Death Toll

44

A crowd of sixty or seventy stood outside the Flask. The snow fell now as if with relief; a teeming blizzard of wet flakes, the clouds so low that the top floor of the former council flats was lost in the gloom. When he’d dropped Justina and Fran at the lifeboat house on the way into town they’d seen the overburdened clouds banked on the horizon, lit by the moon, edging towards the coast. Most of the spectators had brought their drinks out with them, and as Shaw parked the Porsche he heard laughter, thrilling through the crowd like electricity. The Flask looked as it would have looked when the whalers were still stripping flesh on the fields beyond, the snow masking any hint of the twenty-first century, hanging off the rough brickwork and the timbered frame.

The front door of the pub swung open as Shaw and Valentine made their way through the crowd to a halfhearted chorus of boos.

Fiona Campbell shut the door behind them. ‘Sir.’

Shaw looked round. The inside of the pub looked like the Mary Celeste. The empty tables dotted with drinks, a tape still playing Christmas favourites, the tree in one corner decked with flickering lights.

‘The barman opened up at six,’ said Campbell. ‘Lizzie Murray was here — but no sign of John Joe or the son, Ian. Mrs Murray went down to change a barrel and found the watergate open …’

They heard noises from behind the bar but saw nothing until a paramedic appeared from the cellar. He brushed past them, out to the ambulance, without speaking.

Shaw led the way. The trapdoor was open, the cool dampness of the cellar welling up into the close humidity of the bar. The narrow space between the barrels was full of ambulance gear: a stretcher, a mobile cardiac unit, blankets, a medicine chest. In the gutter lay the thick spillage from the beer. Yeast, thought Shaw. It had been Murray’s footprints on Sam Venn’s stairs.

The semicircular watergate was still open, framing the dark river on which the snowflakes settled like miniature lilies. On the far side they could see the Clockcase Cannery, just visible, the illusion almost complete now: that it was a liner, edging from the quayside, bound for an Atlantic crossing.

Shaw stepped out on to the stone quay. Below him lay the wooden clinker-built sailing boat they’d seen when they’d first come down to interview John Joe Murray. He was in it, lying on an overcoat, wrapped in blankets. His eyes were open, but studied the falling snow. One ankle was bare, and Shaw winced at the sight of the raw wound where a rope had cut down through the flesh. He pushed aside an image of Jimmy Voyce’s shattered leg, his broken, transparent body.

A paramedic was kneeling beside Murray, checking his pulse.

Shaw put a foot in the boat, expertly counterbalancing his weight by putting a hand on the far gunwale. He squatted down, trying to get close to Murray’s face. The smell was extraordinary — the smell of the sea, like the crushed ice on a fishmonger’s stall. Shaw noted the salt drying on his face.

‘Where’s Ian?’ he asked, close enough now to see that there was still life in those remarkable green eyes.

‘The sea chest,’ said Murray, and Shaw realized he wasn’t watching the snow fall, he was studying the lit attic windows above. ‘He’s up there now. He knows the truth.’ He licked his cracked upper lip. ‘Keep Lizzie away.’

Shaw sensed someone at his back and turned to see paramedics, the stretcher between them. He retreated to the cellar, where Valentine was briefing Fiona Campbell. ‘Get a description out to St James’s,’ Valentine told her, then, noting Shaw, added, ‘Landlady’s missing. Shortly after he turned up,’ he said, nodding to the watergate. ‘Barman said she’d been hit — bloody lip, and she was crying — pretty much out of control.’

They heard the water slapping against the quay outside.

‘Get a unit along the riverside, Fiona,’ said Shaw. ‘She might do something stupid. George — follow me.’

As they climbed the narrow wooden stairs behind the bar Shaw looked over the banisters and saw John Joe, flat on the stretcher, being carried out through the coffin-shaped door to the bar. Even in the minute since he’d last seen him the colour had returned to his face, the flesh three-dimensional, alive again. A few seconds later the distant sound of the crowd, joyful, festive, died instantly.

At the first landing Shaw halted, unable to suppress the image of Nora Tilden falling, her bones breaking, until she lay in a jagged heap on the floorboards below. The last flight, a corkscrew, climbed into the roof of the old building to the door like a man-sized cat-flap, hinged at the top. Shaw pushed his way through, stooping, his hand on the smooth surface of the old oak floor.

Ian was kneeling in front of his grandfather’s sea chest. His hands, palms up, were pale in the light that poured in through one of the dormer windows from the street lamp outside, casting deep shadows in the otherwise unlighted attic. The heavy, silently falling snow produced an odd effect, dappling the orange light as if reflected off moving water.

