Death Watch

Two children were playing football outside the Bentinck Launderette in Erebus Street despite the fact that the state school summer holidays had finished two weeks earlier. One of them could have been the child they’d seen dancing round the fire that first night in the Cat People mask. If it was, Shaw had been right about his age: seven, less. He had a snub nose and a brutal haircut designed to combat nits. The boys had scrawled a chalk goalmouth on the wall, the heads of an imaginary crowd added in for effect.

A voice shouted. ‘Joey!’ The boy with the snub nose ran to a door at the side of the Crane. Holding it open was a young woman with long, pale legs. She couldn’t stop herself looking their way. Then she clipped the boy round the head and dragged him indoors. Opposite the pub stood Jan Orzsak’s house; the curtains drawn, the scrawled insult on the door gone under a fresh coat of paint. But a splash on the woodwork below looked like fresh dog’s pee. Orzsak’s estate car, which had yielded no evidence, was back, parked at the kerb, behind the electricity van and a builder’s flatback pick-up and skip.

From beyond the razor wire and hawthorn they could hear a pneumatic drill munching concrete. On the back of the truck was a new power unit for the sub-station, much smaller than the original Shaw and Valentine had

‘New gear,’ said Valentine, looking across the street to the Crane. The front doors were wedged open and they could see a cleaner wiping tables. A man in a white shirt holding a coffee cup played a one-armed bandit.

The hot street, the atmosphere of aimless boredom, seemed to suck the energy out of Valentine. That and the sight of Peter Shaw, bouncing on his toes, knocking smartly on Orzsak’s front door.

They heard the crushed slippers shuffling down the hallway. Orzsak had a napkin at his throat, and his mouth worked, chewing. He let them in without a word and went ahead into the front room. The shattered glass had been cleared up, but the tanks still stood, cleaned out, dry. For the first time Shaw noticed a portrait, in oils, on the chimney breast, showing a man in formal Polish national costume. There was a small table in front of the barred bay window on which was a plate of cheese and rye bread, which Orzsak pushed aside as he sat. And a bottle, beside an elegant balloon glass a fifth full of red wine.

Shaw walked to the portrait. ‘This your father?’

Orzsak’s eyes were suddenly alive. ‘Yes. He was a vintner, import and export, based in Gdańsk.’

‘Wealthy, then?’

‘He died in the war,’ said Orzsak, shrugging. ‘Then the Russians came. I was a baby. We had a little, which did

‘And you still like a glass of wine?’ asked Valentine. He looked at the bottle. ‘Not cheap, right? Dipping into the savings? Or do you still earn money, Mr Orzsak?’

But Shaw remembered something else. ‘Of course – the basement, at number 6. A wine cellar – the marks are still on the wall. But no cellar here?’

Shaw looked around; there was no little door in the hallway. He recalled that there’d been none in the Judds’ house either, or at the launderette. He’d check with door to door – was it the only basement in the street?

Orzsak ignored him, sipping the wine, circulating the blood-red liquid.

‘Did your people find Judd’s fingerprints in my house?’ he asked, although Shaw sensed he didn’t want an answer, that the question was a diversion.

‘Why did you lie to us about where you were on Sunday evening when Bryan Judd was murdered?’ he asked.

Orzsak seemed to deflate, his chin sinking further onto his chest.

‘I didn’t,’ he said, but it was barely a whisper.

Valentine produced a black and white print, a video-grab from the CCTV coverage.

‘This is you, sir. Seven thirty on Sunday. At the Bluebell.’

‘It wasn’t anything to do with… that boy.’ Odd, thought Shaw, that after nearly two decades he still thought of Bryan Judd as Norma Jean’s twin – but then Norma Jean would, perhaps, never get any older.

Orzsak struggled out of the chair, hauling himself upright with both hands on one arm rest. He retrieved a laptop computer from a pile of papers on a sideboard and switched it on, the pale light glowing warmly in the shadowy room. It was an odd clash of cultures – the latest iMac, beneath the patriarch’s portrait. Orzsak found a wireless link and went online via Firefox to find a website: www.giveatoy.org.uk.

‘I run this,’ he said, standing back, and Shaw noticed that his left hand was shaking even though it hung loosely by his side.

‘People come online and offer used toys for the children’s wards at the hospital… I run round in the car and pick the toys up. Anything within twenty miles. On Mondays I ferry the items to the Bluebell and add anything decent to the trolley. It’s always been at the Bluebell because that’s where the original children’s ward was – before they rebuilt the hospital site. One of the volunteers goes round the wards on Wednesday and Friday. Sundays the kids come to the toy store room – we call it the Toy Library. We set everything out. They can borrow for a week. I’ve always done it – I started with Mother. So I always go Sundays – it’s the highlight of the week.’

From the sideboard drawer he brought a box full of newspaper cuttings. He gave one to Shaw – the Lynn News for September 1980. Bluebell ‘Toy Library’ Silver Jubilee – the picture was a crowd of children’s faces, a younger

Orzsak took the cutting back, went to put it in the box, then slowly tore it in half and went out of the room, returning with a set of keys attached to a ring in the shape of Mickey Mouse. He was crying, but he did it casually, as if it was of no note.

‘CRB checked?’ asked Valentine.

He shook his head. ‘We began back in the eighties – no checks then. Then, when it was required, I was wary, because of Norma Jean. My arrest was on record – it may have been enough. And since my arrest there have always been those who gossip, build bricks from straw. So when the hospital asked I said I’d been cleared by the church – St Casimir.’ He glanced up at the oil painting. ‘I just never took them the paperwork and they didn’t require it of me. I…’ he thought carefully about the right words. ‘I support the unit – with my time, with some money.’

He went to the window and leant on the TV – a flat-screen, latest technology.

‘So I lied. The last thing I wanted was the police here. Again.’ He cast a murderous look at Valentine. ‘An innocent lie,’ he said. ‘But it damns me. You will have to tell them. They will ask me the questions they must ask. And now I am condemned because I lied – and why did I lie, they will ask. They must not take risks. And I am a risk now. So – it’s over, that part of my life. Thank you for that.’ He was still looking at Valentine, but he handed the keys to Shaw. ‘Take these back for me – the Toy Library’s below Sunshine Ward, on Level One. This is all

Valentine, frustrated by the neat confession, couldn’t keep a note of disgust out of his voice. ‘And you have no sexual interest in these children? How about Norma Jean?’ He felt a sudden duty to ask the questions Jack Shaw would have asked if he was still alive – because if Jack had crushed this man’s fingers to get to the truth then Valentine knew he’d had good cause. He’d looked in his eyes and seen something that night in 1992; something hooded, something cruel.

Shaw felt sick, as if he was watching a blood sport. They should leave; Orzsak’s alibi was likely to be rock solid. They could charge him with obstruction for the lie, but they didn’t have the time to waste. And it wasn’t likely that Orzsak would change his story about Norma Jean after eighteen years of silence.

‘I didn’t hurt that child. I’ve never hurt a child.’ Orzsak stood back, rounding his slumped shoulders as if facing a bully in the street. ‘Your suggestion disgusts me.’

‘Why did you stay here, in this street?’ asked Valentine.

‘Leaving would be a confession.’ Orzsak’s eyes widened, and his chin came up, determined, despite Valentine’s aggression, to have his say. ‘I have nothing to confess. Have you asked him why he’s still here? Andy Judd? Asked him why he lives on this street? Asked him where he put his daughter’s body? I think he guards it.’ He dropped the torn picture into the cold grate. ‘He’ll rot in the hell I know God has made ready for him.’