Death

NINE

Chris Roundhay was the only one of the sixty-six surviving East Hills suspects to opt to change his statement. The last DNA swab was completed just before 3.30pm. The East Hills inquiry would be on hold for the weekend, especially as the chief constable’s latest round of cost-saving cuts had specifically banned overtime expect in exceptional circumstances and only if personally sanctioned by his office. With O’Hare in London any decision to bankroll overtime would fall to Dep. Chief Constable Don Clarke, a man who’d got to the top by avoiding mistakes, and avoiding mistakes by rarely making any decisions at all. Shaw hadn’t even considered an application to keep the inquiry running at full steam.

Shaw and Valentine listened to the throaty roar of the courier’s BMW 1,500cc motorbike as it edged out into the traffic outside St James’ on its way to the forensic laboratory in Birmingham.

‘Now we wait,’ said Valentine, arching his back over, trying to squeeze the stress out of his bones, thinking about a cool pint in the Artichoke. Did it open at five? Then he realized he was kidding himself. He knew the Artichoke was open at five.

Shaw checked his watch, which showed the time, and the tide.

‘One more call, George, then we’ll wrap it up. Separate cars. The funeral parlour where Marianne Osbourne worked — name?’

‘Kelly’s — out at Wells.’

‘Right,’ said Shaw, using the remote to unlock the Porsche. ‘Let’s find out what she was really like. Once we’ve got our name from the lab on Monday we’ll need to find a link to her. So if she had a secret life, we need to know about it.’

Valentine didn’t say a word, but he thought it was typical that their last call was on Shaw’s way home. But he made a decision then that he’d hang around Wells once they’d checked out the funeral parlour, maybe grab a pint by the quayside, fish and chips, then look up a few old contacts. After all, it had been his manor. Plus Shaw had asked him to leak a few details on Marianne Osbourne’s death to the BBC local radio station — he could do that on the mobile from The Ship. Very pleasant — and on all expenses to boot.

They made a convoy on the coast road, the Porsche at half speed, the Mazda’s engine heating up under the rusted bonnet. The sea front at Wells was already Saturday-evening packed; the funfair’s piped-in music at full throttle, both the quayside pubs spilling customers out on the greasy pavements. Cars looking for parking spots edged bumper-to-bumper past the crowds. Shaw, the Porsche’s window down, thought that was the authentic tang of the British seaside — chip fat and exhaust fumes.

The council car park sign was out — FULL — and probably had been all day, so Shaw edged past and turned up one of the old streets which led directly inland. The back lanes were a medieval maze in miniature. He pulled a left, a left and then a right, into a single carriageway, waiting beyond each turn for the Mazda to appear in his rear-view mirror. As he trundled the car past a row of small lock-up shops he noted Joe Osbourne’s locksmiths, a grubby window display showing inscribed pewter tankards, keys and handles. The facia read simply:

KEYS CUT

while you wait

emergency lock out service

0770 870 1938

Open Monday-Saturday 9.00am to 5.30pm.

Above, over the window, was an old fashioned hand-painted sign that read:

G.T. amp; H Osbourne: locksmiths and gunsmiths

Valentine stopped outside the shop and took a note of the number. The shop was shut; a sign turned in the glass doorway gave no indication of when it might reopen. There was a single window above on the first floor, and one above that in the roof, but neither had curtains, and the lower one was obscured by what looked like the back of a cupboard.

The lane gave into a small courtyard. The one-storey building which dominated the space was a shop, with nothing in the large plate-glass windows but two arrangements of white lilies, under a black facia carrying the words:

Kelly amp; Sons

Funeral Directors and Monumental Masons

Shaw pulled himself easily out of the bucket chair and stood listening to the distant sound of the crowds on the quayside. Valentine parked the Mazda, the offside wing nudging the stonewall.

Inside, they both noticed the cooler air — unnaturally cool. Shaw searched for the sound of an air conditioning unit and discovered the persistent note almost immediately, the vibration making a vase of plastic flowers hum on the counter.

A man who came through a door had white hair framing a middle-aged face, with an expression of half-hearted condolence already in place. Italian heritage, there was no doubt, the darkness of the features striking against pale olive skin. He hadn’t been expecting business, not in the hot dead airless hours of a summer’s Saturday, so he was knotting a black tie hurriedly in place.

Valentine put his warrant card in his face. Shaw said they were there about Marianne Osbourne. Had they heard? The man held both palms out sideways, and his eyes flooded, an eloquent if silent answer.

