Death Wore White

The sight of death. For Shaw the shock was no less profound for being the second time he’d faced it in a few hours. If anything the sudden sense of living in a slow‐motion world was even more pronounced. He felt his fingertips tingle as the blood rushed to his heart.

‘Crime scene,’ he said to himself, reassured by the calm resonance of his own voice. ‘Let’s stick to the book. He’s dead, so there’s no hurry, no imperative but observation.’ He stood outside himself, watching himself follow procedure. His voice sounded good. Very good. But despite the sensation that he’d taken control a persistent thought intruded, like the buzzing of a fly around a wound: what would his father have done? An odd sensation: missing someone who’d hardly been there.

‘Don’t look for links,’ he told himself, thinking of the body still freezing under the Land Rover’s spotlight down on Ingol Beach. ‘Let’s take them one at a time.’

He looked at his hands, checking. ‘Gloves,’ he said, double‐checking.

The radio signal was weak, the volume hardly audible now, but he leant in none the less and turned the radio off, leaving himself some silence in which to think.

His training had been repetitive but clear: there were procedures to follow, and a single broken rule could destroy vital evidence.

‘George.’ He said it as calmly as he could, but Valentine was experienced enough to pick up the coded charge of adrenaline. He looked up sharply. ‘Make sure everyone stays put. And get that dog on a leash. Crime‐scene rules. Then come forward – to the Alfa. Wait for me there.’

Now, observations. The corpse. First, the face. From a kneeling position Shaw could look up at the victim, the chin resting on the chest, a pair of off‐white workman’s overalls buttoned high with a white T‐shirt beneath. The skull was slight, almost child‐like. The features – eyes, lips and eyebrows – were large and seemed to crowd the face. The nose was small, snub and under‐developed. He checked the skin at the ankles and hands. Hypostasis, the telltale pooling of blood after death, was incomplete. The man was small – a guess, five foot six or seven.

The cause of death was brutally obvious: a thin‐necked chisel projected from the dead man’s left eye socket. Shaw touched his own wounded eye, feeling his pulse in the blood behind the retina. The chisel had been forced in up to the hilt of the rounded wooden handle. There was remarkably little blood, but blood there was: a rivulet, now congealed, ran from the caked eye socket across the cheek to the neck and shoulder, and then behind the body, pooling on the seat. Rigor had begun to set in; both hands were held palm up, showing signs of soil stains, one with grass under the fingernails, fingers stiff. The head was bare, the close‐cropped cranium vulnerable, but unmarked.

Immediate environment. He smelt the air. Heated over a period of hours, it was heavy with aromas: an acrid hint of something earthy, possibly urine, and from the engine the smell of hot plastic and warm oil. Alcohol too, sweet as death. The dashboard held a half‐eaten apple, the exposed flesh already brown, and a can of Carlsberg Special Brew. The wrapping paper from a packet of Hula Hoops was in the ashtray, which was ashless. The passenger seat was obscured by a large toolbox: metal, blue and worn, with fold‐back wing lids. Hanging from the rear‐view mirror was a picture of three children: two boys holding a toddler, crammed into a photo booth. One of the boys had a shaven skull, the smile uncertain, the bone structure poking through translucent skin. From a suction hook in the roof hung a little plastic model of a bald eagle, which moved very slightly as Shaw’s weight tipped the suspension a few inches. Kneeling, he saw that a key ring hung from the ignition, a leather fob, with gold lettering. Three words: Jake Ellis Appeal.

He stood, feeling that he’d gained firm control of the scene, the tension beginning to ebb from his neck muscles. A run through the snow would ease the stress that was making his head ache, but he knew he’d have to wait. He looked back down the line of cars. Valentine stood beside the Alfa Romeo, motionless except for the rhythmic rise

Between them were three lines of human footprints – John Blickling Holt’s round trip and Shaw’s one way. Holt’s prints were still sharp, although partly filled with the snow that had fallen after the convoy had come to rest, and by the breeze which had blown flakes over the bank from the beach beyond. But they were still clear; unmissable. To the landward side the saltmarsh was dominated by sheets of black water, dotted with clumps of marram grass. There was no sign that anyone had tried to climb the bank, or drop down into the water. To the seaward side there was the dyke, six feet across, eight deep, and beyond that the snow‐covered sands, unmarked except for the delicate herringbone footsteps of the marsh birds.

