Death Watch

11

July 26th 1997.

He’d set out that night for the Westmead Estate, an up-and-coming DI, with a career ahead of him. His partner had been DCI Jack Shaw — Peter Shaw’s father. The body of a nine-year-old boy, later identified as Jonathan Tessier, had been found dead at three minutes past midnight in the car park beneath Vancouver House — a twenty-one-storey council block in the heart of the estate — a sprawling warren of deprivation, the kind of place that official statistics said didn’t exist.

The body was still dressed in the sports kit the boy had put on that morning to play football on the grass triangle by the flats. He’d been strangled, with a ligature of some sort, the condition of the body pointing to a time of death between six o’clock and eleven o’clock that night. A witness who’d found the body had seen a car leaving the scene — a Volkswagen Polo. The driver had failed to negotiate the narrow ramp to ground level and clipped one of the concrete pillars, spilling broken glass from a headlamp on the ground. Valentine and Shaw had stayed at the scene — overseeing the forensics team, organizing a door-to-door of the flats above, setting up an incident room in the community centre in the row of shops across the waste ground.

Shaw and Valentine confronted Mosse, showing him evidence found at the scene — a leather, fur-lined glove, in a sealed evidence bag. They searched the flat but could not find a matching glove. Later DNA analysis of the skin residue inside the glove produced a close match for Mosse. And there was a motive, of sorts. Mosse’s car had been vandalized on several occasions in the previous month — each time separately reported to back up insurance claims. Had Mosse caught Tessier damaging the car? Had an attempt to administer summary justice turned violent, then lethal?

The case was thrown out of court just after lunch on the first day. Shaw and Valentine had made an elementary procedural error in taking the glove to Mosse’s flat. The defence argued that the glove had been contaminated in the process. Mosse’s original statement, and that of his 62-year-old mother, was that the glove had not been in

Jack Shaw’s career ended in early retirement a few months later. George Valentine was busted down a rank to DS and sent out into the wilderness that was the north Norfolk coast; ten years of petty crime, traffic offences, and community policing. For George Valentine it felt like the start of a long slow death. But he’d kept his nose clean, and he’d worked hard, and he’d finally been given one chance to get his rank back. He’d been recalled to the CID at St James’s.

Since becoming partners a year earlier he and Peter Shaw had tried to reopen the case into Robert Mosse — now a solicitor practising in Lynn. What they needed to do was build a fresh case against him — one that did not rely on the contaminated glove. They’d managed to link Mosse to a gang of teenage thugs who’d imposed some rough justice on the Westmead Estate. Mosse — away at university — was already living a different life. But it was clear that at one time he’d been part of this violent and unstable clique, and that they’d been a force to reckon with on the estate. On at least one occasion they’d meted out a violent lesson to a child in the very same underground car park where Tessier’s body had been found. And Shaw and Valentine had found forensic evidence

They’d put all the new evidence they’d collected before Detective Chief Superintendent Max Warren, asking for the case to be reopened. At the very least, reviewed. They’d got a flat refusal. It was a notorious case, which had badly dented the reputation of the West Norfolk force. Warren said he needed more than circumstantial evidence to reopen old wounds. Worse, Warren warned Peter Shaw that any further attempts to interview witnesses or approach the one-time suspect would result in disciplinary action. Shaw had, in turn, warned Valentine off. The case was closed.

They’d never discussed it again. Valentine knew, although it had barely been said, that Jack Shaw’s son still harboured a lingering doubt that his father might have planted the evidence that night. Valentine could see he’d been tortured by not knowing the truth: and now, perhaps, he’d accepted he never would — which meant that in part he not only distrusted his father’s honesty, but Valentine’s too, a judgement which lay at the heart of the animosity between them.

Valentine had not accepted the order to drop the case. He’d tracked down the remaining members of the original gang of four other than Mosse. One had emigrated to New Zealand, one was in a secure psychiatric

Which left him with Alex Cosyns. He’d been watching his house, here, opposite the chestnut tree, for twelve weeks, picking up threads, and using police records and the odd spare moment in CID to piece together a biographical jigsaw. What had he learnt? His age — thirty-seven — born St George’s Day in Lynn Royal Infirmary. Brought up on the notorious Westmead Estate, sixteenth floor of Vancouver House. Valentine had found a cutting from the Lynn News for 1980 — a picture of Cosyns’s father, with his young son, and a litter of prizewinning dogs. Labradors. Dogs had been their shared passion. Then came a school record unblemished by achievement, followed by a course in mechanics at the tech college. Awarded the Griffiths Medal for best student 1989. Worked at Askit’s Agricultural Engineers, Castle Rising until 1998. Then Kwik-Fit. Now a driver-mechanic for Gotobed’s Funeral Services. Married, the father of one daughter, and divorced — all three life-defining events crammed into the same year, 1999. Affected dark glasses and driving gloves. When he wasn’t working he was caring for the stock car or driving the third-hand BMW down to a semi in Manea, near Ely, to see his daughter. That was twice a month, always a Saturday. They went shopping in Peterborough, the cinema, a pub meal, then home.

And that was the first clue: those shopping trips round the Queensgate Centre were just a little too generous for a man who drove a hearse for a living and still paid child support. And then Valentine had checked out the stock

And that was the life he’d pieced together. All that, and the dog.

