Death Watch Read online

  Shaw admired her for that, for not taking the easy way out and blaming herself.

  ‘It was sudden – your mother’s death?’

  She laughed. ‘You could say that. Some pissed-up kids killed her on a joyride. And her best friend. Out near Castle Rising. They never found them, the joyriders. That was the week before – the Tuesday.’

  For the first time Shaw could hear a tap dripping in the kitchen.

  ‘What was her name? Your mother?’ He didn’t want to know – he’d go back to the files for all the detail – but it bought him some time to think, because a single fact had just transformed the crime, like stepping into the hall of mirrors.

  ‘Watts. Agnes.’

  Shaw nodded.

  ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Shaw walked to the window, looking down on the Westmead, cars scattered over the acres of tarmac between the blocks. He hadn’t been honest with himself about the Tessier case, because he’d always thought on a secret level that he’d never find out the truth. And now, for the first time, looking out over the squalid estate where it had all happened thirteen years ago, he thought he might be wrong.

  ‘At the time did anyone think there might be a link between Agnes’s death and Jon’s?’

  ‘No – why should there be? It’s a cliché, Inspector – but shit happens. Especially on the Westmead. Just because we’re one family doesn’t mean it can’t happen twice in ten days. Anyway – your dad had Mosse. We all know he did it. No one ever suggested that a gang of them had done it. Why should they? And they had a motive – they said he thought Jon had scratched his car. It all happened so quickly, didn’t it? Chief Inspector Shaw knew about Mum’s death – but no, I don’t think they thought there was any link at all. They tried to find the car that caused the crash – that was another policeman, I can’t recall the name, I’m sorry. But there was no registration number, so it was useless.’

  Something in the way she said it made Shaw realize how stupid he’d been not to go back, not to talk to the witnesses, the people who were there that night – not just George Valentine. But the real victims, the ones without a police pension.

  ‘Look,’ he said, turning, stopping himself from saying that they should all have been asking themselves another question that first day of the original inquiry: not who did it – but why. Because the idea the boy had died in a tussle over a vandalized car didn’t stand up in the light of day. It was possible, but hardly probable. They’d left motive to look after itself – a fatal omission.

  ‘There may be a link. It’s possible that this car – the one I said was in the lock-ups – is the one that killed your mother. There’s a link, you see, between that car crash and Jon’s death. There was a fleck of paint on his football shirt, it’s a match for the car involved in the crash your mother died in.’

  She sat down, fumbled in a heavy-duty handbag, and produced a packet of cigarettes. When she’d lit one she stubbed it out.

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, and rubbed her hands into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her mouth broke into a zigzag line. ‘It’s OK. It’s a shock, bringing it all back.’

  He sat on the sofa, trying not to push her too far with questions. And he was thinking fast himself, trying to straighten out the line that linked the shadowy CCTV footage at Castle Rising and Tessier’s broken body. He opened his wallet and took out a folded print of the still from the CCTV – the Mini in the rain, under the floodlights at Castle Rising. He placed it on the table so they could both see it, and again, with even more force, he knew he was missing something vital in that black and white image. ‘That’s the car,’ he said, touching the shadowy image of the Mini under the pine trees on the verge.

  She stood, blowing her nose. ‘I need to think about this.’ She jotted down a mobile number on a corner of the local paper then ripped it off. ‘Ring me, after work. The shift’s over at two. I can’t think now.’

  Shaw walked to her car; a Ford Fiesta, the tyres slightly flat, a dent in the off side deep enough to show the metal beneath the paintwork. They hadn’t talked as they’d tip-tapped down the stairs – the lift was out of order – which meant he’d had time to try and work it out. The problem was, even now that he’d established a link it didn’t explain why the child had been murdered.

  ‘Was Jon upset about his grandmother? Were they close?’ he asked as she looked for her car key.

