Death Wore White

Traffic control radioed them back before the news had got through to the murder inquiry room: the van which had crashed at Burn Bridge was one of North Norfolk Security’s – the company that owned the vehicle stranded on Siberia Belt. There was a single fatality. The RTA unit was in attendance, the road closed for the night. The company’s MD was en route to the scene.

‘He’s saved us the trip to his place,’ said Valentine.

At the RTA checkpoint Shaw flashed a warrant card and they trundled forward to within fifty yards of the bridge; a graceful concrete arc with steel safety railings. The sun had set, leaving behind a wound in the sky. The river flowed inland, seawater filling the maze of creeks and ditches so that the mirror‐like surface seemed to fill the world to the brim.

The van had crashed through the metal barriers but its rear wheels had become entangled in the sheared metal, so that it hung now, swinging slightly, the windscreen pointing down into the water. Except there wasn’t a wind‐screen. The driver hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt and on impact had been thrown through the glass. His broken legs were snagged behind the wheel so that he too hung down, his arms reaching towards the water, a snapshot of a diving man.

Amongst the police cars and emergency vehicles was a

The RTA unit had an inflatable in the water, a floodlight already set up on the bank. As they got closer Shaw could see what was left of the driver’s face, lacerated beyond recognition. Blood dripped from the man’s hands, carried off by the flowing river below. Valentine hung back, chatting to the senior fire officer with the RTA unit.

‘Do we know who he is?’ asked Shaw of a uniformed inspector in a reflective jacket. Shaw knew the officer vaguely. Ex‐CID, close to retirement, with an attitude problem that age had done nothing to mellow.

He shrugged. ‘Let’s get him down first,’ he said. ‘He falls in the water we could lose the body. What’s it to you?’

‘Could be something, or nothing,’ said Shaw, happy to keep him in the dark. He searched his memory for the inspector’s name. Jennings, that was it. He’d worked with Shaw’s father in what he suspected both would have called the good old days.

There was no doubt what had happened. The BMW had been overtaken by the van, touching 80 mph. It had hit the black ice in the shadow of a line of poplars which guarded the approach to the bridge. The witness said the driver had nearly regained control but had just clipped the railings, ricocheting to the opposite side, smashing through before being snagged by the ruptured metal.

A black sports car crept towards them from the checkpoint. ‘This should be the owner of the security firm,’ said Jennings. ‘He might have an ID for you.’

The man who got out certainly looked like he owned

‘I’ll have a word,’ said Shaw, before Jennings moved. Valentine joined him.

The MD’s name was Jeff Ragg. Well fed and tall, his face looked as though it had been soaking up moisture in a bucket all day; the features heavy and bloated, the fingers too, holding a cigarette with a gold band above the filter.

‘It’s been a long day,’ said Ragg, implying he didn’t want to talk. The voice was silky, like a recorded message on a cinema‐ticket line. But he couldn’t look at the corpse for more than a second.

‘Can you identify the driver?’ asked Shaw.

‘It’s Jonah. Jonah Shreeves,’ said Ragg. He drew on the cigarette and let the smoke sting his eyes.

Shaw thought of the last time he’d seen the security guard, behind the wheel of a van identical to this one on a snow‐choked Siberia Belt.

‘You can’t see the face,’ said Valentine. He ran a hand inside his raincoat to comfort his stomach. No, you couldn’t see his face, not for the blood and bone.

‘The van’s missing from our compound and so’s Jonah. He’s my son‐in‐law. I don’t have to see his face.’ Ragg gave them a cold look, as icy as the frozen reeds on the riverbank. Shaw tried to gauge his emotions; a mixture perhaps of anger and resignation, both unsullied by grief. ‘Part of the family until three o’clock this afternoon,’ he added. ‘I rang him out on the round and told him you lot wanted a word about what happened on Siberia Belt. Then he went home, that’s their home – I bought it for them – and threw some clothes in a bag, left a note for my daughter Mary.

‘He had a criminal record,’ said Shaw. A seagull screeched and fell on the hanging body, pulling clumsily at the hair.

Ragg’s eyes narrowed and he bought himself some time by taking a step closer to the water. The van creaked as it swung slightly in the tidal breeze. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘No CRB check? That’s standard, isn’t it?’ asked Valentine, failing to hide a note of disbelief.

‘She trusted him,’ was all Ragg said. ‘She said it was an insult to check him out. Now we know why.’

The RTA unit had got steel cables round the van and were preparing to winch it back to the road. The vibrations set the corpse jiggling, the blood‐red hands dancing like a marionette’s.

‘She had to marry someone,’ added Ragg. ‘With a kid on the way. If he was gonna be in the family he might as well be on the payroll and do some fucking work.’ He turned his back on the body of his son‐in‐law and looked out to sea where dusk was gathering on the horizon. ‘What was on his record?’

‘He nearly killed his girlfriend. He’d robbed her grandmother, and she wanted to turn him in. Broke her arms. But there were others,’ said Shaw. ‘Your daughter. Did he… ?’

‘No. Nothing. If he had I’d have killed him. He knew that.’

‘Why d’you think he did a runner?’ asked Shaw. ‘Because if you’d told me about his past I might have

Valentine coughed, the cold air beginning to make his lungs ache.

‘It’s possible, Mr Ragg,’ said Shaw, ‘that the vehicles on Siberia Belt were diverted off the main road in order to set up a robbery – the contents of your security van being the target. Could Shreeves have been involved? The inside man?’

‘It crossed my mind,’ said Ragg. ‘We operate all along the north Norfolk coast, have done for fifteen years. There are plenty of black spots for mobile signals but most of them are out on the beaches or the marsh. There’s just a few stretches of road. My vans never use them. We don’t have radios, so the mobile signal is crucial. Even the worst black spots can usually pick up something if you walk around a bit searching for the signal. But not Siberia Belt – there’s no signal on that stretch for about three miles. It’s the worst black spot on the coast. Which is why the regular drivers never use it. Ever.’

‘So maybe he was involved?’ pressed Shaw.

‘I love my daughter, Inspector, but she’s not the world’s best judge of character. I told her to wait when she met Jonah – give it a year. But she wouldn’t. I said she’d regret it one day. She’s at home now, doing exactly that.’

The van on the bridge shuddered and they heard a joint crack in the swinging corpse. A leg had broken and Valentine looked away as the bone appeared, the shattered end glimpsed through the shredded overalls.

‘I should be with her,’ said Ragg. ‘As for Jonah, if he was involved I think he’s paid the penalty, don’t you?’