Death Watch

Andy Judd was in the lairage, the covered area at the back of Bramalls’ abattoir, where the cattle were held before being sent down the metal-screened race into the slaughterhouse, the corridor in which the cattle got their first scent of death. But Valentine couldn’t smell it, just the sour aroma of singed bone from the saws. Shaw raised a hand to Judd, who was edging a cow towards the sinuous metal entrance to the race using a metal prod. He was dressed in a white overall, one quarter of which was stained a vivid red. Shaw thought what a dead metaphor ‘blood-soaked’ really was.

The cow kicked, suddenly jittery, and the noise began, the idyllic lowing of the field taking on an edgy urban panic. Judd whacked the animal with a metal prong, and sent it careering into the metal barriers, which flexed with the weight. Somewhere a circular saw cut through flesh and bone.

‘Go there! Go there!’ shouted Judd, making the cow skitter and run behind the curtain wall, followed by the next, and the next.

Judd stood still, waiting for Shaw and Valentine to cross the yard, the white overalls and cap he wore making his skin look butter-yellow. Again, Shaw was struck by how diminished he looked, like a man wasting away, to leave just the bones of what he’d once been. Judd worked

Shaw was about to speak when they heard the first percussion, the bolt gun fired into the brain, the slaughtered animal collapsing against the stun cradle. The impact made something inside Shaw recoil in sympathy.

‘I’m working,’ said Judd.

‘Well, actually, you’re being interviewed by the police,’ said Shaw. ‘That can continue here, or at St James’s, but frankly, what you do next is up to me, not you.’

Judd looked around. ‘I can’t just stop.’ By their feet was a metal gutter, and as Valentine watched a trickle of arterial blood began to flow down it, bubbling oddly, as if it was boiling. He began to breathe through his mouth.

‘All right,’ said Shaw. ‘If we can talk. But I’m telling you now, Mr Judd, that if I don’t get some straightforward answers to my questions we will end this conversation under caution at St James’s. Do you understand?’

All the cattle had gone now, the open concrete yard dappled with dung. Judd nodded. ‘Down here,’ he said, following the path the cattle had taken. They heard another stun bolt fired home, only just audible now above the rising panic of the cattle crowded in the race.

Judd’s job was to keep the line of cattle organized so that at regular thirty-second intervals the next cow could be sent forward through a pair of metal swing doors, beyond which the bolt-gun operator dispatched the animals. After that they could just see the main butchery unit, steaming fresh carcasses moving in a production line from hell, dripping blood into the gutters which radiated a sickly metallic heat.

But Judd turned away, and at a signal Shaw must have missed walked the cow to the barrier, setting his shoulder against its side and inveigling it through. Shaw watched him as they heard the bolt gun, the blood gushing at their feet, and he saw Judd’s face shiver with the distaste that even he couldn’t hide. They could see the dying animal kicking beneath the swing doors as its carcass was dragged away. Then the sound of a saw cut through the air, making Valentine step backwards, his black slip-on slipping into the gutter. Judd tried to smile. ‘That’s the sticking, that noise. They take the heads off, then bleed them.’

He was looking at Valentine, which was a mistake, because the DS’s foot now felt warm and sticky, and that made him feel sick as well as angry. As he stepped in close, feeling the power that only controlled aggression can supply, he told himself that anger was good, as long as it was directed – channelled – like the blood. He could smell the stale whisky on Judd’s breath, and he wondered if he’d had a drink that morning already. That was something he’d never done, although there’d been days when he’d thought he’d die if he didn’t. He felt a sudden contempt for this man.

‘We’ve got your prints in Orzsak’s house – and DNA off the bottle you used to bomb the sub-station. You’re fucked, mate.’

What was left of Judd’s self-esteem drained out of him like blood from a carcass.

‘Mr Judd,’ said Shaw, aware that Valentine’s aggression

Judd took one of the cows by the halter, taking off his hat, and Shaw noticed that he couldn’t stop himself trying to soothe the animal, working his fingers into the hide, around one ear, and clicking his tongue.

‘No one told me to do it.’

Shaw thought he’d aged suddenly, almost while they were talking, as if he’d allowed something to catch up with him which had taken a sudden, terrible toll.

