Death Watch

The Red House had been the CID’s out-of-office office for nearly thirty years. Its principal original attraction had been the rarity of its public telephone in the corridor leading to the loos – a vital link with the outside world before the advent of the mobile phone. Now it had no attractions at all. There were four drab rooms, a tiny bar in a lobby by the door. Its local trade – mainly stall-holders from the town’s two markets – crowded into the front bar. The CID took the larger of the back two, a room dominated by a lithograph of the Guildhall and an old photo of the city walls before they had been demolished to make way for St James’s police HQ.

Shaw always got a thrill walking over the threshold, having spent many childhood evenings sitting outside on the kerb, waiting for his father, bought off with crisps and squash. Its interior had been part of his father’s secret world. Now it was his world.

‘Mark,’ said Shaw, nodding at the door. DC Mark Birley wedged a stool against it.

They were crammed into the room. Pints and alcopops bristled on the table tops. No one was on fruit juice, and everyone would drive home; one of the police force’s abiding ironies. Everyone had a single-sheet briefing note from Twine – all the major developments summarized.

Shaw sat on the wide window ledge, his back to the stained-glass picture of the pier at Hunstanton. He took one sip of Guinness, annoyed to find a shamrock doodled in the white head.

‘Anything we should know that’s not in the note?’ he asked.

DC Campbell waved a lime-green bottle of alcopop.

‘MVR – Motor Vehicle Repair. The garage appears completely legit, they don’t issue torches. Staff of thirteen. We’re talking to everyone who was on duty yesterday, nothing yet.’

‘OK. But we don’t have an alternative, Fiona, so let’s dig deeper. What about the vehicles themselves? All accounted for? Any out over the weekend – that happens. Nice little sideline. Bit of pocket money. They rent out the hospital vans for forty-eight hours and no one’s the wiser – as long as someone’s fiddling the mileage. Really dig – OK?’

‘We’ll check it,’ said Campbell.

Check-It. A few of them grinned into their drinks.

Twine stretched his legs under a round iron table, leather boots screeching on the wooden floor. ‘Door-to-door picked up plenty of gossip on the Judds’ marriage. Tongues wag – mainly because Ally Judd seems to spend most of her spare time dusting Thiago Martin’s bedroom furniture.’ That got a laugh.

‘I’ve got a file getting fatter on the priest – he’s right about not being welcome in his own country. There’s a police record. He’s been telling fibs about his medical

‘Why was he struck off?’ asked Shaw.

‘He tried to prove that a contaminated water supply in one of the shanty towns was causing lead poisoning in children. He ran a study based on blood and urine samples. The parents worked for the company that supplied the water. He didn’t get their permission. When he tried to publish there was a legal action. Big money talks – he got struck off. The church wasn’t too pleased either. His own parish, in one of the up-market suburbs, hadn’t seen him for eight months.

‘We’re checking his movements yesterday. He helped someone move house early evening, out of council care, but he was back by seven. He says he’s doing an MA with the Open University and was upstairs studying. He says he was alone. Ally Judd says she went to the presbytery to sweep and wash the floors while the light lasted early evening. She says she left her gear there, thinking the power cut would end and she could go back and carry on. When it didn’t she went and got her stuff. Says she called up the stairs to the priest both times – once at 7.30, then about 10.30. Which is convenient as it provides a neat alibi.’

He leant forward, elbows on the table. ‘And just to say we got hold of Norma Jean’s medical records. Her baby was due in early 1993. So we tracked down abandoned babies for the Eastern Counties – nothing even close. And certainly no record of a regular registered birth in hospital. There’s also a blank on bank accounts, driving

A thunderstorm had been brewing for an hour and now it broke, rattling the windows, chugging in the downpipes. The room got darker, the wall lights warmer, and they could smell the sea.

‘And one loose end,’ added Twine. ‘Bill Creake says the floater who fetched up on the storm grid down in the docks looks like a suicide from Cleethorpes. Wife says he went for a walk four days ago along the beach, didn’t come back. Left his dog tied to a post in the dunes, his shoes and socks neat and tidy. Age is about right – mid-fifties. He’d just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They’re getting the dental records down.’

Shaw thought about the body in the mortuary at the Ark – the single arm protruding from the shroud, the marks at the wrist. ‘OK – thanks.’

