Death Watch Read online

  ‘Orzsak plays the organ at the church,’ said Valentine, their thoughts marching side by side. ‘Maybe he’s the man – the man on the street, the collector, bringing in the donors.’ Valentine thought about the crushed slippers, the weight on the shoes. ‘Maybe he needs special shoes – he’s bad on his feet. You get those built-up ones, they’d make a noise.’

  ‘I’m going to check the organ bank audit,’ said Shaw. ‘Then we’ll see Orzsak. Meantime, get over to MVR, George. Inch by inch – it’s got to be the place we’re looking for. Paul, when we’ve got the resources get started on the staff checks. And I want everything you can find on Orzsak: employment records, family, the Polish Club – check it all. Then get anything relevant to George, fast as you can.’ He stood. ‘Because we know one thing about Jan Orzsak,’ he said, laying a hand on top of the CCTV monitor. ‘He’s a liar.’

  27

  The organ bank was at the far western perimeter of Level One. Shaw walked alone, telling himself that the gentle echo of footsteps behind him was just that – an echo. And that the soft footfall contained no hint of a metallic click. He started listing the turnings in his head, following the little red direction arrows for A5, the code for the bank. Left, left, right, left, right. The full lighting petered out, to be replaced by the occasional neon tube on half power. Lines of tugs and trucks were stored in the wide corridors. He passed a single maintenance man working on a water-pipe junction, the irregular percussion of a hammer on metal. And then, bizarrely out of place, a line of tug trucks decorated with Disney-style characters, a float for some long-forgotten parade, a platform on the back for a carnival queen.

  Eventually there was just one corridor, a hundred yards long, with a single light-bulb at the far end where a uniformed PC sat on a chair in front of an unmarked door. The sight was bizarre, surreal, like a snapshot from some Cold War movie. For the first time Shaw had to look over his shoulder. Nothing – and the echo stopped too, instantly. The PC stood and opened the door. Another corridor, twenty feet, with four doors. Shaw suddenly realized he had no idea what to expect to find in an organ bank. It was a semantic cliché without a corresponding visual image. The corridor was dusty, empty, and narrow, the doors alphabetically labelled. It reminded Shaw of a Czech fairy tale he’d seen on TV as a child where the hero was given a choice between doors – three to hell, and one to heaven. Here, he thought, the odds weren’t as good.

  He pushed open door ‘A’ and stepped into a floodlit room, about the size of a railway carriage, with one long wall lined with what looked like standard supermarket freezers except the tops were opaque, not glass. But the electrics were sophisticated – each white box attached to a panel of blinking lights. LCD screens showed flickering temperatures in blue light.

  One of the freezer boxes was open, like a white coffin, cold air spilling over. The contents had been laid out on a plastic sheet on the top of the next freezer. Phillips was watching two orderlies repack the open box; she was dressed in white, spotless trousers, white forensic gloves, the black hair under a white cap, although a strand hung down by her cheek in a coal-black corkscrew. The frozen plastic bags of tissue provided the only colour in the room – the lifeless blood-red of a supermarket meat counter.

  Phillips smiled, her face flooded with what looked like genuine relief, and those extraordinary eyes, which were a living contradiction of electric grey. The chill in the room made her look paler, an even starker contrast to the black hair, the jet bangles. She shook Shaw’s hand. ‘So far, so good,’ she said. ‘The audit team’s in B now. But this one’s been cleared. They’ve matched all the stored material with operations listed in the six NHS theatres. They’ve taken one out of every ten specimens away for analysis – to make sure what’s in the bags matches the coded labels. But as I say, so far, so good. We couldn’t hope for more.’

  Shaw told her what they’d found on Warham’s Hole.

  She brushed the back of her hand against her cheek, and Shaw noticed again the long flexible fingers.

  ‘Tell me about cornea transplants,’ he said.

  She lifted the edge of the freezer. ‘No,’ said Shaw quickly, holding up both hands. ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘OK. Well, it’s pretty much like most transplants, except the donor’s always dead. No surgeon would remove a healthy one from a living patient. Like kidneys, there’s two, but the comparison breaks down pretty quickly – we need two eyes to see stereoscopically.’