Valentine checked his watch. It was fifteen minutes past two. He wouldn’t be seeing either of them tonight. The usual pattern was a late-night walk at around midnight. The lights would wink out, then the door would open. The dog was a Jack Russell and had seen better days, grey fur around the narrow snout, too much fat round the middle. Cosyns would tug it along the path towards the park, stooping down, ruffling its fur, talking. Like the extra cash, thought Valentine, the dog didn’t fit. People do end up looking like their pets — a process of nature and nurture. They choose them, and then they mimic them. But the stumpy Jack Russell, despite its age, was hyperactive, fretful, skittering. Its owner, on the other hand, was tall, with unhurried movements, the lead always held firmly in the hand — and the hand always unseen in a leather driving glove. Mismatched partners, thought Valentine.

While Cosyns walked, Valentine would check out the front door just in case he’d left it off the latch. Then he’d look in the last of the four garages. Inside there’d be the

Next time he’d spring the front door lock, check out the inside of the house. This time he’d just wait, think, and see if he felt more like sleep. He fished in his pocket for his hip flask and drank.

He pictured Erebus Street, the dock gates, and the Crane. He knew that Shaw and he had come, silently, to the same conclusion; that Bryan Judd’s killer had not only come from Erebus Street, but that the heart of the mystery was there too. Because too much had happened in one night: the blackout, the murder, the sabotage, the attack on the hostel. Then there were the potential forensic links with the murder scene — the rice, the broken match. But what was cause, and what was consequence? Surely, within one of those houses, a motive must have been born, strong enough, and dark enough, to set in motion such a violent series of events.

And then there was that curious knowledge that he’d been to Erebus Street before. He snatched at the memory, but it slid past, like a fish just seen under reflective water. All it left was a phrase in his mind, almost slipping off the hook: missing person. Now he knew he wouldn’t sleep — not in his bed, anyway. So he stood abruptly and set out towards The Walks, across the silent park, picking up the long sinuous path which skirted the medieval Red Tower, and led back to police headquarters at St James’s.

Ally Judd stood at her bedroom window looking at the harsh neon sign that read 24-HOUR WASH, buzzing on, buzzing off, buzzing on, flooding the double bed with green light. Through the party wall she heard the washing machines return to life in mid-cycle, the driers turning like whispers. She hadn’t thought of that — that with the power back on they’d restart.

On the bed she’d laid out some photos. She’d slept for an hour after she’d taken the sedatives, then started awake, crying out, so that the WPC on the step had come up to check she was all right.

Alone again, she’d laid out Bry’s life in pictures.

Her throat was dry and she still hadn’t cried. It was the guilt, she knew, that held her back. The knowledge that now she wouldn’t have to tell him that she had to leave, that she’d loved him once, but that the love had been ground out of her, drained, by her life on Erebus Street, and the bad blood which seemed now to be in the very nature of the Judd family.

She sat on the edge of the duvet and picked up the first picture: a snapshot of Bry and his twin, Norma Jean, her teeth encased in a brace. They’d be eight or nine, Ally guessed, and already the mirror-like resemblance was being torn apart by the difference in sex: Bry’s brow getting stronger, his face broadening, while Norma Jean’s

Then, the picture she’d taken on her first day out with Bry, on the front at Wells, taken by a stranger from Scotland — Pennycuick, she remembered, because they’d laughed at the name and got her to spell it out. Ally looked bitterly at her seventeen-year-old body in its shorts and bikini top — lithe, the waist impossibly slim. She’d had curves then, not this drab figure like an ironing board stood on end. Bry didn’t like the sun, so he was shading his eyes, an arm draped round her neck. The year they met — 1991. The year before everything changed, the year before they’d lost Norma Jean. After that, Bry hadn’t smiled much, but she’d still been drawn to him — a vulnerable, damaged man she thought she could fix.

The wedding day next; what was left of his family, all of her family — worse luck. But at least Bry’s smile was real enough amongst the sullen smirks. She’d been three months pregnant with the baby they’d lost. Andy in the background. She thought the cruelty of it was almost unbearable; Andy, alone after Marie had died, hiding in a family photo.

Next, holidays. The Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, just bliss: the music, the heat, and the thought of all those miles between them and Erebus Street. They stood together, astonished at how much fun life could be.

Back home it was always family. She bit her lip. A picture of Neil next, a laughing six-year-old, thrown over his brother Bry’s shoulder, her grinning behind. And then, finally, Christmas this year: her and Bry on the beach at Old Hunstanton. Bry, trying to be happy, but

And a new picture. A secret picture.

It had lain on the bedside table slipped inside the psalter he’d given her. A snapshot, him in swimming shorts, on a beach. She covered her mouth with her hand. She had a right to be happy, just like anyone else. She propped the picture on the bedside table beside the night-light they’d lit together. And they’d said a prayer for Bry’s soul. They hadn’t even thought about the future. That would have been a sin too.

She broke the line of thought. Next door she could still hear the washing machines. Neil and Andy shared the flat above the launderette. But Andy was at the police station, and would be all night. Neil slept heavily, and noise wouldn’t wake him anyway, unless he picked up the vibrations. She’d leave it until the morning. Then she thought about sleeping, in this bed, their bed, and decided she could deal with the machines now.

The female PC had retreated from the front step to the squad car parked at the T-junction, blocking traffic, the thin squawk of the radio just audible. Looking up, Ally saw a clear night sky, the moon, going to earth now, over behind the abattoir. She put the key in the lock of the launderette and turned the Chubb — but the door wouldn’t open. She turned it back and it did. She’d left it open.

‘God,’ she said, thinking she might cry now. One of the washers had malfunctioned and there was a pool of water in front of it; a detergent slick. She grabbed a plastic laundry basket, knelt down in the water and pulled open the porthole, dragging out the contents.

Inside was a pair of heavy-duty overalls. They were covered in red stains. Pressing the material to her nose she caught the unmistakable scent of blood: ferrous, acrid. She fumbled for the name tag inside the collar.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘No.’