Death Toll

32

The interview rooms at St James’s had been built in the fifties and smacked of utility Britain. No two-way mirrors, intercom or dark, non-reflective surfaces here; just tiled walls decorated with a single line of brown paint at knee-height, cheap furniture screwed down and light bulbs encased in miniature iron maidens. This was Shaw’s third interview in an hour, and it was difficult to imagine they’d all been in different rooms. First: Kath Robinson. She’d reiterated the story Valentine’s sister had heard. She’d seen Fletcher, Murray and Venn leaving the Flask at around ten fifteen on the evening of Nora Tilden’s wake. She was sure of the time, because she’d gone back in to listen to the choir begin their second session, and she knew that was set for half past because Lizzie had said they’d keep to the timetable to allow the staff time to clear glasses and circulate sandwiches. But going in she’d bumped into Pat Garrison leaving, coat on and saying he was heading home.

‘He didn’t say anything else,’ she said. No bitterness, no recrimination, just a statement of fact.

Two questions: Did she tell Freddie Fletcher that night the secret she shared with Lizzie Murray — that Lizzie was pregnant?

She’d shrugged, seemingly confused by the straightforward question. She curled her bottom lip over her teeth. ‘I don’t even like Freddie. I wouldn’t share that with him. Would I?’ In Shaw’s experience that was a bad sign — answering one question with another.

And if it was true that she’d seen them all heading out towards the cemetery — and she’d just admitted she didn’t like Fletcher — why didn’t she raise some kind of alarm the next morning, or in the following days, when it became obvious that Pat Garrison had gone? Her answer, this time, was persuasive: yes, she’d suspected the three men were going to waylay Pat Garrison. A beating? Maybe. Worse? She didn’t think so. Perhaps they’d run him out of town. But either way he deserved it, she said. She wasn’t the only one he’d tried his luck with, and he’d been reluctant to take no for an answer more than once.

Had he forced himself on any of these girls? On her?

‘Never,’ she said. ‘Not really …’ she added, realizing perhaps that she’d gone too far. ‘He didn’t force me to do anything.’ For once the pale, translucent skin of her face reddened.

The second interview was with Alby Tilden. He’d made a statement repeating the story he’d told them at the Clockcase Cannery. He’d admitted industrial sabotage, denied he’d had an accomplice. During the later stages of the interview he began to show signs of distress: shallow breathing and chest pains. The on-call GP was with him within twenty minutes and recommended hospitalization. The paperwork was under way, and he’d been sedated and taken to the sick bay. Uniformed branch would provide cover at the Queen Victoria after his transfer. Shaw asked Valentine to have a chat with one of the hospital administrators to see if they could find him a room of his own. One with blinds.

And now the third interview. Bea Garrison didn’t look good under a shadeless electric light. She’d chosen a formal suit in charcoal, the skirt to her calves, and it didn’t suit her. The silver rings looked gaudy in contrast, and make-up buried her natural colour.

Shaw had already established the basic facts after making it clear they knew she’d lied to them about her relationship with Alby Tilden: she admitted that for the past year she’d been the one contact between the Murray family and Alby. She collected his pension and his post and took them to the Clockcase Cannery once a month. Every first Tuesday Alby would meet her up by the goods-in bay and they’d share a bottle of wine in the strange room he’d built in the basement. But when Alby’s former cellmate from Lincoln had been alive she’d sent all the letters to him to pass on to Alby. Even she didn’t know Alby was in Lynn. She’d pick up his pension, bank it to his account. That’s how he’d always wanted it — distant. He thought about his family every moment of every day, she said. But he didn’t want them to see him.

But when he did need a go-between, asked Shaw, why her? Why not Lizzie, or Ian, or John Joe?

‘Alby knows I don’t find his …’ she searched for the appropriate word, ‘his decline, upsetting. I’m ageing too, Inspector. But it’s more than that. It’s the seediness of it — isn’t it? The failure. He’s always wanted to protect them from that — and perhaps protect himself against the knowledge that he’d know what they thought, even if they pretended otherwise. And I’ve always thought he deserved our indulgence. And that’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think it was important to your inquiry — but Alby’s privacy was important to him.’ It was an oddly formal word to use, thought Shaw. ‘I wouldn’t have wished Nora on anyone,’ she said. ‘And losing the child turned his mind — on top of the war. I think he’s suffered. I wanted to help. We all did.’

But Shaw was still struggling with the notion that this woman was so close to her sister’s murderer.

‘So — you’ve forgiven Alby? For what he did?’