  She stopped in her tracks, suddenly aware this was a topic on which Shaw was probably well up to speed. She forced herself to look him in the eyes. ‘Op’s been around for a century. I guess the only material difference is that you can gift your eyes and they can be removed up to twenty-four hours after death – that’s much longer than usual. There are no blood vessels in a cornea, you see, for obvious reasons. You wouldn’t get a very good view out.’

  ‘But they’re valuable?’

  ‘Oh yes. Very. Especially those of younger donors – obviously most are from donors over sixty-five. There’s a special technique for keeping them once removed – I think there’s a centre for storage in Manchester. But you’ll have to ask Gavin. He’s done some work up there. I think a friend of his runs the unit.’

  It was the way she said ‘friend’ that invited Shaw to ask the question. ‘What kind of friend?’

  She smiled, as you would over the exploits of some mischievous but gifted child. ‘One of his lady friends. That’s Gavin – our very own playboy. He’s a charming man.’

  Shaw thought about the quick CV he’d just read. ‘And the wife?’

  ‘Divorce, I think – but then that’s none of my business,’ said Phillips. She buttoned her white coat one notch higher against the cold. ‘One thing, speaking of Gavin. The audit team will give you chapter and verse, but we do have a private operating theatre here at the hospital. Theatre Seven. They have a facility for storage here in bank D. They haven’t checked that out yet, obviously, but on the paperwork side there are, in theory, spaces in their theatre schedule.’

  ‘What’s that in English?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘The NHS system runs pretty much at capacity – and when the theatre’s not in use in normal hours it’s usually being cleaned up or the maintenance crews are in. The private side’s different – intermittent. So there are gaps in which an operation might take place illegally, if unrecorded. It’s only a theoretical possibility, but one you should know about.’

  The orderlies had repacked the bank. The lid closed with a pop.

  ‘This isn’t what I expected,’ said Shaw, looking round.

  ‘You mean it’s a bit like Iceland?’ Phillips laughed, the professional coolness thawing.

  Shaw recalled DC Twine’s brief biographical note on Phillips’s father, Kalo Kircher, the concentration-camp doctor. He tried to imagine what kind of legacy that had left for his daughter.

  ‘It’s clinical,’ said Shaw, laughing too. ‘Gives me the creeps,’ he said, laying a hand on the cool lid of the nearest freezer. ‘I always feel guilty in hospitals – it’s the not being ill that does it.’

  ‘Yes. That disappears when you have a role. A job to do. Otherwise you feel like a spectator, don’t you?’

  Shaw nodded. ‘It ran in your family, didn’t it? Medicine.’

  ‘Yes.’ The chin came up. She was shrewd enough to know that Shaw had already done his research. ‘My father was a fine doctor.’

  Shaw let the silence stretch.

  ‘He had little choice but to do what he was told to do, Inspector Shaw. They’d have killed him instantly if he’d refused.’

  ‘Just following orders?’ Shaw raised an eyebrow, knowing how inflammatory the question was.

  She slipped her hands in the white coat pockets and looked at her shoes, not rising to the bait. ‘He did what he could – many small kindnesses. There would have been witnesses at the trial to speak for him. It wasn’t that he couldn’t live with the victims, it was that he couldn’t live with himself. We’re outsi
ders too – the Roma. Just like the Jews.’

  ‘But at home here,’ said Shaw.

  ‘Yes. At home here.’ She led the way out, then locked the door behind them. ‘I have the key back,’ she said, adding it to a bunch hanging from a white belt. ‘Let’s hope the others follow.’ She turned, knocked on the door marked B. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, and slipped inside.

  Shaw tried to retrace his steps towards the central lifts, but like many journeys attempted in reverse he found himself lost very quickly. He got to a junction marked 41, stopped, and looked three ways. There were no coded signs. Then he heard the distinct sound of footsteps, out of sight but strangely rhythmic, the shoes clipping down hard, unnaturally hard, on the concrete floor.

  To one side there was a door marked DRY RISER, set back, so that there was a threshold. Shaw stood within, in the shadow, listening. Opposite him was another inset door, a sign that read HEARING VOICES NETWORK.

  The footsteps became louder, crisper, until Shaw sensed the walker was almost upon him. He stepped out into the corridor. The figure, in silhouette, was ten feet away. Shaw held up his warrant card. ‘Sorry. Police. Can I ask why you’re down here?’

