Death's Door (3 page)

‘Where’s the daughter? Husband?’ asked Shaw, wishing silently that Valentine would leave his raincoat at home. They were in the middle of the hottest summer for a decade but the DS still wore the grimy gabardine like a comfort blanket. Its only saving grace was the cluster of charity stickers on both lapels, evidence the DS couldn’t pass a street collection without putting a coin in the tin. At home Shaw had a family snapshot of George Valentine and his father leaving the Old Bailey in 1988 after a high-profile murder trail. DI Valentine, as he then was, had that same raincoat over one arm. The fact that Valentine had known Shaw’s father so well added a bitter taste to their relationship. It was an immutable fact of life that George Valentine knew his father better than Shaw ever would.

‘Hubby’s been told; he’s not a well man apparently, asthmatic, and he took it badly,’ said Valentine. ‘Had some kind of attack. He’s under sedation at the old cottage hospital in Wells. Not very coherent but the uniform who spoke to him said the wife’s got a history of depression – a couple of failed attempts with aspirin over the last five years. One bash with a kitchen knife, but only superficial. He did say the daughter should have been home with her mum ’coz she flunked her exams and they want her to resit. She’s doing media studies – God help us. Wants to be a campaigning journalist. Right the world’s wrongs. But she’s eighteen, so you know, she does what she likes and apparently she reckons she doesn’t need to revise again. She’s probably right. These days all you’ve got to do is turn up.’

Valentine thrust his hands into his raincoat pockets and flapped the material against his narrow thighs. He didn’t really believe what he’d just said about exams, but a lot of the time he couldn’t stop himself sounding like someone else. ‘Kid could be anywhere, anywhere ’cept inside that house with her mum,’ he said. ‘Victim liaison’s getting a woman PC out to look round town; apparently Tilly is no stranger to the amusement arcade by the harbour, or The Ship for that matter. They do underage, always have, in the back room round the pool table.’

Shaw nodded, stress making his shoulders bunch. All of which was local knowledge to Valentine, because after they’d busted him down to DS they’d sent him out to the backwater that was the North Norfolk coast. Wells-next-the-Sea, and the villages around it, had been George Valentine’s manor.

Shaw looked at his watch. They needed to find the girl and wait for the pathologist’s report, then they’d know if there was anything suspicious about the death. But for the moment they didn’t really have time for this because they had a press conference at 4 p.m., down at Wells. The West Norfolk Constabulary had secured a £400,000 grant from the Home Office to use the latest forensic techniques to examine cold cases on its files: they’d reviewed eight then chosen one – a murder from 1994. The reopening of the case was guaranteed to get wide media coverage because it was based on using the latest DNA tracing techniques. West Norfolk’s new chief constable wanted a splash to mark the reopening of the file, to show that even sleepy backwoodsmen could match the country’s finest, and he wanted his whizz-kid DI Peter Shaw to front it up. They’d got half of Fleet Street up for the day and it was Shaw’s job to put on a good show.

Which was why Shaw didn’t need this distraction. He hadn’t said it, just thought it, but he felt a surge of guilt, matching the word
distraction
with an image of the dead woman in her bed. Lena, his wife, had often warned him to watch out for the day that his natural scepticism rotted into cynicism. He always said it would never happen. He forced himself to conjure up an image of the dead woman’s room. ‘There was a kiss on the window. Outside,’ said Shaw.

Valentine disguised his surprise by shaking out a fresh Silk Cut. He’d missed that, and the error brought back a familiar feeling that sometimes the world moved too quickly for him, and that it didn’t matter how hard he tried he’d never quite make the pace. But while the first blast of nicotine made his vision hazy and the smoke made his lungs buzz, the exhilaration was bliss. His brain made a series of connections in less time than it took to exhale.

‘My money’s on the daughter for the goodbye kiss,’ he said. ‘Big argument with Mum. She storms out. Perhaps that pushes Mum over the edge. Everyone’s life’s a mess from the inside. She takes the pills in the bathroom then goes to bed to die. Daughter comes back to say sorry, she’s got a key, lets herself in. Finds her mum. Perhaps
she
opened the curtains to let in the light. Then she runs off into the woods – that’s when she plants the kiss on the glass.’ Valentine looked around, noticing that the heat was making the image of the distant hill buckle.

