Death Watch

By the time Shaw was in Galloway’s office on the dockside Jofranka Phillips’s car was parked at the foot of the gangplank and she’d gone aboard, carrying – according to DC Campbell – nothing more than a paper bag from Thorntons.

‘So she likes chocolates. Anything else?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. She looked at her notes. ‘Dark glasses, black summer dress. One of the crew met her at the top of the gangplank – they kissed, cheek-to-cheek, like friends would.’

‘Right – George, ring Ravid Lotnar. He told us he could get a set of documents to prove his operation had been legally conducted in Israel. Get me the name of the hospital.’

He asked Galloway if he could use his broadband link. The Scot said he’d need a minute to finish an e-mail. Shaw bounced on his toes, reviewing in his mind the interview they’d just completed with Andy Judd under caution at St James’s, with the duty solicitor present. They’d hauled him in quickly before he’d any time to discover that his eldest son had been living secretly in Erebus Street. Or did he know? That was the problem with the Judd family: trying to see its internal workings, its alliances and feuds, was impossible – the more you looked, the less you saw.

It was well after opening time and Judd was sober, which didn’t suit him. He held a pea-green cup of tea on a saucer, but every time he tried to lift it to his lips he’d given up. They’d been talking for an hour: question, answer, question, answer… routine, aimless, designed to confuse the suspect. Every time Valentine got up to take a cigarette break – which was every ten minutes – he’d ostentatiously taken his packet of Silk Cut with him. Judd didn’t just have a craving for nicotine, he had a dependency; they could see it was beginning to make his yellow-stained fingers shake.

Then Shaw showed him the artist’s impression that Ally Judd said was an accurate depiction of his oldest son.

‘This was in all the local papers, TV. I gave you your own copy too.’

‘Yeah – so?’

‘Your daughter-in-law says it is unmistakably your son, Sean.’

‘Looks like him, all right. You’d think I’d come and tell you that? I can look after my own…’ He regretted that, they could both see it in his eyes. Because he couldn’t look after his own.

‘He came back because you’re dying. But he couldn’t – didn’t – feel he could talk to you. Why was that? He thought Bryan was right, didn’t he? That you’d killed Norma Jean?’

‘So you knew he was back in Lynn?’

Judd whispered to the solicitor. ‘I don’t have to answer that question,’ he said, smiling through wrecked teeth.

‘Can you explain how a pair of your overalls came to be found in the launderette, Mr Judd – soaked in blood – on the night your son died?’

The solicitor stiffened, as though she’d got a shock off a cattle fence. But Judd pushed her hand aside when she tried to place it on the table in front of him. ‘I’ve got a bag of special tokens – Ally gives ’em to me. I work in an abattoir. You’ve seen it – seen what I do. You got me in here to ask a fucking question like that? That is harassment. You’ve got me on the arson charge – there’s a date, for the court. I’m sticking my hand up for that – OK – so well done, boys. Isn’t that enough?’

He hadn’t missed a beat and the explanation had been fluid and calm.

‘But that’s not how it works, is it?’ said Shaw. ‘The abattoir collects the overalls and gets them washed in town, on contract. But not this set of overalls. And not on the night your son died.’

Judd’s eyes widened. ‘It’s Bry, isn’t it? You still think I killed him? You think I don’t love my kids? You think I don’t ever wake up and not think of them first? I’d die for them.’ He fingered a gold cross which had fallen out of his open-necked shirt, and Shaw noticed the contrast

‘There’s twenty – more – who’ll tell you I was out on the street that day – by the fire, drinking. I didn’t kill Bry – I didn’t go anywhere near him. It was cow’s blood on the overalls. Your lot in the white coats too stupid to work that out? It’s not Silent Witness, is it?’

Shaw didn’t have an answer to that, because there was one irritating flaw in Ally Judd’s statement: why had she put the blood-soaked overalls back in the wash? Andy Judd had been released, still constrained by the conditions of bail previously set.

In the shipping agent’s office overlooking the Alexandra Dock Galloway finished his e-mail exchange and Shaw took his place at the computer, punching two words into Google: Kalo Kircher.

He’d been a fool. Phillips’s tangential link with Israel had been a coincidence he should have checked out. DC Twine’s summary of her background had included the fact that Kalo Kircher’s children supported a charitable medical programme in Israel. Ravid Lotnar – the Rosa’s last patient – was an Israeli citizen who had tried to claim that there was documentary proof he’d had his organ transplant in his own country.