‘Have I? Yes — I suppose I have. But what did he do? Pushed his wife down the stairs in a violent argument at worst? Or watched her fall down them accidentally after a row on the landing? Living with Nora was a sentence, Inspector. I know — I served my time. She was bitter, cold and calculating. Alby married her for money, so he never had my sympathy, but I liked him because he was everything she wasn’t. Warm, open, spontaneous. I was just a girl when I first met him. I was charmed, excited. I was always charmed. And he was colour-blind when it came to people. Again, a stark contrast with my sister.’

It was quite a speech but Shaw didn’t miss a beat. ‘When did you tell Alby we’d found Pat’s bones in Nora’s grave?’

They’d given her a sweet tea in a plastic cup and at that her fingers pressed in slightly, Shaw noted, distorting the shape.

‘Immediately. I went that night — unannounced. There’s a bell at the loading bay and he came and rolled the doors back. I’m sorry. I didn’t think he’d do what he did …’

‘You told him Kath’s story?’

She looked from Shaw to Valentine, calculating. ‘Yes. Of course — Kath told me that afternoon, as soon as we’d got Lizzie to rest. It was an odd secret to keep all those years.’ She shook her head. ‘Stupid girl.’

‘And Alby’s reaction?’

‘Anger. I don’t think Fletcher and Venn made him angry. He knew them, of course, knew their deficiencies. He could despise them. But John Joe — that’s what hurt. Because as far as Alby saw it, you see, it was two crimes. He’d robbed us of Pat — robbed Lizzie, and Ian. And then he’d taken his place. A father’s love for his daughter is very intense, isn’t it? The thought that she’d spent her life with that man — touching him, letting him share her bed. Alby’s not mad — he’s ill. But that thought shook him, shook his mind.’

‘Did he tell you what he planned to do?’

‘No. Never.’

‘Kath’s a stupid girl,’ said Shaw. ‘But Alby’s not stupid, is he? And yet what he did was stupid …We were bound to find him in the end. He’ll go to prison. He’s unlikely to survive that experience at his age, and with his health. Is that clever?’

She set her hands on the wooden table, the rings striking the Formica.

‘Prison holds no horrors for Alby, Inspector. Quite the opposite. And with the Clockcase closing, perhaps he understood that. Perhaps he wanted you to find him. And that night — the night I told him — he asked about Kath, about whether she’d tell her story to you, to everyone. I said she wouldn’t. Which is what she’d promised me. I thought the past should be a closed book. But she didn’t keep her secret, did she? I don’t blame her, really. But there we are. If she had kept it to herself, Alby thought you’d have never known about the three of them lying in wait for Pat that night. So what happened at the Shipwrights’ Hall might have ended up being what it started out as — simple food poisoning. So perhaps he isn’t that stupid after all. Just unlucky.’

It was a neat summary and Shaw wondered how long she’d had it prepared. Because he didn’t believe that was how it had happened.

‘This is nonsense,’ he said, standing. ‘I think Alby wanted to kill the three of them — Fletcher, Venn and Murray. I don’t know how — but I think you do, and I think you helped him. Because where’s your anger? The anger of a mother who discovers that her son has been murdered.’

She reacted physically to the words, rocking back slightly on the chair, but she didn’t speak. To buy herself time she tried to smooth out the skirt over her knees.

‘My sergeant here will take a statement — but remember, if you are lying, that’s an offence in itself, and the law will take no account of your age.’ He leant over the table so that he could see her eyes. ‘I’d ask you to imagine what it will be like for Lizzie and Ian if they have to visit you in jail. If they have to watch you die there. Ask yourself if they’ll survive that. If the family will survive that.’

Shaw waited for Valentine in the CID suite on the top floor.

It took his DS twenty minutes to take the statement which he slid across Shaw’s desk. ‘She’s sticking. No change. We have to let her go.’

‘Yes, we do. But here’s what we do next,’ said Shaw. He asked Valentine to get the incident room to liaise with Interpol, the US Bureau of Immigration and the North Dakota State Police. He wanted everything they had on Bea Garrison’s life in Hartsville during the sixties and seventies. It was a big slice of her life, and it was missing. Did her story really add up? Something she’d said about her life back then, when they’d first talked to her at the Flask, still jarred in Shaw’s memory. Infuriatingly, he couldn’t recall the detail, but it was something about that small town in the Midwest. Something that didn’t fit. Something about the little drugstore. He tried to imagine her life with Latrell, the GI returned home, but the picture wouldn’t form.