Death Toll

16

Wednesday, 15 December

They found Freddie Fletcher in bed in the one-roomed flat above the PEN office, two floors above Tinos. He’d ignored the knocks on the door, the grit against the window. But they’d finally obtained a spare key from the Greek owner of the cafe, telling him they were worried Fletcher was ill — or worse. And when they found him in bed, he did look ill: his skin held a green tinge in the half light, and as he smoked his hand trembled, his fingers resting on the bedside table. The edge of the wood was marked with a line of small burns where, Shaw guessed, he’d fallen asleep over the years, a cigarette laid ready at his side. The facade of brisk good humour he’d managed to maintain in their first interview was threadbare here in this sad damp room. The original wallpaper had been for a child’s room — red and blue balloons — but now they were covered in posters, one showing Churchill’s face with the slogan DESERVE VICTORY.

Fletcher lay on top of the covers, propped up against chair cushions in a white vest and jogging pants, his skin swirled with black hair at the shoulders. ‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ he said. ‘I’m not dying. Big Christmas bash tomorrow — so I’m just making sure I’m up for it. Can’t beat a plate of good British turkey.’

Valentine stood with his back to the wall, promising himself that he’d never lie in a bed in a room like this. Shaw took the only seat, removing a pile of newspapers to the floor: all of them the BNP’s Voice of Freedom.

‘Seen a doctor?’ asked Valentine in a tone of voice which implied that he didn’t care either way.

‘Yeah.’ He thought about what he was going to say next, then went ahead. ‘Fucking Paki. Said it was something I ate. Well done, mate. Course it’s something I ate.’ He put his hand under his vest and massaged his stomach.

‘You were less than truthful, Mr Fletcher, when we first spoke,’ said Shaw. ‘You said there were only two black faces at Nora Tilden’s funeral — from the Free Church?’

Fletcher avoided their eyes by shutting his. They heard something give in his guts, a deep-seated rumble of intestine buckling.

‘Fuck,’ was all he said, rubbing his fingers into his flesh.

‘What about Pat Garrison — Nora’s nephew? He was there. He’d been on the scene a few months. Why didn’t you mention him?’

‘It’s twenty-eight years ago,’ he said, keeping his eyes shut. ‘Not yesterday.’

‘Were you active then, in 1982, in the BNP?’

‘National Front. I’ll be on one of your files down at the nick, too. Couple of fights. I’ve spilt blood for the cause. Mine and theirs.’

‘Right. And you didn’t notice the black kid in your local pub?’

He opened his eyes, then swung a foot off the bed, forcing himself to sit on the edge. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t notice him — did I? I said I didn’t see him at the funeral. It was a big do — you know, coupla hundred at the cemetery. I knew the kid — we all did.’

‘But back at the pub — you were at the wake? Not two hundred there, were there? What did you do — drink, eat, sing? And still no sign of Pat Garrison?’

‘Nora liked us playing games: dominoes, crib, darts, stuff like that. So when the hangers-on had gone we got stuck into that — bit of a competition, with the choir on too. Folk stuff, sea shanties — British music. I suppose he was there. Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. He used to hang around the bar with Lizzie, or his mum.’

‘What did you think?’

Fletcher licked his lips and Shaw guessed he was thinking carefully about what to say.

‘I thought — we all thought — that he must be ashamed of his mother and what she’d done, you know, while the men were out there, fighting for King and Country. Men like my dad. Whatcha think they’d have thought if they could’ve seen her, Bea, walking out with a black in a uniform like she did, while the white lads were out there dying in the trenches?’

Shaw found it almost impossible not to respond: to point out that the war had been over for years when Bea met Latrell, that trench warfare was a century old, and that the beaches of Normandy saw thousands of black GIs dead on the sands. But this wasn’t the place for that argument, however much he’d like to have it.

Valentine coughed on to the back of his hand. ‘Trenches are the First World War, Mr Fletcher.’

Fletcher froze, staring at Valentine, even as Shaw quickly asked the next question. ‘So Patrice wasn’t welcome. Or is that an understatement?’

‘He had a home — some place he was welcome,’ said Fletcher, tearing his eyes off Valentine. ‘He should have gone back to it. Then he wouldn’t have had a chance to do what he did — leaving Lizzie that child. The two-tone one. We didn’t know then what was going on. But he knew we wanted him to leave — walk away. It’s our country, not his.’

‘Anybody suggest that to him — that he should leave?’ asked Shaw, walking to the window.

Opposite was the wall of the cemetery, beyond a single cypress tree in the mist.

‘Not me. Maybe one of the lads — you’d be surprised, even then we had plenty of members, and plenty of ’em went in the Flask.’