‘Mr. .?’ asked Valentine.

‘Assisi.’ He set his head to one side but didn’t offer a first name.

‘She worked here?’

‘Yes. Poor Marianne,’ said Assisi.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ said Shaw. ‘We just needed to check a few facts. You must have known her well.’

Shaw watched as genuine emotions rippled over the man’s face, dislodging the professional facade. Grief? No. But certainly sadness, and maybe even loss. Shaw wondered if that was going to be the standard reaction to the death of this woman, as if she was simply a beautiful object that people wouldn’t see anymore.

‘My wife is best. .’ Assisi flipped up part of the counter and indicated the way, through the door he’d come in by, down a corridor painted institutional pink. Assisi walked in front. ‘Always unhappy, Marianne,’ he said, over one shoulder.

‘Did you take the call yesterday, Mr Assisi, to say she wouldn’t be in?’ asked Shaw.

Assisi paused with his hand on the next door. ‘Yes,’ he said, frowning, dark eyebrows drawn together. ‘Joe — her husband. She is often not well. But that is the first time he phones. .’

‘Joe’s never phoned before?’

‘No. Always Marianne. But always too before we open, so a message, on the answerphone. My job is to listen — first thing.’ He shrugged slightly, reluctant to articulate any criticism of the dead.

They followed Assisi through the doorway, down a second corridor of peeling lino, through an empty chapel of rest into a small room. Shaw guessed the public, the grieving, never got this far. It was utilitarian, almost industrial, with steel sinks and a tiled floor. The blare from the radio was so loud it was distorted.

There were two metal tables, and two coffins, but only one was occupied, by an elderly woman with unnaturally black hair.

Assisi introduced his wife Ella. She was sitting on a high stool beside the corpse. She was Italian too, but perhaps not first generation, because the genetic photofit, thought Shaw, was clouded with other influences.

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said, before Shaw could speak. ‘It’s Marianne, isn’t it? We heard. Everyone’s heard. But I am sorry,’ she added, as if that might be in doubt. ‘And poor Tilly. .’ She shook her head, then smiled at Valentine as if she knew him. ‘Suicide, of course,’ she said.

‘We’re just tying up loose ends,’ said Shaw, avoiding an answer. ‘A few questions. A minute of your time.’

She thought about that, her long fingers fidgeting with her hair, and then said she’d have to keep working because the funeral was first thing Monday and they had another one coming in, and that they’d been relying on Marianne.

Her husband looked at his polished black shoes, then fled.

‘You’d known Marianne long?’ prompted Shaw.

‘School — secondary school here in Wells. Met first day.’ As she talked she worked, selecting cosmetics from a box and applying them to the skin of the deceased. ‘You collect friends that first day, don’t you? One you think’s funny, one you think’s loyal. Marianne was beautiful, so we collected her too. We were in a crowd but, you know, never really close, the two of us. Our lives just got mixed up together. Like bits of washing in a drier.’ She was happy with that image, examining the cosmetic red on her fingertips, studying the face of the dead woman who lay before her.

Never close. Shaw noted the echo of Joe Osbourne’s description of the relationship between his wife and their daughter.

‘Was she close to anyone, other than family?’ he asked. ‘She doesn’t seem to be that kind of person. Private?’ he asked, pleased he’d avoided the gaping cliche: kept herself to herself.

‘I’m not sure she was even close to Joe,’ she said. Her chin came up, defying the convention that she shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and unable to stop herself adding more: ‘All the years she’s worked here you know they never met for lunch — I mean, how far is it? A hundred yards — less?’ She shook her head, working some powder into a paste in the palm of her hand. Shaw thought about Joe Osbourne, arguing with a prostitute on Lynn docks after dark. ‘She liked men,’ she said, and Shaw realized she wasn’t being coy. It was just a fact, as if she liked them in the same way that you can like sliced bread. ‘And she saw all women as rivals,’ added Assisi. ‘God knows why.’ She drew back some greying hair from her forehead and tucked it under a hair band. ‘She was in a league of her own. No competition.’

‘There were lots of men?’ asked Shaw, leaving the time frame deliberately unspecified, fascinated at how this conversation had suddenly drilled down into the private life of Marianne Osbourne.

Assisi began to work the pale red cosmetics into the skin of the dead woman, working out from the centre of one cheek. ‘I don’t think so — not now, not for years. She suffered from depression — we understood that. It made her a cold person. Also, I don’t think she had the energy for other people. She liked to be admired, but even that seemed. .’ She searched for the word: ‘Passive. Like she thought she was an oil painting, which I suppose she was. A vase. Something brittle.’ Shaw caught it then in the woman’s voice — not just the emotional distance, but a little electric charge of hatred.