Which left forwards. The lights of the truck were still on and lit the fallen pine a pale yellow. There was a six‐foot gap of untouched snow between the pick‐up and the tree.

Shaw took a deep breath. Even the perfect murderer leaves footprints in snow. Suicide? Hardly. Stabbing yourself through the eye was not an obvious way to leave the world. Self‐mutilation? Martyrdom? A message left for the living?

Shaw breathed out, watching the plume of steam hang in the air like an accusation, his knee jiggling as he tried to think. What if the temperature rose? If the snow melted he’d lose the evidence; his crime scene would disappear.

He needed fresh eyes, even if they were hooded.

‘OK, George,’ he called back. ‘Follow my tracks.’ Valentine struggled to match Shaw’s confident strides in

‘Fuck,’ he said, unable to stop the recoil in his neck muscles at the sight of the victim.

‘Indeed, George. Fuck it is. Let’s take it carefully, shall we?’

Valentine sniffed and looked away. His guts began to contract rhythmically, his mouth flooding with saliva. But he fought the urge to vomit again, biting the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

Shaw retrieved a small voice recorder from his pocket, checked it was working and pressed the record button. A pinprick amber light glowed.

‘DI Peter Shaw. Monday, 9th of February 2009. Eight thirteen p.m. I’m standing beside a pick‐up truck. Make and registration…’

Valentine worked his way carefully to the rear of the truck. ‘It’s a Vauxhall Rascal,’ he said. ‘Ten years old – more.’ The licence plate was clear of snow and he read out the number, his voice sharp and discordant in the still air.

Shaw went on, his breath making the hand‐held recorder damp. ‘The driver of the vehicle is dead. Cause of death appears to be a violent stab wound to the face which has penetrated the left eye socket. The weapon used was a chisel with a wooden, worn handle. The vehicle is first in a line of eight stranded on Siberia Belt, Ingol Beach. Six feet in front of it is a fallen tree. Before I approached the pick‐up the only footprints in the snow to the rear were those of John Blickling Holt, one of the other drivers, who walked forward shortly after the convoy became stranded,

Valentine looked back into the headlights of the Alfa Romeo, along the bank above the star‐studded water of the marsh, and ahead to the fallen tree.

‘Check the other side,’ said Shaw, handing him a heavy‐duty torch.

Valentine stepped across the rear of the truck, noting a pool of urine staining the snow by the nearside rear wheel arch, paw prints scattered nearby. Immediately below him was the deep gash of the dyke ditch. Looking back along the line of traffic he could see that after about eighty yards the ditch disappeared into a brick culvert which ran into a sluice gate – the point at which they’d crossed over from the sands. The snow over the top of the sluice and around it had been untouched when they’d climbed across. The bank on the far side of the truck was a sinuous sheet of silver white, with no sign of disturbance.

He edged back. ‘Nothing – no one’s been in or out.’ Shaw clicked the recorder and held it to Valentine’s face. ‘For the record,’ he said.

Valentine’s hooded eyes opened a few millimetres beyond normal. He’d never quite got used to taking orders from people twenty years younger than he was. He’d been a DI himself until they’d busted him after Jack Shaw’s last case, and he’d been to more crime scenes than Peter Shaw had been to university lectures.

Shaw cut the recording and looked Valentine in the eyes. He thought for the first time that he might have underestimated him, and he reminded himself that trust was not one of his strong suits. So he made himself ask the question. ‘What do you think?’

Valentine wasn’t a whiz, and he certainly wasn’t a kid, but the job ran as deep in his veins as it did in Peter Shaw’s. It wasn’t that he couldn’t analyse a crime scene. He’d done it a thousand times. He just trusted his instinct more than a fat textbook of procedural logic. So what did instinct tell him now?

