Death Watch

On the doorstep they stood in the sun. Shaw thought the smell of heated pavements was the best thing about the city. Opposite, the Bentinck Launderette was open for business. He could see a woman working inside, on her knees, pulling sheets from a drier – but it wasn’t Ally Judd. He checked the tide watch: it was one o’clock. They had two hours before meeting Peploe at Theatre Seven. Time for a working lunch.

‘Let’s get a sandwich,’ he said, heading for the Crane.

The pub was full, every table taken, mostly workmen off the dockside. One had his feet up on a stool, the soles of his boots showing. As Shaw ordered, Valentine touched his shoulder. ‘Check the boots,’ he said. ‘Must be pretty common on the quay.’

Each boot sole was encrusted with blakeys, the steel plates used to protect the shoe from wear and tear. One of the dockers saw Shaw’s glance, and put one boot down, the sole cracking on the wooden floor.

The landlord left the one-armed bandit in order to serve them: a pint for Valentine, a half of Guinness for Shaw. They left two cheese sandwiches under a glass dome and bought crisps and nuts instead.

There was enough noise in the room to talk unheard.

‘Andy Judd not in?’ asked Shaw, not even bothering to flash the warrant card. The landlord was hairless,

‘No. Maybe he saw you coming, which is bad news. He’s a bloody good customer. Best I’ve got.’

‘Dodgy liver,’ said Valentine.

‘Yeah. It’ll kill him. They won’t give him a new one either – not till he stops drinking. Day he does that he’ll be as stiff as this counter.’ He tapped it once, letting the ring crack against the wood.

‘You here when the kid went missing?’ asked Valentine, leaning familiarly on the bar, playing with a packet of Silk Cut. ‘In ’92? Mr…?’

‘Shannon. Patrick – it’s over the door.’ He poured himself a drink in a small glass which might have held a half-pint, but probably less. ‘I was here when she was born, mate. We had a party in the street. Twins. That was a bash. I’m Bry’s godfather – bugger all that means.’ He laughed, shaking his head.

‘And Sean – the eldest. What about him?’ asked Shaw.

‘You think it did for Andy, losing the kid, you should of seen what it did to Sean. He was at sea – but they got a message to him, flew him back from somewhere… Rosyth, maybe. Kept wandering the streets trying to find her. On the rough lots, looking in fridges, or down on the Fleet, poking around in the mud. It didn’t make sense, but he never forgave himself – he’d always looked out for her. Bryan – he was just close, like they were one person. But Sean, he’d been the big brother, the guardian. Then

Valentine nodded, pushing some coins over the counter for some pork scratchings.

The landlord cleaned glasses manically, twisting a clean cloth.

‘Happy couple, right – Bryan and Ally?’ asked Shaw, leaning on the bar, timing the question to match a gush of silver coughed up by the one-armed bandit.

The landlord leant over the bar, the cloth twisted between his fists like a ligature. ‘Fuck knows. You listen to the gossip round ’ere you’d think everyone’s got a secret. Life’s tough, they got through, so that’s pretty much a victory.’

‘Just asking,’ said Shaw.

‘Bry come in?’ asked Valentine.

‘Not really. Christmas. He and the old man were chalk and cheese. It happens. He drank down at the Retreat, by the dock.’

‘Neil?’

‘Oh yeah. Comes and gets his dad for meals. He’s like a sheepdog, that kid. Mummy’s boy.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s always one family that cops the shite in life – you’d think it’d be spread about a bit. Neil tries hard for his dad, all the time, but Andy’s not interested. He’s a bit bitter, is Andy. Toxic, more like. But Neil just keeps plodding away. Bit pathetic, really. I’d have left Andy to rot years ago.’

The landlord worked a bar cloth over the woodwork. ‘You can try the jukebox if you like – might be one of those kids’ bands.’ He smiled, enjoying his own joke.

They took their drinks outside. Valentine sat on the kerb, a place he’d loved since childhood. After a minute Shaw went back for more crisps and to refill his DS’s glass.

‘There’s a kid,’ said Shaw to the landlord. ‘In the street. Wears a cat mask sometimes. Bit of a snub nose,’ he added, pushing his own up, stretching the nostrils.

‘Yeah. That’s Joey, my grandson. They live upstairs, his mum and him. Father pissed off sharpish. Good riddance to the tosser.’ He pulled himself another drink and let it fall down his throat in one fluid movement.

‘He seems to know Andy Judd – that right?’

‘Sure. Like I said, I’m Bry’s godfather, and Andy did for Joey. He’s a good one, too – treats and that.’ He stopped polishing the counter, stopped playing the part while no one but Shaw was looking. ‘He’s a good man, Andy is. Like I said, he’s poison to touch, if you get near. And the booze’s got him – but in here…’ He hit a fist against his heart. ‘Loyal. No problem.’

Shaw went back outside, told Valentine what he’d heard, and then they were silent, standing together. ‘It’s this street, George,’ said Shaw eventually. ‘It all comes back to this street. It’s not just Bryan Judd. Or Blanket. Or what’s been going on at the hospital. There’s something else. Something we’re missing.’

Standing in the middle of the road, on the old railway LYNN PRIMARY CARE TRUST – A COMMUNITY COMING TOGETHER.