  She checked her watch. ‘Sure. Well, not really, to be honest. We didn’t see a lot of her – or Dad. Mike rubbed them up the wrong way – not good enough for their only daughter. For Jon the only upside was the dog. They’d got this puppy – a terrier. Cute thing. He loved it, so when she died he just asked Mike outright. Could we have the dog? But that was the really weird thing. The police said they’d watched the CCTV of the crash and they were pretty sure these kids took it.’ She covered her mouth quickly. ‘They left Mum there to die – but they took the dog. Can you believe that?’

  35

  The Ark was already bathed in early morning sunshine, the brickwork sickly orange, shimmering in a mirage created by the morning rush-hour on the ring road. Shaw had a large sheet of paper spread out on the Land Rover’s bonnet: a plan of the Queen Victoria hospital, Level One. The spreading, almost organic chains of rooms and corridors reminded him of a map he’d once seen of the Valley of the Kings. Ancient designs, superimposed on shapes, on patterns long lost. Valentine leant on the side of the Land Rover, a mobile to his ear, getting the latest from Twine.

  Shaw drank from a takeaway cappuccino, bouncing on his toes. Valentine cut the line to the murder suite. ‘We’ve got two hundred rooms – well, they call them rooms, some are nothing more than cupboards,’ he said. He didn’t have a hangover, despite the late-night binge. But the confrontation with Cosyns meant he hadn’t slept. So he was struggling to keep it clear, keep it simple. ‘But they’ll check them all. They’ve checked one already – the Hearing Voices Network. Nothing – just a PC, a few chairs, and a kettle. Most of the rest are going to storage – loo rolls to splints, scalpels to intubation bags, whatever the fuck they are. And the services, gas, electric, oil tanks. Foodstuffs for catering – tins, oils, dried food. Stairwells, lift shafts, piping. You’re right, it’s a maze.’

  ‘All it needs is a Minotaur,’ said Shaw, realizing that, in an odd way, perhaps it had one.

  ‘My guess,’ said Valentine, ‘is that as soon as Judd turned up as crispy duck they packed up shop.’ He snapped his fingers, then drank from a plastic cup, picking tea leaves from the end of his tongue.

  Shaw studied the map, unmoved by Valentine’s pessimism. Hendre’s description of the room in which he’d woken up was a match for Level One – down to the incessant hum and the metal riveted doors. But was the operating theatre down there too? Could a patient have been taken up for the operation, then back down? That was more likely. What about one of those convenient gaps in the schedule at Theatre Seven? Then the patient recovered in secret – but never far from the hospital’s vital services.

  Valentine rummaged in his coat pocket and produced a faxed statement. ‘This is the best Middlesbrough can do – it’s a note of the interview with Ben Ruddle, Norma Jean’s boyfriend, taken six weeks ago.’

  The conversation had been chaotic, and Shaw noticed that whoever had conducted the interview had scribbled a note in the margin:

  Alcohol/uppers/disco biscuits!!!

  Ruddle had told the social worker he was living rough because he liked to see the sky. He’d given up the job at the market garden because they’d made him help out on deliveries and he didn’t like the van. And he had to leave anyway – because he had something he had to do. Valentine had highlighted the paragraph:

  R says he has score to settle. Advised to avoid violence. R says too late for that. Advised to seek counselling – offered further appointment. R request for funds to travel – refused. Offered shelter place for ten days – refused. R terminates interview.

  ‘And there’s this,’
said Valentine, producing a black and white passport-style picture stamped with a prison number. The image bore little resemblance to the file picture from 1992 – the face had filled out, hardened.

  It might have been Blanket: dark, Celtic, the wide gap at the bridge of the nose.

  ‘Question is,’ said Valentine, ‘why’d he come back?’ Shaw thought his way through an answer – because he’d loved Norma Jean, because he’d never stopped grieving for the child he’d lost, and now he had a chance to make the pay-off, buoyed up by drugs and booze. Maybe. But did Ruddle know who had killed Norma Jean? Or had he come back to Erebus Street, on the anniversary of her death, to make up his mind?