Shaw thought about the pine needles on the carpet in the bedroom, which he hadn’t mentioned to Valentine. Maybe that’s where she
came
from, out of the woods, creeping back home. He thought about his own daughter and felt a surge of anxiety, and the pit of his stomach felt empty.

‘Alright George – the daughter’s the priority. If she did see her mum she could do something stupid. So let’s find her. Tell Wells we’re concerned that she might harm herself. Let’s find her quick.’

THREE

T
he narrow hedge-lined lane flashed past in a double blur. Shaw had bought the Porsche 633 second-hand because of the narrow A-bar – the stanchion between the windscreen and the side window – which allowed wider vision to anyone with only one working eye. It was all part of living with the disability, developing skills, avoiding excuses. He’d lost his sight in a freak accident on the beach three years earlier, a canister of chemical waste washed up on the tide line, a kid playing with a stick, stirring the Day-Glo green goo seeping out of the rusted metal, then waving it in Shaw’s face. He didn’t want an artificial eye: he didn’t want to fool anyone, least of all himself, which was a decision which held a hidden, secret danger – one that he’d never shared with Lena. Keeping the blind eye meant that there was a risk the good eye would begin to deteriorate in sympathy – a not uncommon reaction which led most people to have damaged eyes removed. It meant that Shaw was vigilant for the slightest indication his remaining sight might be failing.

They slowed, approaching a police checkpoint as they climbed a hill half a mile beyond the village green. The line of cars ahead was being directed into a side street. As they crept forward they caught sight of a row of cottages, one of them charred, the windows black rectangles, smoke still drifting from the beams of the roof. Two fire tenders stood on the cobbles, a single hose playing a mist over the facade of flint and brick. A West Norfolk gas van and support vehicle were parked in the street.

At the roadblock a uniformed officer approached, saluting Shaw. ‘B road’s closed ahead, sir – gas explosion in the house, and it’s ruptured the gas main under the road.’

Shaw recalled the dull percussion he’d mistaken for a gunshot when he’d been standing in Marianne Osbourne’s bedroom. ‘Anyone hurt?’ he asked.

The officer nodded. ‘Haven’t found the body yet but the old bloke who lived in the house is missing – floor’s ripped out, might never find him.’

Shaw checked his watch. ‘Can we sneak past . . .’

The PC shepherded the Porsche up on the pavement and round the cracked road surface, which was slightly buckled, as if disturbed by a giant mole. Just beyond was another row of cottages, all with broken windows, two women on one of the doorsteps, clutching elbows.

‘Hell of a bang,’ said Valentine. ‘Poor bastard’s probably still in orbit.’

The Porsche effortlessly scaled a straight incline to the final brow of Docking Hill and the open high grassland which hugged the coast. To the right a security fence ran beside the road, mowed meadow on the far side, and in the distance three giant wind turbines, turning slowly, one of which had been visible from The Circle. Along the perimeter fence, by the gates, a crowd of demonstrators stood, spilling into the road, slowing the traffic to a crawl. Beyond, on the open downland, was a small group of tents. Shaw had passed the spot several times that summer and noted what a disparate group they were: belligerent pensioners, middle-aged bird watchers with their binoculars and Alpine walking sticks, teenagers out of school and college for the summer, a few more seasoned campaigners, and the odd ‘usual suspect’ he recognized from the magistrates courts in Lynn, plus a couple of activists from the local animal rights movement.

What did unite them were the placards they held – each one off a production line, each one carrying the same slogan:

Save Our Unspoilt Landscape.

SOUL

Valentine had the passenger window down as they inched past. ‘Nutters,’ he said. He was still annoyed Shaw had pulled rank and insisted they go in the Porsche. He’d have preferred twenty minutes on his own.

Shaw had to stop as several demonstrators stepped into the road and one leaned in the open passenger side window, offering a leaflet. He had a kind of Brideshead Revisited mop of hair, a T-shirt marked ANARCHY INTERNATIONAL, and a birthmark on his left cheek. Valentine noted an understated, expensive watch on his tanned wrist, the kind that shows the phases of the moon, and a ‘bum bag’ wallet on the belt of his black jeans, which were slung below his hips. He wasn’t as young as he’d like people to think. Up close Valentine guessed thirty, maybe more.