Shaw watched the spinning wheel on the screen as Google searched the worldwide web. The first page returned was headed ‘The Kircher Institute’.

Shaw clicked the link. The Kircher Institute was a hospital in Jerusalem offering basic medical services to both the Jewish and Palestinian populations. He worked

He gave his DS a single A4 sheet he’d printed out – a history of the clinic from the website.

The Kircher Institute was founded in 1968 by three brothers – Gyorgy, Hanzi, and Pitivo Kircher, all doctors, based in the United States. The hospital is dedicated to the poor, and named for their father, Kalo Kircher, a pioneering surgeon of the 1930s. In 1970 it offered outpatient services. The first surgical ward opened in 1973 – it now holds nearly 200 patients. No charges are made for the services given. Funding is largely undertaken in the US amongst the Jewish community – although significant donations have been made (see list) from organizations such as the United Nations, and World Jewish Relief (WJR). The Kircher accepts patients on a needs-first basis, irrespective of religion, ethnicity, or sex. The clinic has led a campaign within Israel to amend legislation to allow the removal of organs for transplant from patients certified as brain dead.

Valentine’s mobile rang. He took the call, listened, then cut the line. ‘Campbell’s with Lotnar now. He says he was given the documentation as part of the deal. Operation is listed as taking place at the Kircher Institute ten days ago.’

Shaw called up a newspaper archive story to show Valentine. The headline was ‘Funding Crisis Threatens Kircher’.

The report was over a year old. But the website was live – the clinic still open.

‘How’s that for a noble motive?’ said Shaw. ‘Keeping that clinic open demands a regular, substantial flow of income.’

They both looked out through the tinted windows as the sun began to stretch the shadows of the cranes on the dockside to breaking point. The lights on the Rosa stood out in the dusk, the hold pontoons now slid firmly over the cargo of grain.

A taxi arrived with pizzas and coffee.

Twine sent them an e-mail via the office network – everything he’d managed to track down on the history of MV Rosa and her crew. The ship was eight years old and had been built in Valparaiso, Chile, though she was Brazilian registered. Originally called the Estanca, she’d sailed regularly from São Paulo to Tilbury carrying what was termed general cargo – that was foodstuffs, timber and scrap metal. She’d been bought by her present owners, a shipping company based in Basle, three years earlier. The owners were Swiss, anonymous, and appeared on no known criminal record according to Interpol HQ at

‘Tel Aviv,’ said Shaw, training night glasses on the bridge of the MV Rosa.

‘How’d a character like that get another ship?’ asked Valentine.

‘Let’s get Interpol to try the Swiss owners again,’ said Shaw. ‘Get Twine to organize it – get the paperwork started. It’ll take for ever, so the sooner we start the better.’

They watched another small coaster coming through the Alexandra Dock, out of the Hook, carrying TV sets, according to Galloway. It slid into Berth 2 on the far side, dwarfed by an artificial mountain of scrap metal. Fork-lift trucks swarmed like rats, and a necklace of HGVs queued to unload. At the bottom of Erebus Street a bright light burnt in the hawthorn bushes where the power company team had left it on for security. The old

The air-conditioning in the office was making Shaw’s throat dry so he glugged two pints of cold milk he’d ordered delivered with the pizzas.

‘And she can’t sail?’ said Valentine, nodding at the Rosa.

‘Not unless I say so,’ said Shaw. ‘So we wait.’

‘For?’

Shaw didn’t answer, but swung the field glasses over the scene one last time. Berth 4 was still deserted, a flash of last-minute rays from the sun gilding it gold. He focused on the electricity sub-station. His heart stopped, missed a beat, as he watched the gate in the perimeter wire swing open. Two figures emerged, one supporting the other.

Campbell had picked up the movement too and scrabbled for a pair of binoculars. ‘It’s a blind spot,’ she said. ‘Just there, by the gates. I talked it through with Mark – the CCTV’s too far round behind the container park. They won’t be on film.’

And they knew it. The two figures didn’t take a step onto the quayside, but skirted the container park, disappearing into the maze, then re-emerging opposite the gangplank to the Rosa. They both sat, their backs to the metal container side, in the shadow. But Shaw could see them well enough with the night-vision glasses.

It was Andy Judd, and his son Neil.