Death Watch

Shaw understood now why Jan Orzsak hadn’t left the street in all those years, why he’d taken the opportunity to move next door to the site. He was his victim’s guardian, and the keeper of his own secret. But for this, the chance discovery of her bones, he’d have lived out the rest of his years knowing she was there, knowing Andy Judd was hated by his own children – condemned to a lifetime under suspicion – for what he, Jan Orzsak, had done. And he’d persisted with this lie knowing that Andy Judd’s world had been reduced to a single wish: to bury his daughter, to know, finally, that her body was at peace.

But Orzsak wasn’t at home now. He’d been brought back to Erebus Street by community ambulance at six the previous evening. He’d made himself a simple meal – two boiled eggs, with the stale sliced bread toasted. Then he’d selected the best bottle of wine he had left in the rack. He’d gone to bed, knowing sleep was a mercy he was denied. At just after six that morning DC Lau, in an unmarked car by the dock gates, had seen him leave his house, walk the street and weave his way through the tombstones towards the presbytery of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Ten minutes later she’d watched as Orzsak retraced his steps through the graveyard, followed by the priest, who’d opened up the church.

The small neo-Gothic side door was still open, the

Shaw stood in the silence, listening, managing to pick out a steady, insistent whisper. Three confessional boxes stood to one side, but there was light in none of them. Looking back up the aisle towards the great doors and the shadowy mural, he saw Orzsak, kneeling in a pew, Father Martin beside him, a hand on his shoulder. As Shaw walked towards them Orzsak stood, and Shaw felt that gravity had won whatever battle it had been fighting with this man for a lifetime. He stepped out into the aisle, moving as if he was under water, the folds of fat on his face looser, his jaw slack, his bottom lip down, wet and pink.

Shaw stood in his path. Orzsak almost fell, then steadied himself by holding on to the end of a pew.

‘An honest confession?’ he asked, and Orzsak couldn’t stop himself nodding.

‘Really?’ He turned to Martin, who wore a confessional stole over a white T-shirt and jeans. ‘So he’s forgiven?’

‘Absolution isn’t mine to give,’ he said. ‘That will come later, possibly. In another life.’

‘I know how you did it, Mr Orzsak. You hid her body in the basement that first night,’ Shaw said. ‘I checked the original report of the officers who searched the houses.

Orzsak moved his knee, a tiny stamp. ‘A trapdoor,’ he said.

‘And you had time; she died at – what – six? We didn’t get to the house before ten. And after that you had all the time you needed not to hurry, not to make a mistake. Her body was in the basement; they were rebuilding the electricity sub-station – that’s right, isn’t it? Sometime then – ’92, ’93?’

‘The next spring,’ said Orzsak, a slight sibilance on the ‘s’.

‘So easy enough for you, because you were in the industry – power supply. In fact, were you on the job?’

Orzsak looked away, suddenly tired of the questions.

‘So one night you ran a car to the dock gates and slipped her body into the waiting footings of the floor – an extra foot, beneath the clay. Then you just sat back and waited for them to pour the concrete. Your secret then, until Andy Judd’s little spasm of vengeance led us all to this…’

Shaw looked up at the mural of the wedding feast around the doors.

‘What I don’t understand is why,’ said Shaw. ‘Why she had to die.’

Orzsak considered the implied question, as if it were an abstruse point of contention in a philosophical debate.

‘She came to me crying,’ he said. ‘Not for what she’d done to me, but for what she wanted to do to her child. The unborn child. She’d taken all this life from me

Shaw didn’t believe most of that. ‘So you killed her – drowned her – held her head under the water of the tank. But you killed the child as well – that doesn’t make sense.’

‘I was angry.’

‘Just angry?’ asked Shaw. He thought about the relationship between the lonely bachelor and the child who had become a woman. ‘Or jealousy? You didn’t know about Ben Ruddle, did you? You didn’t know that Norma Jean wasn’t a child any more. What did you really feel?’

‘I won’t speak, not again,’ said Orzsak. ‘Not about this.’

Father Martin sat, pulling the purple stole of confession from around his neck. He’d heard many confessions, Shaw guessed, but none that had taken him so far into the depths of human pain: Orzsak’s pain, the pain of the teenager who had died that night at his hands, and the pain of the father, an outcast even to his children.

