Death

THIRTY-TWO

Lynn’s municipal cemetery had been built by the Victorians outside the old line of the city walls, beyond the London Gate, on flat land running out through what had been a cordon of market gardens. At its heart stood a folly, a single church spire, the base open on all sides, so that anyone could walk in and look up into the echoing interior. Swallow nests dotted the stonework like mould, and a net stretched over the space held the desiccated corpses of fallen birds. Outside, the stonework was soot black, stained by a century of industrial pollution from the town’s bottling works, jam factories and the sugar beet plant, all of which lay downwind towards the docks.

Shaw stood beneath the spire looking out across the gravestones feeling the space above him, the dead air trapped, seeming to press down. The view was no more uplifting: the Victorian’s vision of a peaceful, civic last resting place for the town’s dead had been ill-used by the twentieth century. The inner ring road ran along one side of the plot, the main road over the river down the other, so that now — at just past midnight — lights moved everywhere and the swish of traffic was an eternal soundtrack.

A light cut into the darkness which cloaked the gravestones. A CSI van, a light flashing but silent, creeping through the gates and along one of the principal avenues of the necropolis, making its way towards a single lit electric lantern — the spot where Shaw had parked the Porsche beside Grieve’s grave. When it stopped shadows moved, as if the ghosts of the dead had been called to a meeting.

It was time. Shaw walked towards the lights. Passing car headlamps flashed through the iron railings like a stroboscope; making the tumbled field of gravestones shimmer like the crowd at a pop concert. Shaw half expected to see hands raised aloft, clapping to an unheard beat. By the time he reached the CSI van the team had got a tent up over the grave. Justina Kazimierz stood in a forensic suit looking at the distant spire, black against the street light-stained sky. She seemed to be whispering to herself, and Shaw wondered if she was praying. Tom Hadden stood by Shaw’s Porsche, a file of papers spilt across the bonnet.

Doors creaked on a squad car and Valentine appeared with Chris Roundhay.

The thin fair hair was damp and untidy across the wide forehead. Shaw was struck again by the way the lantern jaw unbalanced the face, an unsettling contrast to the blue eyes.

‘What is this?’ said Roundhay, looking around. He looked tense, the shoulders bunched, but as each car’s lights flickered by he could see that his skin was dry, his expression mildly inquisitive. ‘What do I tell my wife?’ demanded Roundhay. ‘My family. I’ve left them all — we were having dinner, for Christ’s sake.’

Shaw checked his watch, but his hand moved so slowly to turn the face that he managed to convey the truth — that the hour, for him, didn’t matter. Which was, in a way, true; because when Shaw entered a graveyard he always felt the slackening of the leash of time. ‘So you didn’t attend your friend Marc Grieve’s funeral?’

‘No. Why. .’ Roundhay’s eyes widened. ‘Is he here — Marc?’ He looked around at the gravestones and settled on the forensic tent, lit now from within. They could hear the sound of spades slicing into clay. Roundhay looked at his well-polished shoes.

‘Mr Roundhay, did you speak to Marc in the years after East Hills? I’m talking since he married. See each other? Ever?’ Shaw asked.

Roundhay’s hands were hidden in a long coat, the night air ruffling his thin blond hair. ‘He had another life. I left him to it.’

Hadden’s head appeared in the tent doorway. ‘Ten minutes, Peter.’

Shaw lifted apart the plastic leaves of the forensic tent and gestured for Roundhay to go first. He was aware he was being cruel, that he had no real right and certainly no good reason for exposing him to this. But he knew that Roundhay held many secrets, and that if he could just dislodge one, the rest might follow.

When they were all inside, Shaw read out the inscription on the stone, which had been hauled out of its position and set back. The design was modern, ugly, asymmetrical and decorated with a bunch of craved grapes.

MARC JOHN GRIEVE

Born 8/8/80 Died 8/4/06

Three council workers were digging out the grave. The passing headlights on the ring road created a light show on the tent’s side. Roundhay rearranged his feet as if he might fall over, but his face was still utterly expressionless, a passive mask. ‘I didn’t know he was here,’ said Roundhay.

The labourers had already dug down three feet creating a dark slit. Valentine had been to exhumations before and was struck by the resemblance to a judicial hanging: the grave as the drop, the witnesses clustered, the air of almost electric anticipation and growing dread.

‘I want to know what happened on East Hills that day,’ said Shaw. ‘And I don’t want any lies. And if you can’t tell me the truth — and I mean right now — then we’re going to dig up what’s left of Marc’s body and take a DNA sample from his bones. Because I think you’ve lied to us. I think it’s Marc’s skin on the towel we found on the beach at East Hills. I think you killed the lifeguard together because he’d taken pictures of the two of you, in the dunes, and he wanted money. I don’t think you meant to do it. Or planned to do it. But I do want the truth.’

Roundhay rubbed his chest, where he’d built up the muscles, and Shaw guessed his heart was racing. Guilt or lost love? ‘I’ll say anything you want to stop this,’ said Roundhay. ‘But I’ve told the truth already.’ He looked at Shaw, his eyes dead. ‘What do you want me to say?’

It was an impressive performance, thought Shaw. He’d brought Roundhay here to put him under pressure, to drag him closer to an emotional edge. Instead, somehow, Roundhay had switched the pressure on to Shaw. ‘Well?’ asked Roundhay.

One of the men jumped into the grave to start digging from inside. Roundhay didn’t flinch, but the colour had drained from his face.

Shaw had had enough. ‘Get him out of here,’ he said.

Valentine held the plastic tent flap open. Roundhay hesitated, as if it had become his duty to stand and watch his lover’s bones revealed.

‘Unless you wish to stay?’ asked Shaw.

Roundhay fled. Shaw let the tension bleed out of his shoulders, into his back, down his legs, into the grave. Then the sound of a spade hitting wood made him jump. He went outside and watched the tail lights on the squad car carrying Roundhay recede through the dark, eventually joining the coursing flow of cars on the ring road.

A liar then, certainly. But a killer — not just of Shane White, but a multiple killer? The deaths of Marianne Osbourne, Arthur Patch and Paul Holtby were linked to East Hills — even if they couldn’t, as yet, uncover the link. Was Roundhay capable of killing them all just to save his own skin? Shaw had met several murderers, shook their hands, given them tea to sip, listened to them talk, watched them cry. He didn’t think there was a single, common telltale sign that someone was a killer. No cold eyes, no preternatural calm, no twitching facial muscle. But in each case he’d felt just like this: a victim himself, manipulated, controlled.

He felt empty, but most of all, hungry. Not just for food but for human company. He watched Valentine appear out of the dark. A bone saw buzzed from inside the tent.

‘George. Let’s get something to eat.’