Death Toll

36

Robert Mosse’s black soft-top BMW was parked on the driveway of his house. A sleek black cat crouched before a triple-doored garage. The paintwork on the car was as immaculate as the cat’s coat, as pristine as the day it had come off the production line. The tyres looked sticky-black, brand new, not a sign of the gravel or sand from Holkham. The bumper was pristine.

Shaw and Valentine stayed in the Porsche down the street, parked between street lights, and let DCs Campbell and Lau knock on the door. They saw Mosse on the threshold: jeans and a baby-blue sweatshirt, happy to invite them inside. They’d been gone for twenty-five minutes before Campbell came to find them, leaving Lau to finish taking a formal statement. She reported that Mosse’s story was clear and confident, once he’d got over his apparent distress at the news that his old friend Jimmy Voyce was dead, murdered in Holkham woods. Yes — he had met him at the pier head at Hunstanton three nights ago. He said he’d explained all this to DI Shaw the previous evening — a statement given freely.

Shaw shifted uneasily in his seat.

But if they wanted the story again, he was happy to repeat it, and it was identical to the one he’d given Shaw. They sent Campbell back to Mosse’s house. She was to ask the solicitor for permission for Tom Hadden’s forensic unit to check out the BMW — just routine. They were grateful for his cooperation. And they needed his help. Could he identify his friend’s body? Either at the city morgue tonight or at St James’s in the morning. They could run him there now, get it over with.

While they waited Shaw’s mobile vibrated on the dashboard. It was a rare text from DCS Warren: MY OFFICE. EIGHT A.M. BOTH OF YOU.

Shaw was surprised it had taken Warren so long to respond to the news that Voyce’s body had been found at Holkham and that he’d been murdered: a man under twenty-four-hour police surveillance, placed directly in danger of his life as part of a plan to entrap Robert Mosse. A plan endorsed by him. Now, after the event, it was clear that Voyce’s death had wider implications, because Shaw could see that there were three careers on the line, not two.

‘Max’ll swing with us,’ said Valentine, reading Shaw’s mind after he’d been shown the text. His bones ached, and he wanted more than anything else to take them to the Artichoke and let alcohol blur the sharp edges of the day.

‘If Mosse says yes to the ID, we’ll give it one last try, George. Then it’s done. Let’s get him down to the Westmead, to the spot itself — where you and Dad found the kid.’

‘What makes you think he’ll break now?’ asked Valentine, studying the facade of Mosse’s house, despising him for the carriage lamps and the flounced curtains.

Shaw thought about Peggy Robins and the reading of Chris Robins’s will. He’d filled Valentine in on the development, and both had agreed that they’d be seriously disappointed if they imagined anything that he might have left in his will would crack open the Tessier case after years in cold storage. Even a confession implicating Mosse would fail to get them back into court. Mosse’s lawyers, and he’d pay for the best, would attack any postmortem testimony as flawed on the basis of motive. Why speak out now? Robins had had a lifetime to set the record straight. They’d point out the obvious: that the ‘confession’ had been made in writing, no doubt with copies, to obtain money by extortion while protecting the blackmailer. And Robins was the perfect blackmailer, because even admitting his own guilt while he was alive wouldn’t put him away. He’d been detained under the Mental Health Act.

But what if Robins and Voyce, and Cosyns before them, had threatened Mosse with something else? Unspecified, perhaps, but material. Something that would put Mosse back in that dock he’d walked free from thirteen years ago?

‘I’ll use Robins, and the will,’ said Shaw. ‘Perhaps Mosse doesn’t know everything. Maybe Voyce didn’t talk before he died. Maybe, for Mosse, there are still unanswered questions. Let’s play on that. It’s all we’ve got.’

They watched Mosse’s front door open. He stood aside, letting Campbell and Lau go first, then he kissed his wife. A cliched peck.

‘Looks like he’s on for it,’ said Valentine. ‘Model citizen that he is.’

‘Radio Fiona,’ said Shaw. ‘Tell her to follow us.’

Shaw got the Porsche round in time to lead the way, out through the monkey-puzzle streets of the upmarket suburb in which Mosse lived, then onto the ring road.

