Death's Door (9 page)

EAST HILLS INQUIRY

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Inside, Valentine was talking to two women at a desk set in the vestibule of the chapel – a room panelled in mahogany, a simple board listing the ministers from the first incumbent in 1823. Shaw’s DS was perched on the table edge, his face relaxed, in mid-anecdote – some Byzantine story about a DNA sample that got mixed up with some dog food that Shaw had heard him tell before at one of the CID’s ritual parties at the Red House – the St James’ boozer-of-choice. Shaw had noticed that Valentine seemed to be able to relax in female company. Surrounded by men he always maintained a mildly irritable exterior. Shaw’s father had once told him that the tragedy of George Valentine’s life was losing his wife in a car crash. Shaw had tried, but never succeeded, in trying to imagine what she’d been like. It didn’t help that as a child he
had
met her – probably many times. He just couldn’t remember her. In truth, he couldn’t remember George Valentine either, not in those early years. But then perhaps he’d been a different person.

Shaw introduced himself to the women. The one he didn’t know in a smart blue Customs & Excise uniform introduced herself as Christine Pimm. Shaw might not know her face but he knew all about her – Tom Hadden had sent over her file when they were setting up the mass screening. Christine was twenty-six and worked at Stansted Airport, checking passports. She had three GCSEs, a certificate in advanced hair care and an IQ of 122. Pretty quickly it had become clear she had a genius for her job. In April 2007 she’d recognized a terrorist posing as an academic en route to an international conference at Cambridge University. Sadik al Habib was listed as the US’s sixth most wanted target – the Jack of Spades in the pack. She’d routinely memorized his face from a circular she’d seen a month before he’d stood in front of her, checking his mobile phone. He’d had minor cosmetic surgery, no beard, a pair of heavy black-rimmed glasses and false teeth. But she’d still recognized him.

Shaw shook her hand, realizing that she was one of the few people in the world who shared his own obsession with the human face. The difference was that he’d had to learn his skills while hers appeared innate. She was here for a very simple reason: if the killer really was amongst the men called to the mass screening then there was one high-risk option he could take to evade capture: he could send someone else to give the DNA sample. Christine Pimm’s job was simple: check documents, match faces to documents and be a hundred per cent sure they had the right person on the day.

The other woman was Tom Hadden’s deputy as head of CSI, Dr Elizabeth Price, dressed in a crisp white SOC suit. Dr Price was sixty and would never get the top job, due to a burning lack of ambition and an unhealthy zeal for her real passion in life – teaching promising young pianists how to play Bach. Shaw liked her: she was efficient, cheerful – joyful, even. She was living proof the job didn’t inevitably lead to a cynical world view.

‘So how does this work?’ he asked, accepting a coffee from Dr Price’s thermos flask. She’d brought a little stack of six plastic coffee cups – a typically thoughtful gesture. Shaw had left the on-the-day detail of the DNA sampling to the CSI unit, so he wanted to know what was happening. Hadden had been involved in a similar operation to catch a golf course rapist in Hertfordshire in the nineties. On that occasion they’d taken nearly 12,000 DNA samples before catching the culprit, but catch the culprit they had.

‘Well, it’s pretty simple,’ said Dr Price. ‘As you know each of the seventy-four holidaymakers taken off East Hills in 1994 – those still alive – was visited by the police and invited to attend. Early slots went to locals – those in East Anglia. Most are travelling from London, East Midlands, a family from Scotland. They can all claim for travel expenses. The women are re-interviewed and invited to make new statements if they wish. The men start with Catherine here, who makes sure they are who they say they are. We take a DNA sample. All thirty-five male DNA samples – that’s thirty from today, plus the five taken from close relatives of those who have died – will be taken by courier to the FSS laboratories in Birmingham after lunch, first batch, then late tonight, final batch. A twin set of matching samples will be kept at St James. If a case comes to court it will be these samples, the ones we don’t send to the FSS, which will be tested again and will underpin any conviction. The FSS should complete the whole mass screening in under forty-eight hours – they run a 365-day 24/7 operation. All samples will be checked against the East Hills sample – Sample X, which is already on the National DNA Database and has never triggered a match, so we know our killer hasn’t given a sample before.’