  There was a neon light on half power and the figure kept walking until it was directly underneath.

  ‘DI Shaw?’ It was Gavin Peploe. He laughed, spreading his hands wide. ‘You’ve caught me in civvies.’ Shaw noted a cycling top, Lycra shorts, and a small pack over one shoulder. ‘This is how I keep fit.’ He patted a flat stomach. He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got an hour, then back to work.’

  Shaw pointed at the doorway opposite. ‘What’s that?’

  Peploe considered the sign, one foot jiggling with impatience. ‘Hearing Voices Network? New one on me, I’m afraid. But this section is used by the psychiatric wards for storage – maybe ask there?’

  Shaw turned so that they could walk together. ‘Where does this lead? I’m lost.’

  ‘Senior staff car park – the bike’s on the back of the BMW.’

  Shaw looked at Peploe’s feet. ‘They make a racket.’

  ‘These? Sure – cycling shoes, they’re rigid. It saves your feet, believe me.’ He lifted one leg and tapped the bottom of the shoe. ‘Nothing gives with these.’

  They turned a corner and ahead saw sunlight spilling through two exterior doors. ‘I’d better go back,’ said Shaw. ‘I need the lifts.’

  Peploe raised a hand in farewell.

  ‘Theatre Seven,’ said Shaw. ‘Spare slots for private ops; I’m told you’re the man we should see.’

  Peploe looked at his watch again, and for the first time the charm didn’t quite shine through. ‘Well. The HTA team is still in the banks, right? So if they find anything suspicious in D, we can talk. As to the theatre, sure, there are gaps. It’s mothballed at times. Did Mrs Phillips bring this up?’

  Shaw didn’t answer.

  ‘I take exception to the idea that just because there is a private health facility here – and it’s within the NHS – then it’s bound to be involved in some scurrilous trade. If we have some evidence for that, perhaps we can talk. I –’

  ‘We’ll talk anyway,’ said Shaw, cutting him short, checking the tide watch. ‘Three o’clock, your office. No – could we meet at Theatre Seven? I’d like to see the set-up.’

  Peploe shrugged, then nodded. ‘I can make the time,’ he said.

  ‘And where were you Sunday evening, Dr Peploe?’

  Peploe couldn’t stop a sneer disfiguring his top lip where the ghost of the harelip was just visible.

  ‘I was on my yacht. A mile off the coast. Entertaining.’

  ‘Your wife able to back that up?’ asked Shaw, wondering what version of the truth he’d get.

  ‘If she can, she’s psychic. I haven’t seen her in five years. We’re divorced. But I can give you a name, if it helps. I’ll leave it with my secretary. In fact, coincidentally, it was my secretary. Now, I’d like to get some exercise before going back into the theatre. That’s Theatre Four, by the way – the NHS – so that’s all right, I presume.’

  He turned on his heels, and Shaw listened to his shoes clacking.

  Walking the other way he tried to concentrate on finding his way back to the lifts, but an image intruded: a grey industrial sack being quietly slipped over the polished teak gunwale of a white yacht.

  28

  Two children were playing football outside the Bentinck Launderette in Erebus Street despite the fact that the state school summer holidays had finished two weeks earlier. One of them could have been the child they’d seen dancing round the fire that first night in the Cat People mask. If it was, Shaw had been right about his age: seven, less. He had a snub nose and a brutal haircut designed to combat nits. The boys had scrawled a chalk goalmouth on the wall, the heads of an imaginary crowd added in for effect.

  A voice shouted. ‘Joey!’ The boy with the snub nose ran to a door at the side of the Crane. Holding it open was a young woman with long, pale legs. She couldn’t stop herself looking their way. Then she clipped the boy round the head and dragged him indoors. Opposite the pub stood Jan Orzsak’s house; the curtains drawn, the scrawled insult on the door gone under a fresh coat of paint. But a splash on the woodwork below looked like fresh dog’s pee. Orzsak’s estate car, which had yielded no evidence, was back, parked at the kerb, behind the electricity van and a builder’s flatback pick-up and skip.