As they negotiated the turn-off into the Westmead Estate, Shaw smiled into the rear-view mirror, wondering what Mosse would be thinking now, hoping that even his cold blood would have begun to race with the uncertainty, the return to the scene of the crime. Ahead of them the twenty-one-storey block of Vancouver House stood against the night sky, steam leaking from heating systems as if the innards were boiling over. Underneath, in the concrete-pillared car park, Jonathan Tessier’s body had been found on a summer’s evening nearly fourteen years ago. He wondered what Mosse felt about that, whether he thought of himself as a different person back then. That must be how it worked — or did he survive by protective amnesia? By imagining it was someone else back then, a distant relative who didn’t even get a Christmas card any more.

Shaw parked, got out and walked back to the squad car. Mosse’s window was down and Shaw was heartened to see — for the first time — a genuine look of fear in the solicitor’s eyes as he recognized the DI.

‘I thought we’d talked this through, Mr Shaw,’ said Mosse, his composure immediately reasserted.

‘Just to say I appreciate you offering to do the ID for us,’ said Shaw. ‘We can get you down there in a few minutes, run you home. I wanted a few words, though — and I thought you’d feel more comfortable away from St James’s. Less formal. It’s about Chris Robins’s will.’

Shaw opened the door. Mosse got out. He was in a full-length cashmere overcoat. His shoes were soft leather. Shaw smelt apple-blossom shampoo.

He walked forward and shook Shaw’s hand. It was over before Shaw could stop him. He turned to Valentine, but just nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘But why here?’ Shaw thought the expression he’d arranged on his face was perfectly pitched: mild interest, a willingness to help.

‘Because this is where it all started.’ Shaw looked up at the serried lights in the flats, kitchens mainly, windows obscured by condensation. Shaw could imagine a childhood here, but he couldn’t feel it.

Mosse used one hand to button the coat at his throat. ‘That was a lifetime ago. I don’t mind answering any questions you have. But I’d like it recorded that I’m doing this freely.’

‘Let’s go inside,’ said Shaw, and led the way across the snow-covered tarmac, then in through the pillars of the car park. He found the spot immediately, by a lift shaft, a broken fire-exit sign, a puddle on the floor like blood from a head wound. He’d discovered, amongst his father’s papers, press cuttings from the first days of the inquiry. There’d been a picture of the crime scene. And he’d been back since with Valentine, as if they were the ghosts that haunted the place, not Jonathan Tessier.

Shaw stamped his foot lightly, marking the spot. ‘I wondered — we wondered — why you’d killed Jimmy Voyce like that,’ he said. Valentine coughed, taken aback by Shaw’s sudden hostile change of tack. ‘Tying him down first. There was something, wasn’t there, that he wouldn’t tell you.’

Mosse’s shoulders slumped, as if in disappointment. His hands were in his pockets and he dug them deeper. ‘This is going to be a waste of time,’ he said to himself, but loud enough for them to hear.

Valentine spat on the ice.

‘You can see through his body — right to the ground underneath,’ said Shaw. ‘The impact nearly cut him in two. I think you wanted information. Because you were being blackmailed, had been blackmailed, subtly, but persistently. And you wanted to be sure it would end when Voyce died. What kind of information was it?’

Mosse looked at his wristwatch and a cufflink caught the light.

‘I think it’s the same information that Alex Cosyns had,’ said Shaw. ‘And I think it all goes back to Chris Robins. Something they knew, or something they had; something you were prepared to pay to keep secret. Did they ever tell you what it was — or was it enough to know it was there? That it was sufficient to put you behind bars for the murder of Jonathan Tessier.’

Mosse let a smile form on the otherwise immobile face.

‘Of course,’ he said, running a hand back through the barbered hair. ‘That’s what this is about. Your father.’ He looked around. ‘This was where his career came to an end, wasn’t it? Right here. Where he found that glove.’

Valentine was motionless. It was an illusion, Shaw knew, but it seemed as though the cigarette smoke had solidified around him.

‘I think Alex Cosyns milked you for years,’ said Shaw. ‘Low key, nothing in your face. But then he upped the pressure, didn’t he? Because Chris Robins got some cash too — although he never got to spend it. And that’s why Alex Cosyns died, too — because it was all getting too expensive, and we were getting closer to the truth. You thought it was over then, with Cosyns and Robins dead — although it didn’t stop you getting someone to ransack Robins’s stuff during his funeral, just in case whatever they had was there. Which implies, doesn’t it, that there was something. A confession? Maybe. Or something more tangible?’