  They heard the bells of St Margaret’s on the Tuesday Market chime the hour. Inside the Ark they found Justina Kazimierz ready to begin the internal autopsy on the body they now suspected to be that of the man known as John Pearmain, itinerant tramp, whose corpse they’d found on Warham’s Hole, minus the tell-tale upper joint of the second finger on his right hand, and minus his corneas, as well as the rest of the contents of the orbital cavities.

  Shaw got into a surgical gown, then pushed his way through the heavy clear-plastic swing doors into the morgue, followed by Valentine. The stone carved angel looked down on the aluminium tables. Four were empty. A fifth held Pearmain’s body, naked and white, like alabaster. The sixth was covered with a plastic shroud over an unseen corpse. Shaw had been dreading this moment since opening his eyes that morning, but as soon as he saw the flesh that John Pearmain had become he knew he’d be all right. This wasn’t the remains of a human being any more, but lifeless meat, pressing down on the mortuary table with all the finality of stone.

  Kazimierz didn’t bother with any pleasantries. ‘ID is confirmed, by the way – although the missing finger didn’t leave a lot of doubt. His medical records are extensive and held at the GP centre which runs a clinic for the men at the Sacred Heart, so we’ve got matches on teeth, and a skull fracture.’

  She began dictating notes into a headphone, making a brief external examination. ‘Three points of interest, externally,’ she said. ‘The eyes, obviously. Both have been removed. One can only surmise that was in order to cut out the corneas – it’s not necessary to remove the whole eye to do so but a lot easier if the body is not going to be subsequently viewed by relatives. Gunshot wound. The bullet went through the heart. Luck or skill? Who knows, but my money’s on skill. And this…’ She used a gloved hand to indicate a scar on the lower abdomen, left side, which meant she had to lift the corpse slightly. Valentine winced at the sound of creaking joints.

  ‘This will, I suspect, turn out to indicate a kidney removal. I’ll know once we open him up. There are other operative scars – all long healed. We’ll take a look inside in a minute. But first…’

  She turned to the other occupied mortuary table and pulled the shroud clear as if she was launching a new model at the Motor Show. Beneath was the body from the storm grid, the skin pockmarked by the crabs so that it looked like the surface of a table tennis bat.

  ‘This will be Dr Rigby’s last post mortem examination for the West Norfolk Constabulary,’ she said. ‘I suspect an early retirement is about to be announced.’

  Shaw stepped in. ‘What did he miss?’

  She laughed into her face mask. ‘What did he catch is an easier question. The subject’s overweight, so there are folds in the skin, and there’s the pitting. But there’s no excuse…’

  Valentine noted the stitched autopsy incision down the chest bone and relaxed slightly, letting his eyes follow the pathologist’s fingers as she held apart two folds of skin on the lower abdomen.

  ‘Keyhole again; two incisions – just like Pearmain. I’ve ordered up the records on the other two names you gave me – Foster and Tyler, we may be lucky and get an ID. There are other scars.’ She indicated a ten-inch incision on one leg, running into the groin. ‘Vein removal… the key point, however, is that only the keyhole kidney surgery is recent. Very recent – perhaps less than forty-eight hours. All the other scars have healed, and healed well. That’s why Rigby missed them. But that’s not all. There’s something wrong with the kidney keyhole surgery – the stitches are poorly executed, and the wound itself, the interior trauma, shows signs of post-operative pyrexia…’

  Valentine failed to deliver a polite cough.

  She touched a finger to her forehead. ‘Sorry. Jargon, I know. Well, it’s an infected wound. That could have been caused by a whole list of things. We know the patient wasn’t elderly, and he looks reasonably fit, even though overweight, so that tends to suggest he became infected because the conditions in which the operation itself took place were less than pristine.’

  ‘And the botched stitching?’ asked Shaw. ‘Could he have died on the table?’

  ‘No. Absolutely not. There is some healing of the wound – very little, but some. No, death is post-operative. But, as I say, the work looks very – well, amateurish. Which hardly matches the evidence of the keyholes – an advanced procedure – or the other scars, which all appear perfectly professional.’

  The pathologist straightened her back. ‘We may know more once we’ve looked inside Pearmain’s body. Which is why we’re here.’