‘It’s two crimes,’ he said. ‘This killing’s vicious, angry, unplanned. But signs of entry and exit are non‐existent. The killer just vanishes, coolly.’ He took a breath, looking towards the sea. ‘And then there’s the other corpse – down on the beach. Two hundred yards away, a bit more. Where does that fit in?’ He squatted down, looking under the truck. Nothing. ‘He could have jumped, from the cab here, into the marsh…’

Shaw looked unimpressed, although he didn’t have a better scenario. ‘Why? Why risk drowning, or freezing to death, just to avoid leaving a footprint? And the splash would have caught someone’s attention.’

Valentine’s jaw began to vibrate with the cold.

‘We need pictures,’ said Shaw.

Valentine shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Tom’s boys from CSI?’ he asked. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘Well. Two reasons, I guess,’ said Shaw, talking to himself

Valentine buttoned the top of his raincoat. He’d been out of serious front‐line policing for a decade and was honest enough to know he needed to sharpen up his act. Shaw was right in his summary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.

From his pocket Shaw produced a small digital camera.

‘Not admissible,’ said Valentine, before he could stop himself. All specialist forensic photography was on film, reducing any chance of digital enhancement. No court would accept a digital image.

‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw, failing to suppress his irritation at being picked up by his own DS. ‘But we need a record,’ he added. ‘Even if we can’t take it into court. I’ll get what shots I can… Meanwhile get Control. Tell ’em what we’ve got. We’re getting CSI anyway for the victim on the beach – and the pathologist – but we need back‐up. More bodies in uniforms. We need transport for the witnesses, and somewhere we can take them for the paperwork. We need statements, names, addresses, the lot.

‘Somewhere warm…’ said Valentine, taking a breath, ‘would be nice.’

Shaw looked along the coast towards the lights he’d seen from the beach. ‘Tell ’em to try Gallow Marsh Farm. If they’ve got a barn we could use that, but the unit will have to bring some air heaters. And we need a catering unit.’

He patted his jacket pockets. ‘What have I missed?’ There were times, thought Valentine, when Shaw looked like his father. Something in the face, but something subtle, the way he seemed to focus on the mid‐distance when he was thinking. Valentine leant in the driver’s window, looking around the tomb that the truck cab had become, trying not to glimpse the victim’s face. The side pocket in the driver’s door was empty except for a single piece of neatly folded paper. Valentine lifted it clear with his gloved fingers. It was an invoice. Beneath it was a pair of spark plugs. He leant in closer, and sniffed.

‘Old plugs,’ he said.

‘So?’ said Shaw.

‘Rusted. Plugs don’t rust in situ,’ explained Valentine. ‘Too much oil about. If they’d been taken out recently they’d give off that burnt smell… but there’s nothing.’ He pointed at the tiny question mark of the contact points. Dull metal, a blush of oxidized steel.

The pick‐up’s engine still ran, the heating system clattering.

‘So he took them out, left them there, they rusted. What’s the problem?’ asked Shaw. But he knew that wasn’t

Then two things happened at the same time. They heard the first flutter of the helicopter blades along the coast. Within seconds it was with them, hanging in the air with the stars, an RAF Coastal Rescue, the bay doors open to reveal two men in full flight gear and crash helmets. The pilot brought it down to thirty feet and then began to edge closer, trying to find a spot as close to the dyke ditch as he could get without losing his safety margin. The snow began to rise about them.

And as Shaw turned away, looking down the line of cars, he saw the teenager in the baseball cap crawling back up the bank from the marsh. He reached the top, then stood and broke into a run. Shaw watched him for twenty yards before he slipped again, almost down into the ditch on the far side. He knelt for a few seconds, looking back at the cars, and Shaw guessed he was considering a return to the warmth of the Mondeo. But instead he turned away and began to run, into the half‐light first, and then into the night itself.