Then he stopped himself going on, annoyed that he hadn’t tracked down that detail. ‘Just one thing – ask Bill to ask the wife if he wore a watch. Perhaps he left that on the sands too? Only there’s a mark on his wrist – odd. Maybe one of those copper bands to guard against rheumatism. Just let me know.’

Twine made a note, the Mont Blanc’s nib scratching on notepaper.

The chatter in the room had begun to rise so Shaw pitched his voice just a little louder. ‘Right. George and I have just interviewed Aidan Holme at the hospital,’ said Shaw. ‘He was brimful of pain-killers, but he was compos mentis. He understood that we’d found his fingerprints at

The room in intensive care had been like one of Jan Orzsak’s fish tanks. Tubes bubbled, air tanks hissed, and the light was a sickly low-spectrum blue. Holme looked like he’d been smuggled out of the Valley of the Kings: bandages around his chest, throat, and one half of the skull – the right. The left half was red with the heat in the room, the visible eye encrusted with sleep.

Holme’s voice was a whisper, but clear enough, if Shaw sat with his head bowed down to his lips, like a priest. Valentine had sat opposite, trying to take a note, and hadn’t asked a question.

‘I’m going to die,’ said Holme, before Shaw could speak. They’d been briefed in the corridor outside by the consultant who said the patient’s vital signs were poor. The burns had put a burden on his heart which had not responded to medication. He had a lung infection, septicaemia, and internal bleeding inside his skull where he’d struck his head on the road. He was too ill to survive an operation to relieve the pressure on the brain.

‘You’re in good hands here, the best,’ said Shaw, resisting the urge to take his hand. On the side table by the bed were two cards, stiff and slightly formal, both asking the recipient to ‘Get Well Soon’. There was a bowl of fruit and a bottle of Lucozade, unopened.

Shaw outlined what they knew. Holme listened with his eyes closed, each swallow making his Adam’s apple creak.

When Shaw had finished he realized that Holme had been saving his strength, because when he opened his eye it was clearer, brighter.

‘You put it together in the basement of the house…’ said Shaw, recalling the chemistry lab equipment. He got his lips close to his ear. ‘But how did you do the swap?’

‘I got inside. Inside the machine. There’s a maintenance door, you can slide in by the belt, so you’re right there, just before the inner doors of the furnace. It’s hot – too hot to touch anything. But it only takes a few seconds. When the stuff came through I’d take a stash; not all – just one canister, maybe two. That’s the trick – don’t be greedy. Then I’d put the package I’d made up on the belt. Straight swap. Once the last batch was on the belt the coppers were off anyway – so I’d only be inside for two, three minutes, max. Bry would knock and I’d slip out. I never told him how easy it was – best that way.’ He tried to wink, the encrusted eye jerking open.

‘How’d you get into the hospital?’

‘Up the ladder, where Bry smoked. Foolproof – you just walk in off the street into the goods yard and wait until they take a break. You don’t have to wait long. They

He closed his eyes.

‘But then Bry wanted out? Like the family says?’

The eye came open, angry. ‘Shit. No.’ He shook his head despite the pain. ‘That’s Bry’s story because they all wanted him to stop. But Bry – he was happy. Happy as he’d ever be. No. I wanted to stop. We’d fought over it; I’d been telling him for months. But this big shipment was coming in and he wanted to do it. And he wanted some serious money back – a full share: fifty-fifty. I went up there that last day to tell him I wouldn’t do it.

‘I had a life once. I wanted it back. I stopped using about eighteen months ago. So I was looking for a new start – a bit of cash to get me out, and up. So I tried a couple of deals, and got caught. I was going down, whatever the lawyers say. I know enough people who’ve been down. If you supply it’s OK. But you use too – no one can resist that. I thought, if I go in it’ll kill me.’

He laughed silently, overcome by the irony.

‘The lawyer’ll tell you – we’re looking at a deal that’ll get us an open prison. One last chance. So I told Bryan we’d stop. I gave him a bottle of the Green Dragon – I told him if he wanted the stuff there’s a bloke on the docks can get it. But, like, it costs too – top end, two-fifty quid, more. It’s money he hasn’t got. But that was going to be his problem, not mine.’

‘What time did you see him?’