Valentine coughed, realizing some kind of chemical was getting down his throat, into his eyes.

Shaw noted that despite the mundane surroundings the presence of the corpse was making his heart beat race. He licked dry lip. ‘You’ll remember the East Hills killing — the Australian lifeguard. You know Marianne was out on the island that day?’

She leant back from working on the dead woman’s face. ‘Of course — is that why she did it? We’d heard you were calling people back in — we’ve got friends on the lifeboat. She wasn’t good at dealing with stress. Always pretty close to the edge.’

‘I just wondered if she’d ever mentioned it to you. She went out there alone, to East Hills, but we wondered if she’d met someone.’

Assisi laughed, reaching to a shelf for a bottle of mineral water. ‘She was never alone. Ever.’

‘Any names?’ asked Valentine, producing his notebook.

She arranged a white linen square below the chin of the corpse and began to apply a foundation, smoothing away wrinkles, adding a lifelike blush to the marbled skin.

‘We’d left school by then — both of us. Like I said, we weren’t close. Just about any bloke she knew was after her, so that’s quite a list.’

Valentine stashed the notebook.‘But there was Joe Osbourne — they were going out that summer, right?’

‘There was Joe,’ she said.

Shaw got the very strong impression she did know names. ‘Mrs Assisi, we need your help. Would it be easier to talk down at St James?’

Assisi stood and turned off the radio. The dying echo of the last note seemed to circle the cold room.

‘There’s one thing you have to understand about Marianne,’ she said. ‘What she wanted, back then, the only thing she wanted, was to have what her big sister Ruth had.’

‘Where was Ruth that summer?’ asked Shaw.

‘Back home. She’d been away to university. But she had a boyfriend in Wells — Aidan Robinson,her husband now.’

‘You’re telling us Marianne and Aidan were lovers?’ asked Shaw.

She nodded — a tight, jerky movement of the chin. ‘Early that summer, spring even,’ she said, avoiding the direct confirmation. ‘When Ruth came back from the university vacation to work at the Lido she didn’t know what had gone on. I don’t think she’s ever known. It would kill her to know.’

‘And Joe, did he know? Did he turn a blind eye?’ asked Shaw.

‘Joe was star-struck,’ she said. ‘He never guessed what she was like — not until it was too late. I don’t think Marianne would have bothered with Joe at all but she got pregnant the next year, ’ninety-five. I think she thought about getting rid of the child; we had a friend who’d had an abortion up at Lynn. I know she asked her about it. But in the end she had Tilly. Know what? Know why she had that child?’

There was something in this woman’s eyes that made the cold room colder.

‘Because it was something she could have that Ruth didn’t have — a child. And then it got better, because it turned out big sister couldn’t have kids at all. And it’s the one thing Ruth’s always wanted.’

Shaw felt oppressed by this image of Marianne Osbourne. As they edged closer to understanding the woman her beauty seemed ever thinner, almost transparent, so that they could see something else beneath, something not exactly ugly, just something darker.

‘She was unhappy, Marianne, wasn’t she?’ asked Shaw. ‘What do you think she was unhappy about?’

‘Her life. She had dreams — to be a model, to be admired. She thought her face was her fortune. It wasn’t.’ She’d tried to keep that note of bitterness out of her voice but failed. ‘Then Tilly arrived, and that pretty much ended the dream. She hadn’t thought that bit through. Women never do. She’s not going to be all over Page Three of the tabloids, is she, with a kid at home.’

Valentine rearranged his feet, feeling inexplicably giddy.

‘She never complains — Ruth. There’s nothing Ruth wouldn’t do for you. Then there’s Marianne next door, with that child. And Joe — smashing bloke. And she walks round like life owed her something.’

Mrs Assisi began to brush the dead woman’s hair. ‘This is what she really hated. Working here. She used to sneak in and out as if anyone was bothered what she did. Brought a packed lunch so she didn’t have to go out and be seen.’ She stood, took a step back, to look at her work: ‘Mind you, she was good at it.’ She began to cry. It was so unexpected Valentine wondered if it was staged. ‘It’s just the thought,’she said, looking at the corpse lying in its coffin, ‘that she’ll be here, won’t she? One day soon, when you’ve finished, when the coroner’s finished. And then I’ll have to do this, for her.’