‘Thanks for your support,’ he said, trying to make eye contact.

Shaw looked him quickly in the face, noting the birthmark – a naevus flammeus, or port-wine stain. He’d studied facial disfigurements as part of his forensic art studies. This type was treatable using lasers, but rarely with a hundred per cent success. The worst long-term effect was emotional. But in this case the young man seemed to have suffered no damage to self-esteem or confidence.

‘There’s plans for two hundred of these things along the Norfolk hills – and more than five hundred at sea. There’s a petition – the details are on the leaflet . . . ’ He tossed two on to Valentine’s lap.

As Shaw edged the Porsche forward the young man kept pace with the car. He’d already sensed Valentine was hostile so he was talking to Shaw. ‘This kind of thing happens because of apathy. I mean, look at it . . . ’ He pointed at the nearest turbine.

Shaw did; he thought they were beautiful. Elegant, Aeolian, immensely unhurried. They always made him think of the plastic windmills he’d stuck in the sand as a child.

‘And the bird strike’s horrific. Geese alone – thousands of them cut to pieces. They won’t release the figures but you can see the dead ones out at sea, after an offshore wind. Plus the noise . . . Not now. But in winter it’s, like, constant.’

‘Beats a nuclear power station,’ said Valentine, pressing the button so the window went up.

The crowd cleared, ushered out of the road by some bored-looking security guards. Shaw accelerated away but he beeped three times and the little crowd cheered, because he admired anyone who could be bothered to demonstrate about anything.

Half a mile further and they saw the sea, revealed like a backdrop on stage, as if the marine blue was a vertical painted board. The wide arc of the horizon was unbroken, stretching east to west along the north-facing sands. Out almost on the edge of vision they could see another wind farm, thirty, forty turbines, off the unseen Lincolnshire coast. In the mid-distance a school of yachts was bunched in a tight U-turn around a distant buoy.

A mile from Wells they slowed to join a queue of holiday traffic. Valentine dropped his window, letting the breeze cool the sweat on his scalp. On his lap was the file on the inquiry they’d selected to reopen and were about to reveal to the press. While there was a decent chance they’d find the killer, even after an interval of eighteen years, he knew the real reason they were here, why they’d be on this case for the next few weeks, pretty much full-time. West Norfolk’s new Chief Constable, Brendan O’Hare, the former No. 2 from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, was a high-flyer amongst high-flyers. He hadn’t taken the job on to be forgotten. He wanted the world to know the West Norfolk was there, fighting crime on the front line with the latest scientific techniques. That morning he’d had the press over to the West Norfolk’s HQ, St James’, for interviews – his aims, methods, targets. This afternoon the press got their sweeties to take home – a nice juicy cold case to write up under embargo for Monday’s papers. A fat little maggot of a story just right for the so-called ‘silly season’ when the news dried up from Westminster, the Law Courts, even the City. This was all about publicity, and netting O’Hare his next chief constable’s ribbon, preferably a big metropolitan appointment: Manchester maybe, or Bristol. Then he’d be poised for the final run-in, the big push for the only job he really wanted: Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, with a gleaming office looking out of New Scotland Yard at the London Eye and Big Ben. Then, arise Sir Brendan.

Which is where Shaw came in. Valentine glanced in the rear-view mirror at the DS’s face. Young, good-looking, sharp. The face of modern policing, the face O’Hare wanted to present to the media. Because putting yourself right up front was dangerous. If anything went wrong, it was Peter Shaw who’d take the flak. Valentine didn’t often look in mirrors to see his own face. In fact, sometimes he couldn’t recall it – not in detail. But he was pretty certain it wasn’t the face of modern policing.

The quayside at Wells-next-the-Sea was crowded with small boats. The press already aboard the
Osprey,
a modern sixty-seater, which spent most of its time running parties out to Blakeney Point to see seals. Today it was rigged out to keep journalists happy, with an icebox full of bottled beer. Shaw parked in a reserved police bay by the harbour master’s office and retrieved a box file from the boot containing information packs and a CD with pictures, a map and cuttings from 1994 – the year the cold case broke. All the journalists had to do was sit back, drink a cold beer and listen to the story. Then they could tap it out on their laptops as they took the train back to London. Like water, Shaw thought, most journalists took the path of least resistance.