It was a clear and confident summary, thought Shaw, but he knew that if they did get someone into court the first thing any defence lawyer would attack would be the DNA evidence. ‘Matching’ DNA samples involved scientists making judgements on probabilities. It only took a moment of doubt in the witness box to destroy a case. If they did identify their killer through the mass screening they’d still have to provide evidence of opportunity, not to mention motive, but at least they’d have a name, which would give them a fighting chance of getting the rest, and securing a conviction.

Shaw sipped coffee as Dr Price explained the rest of the procedure. After they’d got the DNA samples the men would be invited to join the women for interview, to reread their original statements and give new ones if they wished. Giving them this option was a barely disguised trap. If one of the suspects did alter their statement – perhaps to include the possibility that they’d talked to the victim – then it was, probably, an attempt to undermine any potential DNA link. They would later no doubt argue that their DNA had innocently come in contact with the victim’s own skin, or the towel. But by changing the statement they would be alerting the police and inviting the closest of scrutiny. Shaw had juggled the pros and cons in his own mind and come to a clear decision: if he was the killer he’d rewrite his statement, blur the DNA link, and hope the police had no other evidence.

Shaw checked his watch. The first batch of six suspects – due at eight – were already being processed. Three men were giving DNA samples, three women rereading their original statements. Dr Price said they’d had one call on the emergency line they’d set up for the mass screening: an elderly woman now living in Norwich said she couldn’t make it due to an acute attack of shingles. She was housebound on doctor’s orders so they’d despatched a team with her original statement. Otherwise everything was running like clockwork. If they had a ‘no-show’ they had instructions to alert one of Shaw’s team immediately.

‘You think that might happen?’ asked Dr Price. She hugged herself, suddenly vulnerable to the excitement around her. He could see that what this woman had in part, which he lacked completely, was an ability to detach herself from what was going on around her. She was a professional, here to do her job, and that was all.

‘Maybe,’ said Shaw. He’d always thought failing to turn up was the least smart option open to the killer. But if someone panicked it was still a possibility, probably followed by an attempt to disappear. That was Valentine’s favoured option. His view of the criminal mind always shaded towards the chaotic, the visceral – cock-up over conspiracy.

Out in the main yard Valentine got on the mobile to check on the inquiry’s progress up at The Circle where the incident room was now in place outside Marianne Osbourne’s house. Shaw checked out the Portacabins then went back into The Ark, pushing through the doors into the chapel itself. It was a building he liked – the space still redolent of prayer and clarity. His own religious beliefs were insubstantial. He felt a life spent in pursuit of divine insight was a life wasted. It had been a point of friction with Lena and her family, who had been brought up as Catholics and still kept the faith, however intermittently. Occasionally Lena had managed to suggest, subtly, that Shaw’s inability to float free of the world of work was in some ways a symptom of his lack of faith. Shaw thought it was due to lack of time. But none of that meant he lacked any concept of the spirit. He loved churches and the feeling he got that they radiated a kind of compressed devotion. If he’d been alone now he’d have sat for a while and enjoyed that sense of place. Sun streamed through the original green glass of the narrow lancet windows, splashing the interior with an eerie underwater light. Shaw always imagined that if he wanted to he could just float into this space, swim through it, rising up to join the stone angel with its hands to its face.

The long nave had been cut in half crossways by a frosted-glass screen. A set of swing doors led into the force’s pathology suite and mortuary – unseen. Shaw was aware that beyond would lie Marianne Osbourne’s body, probably in the chilled vaults, but just possibly still on the aluminium mortuary table. At one of the desks on this side of the screen, where Tom Hadden’s SOC unit had its office space, sat DC Jackie Lau. Her job was to monitor each witness as they passed through the process and manage any requests to change original statements.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Shaw, his mobile signalling an incoming text.

Lau had left her leather jacket on a hook by the door and her reflective sunglasses were up in her short-cropped coal-black hair. ‘That’s my text, sir. Six through so far – one’s just elected to modify his original statement. He gave me a verbal outline of the changes.’

Shaw felt his heartbeat pick up. ‘Substance?’

