Death Wore White

Wednesday, 11 February

Shaw swung the Land Rover over the Ouse Bridge, skimming above the estuary, looking back at the Lynn waterfront a mile distant, the tide running out now, revealing banks of mud the colour of Bisto. They turned north when they reached the far bank, past the canning factory and into West Lynn, a sleepy dormitory suburb with the one road in doubling up as the one road out, 1930s semis arranged in a maze of concentric cul‐de‐sacs, a church tower scarred by damp, and the ferry carrying commuters and shoppers over the water to the medieval quayside on the far side of the estuary.

They followed the street signs for the West Lynn ferry. ‘Let’s make sure we do this one by the book,’ said Shaw, skirting a line of commuters’ cars. He bit his tongue, knowing it had been an unnecessary reminder. It was a scab he couldn’t help but pick.

Valentine sniffed loudly, the phlegm in his throat bubbling. Then he looked out of the side window, his eyes narrowed in the harsh light, making sure the DI didn’t see that he’d spotted the inference.

Fred Parlour’s house was just by the ferry office. Parked outside was an Express Plumbers van, identical to the one still in the pound at St James’s. They’d arranged for

‘I don’t like this bloke,’ said Valentine, parking up. ‘Great,’ said Shaw, watching the net curtains twitch. ‘So we can count on you for some objective observations then.’

‘He’s got the victim’s blood on his hands.’ Valentine had spent a few waking hours the night before trying to find an innocent scenario which explained the blood on Parlour’s clothes. There wasn’t one. Even with a fancy degree, it just wasn’t there.

‘Thigh actually – the left. One smear. With traces of animal bone.’ Shaw liked details, because it was when they didn’t fit that you had to stop and think.

‘He’s a busy‐body. Gets his nose into everything.’

‘Remind me – what’s the tariff on that these days? Life, or just ten years?’

Valentine coughed into a grey cotton bundle. ‘He’s a liar.’

‘Yeah,’ said Shaw. ‘So let’s start with that.’

Shaw’s mobile rang and he got out of the car to answer. It was one of Tom Hadden’s CSI team. They’d completed the dental checks on all those in the convoy. No match to the apple biter, not even close.

Valentine could tell it was bad news.

‘Zero on the apple. No match to anyone in the convoy.’

‘Leggy blonde, then,’ said Valentine.

Fred Parlour was on the step before they got to the top of the path. He turned abruptly, leading the way along a hall into a lounge which looked out through French windows, the lawn rolling down to the river. The ferry was crossing, butting the tide, crowded with shoppers. Flags flew over the Guildhall in Lynn while an undersized barrage balloon advertised petrol on the quayside, sea gusts making it dip and dive.

‘That’s quite a view,’ said Shaw. He ran his eyes over Parlour’s face, making an inventory of salient features, including the single plaster on his forehead where the door of the Mondeo had caught him that night on Siberia Belt.

‘So how can I help, Inspector? The paper’s full of it – this body on the beach, and now one out on the sands…’

They heard a toilet flush upstairs, footsteps, and Sean Harper came in, still fiddling with his flies, then scratching the dimple in his chin. He didn’t know what to do with his arms, which seemed overlong, hanging by his sides. He touched the stud in his ear and nodded by way of greeting.

A copy of the Daily Mail lay open on the coffee table

‘Tea?’ asked Parlour, not waiting for an answer. ‘Or something stronger… ?’ He laughed, but Shaw knew he hadn’t been joking.

‘Tea’s great,’ said Shaw.

Parlour pottered in the kitchen, singing along to the faint music from a radio, the voice youthful, light. Shaw stood in the living room trying not to pick things up. A framed wedding photo stood on a shelf in the dresser; Parlour handsome in a narrow‐legged seventies suit, the wife embarrassed by a once‐in‐a‐lifetime hairdo. No pictures of children, nephews or nieces. Everything else in its place, the two armchairs: his and hers, hers with a sewing box on a small table. Coasters everywhere. Parlour found one and put down Shaw’s mug of tea, then retreated to get the others. Harper pretended to read the paper.

‘You’ll be delighted to know, Mr Harper, that we will not be taking proceedings over the pornography found in your possession,’ said Shaw.

Harper looked pathetically grateful. He held up a thumb. ‘Brilliant.’ But Shaw didn’t return the smile. ‘As long as you can tell me where you got the magazine.’

‘The Skeg,’ he said. ‘Under the counter.’

They heard a thud from above, then the sound of dog’s claws on the wooden stairs, dry food being tipped into a tin plate.

Parlour came back with Valentine’s tea. ‘Milly’s a bit shy. Shy but hungry.’

‘Please,’ said Shaw, laughing. ‘Sit down if you want – it’s your front room. We wanted a quick word just to check your statement.’ He rearranged a sheaf of papers on the coffee table.

They heard the dog scrabbling at the back door. ‘If she needs to go out perhaps Mr Harper could take her down the garden,’ said Shaw pointedly.

