Death Toll

29

Friday, 17 December

Freddie Fletcher lay on his hospital bed, his chest bare, the black hair swirled in spirals on his damp skin. The sheet that should have covered him from the waist down was tangled, so that they could see some of his pubic hair, and an old scar like a lipstick kiss on his thigh. His eyes were the only part of him that moved, up to the ceiling, focused on the light fitting, then down, around the bed, and back to the ceiling, as if there was something up there he wanted to hold on to, something that would save him.

There was sunlight in the room, the kind of cheerless sunlight that only hospitals allow. But the most remarkable effect of the light was that Fletcher’s skin seemed luminous, so that he appeared to float apart from the drab bed, with its steel frame and stiff sheets. It was a precarious state, Shaw thought, as if he was held there by his own determination not to die, anchored by the image of the light above.

The contaminated food he’d ingested had prompted a series of minor strokes in the early hours of that morning, and the shock had flooded his lungs with fluid, so that pneumonia was now established in the left, and the right was deteriorating too. Freddie Fletcher was suffocating by degrees. But it wouldn’t be the lack of air that would kill him, thought Shaw, it would be his in-ability to maintain the concentration required to stay alive, an effort which patently was growing with each passing minute. His condition had been weak anyway, the doctor had explained, as he’d apparently gone to the Shipwrights’ Hall dinner suffering from some kind of gastric illness which had put him in bed for the previous twenty-four hours. While his fellow patients had been able to call on their own internal resources to repel the effects of the poison, he had been at its mercy from the first mouthful of the tainted fish soup.

Fletcher kicked out, revealing a foot, and Shaw looked away, embarrassed by sight of the pale withered flesh. Valentine stood by the door, trying not to think how much less frightening this would be for Fletcher if he could have held someone he loved by the hand. Shaw was struggling to dispel the idea that because he disliked this man, in several deeply interlocking ways, he would find his death less shocking — viewing it not as a death at all, in fact, but as retribution. He thought about Fletcher lying in wait that night for Pat Garrison, made brave by being in a crowd of three. George Valentine had expanded on the message he’d left after he’d spoken to Jean. They’d dispatched a car to pick up Kath Robinson and Bea Garrison, another to the London Road Shelter to check on Sam Venn, and if he was well enough to bring him in too. They’d got a squad car out to the Flask as well. If they couldn’t produce John Joe Murray then he was officially a missing person: TV, radio and the local papers would get a mug shot within hours.

Shaw was troubled again by this complex interlocking jigsaw of a world within a world — the community of South Lynn. The picture depicted was a shifting one. But now, at least, they had a clear snapshot of that fateful night: the three men setting out to teach Pat Garrison a lesson he’d never forget — to teach him he was an outsider, and that he’d always be an outsider.

Shaw looked at Fletcher and tried to imagine that moment when the billhook had swung down against the stars and buried itself in Pat Garrison’s skull, slicing down through his brain, so that he would never feel the drop into the open grave. He tried to imagine Fletcher holding the weapon — but again, it wouldn’t come. And again, like a tap dripping, his doubts impinged, undermining this all-too-simple solution to the question of who killed Pat Garrison. Three men, each with a motive, setting out on their victim’s heels.

Shaw checked his mobile at the sound of an incoming text. It was from Guy Poole: the latest from the Environmental Health laboratory was that the soup had been contaminated by a base metal — a compound of aluminium — which had seeped into the soup, probably from the cans in which it had been delivered. They had a team down at the Clockcase Cannery and they were running tests on the unopened can recovered from the Shipwrights’ Hall. Poole’s text wasn’t just to share the latest news — he wanted advice. Management at the Clockcase refused to believe the fault was with their product. They suspected sabotage by a disgruntled workforce facing redundancies as the factory closed. Poole said it was an incident he couldn’t afford to ignore. He needed to seal off the works and get a full team on to the premises. In the circumstances he couldn’t trust the company’s day time security — and the resident factory watchman was a pensioner. Could Shaw liaise with St James’s and get him a couple of uniformed officers to secure the factory?

Shaw relayed the text to the duty desk at St James’s with a recommendation to pull in a squad car off the ring-road traffic patrol.

He killed the phone, then the power, and slipped the dead mobile into the zip pocket on his RNLI jacket. On the bedside table someone had neatly laid out Fletcher’s personal possessions: a watch, a wallet and a menu card for the Shipwrights’ Hall lunch. Turning the card over, he found a printed seating plan: Fletcher had shared a table with eleven others, including Pastor John Abney, Sam Venn and John Joe Murray — although they knew Lizzie’s husband had ducked the meal and given his ticket away before disappearing.

