Death's Door (27 page)

A construction company had moved on to the Docking Hill site in April to build a canteen and a new office block by Turbine C. The work had required a replacement computer system, designed to monitor wind speeds and the inclination of each turbine blade. The workmen had been given access to each of the three giant turbines, the other on-site facilities, and the generating block. One of the labourers was young and had been to school with one of the female demonstrators. Sweethearts, briefly, they’d drifted apart.

The demonstrators had watched this young man each Friday, blowing his wages in the quayside pubs at Wells. One night, in June, they made sure he met the girl again. By the end of the night he was lying in a back alley, head foggy with a mixture of alcohol and prescription sedatives. In his pocket were his work keys. Three of the keys were marked A, B and C. None were missing, but if he’d looked hard he’d have seen traces of Blu-Tac in the teeth of B.

The plan had stalled there. It was no good having the key to the turbine if they couldn’t get into the compound. As soon as the
SOUL
campaign had begun a security firm had been hired to patrol the perimeter. The gates in the fence were individually computer locked – opened only by a sequence of numbers changed daily. The group favoured a mass demo by the gates, then trying to break through into the compound so that they could occupy Turbine B – get up to the gondola at the top, unfurl a banner, and see how long it took the security firm to get them out with a TV crew training its telescopic lens on their every move. They’d take up some flares as well, so they could be seen after dark. ‘A light of protest,’ said Tilly, smiling for the first time. ‘That’s what Paul said.’

That was the plan, and they’d set the date a month ago, and it had been timed for today. The chances of it working, however, were extremely slim. The compound was patrolled by dogs. The security firm was mob-handed most mornings. Pushing and shoving would turn into a brawl, the police would be called, and they’d all end up in cells at St James’. Nobody really thought they’d make it to the turbine, let alone the gondola aloft. ‘Then Paul called me on Saturday. He’d heard about Mum, so he said he was sorry. But there’d been a change of plan and he wanted my help. Would I help?’ She looked directly at Shaw. ‘I said yes, because I thought it would give me something else to think about, and stop me brooding about Mum. And if I felt better, I could help Dad feel better too. I’m in charge of media for the group, for
SOUL
, contacting papers, radio. It’s what I do at college. So it was up to me.’

Holtby, she said, had a new plan. He’d found a way into the compound. Overnight, on Sunday. Once he was in he’d get to the gondola at the top, and unfurl the banner at precisely eight o’clock the next morning. It was Tilly’s job to make sure pictures got to the media. She should take some herself, some on video camera, but best of all wait and see if the plan had worked and then get one of the TV companies out as fast as she could before the security guards worked out how to get him down the turbine steps. If he could stay up all day he’d light a flare after dark. That would shine for miles, like a beacon.‘I thought he’d found someone on the inside,’ she said. She looked through the wire again as the vanes on Turbine B began to turn. ‘Then, yesterday, nothing. No sign of him, and he wasn’t answering his mobile. We thought the guards had caught him, but there was no sign. Now we know where he was.’

‘Tilly . . .’ Shaw put a hand on her shoulder but she didn’t take her eyes of the slowly turning turbine. ‘We’ll talk to the company, and the security firm. But you’re right, I don’t think Paul died because he was planning to embarrass an energy company that wants to build wind farms. I think he died because he knew something about East Hills. Just like your mother.’

Her lower lip fell, showing small white teeth. She shook her head, as if trying to brush away the idea.

‘Did you ever talk to him about East Hills? Your mum had been asked to attend for the mass screening and interviews – you knew that. Did you mention that to Paul?’

She dabbed at her face as if she was crying, but her eyes were dry and wide, trying to remember. She shook her head. ‘Dad said – about East Hills. That Mum was upset, that it brought back horrible memories. He’d told me about it before because some years she was bad – on the anniversary, like she couldn’t forget it. And she never came to the beach – not ever.’

‘Right, but did you talk to Paul about any of this?’ Shaw noticed that despite the heat she’d started to shiver.

‘No. No, I don’t think so. A bit,’ she contradicted herself. ‘Yes. We spend hours up here like I said so we just talk – so yes, I did mention it. He said he remembered it.’ She turned to Shaw, as if the memory was a letter and she’d just ripped it open. ‘Yes, he did. He took dirty pictures, didn’t he, the lifeguard? Paul said he remembered the gossip. He was only a kid.’

