Death Watch

He’d booked the video suite at St James’s for nine forty-five. A windowless room behind the front desk, stinking of Flash and stale coffee. Closing the door he sat down, knowing that if Lena knew this was what he was doing, she’d effortlessly unleash that high-pressure anger he knew she kept just beneath the cool surface of her skin. Because this wasn’t what she’d meant when she said he needed to make or break the Tessier case; the chances of him finding anything on the video that was new after thirteen years was close to zero. No, this was an obsession, and he was feeding it. He felt furtive, guilty, and strangely excited. Outside, the desk sergeant was trying to book in a pair of drunks picked up on the quayside, their voices overloud, cloyingly cooperative. Around him he could hear the sounds of St James’s: a phone ringing unanswered, cars being shuffled in the vehicle pool, the cleaners running floor-polishers upstairs in CID.

Slipping in the video cassette he’d picked up from records he concentrated on the black, flickering screen, until he saw a white caption roll up.

I.O. DI Ronald Blake.

Tape owned by BC KL&WN.

Case. GV 5632 HH.

A T-junction Shaw knew well, where the road from Castle Rising crossed a long straight stretch of the B-road which ran out towards one of the bird reserves and a few lonely farmhouses. A deadly spot, even now, because of the thick woods which obscured the view left and right as you approached the junction. There’d been crashes before, despite warning signs, not least because the arrow-straight mile of open road was a magnet for joyriders. The junction was lit by a set of high lights on which was set the CCTV camera. The ticking digital clock showed the time on screen: 12.31 a.m. No date. But he knew that: 21 July 1997.

Shaw found himself trying not to blink in case he missed it. A fox trotted happily across the picture from the woods towards the village. Then the first car, on the dual carriageway, swishing past at a steady 60 m.p.h., wipers going.

A rat dashed along the verge.

Then it happened, so quickly it made him jump. A car crossing the picture on the dual carriageway at 60 m.p.h. – perhaps a little faster. And out of nowhere a second car, from the village, cutting across, swerving at 80, 85 m.p.h. It caught the first car side-on, shunting it to the far carriageway, where it turned over once and then bounced on its suspension. Then an unnatural stillness. The street lights caught the smashed glass on the tarmac. The second car, the one that had caused the accident, had left the picture.

Then he let it run on – still in slow motion. The second car, its bonnet buckled, trundled back into the picture, at the edge of vision, up on the verge in the shadows under some trees. Nothing moved for forty-five seconds – then three youths got out, two from the rear seats, one from the driver’s. In the shadows where the car was Shaw could just see the windscreen and the wipers still wiping. The three wore baseball caps, T-shirts, jeans, and each had something wrapped round his lower face – a sweatshirt, a football scarf… That’s what they’d done in that dead forty-five seconds – because they knew there were cameras, so they’d masked their faces. The three walked to the other car and peered in through the shattered side windows. One of them vomited at his feet, the other two started fighting, pushing, almost hugging. Then they all stood still, watching a spreading black stain which had formed beneath the passenger-side’s buckled doors.

One walked towards the CCTV mounted by the T-junction and looked up between the peak of his cap and the scarf round his neck and lower face. Cool, appraising. He looked back at the Mini parked under the trees, perhaps satisfying himself the camera couldn’t read

The written report which went with the CCTV had formed the basis of the press article Shaw had read to Lena and laid out the details found at the scene: the two dead OAPs in the rear seats. The driver, neck broken, but still alive. The tyre marks. And the evidence of the CCTV itself – a narrative description of the film Shaw had just watched. No IDs possible for the three men, or the car, although the paint job on the vehicle was distinctive – a central white band over the doors and roof – leaving the boot and bonnet in another colour. From the hue it looked grey-blue.

The film was eight minutes long, and Shaw watched it six times. At first he concentrated on the fragile bundle, not mentioned in the report. Too small for a child. It was a guess, and only a guess, but it may have been that the original CID team had withheld the fact one of the youths had taken something from the car – a detail they could use to weed out crank confessions. But what was in the bundle?

He watched the film again. There was something

‘Who’s in the passenger seat?’ he asked himself. ‘Why would two teenagers go out on a joyride and sit in the back? Is there someone in the front seat – or is there something on the front seat?’

He found the image again of the windscreen when the car came to rest under the trees. He drew a cursor round the darkened area on the passenger side and blew the image up: ×10, ×20, ×50. But the film’s original poor quality made the images chaotic, an illogical patchwork of black and grey.

Shaw printed out half a dozen stills from the footage.

He looked at one frame of the three men standing on the road. Could one of these young men be Robert Mosse, the 21-year-old Shaw’s father and George Valentine had arrested for the murder of Jonathan Tessier? He’d been a member of a gang of juvenile thugs in his teenage years before leaving for university. A gang of four. In the weeks leading up to Tessier’s murder he’d been at home, back amongst his roots. Had he gone out for a joyride, a few drinks with old friends, and then a late-night high-speed romp, just like old times? Or – another possibility – had he gone for the joyride but been smart enough to stay in the car after the crash? Was he there, amongst the grey and black shadows, in the passenger seat?

He looked at a still image of the Mini, the windscreen speckled with raindrops except where it had been cleaned by the wipers. There was still something wrong. Something else wrong.