Fletcher’s eyes left the ceiling and locked on Shaw. ‘Worked it out?’ he asked next, trying a smile. His voice was surprisingly clear, but then he gulped in air, as if he’d forgotten how to breathe. His eyes went back to the ceiling. His body stiffened with the effort of reconnecting with that point above his head.

Shaw sat, pulled the chair so close to the bed frame that the wood hit the metal, and spoke into Fletcher’s ear. ‘We know you were in the cemetery that night, waiting for Garrison. You, Sam Venn and John Joe Murray. We know the billhook you used to kill him was from the sea chest in the loft — Alby’s chest. We know you tumbled Garrison’s body into the open grave. What more do we need to know?’

‘You know fuck-all,’ he said. Fletcher clawed at the stiff sheet. ‘Sam drew him little pictures,’ and the smile came this time, because it was cruel, and just slid into place. ‘Just a line on the first one. Two lines on the next one — the start of the gibbet, then the hanging man, because I told him one night, in the dark out by the river. I said we’d lynch him. I said that when they found him swinging they could cut him down with that penknife he always had with him — the one his GI dad left him; the one he was always flashing about to impress the girls.’

He passed out then, a fleeting few seconds of unconsciousness. When he opened his eyes, Shaw knew he’d no idea there’d been a break.

‘But that’s all Sam was gonna do about it — draw little pictures. At the wake I said that all he believed in was talk. That’s why they had their little church — inside it they could hide from the real world the rest of us had to live in. Pathetic. Just because he had a withered arm didn’t mean he couldn’t act. Do something.’

He took a careful breath this time, sipping the air. ‘I said we should teach him a lesson.’ His breathing began to dip into the shallows, picking up speed. ‘And I’d have done it too, but I was outside, smoking, waiting for the kid to go home when Kath Robinson came up. Bit of gossip for me — she said Lizzie was pregnant. That the black was the father. She thought I’d like to know. Thought that might fire me up …’

He licked his lips. The heart monitor by the bed began to buzz and the consultant was beside them. ‘I think that’s it,’ he said. ‘Mr Fletcher can’t do this — not now.’

Fletcher smiled at the notion of ‘now’ — suspecting, perhaps, that there might not be a ‘later’. He held up a hand, and the doctor shrugged, silently mouthing ‘five minutes’ to Shaw.

Fletcher tore his eyes from his anchor above and looked Shaw in the face.

‘I couldn’t do it — not then, not when I knew there was a family. Lizzie’s kid deserved a father — even if it was scum like Garrison.’

Fletcher’s eyes swam, and Shaw recalled his story. The child who’d seen his mother desert the family, then watched the failure of his father to hold what remained of it together. A childhood in care, separated from his only sister. He remembered the single picture on his mantelpiece, his arm thrown round the woman in the cheap shell suit. Reunited. But he could imagine the damage that had been done to both, struggling through separate childhoods.

‘I left them, Sam and John Joe, just inside the cemetery gates. Went home.’ His eyes spilt tears. ‘I said it wasn’t right, told ’em what Kath had said. John Joe said it was rubbish, that she’d made it up because she wanted us to scare Pat off good and proper. Because if she couldn’t have him, why should Lizzie? That she might be simple but she wasn’t stupid. But John Joe knew Kath was right, deep down he knew, so he was really up for it — he had the billhook under his jacket, and he was high all right, like he’d been doused in the whisky. So I left them.’

He shifted his eyes back to the ceiling.

‘Next day I went up with Will Stokes and filled the grave in. We’d covered Nora’s coffin the day before, we just had to finish the job. Took us an hour — with a couple of fag breaks. That night I was in the Flask and the rumour was round that Pat had gone. It didn’t take long to find out why. Sammy and John Joe always had the same story, that they’d lost their nerve too. Too scared. So I never knew — never guessed. But I was always scared — of what I came close to doing.’

He looked at Shaw again. ‘I’m scared now,’ he said.

They left him asleep. In the corridor outside Shaw checked his mobile as he watched the patient through a glass porthole. The doctor appeared at his shoulder.

‘What are his chances?’ asked Shaw.

The doctor was reading a set of medical notes. He didn’t look up. ‘He hasn’t got chances, Inspector. Death’s a process — like life. It’s started. Miracles happen — but up till now, never on my shift.’ He pushed Fletcher’s door open and went in to check the bedside monitors.

There was a text on the phone from Paul Twine.

SAM VENN DEAD AT HOME. TOM AT SCENE.