Death

TWENTY-ONE

Shaw had the whole team assembled beneath the cool shade of the cedar tree, the midday heat penetrating only in a scatter of sunspots on the beaten grass. A thick cable of PC wires, taped together, had been slung out through one of the stone arrow-slit windows of the Warrenner’s House to the mobile incident room. The temperature back in the metal box was 110 Fahreneheit and still rising. Twine had two nests of desks set out in the shade, a Perspex information board covered in SOC shots from Osbourne’s bedroom and Arthur Patch’s house, plus a poster from the original East Hills inquiry showing Shane White’s handsome, if forgettable, face.

Overhead, ash drifted from the woods above The Circle. Another fire had sprung up, sparked by the gas explosion, as the fire brigade had feared. It had been doused, but the woods were still thick with clouds of acrid fumes from the smouldering pine trees. The drifting embers had kindled at least one other blaze — over the hill, deeper in the woods, beyond the reach of the fire brigade’s hoses. The council beaters had been sent in, the workmen in dayglo jackets picking up gear and clothing from an open lorry parked on the narrow lane which led up to The Circle from Creake village. Under the cedar tree, inside the thick walls of the medieval ruin, the air was breathable enough. But they could all taste it, despite the thick, dark coffee from the St James’ mobile canteen: a bitter burnt essence of pine needles on the lips and tongue.

The team had been told the result of the East Hills mass screening, or rather, the lack of a result. They all knew the inquiry was in trouble. So Shaw had called them together to tell them that it was time to refocus. They had three days — just — to find the East Hills killer. Their prime suspect was now Joe Osbourne.

‘We need to drill down on this guy,’ said Shaw. ‘I want to know everything about him and I want to put pressure on his alibi — sorry, alibis — until they crack. Where was he when Shane White died? Where was he when his wife died? Where was he when Patch died?’

Drill down — it was one of Shaw’s favourite phrases, and seemed to encapsulate his own particular brand of intellectual precision.

Shaw pinned a picture of Osbourne to the board. ‘Joe has motive, he had opportunity, he had means, and we now know that two years after the killing it was his habit to always carry a knife. In 1994 he said he was in his father’s locksmith’s shop all day. He’d been out the back in the workshop. His father had manned the counter. His father is now dead. On the day his wife died he says he was in the same lock-up. No customers till nearly noon, and that was someone he didn’t know looking for electric time locks which Osbourne doesn’t sell. The earliest time we can place him in the workshop is at 3.15 p.m. when a uniformed officer from Wells told him his wife was dead. So, as an alibi it makes threadbare look like thick pile. Plus, we know he was capable of swimming back from East Hills. In fact, he might even have managed it both ways — or he could have got a free ride out on the ferry from Tug Coyle. Were they friends, maybe? Eventually they’d be family.’

Shaw searched the faces amongst the fragmented shadows of the cedar tree. ‘George and I will interview Joe Osbourne now. Let’s get down to Wells to the locksmiths. If Joe’s our man then he wasn’t at the shop that afternoon in 1994, and he wasn’t there on the day his wife died sixteen years later, unless she was dead before he left for work. See what the other shop owners know in that street — what the routine is. Where does he go for lunch? Marianne doesn’t sound to me like a dutiful sandwich-maker. And we’re told they never met in the day, even though they worked less than a few streets apart. Get on to Swansea and find out what Joe’s driven in the past as well — he was eighteen at the time of East Hills. Did he have a motorbike? A car? If Patch died because he knew something about that day then there’s a good chance it was something to do with a vehicle. Let’s find out what vehicle we’re dealing with.’

Shaw put his hands together as if in prayer and touched the tip of each index finger to his lips. ‘That’s a thought: Ruth Robinson reckons that if you swam to the mainland from East Hills the only way to do it and live to tell the tale is to go out, then come back with the tide to the main beach. It’s late evening on a hot August day so you can wander around a bit in your trunks, but pretty soon you’ll stand out.’