With a sudden burst of sound the ambulance pulled away from the front of the pub, the siren ringing out briefly.

‘What happened to John Joe?’ asked Shaw.

‘He told the truth,’ he said. ‘At last. It’s only taken twenty-eight years.’

Ian looked at his hand and Shaw saw a dark stain. ‘You hit your mother?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Just once.’ He looked about him as if only now aware of where he was. His body turned at the hips, and Shaw noticed for the first time that on his lap was a silver flask: oddly designed, the body in thick glass, the stopper and base metallic.

Ian picked it up. ‘Strange where you find the truth,’ he said. ‘Even John Joe didn’t know, because he didn’t know what this meant …’ He put the flask on top of the sea chest.

‘I come up here a lot,’ he said, settling back on his heels. ‘It’s like a link — to family. I’ve always had Mum — but I felt she was always holding back, as if any display of emotion would let something out, something she wanted to keep inside.’ He nodded, seeing how true that was. ‘So I’d come up here, see if I could feel the past. Last night I came up again. The ship’s log is my favourite because Grandad filled it in, after they found the ship again. They saw an iceberg — did you know that? Just, like, there, one morning, a few hundred yards from the ship. He says they could feel it — the cold — on their faces.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘I understand why he doesn’t want to see me — but I think it’s unfair. Selfish.’

Shaw didn’t answer. Valentine was wondering how hard he’d hit his mother.

‘Because it’s like Grandad has run away, too, just like I thought Dad did. But it’s worse, because I know he’s been near, watching, and there’s been so many times I wanted to speak to him but I couldn’t. So …’ He looked around, seeing his fixation as pathetic. ‘I used to come up here, though not for a while. But last night I came up for a lantern — a storm lantern. I knew where John Joe was — out at the old coal barn at Wells, on the marshes. Aunt Bea rang. I needed the light. And there was something right about taking Grandad’s lantern. It was like it made it official — a ceremony. Because it was going to be a trial, of sorts. And then an execution.

‘I found the lantern, but I also found something new — this.’ He held up the flask. ‘See? It’s got that picture on it, like the one on the glasses — the whalers. It must have been part of the set.’ He unscrewed the top of the flask and drank, coughing, not bothering to put the cap back on. ‘And it hadn’t been there before. And no one comes here now except me or Mum, so I thought she’d put it away, because she’s fond of the glasses but they get broke, and perhaps she wanted to make sure she’d always have the flask. But I thought — I could do with a drink if I was going to finish it, finish what we’d started. So I took it. I took it — and the lantern. I’d always promised Mum I wouldn’t take any thing. They gave me something when I was a kid — a tankard — but she said I had to leave everything else, because one day they’d sell it all, and I could have the money, help set up the restaurant, maybe.’

He laughed as if that was a fantasy.

‘Then, tonight, John Joe told the truth. It saved his life. He said that the three of them were waiting for Dad that night — him, Fletcher and Venn. But Fletcher lost his nerve, and Dad humiliated Venn — threw him in the open grave. Then Venn ran for it too. And John Joe couldn’t do it — not on his own — and I doubt he ever wanted to do anything …’ he searched for the word, ‘permanent.’

He drank some more, and on the still air Valentine caught the scent of malt whisky.

‘But he did say he’d seen Dad waiting by that big old stone box tomb — and that on the stone he could see two of the green glasses, and the flask. This flask. But when John Joe left Dad that night, he’d been drinking from it. His head thrown back. So how did it get back to the sea chest?’ It wasn’t really a question, because he had an answer.

He put both his hands on the sea chest, like a priest at an altar. ‘I asked Mum why she did it. Why she killed him. Tonight — after I hit her. She wouldn’t say. She said it would be better if I didn’t know.’ He shook his head and looked at Shaw and the shimmering orange light showed that his eyes were full of tears. ‘How can she think that, after all that’s happened to us? How could it be better not to know?’

He stood, lifting his jeans at the knees so that they were straight. ‘I don’t know where she is. In the river? She said she might — if she had the courage. Wherever she is it’s because of the lies. Her lies. I can forgive her — I can forgive everyone. I just want someone to stay. Not run away or hide. I wanted her to stay. I don’t think she heard me ask.’

They heard the single pulse of a police siren outside.

‘Can I see him?’ asked Ian, standing. ‘I’d like to see Grandad.’ He touched the sea chest. ‘I never have.’ What was astonishing then, thought Shaw, was that for the first time he could see Alby’s genetic input in Ian’s face: because he had his grandfather’s precise air of almost childlike curiosity.