Andy Judd got out, running a hand through the shock of white hair. He didn’t pay the driver, who pulled a U-turn and left. He took a few steps towards the Crane, saw them, and turned instead into the launderette. Shaw didn’t have to ask Valentine to make the call. He got through to Twine, told him to get Andy Judd’s medical history and a contact number for his GP. One priority question: did he have a regular appointment at the Queen Vic? As the DS made the call Shaw saw Ally Judd come out of the church, closing the little lancet door behind her, then walking down the side of the nave towards the bench by the Victorian semi-circular apse, the seat Blanket had sought out on that first afternoon he’d come to Erebus Street. She walked quickly to it, head down, as if hurrying from a painful encounter. They saw her find the bench, sink down, and then cover her face in her hands.

‘Martin’ll be in the church,’ said Shaw. ‘Keep him busy for ten minutes, George. I’m going to see if I can get a private word with Ally Judd.’

Shaw cut through the graveyard, where the noon sun had left the stones without shadows. If she’d come here to get out of the heat it was a poor choice; the church walls shimmered with it, and a cypress sapling beside the bench seemed to wilt with the effort of staying green. Shaw paused by a memorial; an angel on a plinth, giving her a few more moments of peace. He thought he could hear her crying, but he couldn’t be sure.

A breeze stirred and he forced himself to take a step forward, his boot crunching on a broken beer bottle, so that she looked up, and he saw her eyes were red rimmed, her flesh puffy and without shape, as if it had been hastily fashioned out of Plasticine. He sat easily on the hot grass, leaving her the space on the bench alone, his legs crossed like a Buddha.

‘Father Martin is in the vestry,’ she said. ‘There’s a meeting, about rebuilding the hostel. It’s going to be thousands, but the insurance will pay.’ She tried a smile that went horribly wrong.

‘If you’re not telling us the truth it will unravel – lies always do,’ said Shaw. A blackbird flew into the dust which had collected in the ditch at the root of the wall, flapping, shrieking as it took a bath.

She looked straight ahead, focused on the mid-distance.

‘Neil doesn’t know, I’m sure of that,’ said Shaw. ‘That’s because he’s an outsider. And an innocent, in an odd way, despite the tattoos and the martial arts. And he’s all about

They heard a klaxon sound on the distant docks, marking a change of shift. The noise made her jump, so that she had to rearrange her hands on her knees, then curl one of her feet up and under herself. Shaw noticed that on her lap was an apple, green, with a single ice-white bite mark.

‘But Bryan? That’s the real question,’ said Shaw. ‘Did Bryan know you were having an affair with Thiago Martin?’

She stood then, and looked around, trying to see if there was a way out, not just out of the sun but away from the question. She turned and walked to the graveyard wall, within which were set some headstones. With her back to Shaw she picked up a cypress leaf, examined it, then turned.

She looked into Shaw’s eyes and he was sure she was concentrating on the moon-like one, knowing it was blind. ‘Not until a few days before he died,’ she said. Her voice had become oddly formal, as if she was giving evidence from a witness box. ‘The water main burst up on the main road and we lost our supply. A woman comes in to help, she was there and didn’t know what to do. She rang me, but I’d left the mobile in the launderette. So she rang Bry. He got someone to take half a shift and he cycled back. He found me, us, together, upstairs at number 14. It was the end of everything.’

‘An end to the affair?’

‘Yes. Bry was in pieces. He was trying to put his life back together. Trying to stop the drugs.’ Shaw wondered

‘Which you broke on Sunday night?’ asked Shaw.

‘That was a mistake.’

‘What time was this “mistake”?’

She bent her head back, and Shaw wondered if she was calculating.

‘At six. We always met at six. But not at the house – I came here. I left Martha in the launderette. She’s a friend,’ she added. ‘She’s there now.’

‘Thank you,’ said Shaw, standing. ‘Six until…?’

‘Until you saw me in the street.’ She sat back on the bench and pulled her legs up, embracing them for comfort. But Shaw thought the movement was oddly relaxed, and he wondered if she was better at concealing the truth than he’d thought. This woman was the still heart of the Judd family, around which the turbulent men seemed to revolve. Shaw could see that she was someone used to keeping secrets, and he wondered how many others she kept.

‘Do you have to speak to Thiago?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I have to speak to Father Martin. Of course. And I have to ask you this: are you lying to me, to us, again? Did Father Martin really stay with you on Sunday night or did he go up to the hospital? Did he want to confront Bryan, perhaps? Because if Bryan had let you go…’

‘No he didn’t,’ said Shaw, angry that he’d let his sympathy for this woman cloud his judgement of her. ‘You were – if we believe you both – in bed together when he died. What kind of respect is that?’

She shrunk back at that, the eyes focusing again on the mid-distance. Valentine’s footsteps echoed down the tarmac path, and as Shaw turned to him the DS’s mobile rang. Valentine listened, mouthed the word ‘Twine’, then rang off, walking away so that Shaw had to follow, out of earshot of Ally Judd.

‘Hospital says Andy Judd’s a regular outpatient at the liver unit; he’s on a programme of steroids and was diagnosed in the initial stages of cirrhosis last May. He’s on a dietary regime. He is not on the transplant waiting list because of his continuing alcohol abuse. He attends Mondays and Thursdays – 10.30 to noon. Twine had a word with the consultant. Between us and the gods, the prognosis is poor. He’ll be dead in a year – less, if he’s lucky.’

Shaw thought about the gods, and the trip into the underworld of Erebus – a land of shadow on the banks of the river of the dead. To cross into Hell you had to pay the ferryman. But this was a dusty street on a summer’s day in Lynn, not a legend. Perhaps, in this world, you could pay to avoid the trip. ‘Unless,’ he said, looking up and down the street, at the paint peeling from the window frames, an ugly stain of damp on the side wall of the Crane. ‘Unless he can find a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. That was the price, right? If he had that kind of money he could buy himself a second life.’