‘Unless you had a vehicle ready, or you could make a call, get help?’ said Campbell. ‘Or walk back into town, but then you would stand out.’

‘There’s the big beach shop out there, behind the woods,’ offered Jackie Lau. ‘If you had cash you could buy shorts, a T-shirt, then get a bus, or call a cab, or walk. Key question: was it planned?’

‘OK, let’s think all that through,’ said Shaw. ‘But it was eighteen years ago. I’m more interested in kicking the tyres on Osbourne’s alibi for this Friday, the day his wife died and the day Patch was murdered. If Osbourne is our killer then either he stopped at The Row, at Patch’s house, on the way down to Wells, or came back to the village. Again, let’s check out his transport options. If he’s on the British motorbike someone will have heard it — you can hardly miss it.’

They left Twine to organize a DNA swab off Joe Osbourne after their interview. Shaw wasn’t even going to ask O’Hare to OK the costs of that. This was still Shaw’s inquiry, and he could authorize expenditure under?5,000 without going up the line of command.

Out on The Circle a marked police car was parked outside No. 5. The porch of the house was crowded with bouquets and wreaths, dominated by a single bunch of sunflowers. Shaw looked at the card and saw they were from Kelly’s, the undertakers, Ella Assisi’s signature scrawled across an embossed card. Best Wishes.

Again, thought Shaw, a curious lack of love.

Inside the house, Joe Osborne stood in the hallway. ‘What’s this about?’ he said.

His fair hair was unkempt and his hands, slender, almost feminine, hung by his sides, smudged with oil.

‘A few questions,’ said Shaw. ‘Routine. There’s been some developments.’

Osborne looked into the front room, then towards the bedroom, as if trapped in his own house.

‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He looked at his feet; his shoulders slumped.

Shaw waited. ‘There’s a workshop,’ volunteered Osborne. ‘Down the garden, we can go there. I often go there.’

A picket fence just two feet high separated the back gardens of No. 5, and the Robinson’s next door at No. 6, which was mostly chicken-run. The Osbourne’s was dominated by the allotment vegetables and a patch of rough grass, leading to a wooden workshop — almost the width of the garden, with just a narrow alley left to a gate which led out to the pine woods.

One of the padlocks on the workshop was proving difficult to open and the frustration seemed to be too much for Osbourne. He dropped his hands, eyes closed, as if trying to hold himself together. He tried again, and the lock gave. Inside, the workshop was a surprise — more a study or a den. Books lined one wall; there was a leather battered armchair in one corner, a gas heater for a kettle, a digital radio, a desk with pencils neatly lined up beside a mug. There was a workbench too, and Osborne took the wooden seat beside it. As he sat he slipped an inhaler out of his pocket and took two surreptitious breaths.

‘What developments?’ he asked.

Shaw told him about the explosion at Arthur Patch’s house, the traces of cyanide in the old man’s blood, his tenuous link to the East Hills murder. Then he told him that they now thought the East Hills killer might not be amongst the thirty-five men on the island that afternoon in 1994.

Did he know Patch? Did he ever use the little car park by the quayside?

Osbourne laughed. ‘Everyone knew Arthur. Bit of a character. He was in that caravan, or sat outside it, every working day of his life. ’Course I knew him. Never needed to park though — always had the bike. We have deliveries but I know the wardens and they turn a blind eye for twenty minutes, so no, I never used the car park.’

‘Mr Osbourne,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ve also discovered some new information about Marianne, about the day she was out on East Hills. I’m afraid she didn’t tell the truth — not the whole truth — about that day.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Osbourne, one hand automatically tightening, then loosening a G-clamp on the edge of the bench, spinning the well-greased metal handle.

‘Marianne said she was planning to go out to East Hills with a friend, Julie Carstairs. That Julie didn’t turn up, so she went alone.’

‘That’s right.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Shaw, and Osbourne seemed to flinch. ‘Julie says Marianne may have done this to meet men, Mr Osbourne.’ Shaw took a deep breath, because what he wanted to say was cruel, but he thought he should say it: ‘Several different men that summer.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Osbourne. He ran his still-oily hand through his hair, leaving a grey highlight. But the denial of the possibility he’d been cheated on was perfunctory, Shaw thought.