Shaw stepped closer and lowered his voice. ‘Paul spent the summers out at Morston, Tilly. He may have seen the killer that day in ’94. Did he say he’d seen anything?’

Tilly’s eyes were blank. ‘No.’

Shaw said she’d have to make a statement but she could do it in private – back at the house in Creake. He would have gone then but she reached out a hand and touched his arm. Shaw was shocked by the gesture because they seemed such a cold family: not cold,
isolated
– each from the other, and all of them from the world.

‘I know it doesn’t seem like it,’ she said, ‘but we loved Mum. She knew she was unfair – to me, to Dad. That she blamed us for the way her life had turned out. She said that. She just couldn’t stop herself. When she spoke all the bitterness came out. The depression. So sometimes we’d just sit, holding each other and not say anything. They were the best times.’

She smiled, and Shaw responded with a mirror-image, because it was the first time anyone had said anything sympathetic about Marianne Osbourne, and the idea that she’d tried to love her family brought her alive for Shaw, far more than the flickering film of her Fleet Street photo shoot.

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he village of Creake was drenched in summer holiday sunshine, the shadows crowding back into the woods which encircled the Norfolk-stone cottages. Shaw swung the Porsche past a line of terraced houses and slowed to negotiate the tricky T-junction by the church with its circular tower in flint, and a graveyard spilling over a low wall. The local pub – The Ostrich – was set back, a long medieval range painted white, with black beams and window casements in eggshell blue. Ahead of them they watched a squad car carrying Tilly Osbourne, going up to The Circle to give her statement at the incident room.

Valentine let his eyes slide over the scene outside the pub – half a dozen picnic tables crowded with families, and a garden to the side, packed with lunchtime tourists. He thought, just for a moment, of suggesting an early lunch, brunch, a late coffee break, whatever. But he knew Shaw better than that. Lunch would be c/o the St James’ mobile canteen on the green up at The Circle: a cheese salad, fizzy water.

The brief high Valentine had enjoyed the night before, a result of Jan’s company, and their clandestine visit to the museum, had dissipated. A day of routine enquiries loomed. They’d be down to Morston to check out Holtby’s flat, or back to The Ark for his autopsy, or conducting endless local interviews in a no-doubt doomed attempt to find the location of the elusive wartime dugout and its lethal cyanide pills. Valentine experienced a fleeting moment of despair, realizing how much of his life he spent wishing he was somewhere else. And his early morning interview with the chief constable overshadowed the day, like a bad dream. In contrast, another image didn’t help – DCI Jack Shaw, Peter’s father, walking across a bar with a pint in each hand, sunlight catching the beer in the glasses.

Shaw stopped the car, pulling over sharply into a lane beside a Londis supermarket. ‘Come on, George. I’ll buy you a drink.’ He’d been planning to visit the incident room, brief the team, but his head wasn’t clear. There was a pattern here now – putting aside the original murder of 1994 they had three deaths, a single motive, a rationale. They had a prime suspect – Joe Osbourne – and they had his DNA sample at the lab. Tilly’s belief that her father was innocent sounded to Shaw like wishful thinking. She’d lost her mother – what else did she have to believe in? He wanted to pause, take stock; make sure they were on firm ground before taking the next step.

Valentine hauled himself out of the Porsche, telling himself not to feel good about this; that Shaw was probably planning a dressing down for his DS, and didn’t want to do it up at the incident room.

The bar of The Ostrich was full of dining tables, crowded with plates of scallops, fish in beer batter, and oysters. Shaw bought Valentine a pint of Norfolk Wherry and a fizzy water for himself, with ice and lemon. Then he led the way down a whitewashed corridor and out into the garden.

Shaw made a quick call to St James’ and got through to the control room. The force’s own helicopter was on holiday traffic watch until noon, then back on at five. They could have it for two hours and the thermal-imaging gear was on board. Summer leaf cover markedly reduced the chances of getting a clear image, but it didn’t make it impossible. The Serious Crime Unit would have to make an internal payment to Road Traffic for use of the helicopter – nearly £4,000. So they had a deal.

They watched a peacock strutting its stuff in the beer garden. Shaw had bought nuts and he put three of them out on the table top, spilling the rest in a pile so that they could both pick at them. ‘Three witnesses to East Hills: Marianne Osbourne, Arthur Patch and Paul Holtby.’

