Death Watch

‘It’s Level One,’ said Shaw, wiping condensation from the windscreen of the Mazda. They were parked in Erebus Street, facing back up towards the T-junction, the dock gates behind them. There were lights on within the Sacred Heart of Mary, the tracery of the windows and the Victorian stained glass glowing in the dusk. White light that spilt from the frosted windows of the Crane. A late summer storm had cooled the air, so that the tables outside were empty, although the pub windows were open, allowing a thin trace of jukebox sound to leak out under the orange street lights.

‘Got to be,’ said Shaw. ‘The sound, the heat, the pipes. We’re out of time today but set it up for the morning, George. I want Level One ripped apart. We should have looked before, because if they were regularly getting rid of human waste down there then having the whole deal there – on the doorstep – it’s perfect.’

Shaw covered his eyes, trying to dredge something from his memory. Something Liam Kennedy had said. I hear voices… We all hear… ‘Down on Level One there’s a room allocated for a group called the Hearing Voices Network,’ he said. ‘Kennedy mentioned it. I saw the door, down near one of the exits to the main car park. Get that checked specifically – I want to know what’s behind that door.’

‘Get to Phillips, or Peploe, and tell them we want Level One sealed off tonight. The areas they have to use, round the lifts, the offices, the rest, we’ll do those first thing and they can have them back. It won’t be there, anyway – my guess is it’s out on the edges somewhere. But let’s do the best we can. Tell Twine what’s up; give him the background. I want everyone up to speed by dawn. All right?’

The doors of the Crane opened and DC Campbell came out. She’d insisted the landlord wake up his grandson Joey – the child Pete Hendre thought was the Organ Grinder’s monkey.

‘Nothing, sir,’ she said. ‘But he was pretty scared. Said he’d never run an errand like that, and he didn’t know anything about any organ grinder. I’ll get family liaison to have another go in the morning. But there are limits. He’s seven years old.’

‘Thanks,’ said Shaw. ‘It was a long shot, anyway. See you tomorrow.’ They watched her walk to a parked Citroën, then make a call on her mobile, before driving off.

Valentine looked at his Rolex. ‘We done?’ he asked.

‘Almost. The statement you got off Father Martin is a perfect match for Ally Judd’s – to the minute. So what’s going on? They’re having sex upstairs while Bryan Judd’s

‘Sure.’ The Mazda coughed into life.

‘And, George. Tonight – finding Pie, then Hendre, that was good work. Well done.’ He thought about smiling but knew it wouldn’t look right. The Mazda was doing 50 m.p.h. by the time it reached the T-junction, then backfired as it turned out of view.

Shaw entered the Sacred Heart by the side door and was surprised to find that, despite the hour, a service was in progress. He found Liam Kennedy just inside the entrance, perched on a pew end, probably to discourage late visitors from the Crane, Shaw guessed.

Shaw knelt beside him.

‘Midnight Mass?’ he said.

‘Tomorrow is the feast – the birth of Our Lady. We’ve always held a service on the eve. A vigil. It’s popular, with those of a certain age. It’s just ending.’

Shaw thought he wouldn’t like to see what unpopular looked like. There were a dozen in the congregation itself, the hostel men gathered separately to one side, in front of the devotional candles, seven or eight of them, like human bundles, motionless, huddled together.

Father Martin was at the altar, his back to the nave,

Father Martin blessed the congregation and asked it to go in peace. Parishioners began to melt away, while the men of the hostel moved as a group down the nave towards the makeshift kitchen. Martin spoke to a few people at the door and then turned to Shaw, already unfurling the stole at his throat.

‘Can I help?’

‘Dinner’s late,’ he said, watching the men cluster around a tea urn which Kennedy had wheeled into the light. A biscuit tin attracted them like birds around grain.

‘Just a treat, actually – they all ate earlier. It’s our feast day tomorrow, so…’ He laughed. ‘A celebration.’ He opened his arms as if to emphasize the contrast between that concept and the gloomy interior of the church.

‘Can we talk alone?’ asked Shaw.

Martin led the way into the small room behind the altar and began swiftly to pull off his vestments.

‘You lied in your original statement – Ally told me the truth this afternoon. I’m sure you know that by now. You were upstairs, in bed, together.’

He was pulling the cassock up over his head and so Shaw couldn’t see his face at that moment, but when he straightened up he was smiling. ‘And why does that matter?’ He pulled the bow on the white surplice.

‘Ally has to live in this street, Inspector. I can leave. I will leave, maybe soon. But she’ll have to live with the truth we leave her, or whatever version of the truth is left.’

‘You think people don’t know?’

The smile again, revealing expensive teeth. ‘You English – sometimes you don’t see yourselves for what you are. People know many things. What they say to your face can be very different. She can live with gossip and innuendo – she does. She despises them anyway. We don’t owe them any kind of truth. But we don’t have to…’ He searched for the colloquialism. ‘Rub their noses in it.’

It was the closest Shaw thought he’d get to a confession, so he moved on. ‘Ally came to see you at six. Bryan Judd died at between seven forty-five and eight thirty. Did you go up to the hospital to see him?’

‘No. I had no reason to.’