Harper fled, then reappeared on the lawn, lobbing snowballs at the dog as it ran in circles.

Shaw ran through the statement Fred Parlour had given Valentine at Gallow Marsh Farm. ‘I just need to be clear on one thing,’ said Shaw. ‘And I know this is labouring the point. But you didn’t, at any time, go further forward than the Alfa Romeo? I need to check that point.’

Parlour worked at a zip on his cardigan. ‘Well, that’s true. Actually, I didn’t go any further up than that poor man’s Corsa. She came back to get me – the woman – and we went to see if the old bloke was dead. Then you sent me back to the van.’

They heard Harper laugh in the garden, the dog barking like an unoiled hinge.

Shaw wondered how his father would have conducted the interview. The frontal assault perhaps, with Valentine offering him a lighter sentence if he made a full and rapid confession. He blew on the surface of the tea.

‘Anyone say much while you were all at the Corsa? There’d be you, Mrs Baker‐Sibley and Mr Zhao.’

Parlour looked blank.

‘She was worried about her daughter?’ prompted Valentine.

‘Yeah. I said kids were a lot more independent than parents thought. Like I know.’ He laughed, looking round the room.

‘What did she say?’

‘She said I was right but she’d let her down before – that she’d promised it would never happen again. She was upset. I mean really upset. But she didn’t seem bothered if the old bloke was dead or alive.’

There was silence and Parlour swished the dregs of his tea in the mug, humming an echo of the tune he’d sung in the kitchen. Out in the garden a pile of snow slid off the shed and thudded onto the lawn, burying the toy windmill. The dog dashed after snowballs.

‘Why are you lying to us, Mr Parlour?’

Shaw watched Parlour’s face, and saw the smile clinging to his eyes, the muscles which held the line of the mouth twitching, a sudden flush of blood to the cheeks. And

‘Pardon?’

Valentine sat back, enjoying the moment, wondering how long Parlour would be able to go on denying the obvious.

‘You said you didn’t know Harvey Ellis. That you’d never met him?’

‘That’s right,’ said Parlour, a hand wandering to find the edge of the armchair for support.

‘Mr Parlour. Traces of Harvey Ellis’s blood were found on the trousers you were wearing on Monday night. Now I’m afraid that means one of two things. Either you did go further forward, which suggests to me that you might have killed Mr Ellis. Or that you met the person who did kill him.’ Shaw looked down the garden to the distant waterfront. ‘Either way the course of events from this point, right now, is pretty much unavoidable.’

Shaw stood. ‘I’d like you to come with us to St James’s, sir – unless you have something to tell us. Did you kill Harvey Ellis, Mr Parlour?’ Shaw was less than two feet away when he asked. He liked to be that close. It was one of his father’s maxims: one of the few things he’d ever said about how he did his job. Get within their personal space, then you can feel the reaction.

Parlour’s eyes were small and grey and they avoided his. ‘I… I don’t know how that could have happened. The blood. I didn’t go forward, and I don’t know Harvey Ellis. I don’t.’

Valentine produced a copy of the family snapshot of

‘No. They showed me the pictures… the constable came round, when they checked my teeth. I said no then.’ He held out his hands, the wedding band catching the light on the ring finger. He looked round the room. ‘I can’t leave now. The wife’s at work, she won’t know, I need to tell her.’

‘Would you like to make a call?’ said Shaw.

There was a phone by the armchair, a flip‐up address book. Parlour sat, and Shaw noted that his eyes had filled and his breathing had become uneven. They listened as he got through, waiting while they paged her, and Parlour fumbled through an explanation. When he put the phone down he stood up. They all watched the dog jump in the garden – the joy of the leap, the front paws extended.

‘I’ll put a bit more food down for the dog – she won’t be back ’til lunchtime.’

Shaw went out into the garden where Harper’s footprints had soiled the lawn, revealing winter grass that was straw‐yellow. The apprentice dropped a snowball from his hand as if he’d been caught out breaking rules in the playground. The dog, madcap, raced headlong, fell, and went rolling through the snow.

‘OK, Mr Harper, Mr Parlour is coming to the station with us. He’s told us a few lies, I’m afraid, about Monday night. Have you?’

Harper searched for the right answer, looking back at the house, the French windows reflecting a picture of the two of them stood in the snow. ‘Fred always tells the truth,’ he said.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Harper, following Shaw back into the house.

Inside the kitchen door the dog bowl had been piled high. A mixture of chunky meat, slightly purple, and lumps of what looked like a white biscuity meal.

Milly crunched in the bowl, her stub tail oscillating like a metronome on steroids. Shaw watched her, unblinking. His mind raced to the truth.

‘Shit!’ he said, and the dog cowered. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Valentine came into the kitchen and stood looking at the dog bowl with him. Shaw covered his eyes, one hand resting gently on the dressing, then dropped to his knees, a hand on the dog’s back, the fur wiry and slightly greasy.

‘It’s all right, Milly,’ he said.

He’d been a fool, a bloody fool.