Death Watch

Shaw woke a millisecond before the phone rang. Or was it the second ring? He could never quite catch the echo, but sensed it was there, bouncing round the dark room. He could smell Lena; her skin was so close, a subtle mix of sweat and salt. He fumbled with the receiver trying not to think it must be bad news. It was George Valentine.

‘Peter. I need to show you something – outside the Crane, on Erebus Street.’ For once Valentine’s voice was free of the corrosive edge of antagonism.

Lena turned away in her sleep.

Shaw propped himself up on an elbow and looked at the harsh red numbers on the alarm clock: 12.55 a.m.

Then he made a mistake. ‘Is this really necessary, George?’

He heard Valentine draw on an unseen cigarette. Shaw knew he shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have questioned his DS’s judgement. George Valentine was his partner, and he’d got the best part of thirty years’ service under his belt. If he rang his DI in the middle of the night he had a reason – a compelling one. Shaw knew what Lena would say, and the word ‘trust’ would be at its heart. So he made himself cut in. ‘Sorry. Course it is. I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t move.’

There was no sign of the moon when he pulled the 24-HOUR WASH, although the launderette was closed.

Valentine sat in the gutter, a pewter flask in his hand, his lips wet, so that they caught the light. In the sudden flood of headlamps he stood arthritically, like a deckchair unfolding. When Shaw got out of the Land Rover his DS didn’t say anything, just led the way to the dock gates, following the sunken iron rails in the tarmac. The gate to the wired compound for the electricity sub-station stood open.

‘The lock here was broken – that’s how Andy Judd got in with his bottle of paraffin,’ said Valentine.

From the small yard within they could see up into Jan Orzsak’s house, where a single light shone through the frosted glass of a bathroom window. A shadow moved inside, and Shaw imagined Orzsak standing at a mirror, trying to forget whatever nightmare had woken him up, shifting his weight off the crushed slipper.

‘We missed this,’ said Valentine. He brushed his way through the hawthorn bushes to the far wire, the perimeter of the dockyard, and there they found another metal gate.

‘This is neat,’ said Valentine, holding out a padlock on his hand. The heavy-duty shackle had been filed through. The hinge screamed as the gate swung in. They walked out onto the barren acre of concrete, on which had been painted the giant number 4. A rat dashed left and right, left and right, seemingly following a path only it could see, as if it were negotiating an invisible maze.

Shaw read the letters painted on the stern, and felt his blood run deliciously cool.

‘MV Rosa,’ he said. ‘MVR.’

His second thought, after he’d stopped the elation flooding his brain, was that it could be a coincidence. ‘Was she here on Sunday night?’

Valentine nodded, looking at his black slip-ons. ‘I rang the shipping agent – she sailed Monday morning at dawn. But she was here, Berth 4.’

‘Well done,’ said Shaw, thinking fast, putting together pieces of a jigsaw which suddenly seemed to fit – like Pete Hendre’s description of the room he’d woken up in, with the steady mechanical hum, and the iron door. Like the bodies on Warham’s Hole and on the storm-drain grid. Like the torch and the wristband: MVR.

‘You haven’t been aboard?’ He bit his lip, recognizing that he’d done it again, shown his lack of trust, because only an idiot rookie would be stupid enough to blunder aboard.

The cold edge returned to Valentine’s voice. ‘Agent’s meeting us at the dock office – I’ve told him if he contacts anyone on the Rosa he’ll be a shipping agent in Murmansk by the weekend. He’s OK. Old school.’

The Rosa was silent except for the dribble of a bilge pump into the black oily water. They strolled away from the ship, keeping to the shadows of the hawthorns that grew through the wire fencing, round the edge of the Alexandra Dock, to the gates into the Bentinck – the inner dock – aware that by now they’d be on the CCTV. CONSTABLE SHIPPING AGENTS.

Valentine spoke into a crackling entryphone grille.

‘DS Valentine, sir. We spoke twenty minutes ago.’

They heard the automatic bolts shoot back. Inside was a windowless room in which sat two women, both wearing thigh-length skirts – one leather, one red silk – stockings, and loose blouses – one in gold lamé, the other silver, spangled with red dots. One had a cut lip, the other a puffy eye; tears stained the make-up on both.

Shaw thought they looked like hookers from central casting.

‘Girls,’ said Valentine. He knew them both, regulars from the small red-light district on the outskirts of the North End. Neither was older than twenty-five, but he knew they’d already been on the streets a decade.