She checked a notebook. ‘John Phillip Roundhay. Lives in Burnham Market with his family – wife and two kids. A partner at a Lynn firm of chartered accountants. He says he was too embarrassed to tell the truth at the time and thought it didn’t matter. He went out to East Hills with a friend – male. They both fancied White, the victim – chatted him up on the boat. Roundhay says that about an hour before the lifeguard’s body was found the Aussie was up on the top of the dunes, so Roundhay walked up too, sat down and had a chat. He said he sat on the kid’s towel, and it might be the one that was left on the beach, but he didn’t think it was.’

‘He said he sat on the towel?’ checked Shaw, the excitement making his voice vibrate.

‘Yup. Classic. Could be our man, sir.’

‘What happened next?’

‘Roundhay says he got his signals crossed, that White wasn’t interested. In fact, the only thing he was interested in was the girls. So he left him to it. Later, he just panicked. He was living at home then, his parents didn’t know he was gay – well, they hadn’t talked about it. He says his Dad wouldn’t have understood. Old-fashioned values – whatever that means. So he kept his head down.’

‘OK. When’s the other lad in – the one he went out with?’

‘Died nearly ten years ago. Car accident on the Norwich bypass.’

‘Check that,’ said Shaw.

Lau suppressed a smile because that was one of Shaw’s verbal tics. ‘Check it.’

‘Where’s Roundhay now?’

‘Portacabin B’

‘OK. Here’s what we do,’ he said. ‘Get chummy’s mobile off him. Make sure he doesn’t leave until I say so. Double-check we’ve got his passport. We need to re-interview him. Can you get me some photos of Marianne Osbourne? There’s a beach shot at the house. Paul could scan it over. I’ll need it.’ Shaw went out to reception and told Dr Price the news.

They discussed the logistics and the cost. If they rushed Roundhay’s DNA sample through so that they got a result that day they’d be down £12,000. It was a lot of money. But if they got a match then they could put the rest of the samples on a non-urgent check, saving the best part of £100,000. So it looked like a no-brainer.
Except
, if they didn’t get a match they’d have wasted £12,000 overnight. With the West Norfolk facing swingeing cuts in the latest round of the public spending freeze that was the last thing they could get away with. Price suggested a compromise: they’d put samples though as planned but ask for Roundhay’s sample to be analysed first. That way they’d get a result tomorrow – Sunday afternoon at the latest. If they got no match they’d go ahead with the whole batch at the fast-track price. That would have to do.

Shaw went back into nave of The Ark. Valentine was by the emergency exit – a door which led out into one of the back streets that fed into the Vancouver Shopping Centre.

‘News?’ asked Valentine.

Shaw pushed open the exit door roll bar and held it open for his DS. They’d come here before after autopsies to talk through the case in hand. There was something about the scruffy informality of it which suited them both. The street was hot, the tarmac sticky under foot. Shaw filled his lungs and detected the unmistakable aroma of the town: heated pavements and grit. He filled Valentine in on Roundhay’s request to make a fresh statement.

‘Bullseye,’ said Valentine, spitting into the dust.

‘So what happened?’ asked Shaw, knowing that was George Valentine’s forte.

Valentine shrugged, aware he was being led on to shifting ground. ‘He fancies the lifeguard with the six-pack. Thinks he’s on to something, chats him up, follows him into the water, maybe cops a handful of something he shouldn’t. White belts him. Roundhay’s got a knife. Stabs him, gets out of the water, lets him drift down the beach towards the landing. That’s why he made a false statement. Now he thinks we’ve got his DNA on the towel – his towel, or a spare towel the two brought with them, or even White’s spare towel. So he’s made this up. It’s clever.’ He paused for effect. ‘It’s what you said would happen.’

Shaw wasn’t convinced. ‘Same question – where did the knife come from?’

‘In his trunks with the hard-on.’

‘We both need to talk to him,’ said Shaw, tapping both feet. ‘Together.’

Valentine held out the hand holding the cigarette, offering another version of events. ‘Perhaps it
was
blackmail. Maybe White had got pictures of them before, these lads, in the long grass, so Roundhay takes a knife. He says he’s got the money and they meet up in the dunes, all three of them, including Roundhay’s chum. Someone pulls the knife, threatens White. There’s a fight, White picks up the wound, then Roundhay drags him down into the water over beyond the trees, out of sight. Then the body drifts round.’