‘I think you knew all about it,’ said Shaw. ‘And I think you’d decided to do something about it. I think you were on East Hills that day. How did you get to the island — did you swim, or did Tug Coyle pick you up at Morston? That would have given you an element of surprise. So you could just walk out of the sea. What did you do? Look for Marianne? Then, when you didn’t find her, did you wander off into the dunes? She was there, wasn’t she — with White. And that’s when you killed him. But you picked up a wound — something bloody but superficial. So you had to swim for it.’

Osbourne swallowed, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his bony throat. His face seemed to ripple slightly, as if from a blow.

‘I don’t think you meant to kill him — did you, Joe? Just scare him.’

And then Shaw saw it more clearly. ‘Did he have a knife too? Was that what you didn’t expect? We know he had one and it’s never been found. And you always had one.’

Osbourne’s eyes widened, and Shaw thought that he was trying to work out what else they might know.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of it — not a word.’

‘Since your wife died you’ve been going into work I think — most days. That’s what Aidan told us. But the shop’s been shut. Where have you been Mr Osbourne?’

Osbourne seemed to focus on a point equidistant between them. ‘I walk. In the dunes. It helps.’

From the woods they heard the sound of dogs barking. Osbourne stood, knocking the bench, and walked to the back door of the workshop, keeping his back to them. He opened the top half of a stable door and looked out at the edge of the woods. Smoke was drifting out from the green shadows. Somewhere up the hill, under the canopy of trees, they could hear shouts. He fumbled in his pocket and produced his inhaler, and they heard three rapid breaths.

The shouts in the woods seemed to be getting louder, insistent, and Shaw heard a single police whistle, but a distance away, over the hill, towards the Old Hall Estate.

‘I’d like to take a DNA swab, Mr Osbourne,’ said Shaw, breaking the silence.

‘One of my detective constables will call a little later to take you down to St James’. We’d like a formal statement as well. And if you could stay in Creake — or Wells. If you need to leave the area, even for a few hours, I’d like you to inform DS Valentine here — he’ll leave you a mobile number. Are you able to accept those restrictions, Mr Osbourne?’

He turned then, and Shaw could see he was shaking, his narrow shoulders unsteady. ‘I was at the shop the day the Aussie died. In the back. Dad was busy; if he hadn’t been I’d have gone with her. I’d have been there.’

Shaw logged the denial in his memory, but was unmoved by it.

Osbourne’s eyes widened and he almost fell. ‘And Marianne, and that old man. You think I did that too?’

‘Did you?’ asked Shaw.

‘No,’ said Osbourne, simply. ‘Why would I do that?’ He looked at his own hands. ‘How could I do that?’

‘Because Marianne was a witness to White’s murder,’ said Shaw. ‘She lied to save you, as well as herself. But not this time — this time she couldn’t face it. Did she ask you to help her end it, or did you suggest it? Had she just had enough of life. .’ Shaw looked back down the garden towards the house: ‘Life here, with you. Or just you?’

It was cruel blow but effective. Osbourne raised both hands to this mouth.

‘And Arthur Patch saw you that day in 1994, didn’t he? Saw the wound. So when we drew a blank on the mass screening, as you knew we would, you were afraid we’d start looking for witnesses along the coast that day and in town, and that’s when he’d step forward. So he had to die.’

A shout from the woods made them all turn to the still-open half stable door.

Emerging from the shadows was a man walking quickly towards them: Aidan Robinson, with a beater’s brush, a pair of overalls grimy with ash, the left foot trailing badly. When he got to the door he saw Joe Osbourne’s face and froze.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. The silver-grey eyes were bloodshot from the smoke in the woods.

No one answered.

He looked at Shaw. ‘I’ve been helping up in the woods, keeping the fires down. You need to come up — we’ve found someone.’