Death Watch

As the seagull flies, Peter Shaw lay twenty-two miles to the north, on the cool sand of Old Hunstanton, watching the moon set. Despite the hour, nearly 3 a.m, along the high-tide mark small fires still burnt, the remnants of the surfing crowd staying up to see in the new day and enjoying what might be the last night of the Indian summer. Wavelets curled over to fall on the beach, creating the night’s only sound – a rhythmic whisper. Fran had made a seat in the sand in front of the café. He sat in it now, his skin drying after a swim, wrapped in a beach towel.

Lena swam fifty yards offshore, the rise and fall of her arms hypnotic. When he’d got back she was up, in a chair on the stoop, unable to sleep through the heat. He watched her coming out of the sea: black skin, white bikini, slim and compact, treading heel-to-toe as if following a line in the sand. She grabbed a towel from the café and sat down, their bodies touching at the hip and shoulder. She dug her toes into the sand. ‘We made some money today,’ she said. She had brown eyes, only ever half open, but with a cast in the right. ‘Fifteen hundred pounds in the shop – a thousand in the café.’

Shaw whistled, insinuating a hand around her waist. On his lap he had a reference book – 1001 Paintings from the Louvre. He’d had it open at Patigno’s Miracle at Cana. One of the many ways in which he was less than the perfect

Liam Kennedy’s copy on the walls of the Sacred Heart of Mary had been faithful to the original – at least in the corner he’d finished – in every detail except one. A tiny omission amongst the memento mori.

Lena kissed him on the neck as he closed the book, but then he slipped a cutting out that he’d hidden between the pages of the index.

‘I found this,’ he said, knowing he’d just ruined the moment.

It was from the Lynn News of 1997. July 22nd.

An accident on the outskirts of town. A Mini had hit a Ford Mondeo at a lonely T-junction. The driver of the Ford – a 45-year-old woman – survived but the two passengers, both over seventy, died at the scene. CCTV footage showed clearly – the report said – that the Mini had jumped the red light. They’d got out of the car to inspect the wrecked Ford – three young men in peaked baseball caps, their car side-on to the CCTV. According to the police the footage showed the driver was alive – her forehead slumped over the wheel turning side to side, and one of the passengers in the back of the car, a hand at a rear window, pawing at the glass. Then the Mini drove away. It was nearly thirty-five minutes before another driver arrived at the scene and alerted the emergency

It was just the kind of crime Lena said damaged the way you looked at the world. Just the kind of crime she didn’t want to know anything about, not any more. She folded the cutting, handing it back. ‘Nice people. Perhaps they’ve paid the price for it – we’ll never know. I don’t want to know.’

But Peter Shaw did want to know. This was what he found almost impossible to tolerate: an open-ended question, the puzzle with no solution. Lena knew it was one of the things that made him a policeman.

‘The date,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘I know. It’s a few days before the day we don’t seem to be able to ever forget.’

She looked out at sea, annoyed – angry – that an almost perfect day had ended like this.

They both knew the details of his father’s last case: the murder of nine-year-old Jonathan Tessier on the night of 26 July 1997 – three days after this fatal car crash. The case that had left his father to retire under the shadow of that dreadful epithet ‘bent copper’. The case that had seen George Valentine busted down to DS, and banished to the coast.

Shaw held the cutting lightly. Lena watched the sea, hugging herself.

‘Tom Hadden’s done a re-examination of the forensics on Tessier. Remember there were tiny spots of paint on the kid’s football shirt? We linked those to the factory where some of Mosse’s mates worked. But there was another flake of paint on the football shirt that child died seascape blue. It’s a commercial make used widely in the 1980s.’

He flicked the cutting. Lena looked out to sea. ‘Widely,’ she said, expertly picking at the hole in the logic.