Mosse tapped the toe of his shoe on the solid ice of the puddle.

‘So you must have been pretty upset when you heard Jimmy Voyce on the line — and not long distance, either, but right here in Lynn. What did you give him — a few minutes in the pub, just to make sure he was on the same game as the rest? After your money. But the key question, the one you took him down to the woods to pose, was did he have the information. Get an answer?’

Mosse turned to Valentine. ‘This is delusional, Sergeant. You really should step in, you know. This is going to look so bad in retrospect. When my complaint goes in to the chief constable’s office. You’ll both be finished then.’ And that’s when his neck muscles jerked, just a fleeting spasm, but it made his head lower an inch, like a boxer ducking an imaginary blow. It was the first time the facade had cracked, the stress of the moment short-circuiting his nervous system.

Valentine was watching his face and he saw that Mosse’s skin colour was changing, very gradually, the blood draining away so that the tan looked artificial. It was like watching a lizard in the sun.

‘But it doesn’t have to be the same for you,’ said Mosse, licking dry lips, looking at Valentine’s tightly knotted tie. ‘Know what I think? I think you were loyal. Stood by Jack Shaw. It wasn’t your idea to contaminate the glove, was it? But you paid the price.’ He smiled. ‘And now you’re here. Being loyal again. Same mistake. It’s a family thing. They’re going to take you down with them. Then he’ll walk away from the wreckage. There’s that nice little business the wife runs down on the beach. What have you got to walk away to?’

Mosse affected a shiver, produced a pair of gloves, fur-lined, and slipped them on.

‘Now, I think you wanted me to ID Jimmy Voyce’s body?’

‘This time next week I’ll know what they knew,’ said Shaw. He judged the tone perfectly — there was no doubt he was speaking the truth. ‘There’s been an invitation. A family affair. Last will and testament of Chris Robins. I’ll know everything — as I said, by this time next week. So, if you were planning on leaving town at all, I’d appreciate notice. Because we’ll need to talk again.’

He’d thought about the words to use. He could have told him the stark truth, but Mosse would have seen what a weak threat that was, just as they had. This way Mosse had seven days to imagine the worst.

Mosse’s eyes flitted between them. He said he was going, but he didn’t move. The uniformed PC stood out of earshot, but they could hear him stamping his boots in the cold. Somewhere, out on the Westmead, a car alarm began to blare.

‘You all done?’ asked Mosse.

‘Not quite,’ said Shaw.

‘Really?’ asked Mosse. ‘I think you’re all done, because we wouldn’t be standing in an underground car park if you could prove any of this, Inspector. We’d be down at St James’s. And if this mysterious invitation was so persuasive I think you’d have waited until after the reading. Then we could have talked.’

He ruffled his hair and Shaw thought he caught the scent of it — apple again, or something citrus.

‘And, if you don’t mind a bit of free legal advice, I’d think twice about a next time. Jack Shaw made a big mistake that night. I don’t mean not bagging the glove, or bringing it to the flat — although, frankly, they were disastrous mistakes. No — the big mistake was that he thought I’d killed that child. I didn’t. And I find it unforgivable to be accused of that crime — again.’

His voice was angry, but Shaw could tell this was play-acting. He wasn’t offended at all, he was playing for time, hoping Shaw would tell him more.

‘I’m sure your father paid for his mistake. I don’t know how, and I don’t want to know. But if you make the same mistake, you will pay too.’

‘This time next week,’ said Shaw.

A Vauxhall Corsa came down the ramp, parked fifty feet away, and a teenager in a baseball cap walked away from it towards the exit.

Shaw could see that Mosse had not only made mistakes in this interview, but that he knew he had. He was re-calculating, like a dashboard GPS, but he couldn’t do it fast enough.

‘And Voyce’s car — that’s another mistake. Only partly burnt out. You drove it, didn’t you? Not a mark on the BMW. So you used his car. There’ll be forensics, there are always forensics,’ said Shaw.

‘That’s it,’ said Mosse. He turned to Valentine. ‘Unless you have any rational questions, Inspector?’ He did a little am-dram double-take. ‘Sorry — Sergeant.’

It was — in retrospect, Shaw thought — his biggest error. He couldn’t walk away without that one taunt. It was retaliation, which meant he’d been hurt.

‘I’ll save my questions,’ said Valentine. ‘For next time.’