‘I got pissed, it was Norma Jean’s day – the day we lost her.’ He looked defiantly at Valentine. ‘I loved her very much. We all got talking outside the pub about how he’d got away with it, Orzsak, how he was still there, taunting us. So I got a coupla bottles and some old rags and filled ’em up with paraffin from the heater in the flat. Once we’d knocked out the power we just walked into his house. He deserves everything life’s saving for him. I had two bottles left over. I don’t know who chucked ’em in the hostel. That wasn’t me. I don’t know anything about the tramp down at the church.’

‘And I suppose you still don’t know who the Organ Grinder is, or where I could find him?’

‘You’re right,’ said Judd.

The cow went through, and they all looked away as the bolt gun fired.

Shaw took out the artist’s impression he’d drawn of Blanket. It was due to go out on the networks that night – they’d done a deal, holding it back from the papers so the TV would headline with it.

‘There’s been some very ugly business done on this street, Mr Judd – a lot of innocent people have been hurt. Worse,’ said Shaw. ‘Weak people, defenceless people, desperate people. People like this…’ He held up the drawing. ‘This man is the latest, he’s the one taken from the church the night Bryan died. I think you know where he is, and what’s been done with him, and why.’

He held the picture up to Judd’s face as he tried to look away. ‘I want you to think about this man, and what might have happened to him, and whether you’re responsible in some way, in any way.’ Judd took the piece of paper in his hand. There were a lot of emotions struggling not to surface. Then he looked at Valentine and Shaw, and shuffled one foot, trying to keep his balance.

Judd went to hand the picture back.

‘Keep it,’ said Shaw.

He looked at it again. ‘What’s happened to him?’

‘Men like this are offered money, Mr Judd, for organs,’ said Shaw, sceptical that Judd didn’t know already. ‘A

Judd went along the line, smacking the animals, keeping them in single file. When he came back Shaw could see that, at last, some emotion was in his eyes. He wondered what life was like watching animals die.

He dropped his eyes to Shaw’s boots. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’ He seemed utterly defeated, as drained of blood as the carcasses hanging on the hooks.

‘There’s a car outside,’ said Shaw. ‘You’re going downtown. I’m arresting you for the arson attack on the substation and the criminal damage to Jan Orzsak’s house.’ Shaw read him his rights.

The bolt-gun operator came out, smoking, looking curiously and openly at Judd. They all followed the race into the yard.

‘One fag?’ said Judd, out in the sunlight. ‘Please.’

Shaw nodded, and watched as the old man’s hands shook as he tried to light up. Then, deftly, with one hand he snapped the match and let it fall on the sand. That family habit again, the broken V-shaped match.

‘There’s one thing in particular I don’t understand,’ said Shaw, placing his feet apart. ‘Why precisely did Bryan think you were responsible for Norma Jean’s death? I know he felt in his heart she’d died. And he knew that you’d both fought over the baby. But why did he think you’d killed her?’

Judd looked down at the gore on his once-white overalls. ‘Blood – he’d seen blood.’

Judd’s head was lost in a cloud of cigarette smoke. ‘In the bathroom. He went up to check she was OK – I’d cut myself shaving, put a hand out, I s’pose, and left a mark. Later, when we knew she was gone, he wanted to know if it was her blood. Fuck. It was mine. And he’d felt her drowning, gasping for air. That’s what he said. So he just strung it all together: that we’d fought, that I’d hit her, drawn blood, then held her under. He didn’t tell you lot – sometimes I wish he had. But he wouldn’t. Instead he tormented me all those years, and I’ve tormented Jan Orzsak.’

They let him finish his cigarette alone.

Then they walked him out into the street, and when he saw the squad car he looked at it as if it was an obscenity. Valentine opened the rear door and covered Judd’s head with his hand, protecting it as he pushed him down into the seat. A uniformed officer sat beside him, another in the driver’s seat. Shaw looked in the window and saw that he’d unfolded the ID sketch of Blanket on his lap. When Judd saw him he jerked his head away, but Shaw had seen that he was crying, the tears clearing a channel in the dust and blood on his face.