But she’d walked into a trap. ‘Tom’s done a mass spectroscope analysis and the paint is one produced for this specific model of Mini by British Leyland at Long-bridge in 1991. That’s about eight thousand cars in the batch – most went for export. That’s a very small number, Lena. Think about it – eight thousand in the world. What are the chances that fleck of paint didn’t come from that Mini?’

He gave up waiting for his wife to react, and watched the waves breaking instead. ‘So – a gang of youths in a fatal car smash do a runner from the scene. We know Mosse was involved in such a gang. Less than a week later we find Tessier’s body under the Westmead – and there’s a flake of paint from the Mini on his clothing.’

Lena looked her husband in the eyes. She was always saddened at how much of their lives seemed to get sucked into this other world.

‘This is it,’ he said, raising both hands in frustration. ‘They know there’s a camera at the junction. They probably guessed you couldn’t do an ID on the registration

She laughed without a trace of humour. ‘And you think that makes sense?’ Shaw had been at New Scotland Yard when he’d met Lena in Brixton. She probably knew more about crime on the streets than he did. ‘Why kill a nine-year-old kid because he’s seen you respraying a car? They knew where he lived. A threat would have done – sweetened with a five-pound note. Why would the sight of a Mini being resprayed have registered with the kid? You’ll have to do better than that, Peter. Max’ll have you for breakfast.’

Shaw snagged an ankle round hers.

‘Have you told George?’ she asked.

‘No. I can’t. I don’t know why.’

She threw her head back. ‘He’s a boozer – not far short of an alcoholic – and a nicotine addict with an aversion to exercise and a weak bladder who lives alone. You’re married, with a daughter, have an addiction to exercise, an aversion to cigarettes and no apparent need for a bladder at all. I’ve seen you drink a pint of Guinness, but never two. And you don’t get on? That’s a big surprise, is it?’ She rubbed the salt on her cheek, suddenly desperate to be in the shower. ‘And, while we’re on the subject,

‘I don’t trust him,’ said Shaw, trying not to recognize how cruel she’d been to point that out. He was haunted by this simple conundrum: were Jack Shaw and George Valentine just old-fashioned coppers who’d bent the rules, or were they old-fashioned bent coppers? He was convinced now that Robert Mosse was involved in the murder of Jonathan Tessier – but he was aware that his guilt didn’t necessarily mean his father and George Valentine hadn’t twisted, or planted, the discredited evidence.

Lena stood, brushing sand from her skin. ‘You don’t trust him because you still think there’s a chance he and Jack planted that glove. Which would imply that George’s enthusiasm for reopening the case is simply a cover for his earlier dishonesty. Which means you don’t trust – didn’t trust – Jack, either. Who do you trust?’

Shaw narrowed his eyes, watching a light at sea. ‘I just want proof.’

Lena stretched her fingers out, making her hands into two bird’s feet. Shaw could see that she was struggling to keep her temper. ‘All right. What about doing something practical – getting this over with? And if you can’t do that, Peter – let’s see if we can live without it.’

She stood, took a step forward, looking out to sea. ‘Other than Robert Mosse, who is presumably fairly easy to find, where are the other three kids you and George have identified as members of this gang?’

‘They’re not kids.’

Shaw worked his hand into the muscles at the back of his neck. He’d been down this route, trying to track them down in the odd spare moment George Valentine wasn’t around. All he’d found were three dead ends.

‘One emigrated – two years after the murder. New Zealand. Another turned out a small-time crook – East Midlands somewhere. But he’s in a psychiatric unit now. The ringleader – well, the oldest – took up driving, car mechanics. He crops up in 1999 – drink-driving. Got off with a suspended sentence when the court was told he needs to drive as part of his job. Divorced, one child. Since the drink-driving he’s led a blameless life and appears a model citizen.’ He stood, kicked some sand. Out of his pocket he took his RNLI pager, checked the signal and the battery – a little ritual before sleep.

‘And he’s got a steady job. Even if it’s a peculiar job,’ he added. ‘A touch of the macabre – he drives a hearse.’