‘Not true, Father. Surely, not true. Ally would not have broken off your relationship but for the fact that Bryan had found out about it and wanted her to stay with him. She felt she should. She felt she had a duty. She’d already broken her promise. But perhaps that was a final gift to you?’

Martin looked away and Shaw knew he was right.

‘Did you go up to the hospital to confront Bryan with her betrayal? To force him to release her – openly – from the promise she’d made?’

Martin folded gold-threaded cloth into a wooden chest and locked it.

Shaw believed him, persuaded not by his words, or the logic of his arguments, but by the fact he couldn’t imagine the priest using violence. The hands were too studied in their movements: academic, considered. But he still had that image in his head of the medical certificate hanging in the priest’s study. ‘Do you have access to the medical records of the men here, and at the hostel?’

‘In theory. We keep files, and I think there’s a summary of the relevant medical details. That’s really Liam’s domain. Why?’

‘You have a medical degree.’

Martin set his jaw. ‘I’m at a loss to discover why I should feel guilty about that.’

‘Someone has been selecting homeless men off the streets of Lynn – some of them from your hostel. These men are being offered money to donate organs as part of an illegal traffic. Two of them, at least two of them, have not survived their operations. I’m asking you whether you fulfilled the role of broker. I expect whoever it was would be well paid. You have ambitions to bring about change in your country – that must cost money? For publications. For travel. Politicization – that’s the term? And I understand your reticence – we know you’ve been struck off. The Brazilian authorities are sending us the relevant documentation.’

He laughed in Shaw’s face. ‘There – that phrase. You’ve never lived in a police state, have you, Inspector? They say things like that all the time – euphemisms for control. Be careful. You’re a good man, I think. In my

Shaw glared at him, aware he had no evidence at all to support his accusations. But he didn’t back down. ‘I want to see inside the presbytery. I could get a search warrant – do I have to?’

Martin’s eyes went dead. ‘In my country the police rarely observe such niceties.’ He patted his pocket and they heard the keys jangle. The priest led him through the graveyard to the door of the presbytery. Shaw stepped over the threshold first, still unsure what he was looking for, unsettled by the priest’s sudden submission.

‘Bedroom?’ he asked.

He knew it was an invasion of privacy, but he felt he had to provoke Martin, to break down the emotional distance that separated them.

The stairs were dark wood, with a band of carpet that ran only down the middle of each step, held in place with brass stays. A long landing on the first floor ran the length of the house, the doors off it impersonal, like a hotel corridor. Martin’s room was at the back, the last door.

The duvet was turned down on the single bed, but as Martin went to sit on it he flicked it back into place, covering the sheet.

There was a wardrobe with a mirror attached between two doors, and a bedside table, bare except for a reading light, some loose change, and a bible. It was as impersonal as a monk’s cell, except for the small, wooden chest set under the window.

The sash was up, and Shaw walked to it, looking down

‘I’d like to look in the chest,’ said Shaw.

‘You’ve come this far,’ said Martin. Shaw could feel the anger the priest was holding in, the micro-muscles in his face tensing and untensing as he tried to keep control.

Shaw put a hand on the lid, lifted it, and looked down at a damask cloth covering the contents. The outside had been plain, but the underside of the lid was decorated with carved images of birds, flowers, and fish. He traced a finger around the image of a fern leaf. ‘This is new, surely?’

‘My father had it made. The wood is very old, actually – eighteenth century. But the carving and construction are contemporary. It was a twenty-first birthday present. A leaving present.’

Shaw breathed in the slightly musty scent of the chest.

‘The wood?’

‘Muirapiranga,’ said the priest. ‘The bloodwood tree.’

Shaw didn’t react; just let his fingertips play over the carving. He pulled the velvet cloth away to reveal some books, leather-bound, a bible, two framed pictures of figures from the nineteenth century, both on high-backed chairs taken in full sunlight outside a stone building; a brass telescope, a wooden chessboard and what looked like a box for the pieces, a sextant, and a doctor’s stethoscope. He laid each out on the bed.

‘Heirlooms,’ said Martin. ‘My inheritance. I’m the youngest son – so nothing else. But you’ll know all that,

Martin nearly had him then, because Shaw was going to ask him about his family; but instead he remembered to turn back to the chest and the ruffled green baize cloth at the base. Beneath it was a velvet purse, about a foot long. He lifted it out, undid the gold-thread knot, and, using an edge of the material to cover his own prints, drew out a knife, the sheath silver, blackened with age, the handle the same, overworked in tracery.

‘My grandfather’s,’ said Martin, but the tension in his voice made the word stick in his throat.

Shaw drew the blade and found to his surprise that it was not a blade at all, really, more like a short rapier, as clean as a surgeon’s scalpel. What had Dr Kazimierz said of the wound in Bryan Judd’s chest? That it had been delivered by a knife, narrow as a fencing épée.

Shaw held the blade up to the light.

They both heard the sound of footsteps from the alleyway below, two sharp metallic taps on stone. Shaw stepped to the window and leant out; the path, lit from above, was empty except for a hedgehog, ambling arthritically towards the rear yard. But the little doorway was open, and as Shaw leant further out he saw the shadow of a running man, flitting against gravestones, the sound of his footfalls deadened by the grass.