Valentine took a nut from the pile.

‘Patch died first, probably,’ said Shaw. ‘Then Osbourne, then Holtby.’ He filled Valentine in on what he’d learnt from Lena’s map of the tides and winds of the North Norfolk coast. So it made sense, especially if their killer was either an inexperienced swimmer, or had panicked, or more likely still, was struggling with a wound.

Valentine took two inches off his pint. He could recognize this moment now, the point in the day which seemed to act as a fulcrum, so that the afternoon would feel better than the morning, the evening better than the afternoon. It wasn’t all to do with the alcohol, although he was well enough insulated against self-pity to know that it helped.

‘The problem,’ said Shaw, ‘is that we appear to be dealing with a singular killer.’ He’d chosen the word well and it pleased them both, he could tell. ‘Singular. He – let’s say he for now, because Sample X is a man, so it’s a decent assumption.
He
operates in a purely pragmatic way. It’s almost ruthless, but somehow even more bloodless than that.

‘First is Patch. That’s completely cold-blooded. But for the bizarre chance of the candle surviving in the bedroom we’d have put that down to a gas explosion. Justina – alerted to the possibility of murder – did the tests. Otherwise we’d have presumed the cause of death as all too plain, given he was reduced to a few pieces of random bone and flesh. Spotting that it was murder was a one in a thousand chance. Then, before the explosion at Patch’s house, there’s Marianne. My guess is this was an assisted suicide, if you like, maybe more than that. But he just walks away from it, except for that kiss on the glass. That’s the only scintilla of emotion. If, and only if, it’s the killer’s kiss. He doesn’t try to make it look any more like suicide than it is; he doesn’t move more pills by the bed, or rearrange the body, or contrive a note. Nothing. He knows we’ll find the cyanide in her system, and he just walks away. And then Holtby, up in the woods, two nights later. The killer lures him into the woods, is my guess, by promising him he can get him through the perimeter wire. He falls into the trap – literally. The cyanide is administered. The killer walks away again – and he’s lucky again, but not quite lucky enough. The fire destroys our crime scene, but not all of the body.’

Valentine flapped his raincoat with his hands in the pockets. ‘The killer could’ve just followed Holtby into the woods – he doesn’t have to be privy to the plan.’

They drank in silence.

‘The key here, George,’ said Shaw, finally, ‘is that he doesn’t really care if we find the cyanide. The priority is the kill – each time. A professional.’

‘A soldier,’ said Valentine. ‘Maybe the bloke Robinson saw above the house on the edge of the woods. It fits. But there’s nothing from the army. Nobody’s gone AWOL. None of the East Hills suspects was military – not even TA.’ Valentine finished his pint and went for refills. He bought Shaw a half of Guinness.

‘I spoke to Tom first thing,’ said Shaw. ‘The forensics aren’t going to help us at any of the three SOCs. We’ve been all over the Osbourne’s bungalow – nothing. Patch’s house is burnt-out. We found Holtby in a pile of ash. It’s not hopeful, is it? Plus the fact we don’t have a single witness sighting for any of the three killings. Arthur Patch’s neighbours saw and heard nothing. Nobody on The Circle appears to have seen anyone approaching No. 5 on the day Marianne died. And no one was seen around the woods Sunday night. ‘Perhaps that’s it,’ he added, suddenly, irrationally, elated. ‘We’re looking for someone who can come and go without being seen.’ He added that to the idea of the professional killer and thought it helped – an outline appearing, like a silhouette on a distant horizon. He looked up to the woods on the hill. ‘So perhaps there is something up in the woods, one of these dugouts.’

Valentine was concentrating on Shaw’s face – the way his eyes had come alive, despite the deep-set sockets which were often in shadow. So he didn’t see the figure approaching and didn’t take any notice until he took a seat at their table. It was the man from
The
Daily Telegraph
, name of Smyth, Shaw recalled. He was in the suit, still, in country green cloth, with upstairs-downstairs glasses and that carefully cultivated air of intellectual distraction.

‘Lionel Smyth,’ he told them. ‘
The
Daily Telegraph
.’ Smiling, he fumbled in the narrow pocket on his waistcoat and produced an embossed card. ‘We meet again.’