‘Three – maybe half past. I met him up on that ledge where he smoked. I told him again, that it was over. He wasn’t happy but, like, what’s he going to do about it?

Shaw sipped his Guinness. The Red House was silent.

‘So, there was a drugs trade. But Bryan Judd didn’t die trying to get out of it. He wanted in, not out.’

‘We believe this stuff?’ It was DC Lau, a bottle pressed to her lips. ‘What if they argued anyway? Judd might have gone for him, they struggle, and whack!’ She knocked the bottle on the table top.

‘What was there to argue about?’ asked Shaw. ‘Holme was going down – and they needed his expertise to do the switch. And we’ve checked his story with the brief and it all matches up. They’d agreed a change of plea, to guilty. There was too much hard evidence – CPS has the case, I’ve looked at the file. No, Holme was up for a plea bargain and there was a good chance he’d get it. There was nothing Bryan Judd could do about it.’

Chatter filled the room.

‘Let’s put drugs to one side,’ said Shaw, and the room fell silent. ‘I’m not saying forget it – I’m saying to one side, for now.’

Birley went to the bar to get refills, while Shaw nursed the Guinness, reading some of the reports from door-to-door. And three notes. The first was a progress report on tracking down Pete Hendre, the hostel resident Shaw had saved from the burning upper floor of number 6 Erebus Street, who’d slipped out of the Queen Vic

The second note was from Newcastle CID. He flicked over a few pages. They’d traced Ben Ruddle, the teenager who’d got Norma Jean Judd pregnant in 1992. He’d been released from Deerbolt, County Durham, in 1994, having been found guilty on the burglary charge. There was no record of him returning home. He was back inside in 2000, for burglary again. The case came up at Castle Barnard, County Durham – thirty-one other offences of a similar nature taken into account. Out eighteen months ago from Acklington, again County Durham. Probation service had a record of him working in a market garden, outside Middlesbrough. He went missing six months ago, after picking up his wages. Teesside Social Services had a record of him turning up in a homeless shelter: six nights. He was interviewed – then, next day, off the radar.

‘Middlesbrough,’ said Shaw, handing the note to Valentine to read.

The third note was from Twine. The Military Corrective Training Centre at Colchester, the military’s last remaining ‘glasshouse’, had contacted St James’s. They needed help tracking down Petty Officer Andrew Sean Judd, who had absconded from custody while serving

Valentine read that note, too.

‘Let’s dig a bit more on both of those,’ said Shaw. ‘This final Ruddle interview – with the social – see if we can get a transcript. And pictures. Colchester will have a mug of Sean Judd, and Acklington’ll have Ruddle. Let’s get both.’

‘What you thinking?’ asked Valentine.

‘I’m thinking I’d like to see the faces.’

Shaw stood, fished a handful of drawing pins from his pocket, and pinned a foolscap piece of white paper onto the jaundiced wallpaper. Someone whistled and a couple clapped. It could have been a drawing of anyone, but there was no doubt that in its own way it was a work of art. Shaw’s skills as a forensic artist were known to them all – he gave regular lectures at Hendon, the Met’s training centre, and was one of only half a dozen officers with the qualification in the country. He wrote articles for Jane’s Police Review. But seen in the flesh, as it were, the result was startling. This wasn’t a police ID with pencils. It was a living person, a classic example of the kind of animated graphic which was making forensic art part of mainstream police work around the world, replacing the disjointed jigsaw of the traditional photofit.

It was a striking face. The principal feature was the gap at the bridge of the nose, especially wide, pushing the eyes apart. One of the front teeth was chipped. The bone structure was heavy, the hair thick and black; but the jaw

Shaw was proud of this because it was the first time in a live investigation he’d used the techniques of age-progression to produce an image. And it was the first piece of work he’d done since losing his right eye a year earlier. He’d been told by the occupational therapists that his ability to sketch – and to take photographs – would actually improve with monocular vision. In effect he didn’t have to close one eye, the classic artist’s pose. What he saw now, with one eye, was a 2D flat image – exactly the image he could transfer to the sketch pad. He hadn’t believed them, but now he could see the proof.

Shaw cut the chatter by tapping his Guinness glass with Twine’s Mont Blanc.