  She smiled broadly at Valentine, pinging the surgical gloves on both hands, turning back to the eyeless corpse.

  She made the initial surgical incision, holding the blade of the scalpel up to the green-tinged sunlight coming in through the old chapel windows, before pressing down into the bloodless flesh, running a wound from shoulder tip to shoulder tip, then down the line of the sternum to the pubic bone. Shaw stepped in to watch but he could hear Valentine’s laboured breathing behind him. The DS had gone for the full face mask. He was ten feet away, and he wasn’t getting any closer.

  The Stryker saw created a thin film of bone dust as the pathologist cut through the ribs, then lifted clear the chest plate.

  She made a quick examination of the principal organs. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Now that is not what I expected.’ She flipped the microphone away from her mouth, thinking, working the autopsy glove down between the fingers of her left hand with her right index.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Shaw, as the pathologist re-examined the outer flesh on the abdomen wall.

  She flipped the microphone back into place and told the tape. ‘The left kidney, the one beneath the surgical incision, is missing – as we would expect. The right kidney is in place – here.’ Shaw stepped an inch to one side to let the floodlight illuminate the plump organ, the colour of a bean in a plate of chilli con carne.

  Her hands dropped inside the torso cavity. ‘And here, the liver – which is in situ – but you can see the scars? Someone has performed a hepatectomy, a partial removal of the healthy organ. A graft, if you like – common now, but sophisticated. This isn’t some backstreet surgeon-barber at work. There’s nothing amateurish about that.’

  ‘Why would you need a bit of healthy liver?’ asked Shaw.

  ‘Transplant. Essentially it’s grafted onto the failing liver in the recipient and takes over some of the workload. Very popular, of course, because you can have a live donor, not a cadaver. LDLT – live donor liver transplant.’

  ‘So three different procedures?’ asked Shaw. ‘The corneas, the kidney, and the liver graft. At least three. Timings?’

  She smiled, looking at Shaw as she might have looked at a favourite son. ‘The question. The corneas postmortem, the kidney before that – maybe two weeks, but the liver… I’d say that happened between six to eight months ago. The liver has partially regenerated itself at the point of the internal scar – the external scar is almost entirely healed.’

  Shaw thought about the timescale. They thought Pearmain had been taken off the streets about six months earlier. That’s when the liver op would have taken place. Then he returns to the operating table for a kidney transplant. Then he dies and the corneas are removed before the body is dumped. Where had he been between the operations?

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bsp; Meanwhile the other victim – possibly Foster or Tyler – has had several procedures as well, and then dies after a botched kidney removal. An operation which had taken place in the last few days. That didn’t make sense either.

  ‘Can we match either of these two to the organ we found on the incinerator with Bryan Judd – the kidney?’

  ‘We can try,’ said Kazimierz. ‘It’s not Pearmain’s – the blood group is wrong. The other one – Rigby’s floater – is a match for blood, but the rest of the tests will take time. At this stage all I can say is that we can’t rule him out.’

  Finished, Kazimierz made notes, walking back out into the CSI office on the far side of the partition. On a desktop was a bagged plaster cast of the knife Shaw had taken from Father Martin’s bloodwood chest.

  ‘As for this, it’s possible the wound in Bryan Judd’s chest was produced with this weapon. Possible. Nothing more.’

  They broke for coffee. Valentine took his mug outside with a cigarette.

  Kazimierz took Shaw to her desk. There was a pile of thin manila files.

  ‘These are the parish records your team collected from the Sacred Heart of Mary,’ she said. ‘They’re effectively, in part, a précis of the medical records held on the men by the team of GPs who visited the church as part of the community health programme. The parish files are actually very good – they made copies of medical cards, other records, any repeat prescriptions they collected for the men, plus a written note from the doctor. Then they’ve added in their own observations: records of weight, for example, diet, etc.’

  Shaw butted in, aware that he should have asked this question at the start of the inquiry. ‘Is that usual, that a church would have copies of medical records, other documents?’