  From beyond the razor wire and hawthorn they could hear a pneumatic drill munching concrete. On the back of the truck was a new power unit for the sub-station, much smaller than the original Shaw and Valentine had glimpsed that Sunday night by torchlight, covered in polythene, the metallic connections gleaming in the sun. Power to the houses was still coming in by cable, gaffer-taped along the gutters, from which a smaller cable ran to each house, looped through letter boxes or open windows.

  ‘New gear,’ said Valentine, looking across the street to the Crane. The front doors were wedged open and they could see a cleaner wiping tables. A man in a white shirt holding a coffee cup played a one-armed bandit.

  The hot street, the atmosphere of aimless boredom, seemed to suck the energy out of Valentine. That and the sight of Peter Shaw, bouncing on his toes, knocking smartly on Orzsak’s front door.

  They heard the crushed slippers shuffling down the hallway. Orzsak had a napkin at his throat, and his mouth worked, chewing. He let them in without a word and went ahead into the front room. The shattered glass had been cleared up, but the tanks still stood, cleaned out, dry. For the first time Shaw noticed a portrait, in oils, on the chimney breast, showing a man in formal Polish national costume. There was a small table in front of the barred bay window on which was a plate of cheese and rye bread, which Orzsak pushed aside as he sat. And a bottle, beside an elegant balloon glass a fifth full of red wine.

  Shaw walked to the portrait. ‘This your father?’

  Orzsak’s eyes were suddenly alive. ‘Yes. He was a vintner, import and export, based in Gdańsk.’

  ‘Wealthy, then?’

  ‘He died in the war,’ said Orzsak, shrugging. ‘Then the Russians came. I was a baby. We had a little, which did not last very long. My mother worked hard. We came here. I worked hard. Everything I have we earned.’

  ‘And you still like a glass of wine?’ asked Valentine. He looked at the bottle. ‘Not cheap, right? Dipping into the savings? Or do you still earn money, Mr Orzsak?’

  But Shaw remembered something else. ‘Of course – the basement, at number 6. A wine cellar – the marks are still on the wall. But no cellar here?’

  Shaw looked around; there was no little door in the hallway. He recalled that there’d been none in the Judds’ house either, or at the launderette. He’d check with door to door – was it the only basement in the street?

  Orzsak ignored him, sipping the wine, circulating the blood-red liquid.

  ‘Did your people find Judd’s fingerprints in my house?’ he asked, although Shaw sensed he didn’t want an answer, that the
question was a diversion.

  ‘Why did you lie to us about where you were on Sunday evening when Bryan Judd was murdered?’ he asked.

  Orzsak seemed to deflate, his chin sinking further onto his chest.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said, but it was barely a whisper.

  Valentine produced a black and white print, a video-grab from the CCTV coverage.

  ‘This is you, sir. Seven thirty on Sunday. At the Bluebell.’

  ‘It wasn’t anything to do with… that boy.’ Odd, thought Shaw, that after nearly two decades he still thought of Bryan Judd as Norma Jean’s twin – but then Norma Jean would, perhaps, never get any older.

  ‘I’d like a straight answer, Mr Orzsak, or we will go to St James’s. I know you want to avoid that. Can you give me a straight answer?’

  Orzsak struggled out of the chair, hauling himself upright with both hands on one arm rest. He retrieved a laptop computer from a pile of papers on a sideboard and switched it on, the pale light glowing warmly in the shadowy room. It was an odd clash of cultures – the latest iMac, beneath the patriarch’s portrait. Orzsak found a wireless link and went online via Firefox to find a website: www.giveatoy.org.uk.

  ‘I run this,’ he said, standing back, and Shaw noticed that his left hand was shaking even though it hung loosely by his side.

  ‘People come online and offer used toys for the children’s wards at the hospital… I run round in the car and pick the toys up. Anything within twenty miles. On Mondays I ferry the items to the Bluebell and add anything decent to the trolley. It’s always been at the Bluebell because that’s where the original children’s ward was – before they rebuilt the hospital site. One of the volunteers goes round the wards on Wednesday and Friday. Sundays the kids come to the toy store room – we call it the Toy Library. We set everything out. They can borrow for a week. I’ve always done it – I started with Mother. So I always go Sundays – it’s the highlight of the week.’