‘OK. I’ll come back to our friend here. But first – the big picture. We’ve all read the briefing note, so I won’t waste your time. The last few hours of the inquiry have opened up two possible ways forward. First, Jan Orzsak and Andy Judd. They’re tangled up together in the case of Norma Jean. Did one of them go up to the hospital last night – the anniversary of her disappearance? We need to re-examine the Orzsak alibi minute by minute; that’s a priority for tomorrow. The father’s still an outside possibility – let’s dig some more. George will put together a team. And when we can, let’s gently see if we can get Ally Judd and the priest to talk – what if Bryan Judd knew about their affair? Come to that, is it an affair, or is it just gossip?

‘Which leaves our major line of inquiry: illegal organ disposal. A human kidney was found under Judd’s body

‘One – clients. The rich, the unscrupulous. So far we’ve haven’t had a whiff. So let’s think about that. Two – donors, either willing, or unwilling. Pete Hendre, the man we got out of the top floor at number 6 when the place was on fire, said he didn’t want to come out because there was someone in the street he was afraid of: the Organ Grinder. Just that. I said afraid, but terrified is closer. Hendre’s done a runner – we need to find him. And we’ve got a missing person, violently abducted. The man with no name except Blanket. Someone came and found him under cover of darkness. Someone offered him a “deal” – which he declined to take. And there’s a chance that that someone was Bryan Judd’s killer. Obvious question: was Blanket, is Blanket, an unwilling donor? If he is we need to find him, fast.’

Shaw put a finger on the sketch. ‘I think this is what he looks like. We don’t know his name. He’s a tramp who says he’s spent most of his life in Middlesbrough but has no accent to match and, according to Liam Kennedy, an unnerving amount of local knowledge. He was never seen without his blanket coat. Last night he was dragged, unconscious, out of the Sacred Heart of Mary by an unidentified man. The coat – which was left behind – was marked on the back with a rough sketch of a candle. I

They all studied Blanket’s face. Campbell, her six foot two inches perched on a tiny stool, asked the question they all wanted answered.

‘This image – where did it come from?’

‘Blanket’s possessions included a snapshot of a small boy in 1984. The picture – like most from that far back – is actually very high quality. I blew it up, then aged it thirty years. It’s not rocket science – but then it doesn’t have to fly.’

Everyone laughed except George Valentine.

‘How do you do it?’ asked Birley.

‘The FBI leads the world in this. In the eighties they started using it to track down missing kids. Usually there are two methods combined. On one hand you study the family and see if you can pick out genetic patterns. On the other there are general principles of craniofacial development – it’s obvious stuff, just look at your own kids if you’ve got any. Their faces grow down, and forward. Stuff like that. But the good news for us is that

He sipped his Guinness. ‘Lecture over. The health warnings are clear, though – we’ve got no DNA input here, no parentage to feed into the mix, and I’ve used my instincts not a computer program to run the progression forward. That might be a plus, maybe not.’

‘Does it look like Sean Judd?’ asked Twine. ‘I mean, does it look like the family?’

They all looked then, trying to see Bryan Judd’s face.

‘Maybe,’ said Shaw. ‘But maybe not. We’re getting pictures of Sean Judd and Ruddle. We might strike lucky. Until then, keep an open mind. I ran it past Kennedy and he says it’s a close likeness – but then he didn’t really see that much past the curtain of hair so let’s not get too excited. Anyway, there is no doubt it’s the best picture we’ve got. You’ll all have a copy tomorrow. And I’ll get one to the Lynn News, Look East and Anglia Tonight.’

They drank in silence.

‘Paul’s going to go on summarizing all the evidence,’ continued Shaw. ‘Statements, anything we think’s relevant, all boiled down into a single online file. A thousand words, no more, every day. I want you all to read it when it’s posted. We’ll update as we go along. It’s links we’re looking for, so I want everyone up to speed. The organ transplant information remains confidential. Talk to nobody. If I see it in the press I’ll find out who leaked it. That’s not an idle promise.’

He bought everyone a drink except himself. The sometimes cloying bonhomie, the esprit de corps of the CID, was never his natural environment. He could imagine his father staying late, chewing over the fat, eking out ideas. But that wasn’t his style. After being knocked out of a darts match at nine thirty he bought a few more drinks then slipped out to the loo in the yard, and from there through a gate in the fence, straight out into the street. The windows of the pub were open so that the sounds flooded out into the flagged street. He walked away from the noise of other people.