‘Fuck off,’ said one, winking at Shaw. The other one hit her, but it was only a make-believe blow, and it made them both laugh bitterly. They clutched each other’s arms and glared at Valentine, united in their antagonism.

‘Come up,’ crackled a voice from the entryphone outside. They climbed to the office. The ship’s agent was called Galloway, a thick-set Scot with a permanent five o’clock shadow and short arms that hung like weapons from his shoulders. A Cairn terrier cross was at his feet, chewing the cardboard packet which had once held a beef sandwich. Galloway waved a mobile phone at them. ‘Just

Shaw shook his head. ‘Do us a favour – cancel. Tell them we’re here. Do it now.’

Galloway did so and killed the call. He didn’t look that happy about being given orders in his own office. ‘Next?’ he said.

‘What would the security guard at the gate do if he spotted two men like us wandering the dockside and then turning up here?’

‘If he was awake, he’d ring me,’ he said.

They stood in the silence. ‘He isn’t awake very often,’ said Galloway. ‘That’s how the girls get on here. We’re trying to keep the hookers off the dock. Mind you, these two were in the boot of a cab,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘Ship owners don’t like it. They like the vice onshore.’

‘That’s the girl we’re interested in,’ said Valentine, pointing at the Rosa. ‘What can you tell us?’

Galloway punched some computer keys. ‘I’ve drilled down for the stuff you need… She’s a regular. Dutch owners. Basic run is from here to Vaasa – that’s Finland; godforsaken hole, too. You wouldn’t even get a shag there, let alone a drink. She takes grain, scrap metal, brings back timber. Three and a half thousand tonnes – which means she’s a neat fit for the Kiel Canal, so we’re talking five, six days, each way. Nearer six now the EU’s kicking up about energy efficiency – they have to trim their speed, burns less fuel. Then there’s a regular two-way contract to Rotterdam. She’s just come in from that, carrying…’ He checked on screen. ‘White goods – fridges, mainly.’

Galloway nodded, scooping up the dog.

‘Crew?’ asked Shaw.

‘Er… standard seven. Captain is Juan de Mesquita – John to us. First Officer’s Dutch, engineer is a Pole, couple of Russian ABs, then two Filipino deck crew – one of ’em’s the cook. Good, too – I’ve had the grub.’

‘All aboard?’

‘Yeah. Probably. They don’t need permission not to be – except from the captain. EU nationals don’t need a passport. They’ll go into town in the morning, shop while she’s being unloaded. Then it’s grain to load, and she should make the tide tomorrow night.’

Shaw shook his head. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

‘Technically, she’s Dutch sovereign territory,’ said Galloway, folding the short arms across a barrel chest.

‘The dock gates are British,’ said Shaw. ‘And they’re staying shut.’

Galloway shrugged. ‘OK, but you’ll have to deal with the owners. Every moment she’s in the dock she’s losing money. I’d need authorization – I don’t know – the chief constable’s office, something like that. In writing. I’m not trying to be difficult, but this is what I do. I protect the owners’ interests.’

Deck lights died on the Rosa, leaving just the bridge lit. Shaw called the dog, which nuzzled his hands. ‘We need your help,’ he added to Galloway. ‘I can’t tell you everything, but I’ll tell you as much as I can.’

It took Shaw a minute to give him the bare burnt bones. The case in a nutshell: Judd’s death at the hospital,

‘You mean like this?’ asked Galloway, extending his wrist out from a shirt cuff. On it was a white band, and he turned it to reveal the tell-tale letters MVR. ‘Crew’s been flogging these for about six months. They’re raising cash for Mercy Ships – you know? Charity ships. They sail into some godforsaken port in Africa and start offering cataract ops for free, vaccination, that kind of thing.’ He jiggled the band. ‘It’s a good cause.’

‘It’s guilt,’ said Shaw. ‘Crooks can surprise you just like honest people do.’

Galloway opened a drawer on his desk and retrieved a bottle of whisky. The label was Dutch. He poured it into three tea mugs and divvied them up.

‘So,’ concluded Shaw, sipping. ‘What I want to do is watch, see what happens. They may just keep their heads down – I would. They don’t know we’ve got the torch or the wristbands – although they may well know we’ve picked up the two floaters, so perhaps they’ve guessed. But they won’t know we’ve made the link. And I guess they have to come back, right? They haven’t got a lot of choice.’