Ally handed out coffees. Orzsak shook his head so Shaw took his. The liquid was hot, gritty, and pungent. Shaw was always astonished at how such a simple thing could make him feel a splinter of joy, even here.

Kennedy stood watching the men sleep.

‘And what do the voices say today?’ asked Shaw of Kennedy.

He shook his head, as if clearing it of other thoughts. ‘They’ve been silent.’

Shaw stood and looked back down the nave to Kennedy’s painting, completed now to the halfway stage above the pointed arch of the main doors – Patigno’s Miracle at Cana.

‘I did wonder why you’d left it out – the candle, the ultimate symbol of memento mori, of the passing of time, of death. In the original there’s a rather fine one, in a gold holder, at the centre of the table… just there, to the right of the skull.’ He walked to the wall, pointing up at the velvet-covered table, heavy with rotting fruit.

But Kennedy wouldn’t look. Instead Father Martin walked towards the mural, as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said, tapping a finger on the cold stone wall.

Valentine appeared at the small door with two

‘You couldn’t bring yourself to paint the candle, could you, Liam – because that was the sign, the signal, that you used to mark each of the victims after Mrs Phillips gave you the names.’

Kennedy came alive then, realizing for the first time that he’d made mistakes, that good intentions didn’t mean he hadn’t committed a great sin. ‘This is rubbish. Selected who – for what?’

Shaw ignored him.

‘The second time we met you, Liam, here, in the church, you were wearing a T-shirt with a slogan. Do you remember?’

Kennedy licked his lips. He did, and he put a hand over his heart where his pulse was beginning to race.

‘Voluntary Service Overseas,’ said Shaw. ‘I checked you out with their London office. They passed me on to Tel Aviv. You were at a kibbutz in 2008. A whole harvest – a good worker, even if you weren’t Jewish. And political too – speaking up for the Palestinians, for their rights on the same land. But that wasn’t so popular, was it? So you went to Jerusalem to work for an organization that didn’t discriminate – the Kircher Institute. And you could use some of your IT skills, at last. You helped them build their website. And when you came home you kept in touch, which is how you met Jofranka Phillips. But you were ill by then, and the voices were part of that. So what could she give you in return for your help? There’s a room up at the hospital – for the Hearing Voices Network. We had a look inside. PCs, an office.

Kennedy turned to Father Martin. ‘This is rubbish.’

‘And she’d have told you what she told me. That the donors each had a choice. And that once they’d taken that choice they’d be looked after. No evil could come from that. Is that what she said?’

Kennedy held a coffee cup but he put it down now because his hand was beginning to shake.

‘I’m not here to listen to you deny this,’ said Shaw. ‘I’m here because there is still something I don’t understand. It was one of your little kindnesses, I think, at first, to collect the men’s pills from the chemist. At first I thought that was it – that was how you were able to select the ones that Mrs Phillips could use. And it might have helped – but it wasn’t good enough. No, she had the files, up at the hospital, so she didn’t need you for that. But I checked with Boots.’

He took a list out of his pocket.

‘And that’s what I don’t understand, because only yesterday you picked up a prescription for Paul Tyler – and he disappeared six months ago. And there are others, men who haven’t been listed here, on your records, for months, even a year. So my question – and it’s an urgent one – is why. If these men have gone, why do you still collect their drugs?’

In the silence they could hear the uneven whirr of the electric clock over the vestry door.

The blood drained from Kennedy’s face.

‘I gave them to the captain,’ he said in a whisper. ‘He said they needed them – where they’d gone. That’s how they got away – on the Rosa. To the south coast.’ He

‘Was he lying to me?’ Kennedy asked, though Shaw could see he already knew the answer. It was the moment, Shaw thought, when Liam Kennedy realized he was a holy fool.

He stood, adjusted his jeans, and noticed for the first time the uniformed officers who’d slipped into a pew by the door.

‘I want to speak with Father Martin before I go,’ he said. ‘Can I?’

But Father Martin was already walking away, down the nave, with Ally Judd at his side. He knelt at the altar, crossed himself, then left his church without looking back.