‘So he knew what you all felt? It was clear — no ambiguity?’

Fletcher laughed, rubbing his stomach with energy. ‘It was fucking clear all right. If he missed the signals, he was blind. You think one of us put him in the ground?’ asked Fletcher. ‘Me?’

‘Well, someone murdered him, and almost certainly on the night of the wake. Dumped him in the open grave with a couple of feet of topsoil over him. Then you came along and filled it in. You’ve admitted that.’

Valentine pushed himself away from the wall because the damp in it was making his shoulders ache.

‘So did you decide to give him a lesson, Mr Fletcher?’ asked Shaw. ‘Not just you — that’s a bit dodgy, bit risky: but what, one or two of you — three, even. ’Cos you wouldn’t want to give a black man an even chance. Things get out of hand?’

Fletcher took a pill bottle from the side cabinet and downed two, with a glass of off-white milk. ‘That’s bollocks. You know it’s bollocks.’

Shaw stood, zipping up his jacket. ‘How would you describe the relationship between Pat and Lizzie?’

Fletcher shrugged. ‘They were fucking each other.’ He shook his head. ‘But like I said, we didn’t know, not then. There might have been rumours — I can’t remember. She certainly didn’t seem to mind the fact he was a black. Some of the girls are like that. Like father, like daughter, right?’

Valentine saw his chance, the sudden vulnerability in his voice when Fletcher had said the word ‘daughter’, the contrast between that and the anger which seemed to permeate every other word he used. ‘You got kids, Mr Fletcher? Family?’

‘No,’ he said, almost in a whisper.

‘Never been married?’ asked Valentine.

‘No.’ He rolled his shoulders. ‘But I don’t go short. Never have done.’

‘But you like children — your nephews, nieces?’ Valentine walked to the mantelpiece over the blocked-off fireplace. There was a picture there of Fletcher and a woman. He had his arm round her shoulders but her hands hung limp. She was in her fifties, poorly dressed in a tracksuit top and joggers, her hair permed to destruction.

Fletcher glared at Valentine. ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

Shaw looked at a spot right between Fletcher’s eyes.

‘Did you kill Pat Garrison, Mr Fletcher?’

Fletcher removed something imaginary from his lip. ‘No. I didn’t kill him. If I had I’d deserve a medal — but I didn’t.’

‘You ever dig graves at night?’

Fletcher’s eyes narrowed with what Shaw thought was genuine surprise. ‘What? Why would I do that?’

‘Six months ago someone opened up Nora Tilden’s grave. Was it you?’

‘No. That’s crazy.’

‘And you didn’t notice — no one noticed, that a grave had been opened, then refilled?’

‘Summer you get that — bare earth. Relatives plant flowers, tidy up. Seriously, you wouldn’t notice. No one would.’ Fletcher closed his eyes and stretched back on the bed, the springs creaking.

‘The night of the wake, Mr Fletcher. Can you tell us your movements?’

‘I went to the Flask from the graveside — we all did. Church mob went upstairs to the function room for cucumber sandwiches. We stayed in the back room. Choir got there about eight. That’s it. I left when they kicked us out …’ He shook his head on the pillow. ‘No. No — I left about eleven. I hadn’t done her grave so I knew I had to get up and do it next morning before anyone was about. I was pretty much pissed. It was a decent job — I didn’t want to lose it. So I made sure I got to sleep. Set the alarm.’

‘Anyone verify that — anyone who’s alive?’

Fletcher blew air out between his lips in a steady stream, like a balloon deflating.

Shaw stood. ‘We may need you to answer these questions formally, under caution at St James’s. I’d like you to stay in Lynn — and inform my sergeant here if you have any plans to leave the town. Do you understand?’

Valentine put his card on the bedside table.

‘I’m not giving you any names,’ said Fletcher. ‘But there’s plenty of people who wanted that piece of shit wiped off the floor. Dead — maybe not. But gone? Oh yeah — plenty.’

As they went to leave Fletcher stood for the first time, grabbed a copy of Voice of Freedom and thrust it at Shaw.

Shaw looked at the front-page headline:

MIGRANT WORKERS BLAMED FOR CRIME WAVE

‘No thanks, Mr Fletcher. There’s only one crime I’m interested in at the moment.’

Fletcher shrugged. ‘What about the wife? We get a lot of women now, in the party, on the streets for us. And there’s the lunch tomorrow — still a few tickets on our table. Fifty quid — three courses. Local fare.’

Shaw nodded, looking at the paper. ‘It’s only a guess, Mr Fletcher. But you know, I don’t think it’s really her kind of thing.’