‘None. She’s run by the owners. Contracts are in place. They want her in Lynn, she’s in Lynn.’

Unless, of course, the owners were in on the game, thought Shaw. He made a mental note to check back on

‘They’ll know we’re up at the hospital turning the place over,’ said Shaw. ‘And the death of one of the surgeons – Peploe – has given us a conveniently silent prime suspect. If they’re greedy, or desperate, they might just think they’re in the clear. I don’t want anyone on the ship alerted. Let them think they’re sailing Saturday morning. Can we put someone in here…’

Galloway looked round at the dishevelled office. ‘Sure. The glass is tinted so they can’t see in. I usually go aboard for the paperwork, so they don’t come here. You’d be safe. There’s a secretary, telephonist, but they’re good girls. Leave it to me.’ He walked to the glass and looked at the ship. ‘There’s dockside CCTV – a camera on the gate, one on the quay. There are screens at security. Mind you, the picture quality’s crap so don’t get your hopes up.’

‘I’ll get you that letter from the chief constable – and the Port Authority. You’ll be covered,’ said Shaw. He asked to borrow a pair of night-vision binoculars.

The light was eerie, a kind of low-voltage purple. He focused on the security booth at the gate, two hundred yards away – a blaze of neon, the cap of the security guard just visible through the plastic counter glass.

‘He’s asleep all right.’

Then he looked at the Rosa, tied to the quayside, the only link between the two worlds a thin gangplank. No, not the only link, because there was the thick power cable as well, like a snake.

Something clicked into place in Shaw’s mind, like a virtual plug into an imaginary socket.

Galloway put his hands behind his head, revealing two large patches of sweat-stained shirt. ‘We’re a green port. That means once the ships tie up they have to switch to UK power, which is generated inland from biomass. Costs a fucking fortune – nobody likes it, but that’s the way it is. If the UK’s gonna meet its emissions targets this is the kind of nonsense we have to live with.’

‘So Sunday lunchtime, when the power went, they’d have to switch to the generator?’ Shaw tried to recall the dark shape of the ship beyond the dock gates, but he couldn’t see any lights in his memory.

Galloway thought, then frowned. ‘Well, the others did – the Ostgard, the Waverley, the Rufinia. They all switched to generators ’cos I had to go aboard to do the paperwork during the afternoon and they all had power. But I did the Rosa when she came in about ten that morning. Then I went home. I do that – just to frighten the wife. But Monday morning the bloke on security said there’d been a cock-up on the Rosa – soon as they’d docked and hooked up to the shore-side power they’d taken the chance to strip down the generator ’cos it was way past its maintenance date. So when the power went pop they were buggered. Took them till after midnight to get it up and running again.’

Shaw and Valentine exchanged glances. At last, the link between the seemingly chaotic events on Erebus Street and the illegal traffic in human organs. Shaw tried to imagine the scene on board as the power failed at midday on Sunday: the frantic activity, the generator useless. Rosa. Then he scrolled down his mobile call list until he found the number for Andersen, the electricity company engineer they’d talked to in Erebus Street on the Sunday night. He answered on the third ring. Shaw guessed he had the kind of career where a call in the middle of the night wasn’t unusual. Shaw had a simple question: the power on the quayside, did it run through the Erebus Street sub-station, and if it did, where was it coming from now? Simple answers: yes, to one. Now it came from a divert they’d set up from the power supply on the Bentinck Dock.

‘Can you monitor the supply to a specific ship?’

‘Sure,’ said Andersen. ‘I’d have to get into the other sub-station – it’s over by the grain stores.’

‘Can you do that? This is confidential, so low key. Then let me know as soon as there’s a peak in the supply – anything substantial. The ship we’re interested in is the Rosa.’

‘Why?’

It was a fair question and he needed the engineer onside. ‘It’s possible the Rosa has been used as a kind of floating hospital – an illegal floating hospital. If they tried an operation on board the arc lamps alone would chew up the power supply. I want you to tell me if there’s a peak like that.’

Andersen said he’d be in position in an hour.

Then Shaw swung the glasses round to the old gates at the bottom of Erebus Street. The light still shone from Orzsak’s bathroom, but it wasn’t the only light now. Above the Bentinck Launderette the lights were on, 24-HOUR WASH sign wasn’t lit green – a livid light, echoed by the stark illuminated cross on the apex of the roof of the Sacred Heart.

‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘For now, we wait.’