she’d walked, one foot right in front of the other, the way people walk when they’re being watched, like she was on a catwalk. There was an old boat on the beach – just the half-sunken rotten timbers of a dingy – and when she got to it she’d turned to walk up the beach, into the marram grass, and into the shadow of the pine trees.

White had stood, readjusting his swimming trunks, his hand thrust inside the thin material. He’d said it was time he took a walk and pulled on his lifeguard shorts and top, put one of the towels over his shoulder, and set off along the beach.

Roundhay went back to Grieve. Lying down on his stomach, letting his friend rub suntan oil into his back, he’d watched White stroll into the trees. He hadn’t seen anyone else. The next time they’d seen White he’d been floating in the sea, in the pink seawater. And that was the truth.

‘And he took one of the towels with him?’ asked Valentine.

‘Yeah.’ But Roundhay couldn’t meet their eyes, haunted perhaps by the lies he’d told before. But was he telling the truth now? If he was then the scene he’d described fitted nicely into the scenario they’d constructed for the last day of Shane White’s life. The lifeguard was blackmailing Marianne Osbourne; he’d followed her into the dunes to either take more pictures or collect his money, and there he’d met his killer, whose DNA would match the sample on the towel found buried in the dunes.

And if Roundhay was lying? Sitting in the empty interview room, after Roundhay had gone, they agreed it was possible. What if the lifeguard had been blackmailing Roundhay and Grieve, and what if it had been them that he’d followed into the dunes that day? In which case Roundhay’s new statement was a calculated package of lies designed to allow him to wriggle out of the forensic evidence. He’d simply claim he’d left his skin cells on the towel when he’d sat on it to talk to White. No jury would convict on the DNA evidence alone.

Valentine felt Roundhay was their man. He’d organize a unit to stick with him till they had the mass screening results. Shaw wasn’t convinced. He had no illusions that Roundhay was anything but an accomplished liar. But he suspected that was just the way he’d lived his life. There was something about the scene that Roundhay had painted for them that rang true: the beautiful, self-conscious, sixteen-year-old Marianne Osbourne, alone on the distant beach. And then that catwalk stroll into the pine trees, as if she’d been the bait, and the trap was set.