Jim Kelly - Death Toll

‘I like it cold,’ she said. ‘Icy.’

She stared Shaw in his blind eye.

‘I’m not sure you have a single item of evidence to support this fanciful scenario,’ she said. But her age betrayed her: the wine glass rocking as the tendons in her arm failed to smoothly elevate it to her lips.

‘You have three problems,’ said Shaw. ‘Alby is happy to confess to his side of the plan — although I will concede that he’ll never implicate you directly, as he is actually pretty keen to spend the rest of his life in a secure cell at Lincoln. I just wonder how coherent his testimony would be under cross-examination. Especially as his sabotage was carried out before the discovery of Pat Garrison’s bones was made public, and he admits to seeing you only hours before he laced the cans. Second, I think Freddie Fletcher fell ill during his lunch at the Flask. I think the mercury was in the salmon — he started feeling nauseous before he’d finished, so he used the foil from his sweetcorn cob to wrap up the fish. It’s a generation thing: waste not, want not. He wouldn’t have suspected the meal he was currently eating. Probably blamed it on a dodgy curry the night before. It’s in his fridge, the salmon. Well, it was in his fridge — it’s in our forensic lab now. Where we will also be spending some of our budget on a more thorough examination of the stomach contents of Fletcher and Venn. We’ll find the mercury, although I suspect the amounts will be truly microscopic. Because that’s the dreadful beauty of toxic synergy — the traces of the two poisons can be almost undetectable, especially if you’re not looking for them.

‘And third, and most importantly, Fletcher, Venn and Murray didn’t kill your son.’

She shook her head and tried a laugh, but it died in her throat.

‘How do we know this? Well, initially we ignored several pieces of evidence which didn’t fit the scenario painted by Kath Robinson — a story, by the way, which I’m sure was genuine in outline.’

‘Such as?’ She tried to make the question sound casual, but even Valentine detected the edge in her voice, as if she was about to choke.

‘The two green glasses we found with Pat’s bones, for a start. Why two?’

Bea took a sip of wine.

‘But the real breakthrough came just a few minutes ago. Right here. We bumped into Kath Robinson. She showed us the airline ticket you’d bought her. A kindness you will regret.’

Valentine’s mobile rang and he turned away, walking down a few steps.

‘Your son died with a piece of paper in his pocket. There’s not much left now — shreds. But we could see three letters: bold capitals. MOT — not part of a word, there were no letters missing just those three, so that was it — like a code for something. Something like an airport.’

Valentine came back. ‘The Flask — 999 call: ambulance, police, the lot.’

Bea Garrison held the wine glass, poised, but the rim dipped and the liquid began to fall to the ground. Shaw thought she’d be cold now: icy. He couldn’t imagine the thoughts she must be struggling with, but he sensed there would be an image in her mind of the home she’d once had on the other side of the world, and perhaps the last time she’d left it, rising through the thin Midwestern clouds above North Dakota.

Shaw showed her his mobile. ‘I’ve just checked MOT is the airport code for Minot, North Dakota. A small municipal airport then, but the one Pat would have used to go home. And that’s what he had in his pocket that night. His ticket home. Away from the Flask, and you, and the life you’d tried to make for him. But most of all it was a ticket home away from Lizzie.’

A crowd of sixty or seventy stood outside the Flask. The snow fell now as if with relief; a teeming blizzard of wet flakes, the clouds so low that the top floor of the former council flats was lost in the gloom. When he’d dropped Justina and Fran at the lifeboat house on the way into town they’d seen the overburdened clouds banked on the horizon, lit by the moon, edging towards the coast. Most of the spectators had brought their drinks out with them, and as Shaw parked the Porsche he heard laughter, thrilling through the crowd like electricity. The Flask looked as it would have looked when the whalers were still stripping flesh on the fields beyond, the snow masking any hint of the twenty-first century, hanging off the rough brickwork and the timbered frame.

The front door of the pub swung open as Shaw and Valentine made their way through the crowd to a halfhearted chorus of boos.

Fiona Campbell shut the door behind them. ‘Sir.’

Shaw looked round. The inside of the pub looked like the Mary Celeste . The empty tables dotted with drinks, a tape still playing Christmas favourites, the tree in one corner decked with flickering lights.

‘The barman opened up at six,’ said Campbell. ‘Lizzie Murray was here — but no sign of John Joe or the son, Ian. Mrs Murray went down to change a barrel and found the watergate open …’

They heard noises from behind the bar but saw nothing until a paramedic appeared from the cellar. He brushed past them, out to the ambulance, without speaking.

Shaw led the way. The trapdoor was open, the cool dampness of the cellar welling up into the close humidity of the bar. The narrow space between the barrels was full of ambulance gear: a stretcher, a mobile cardiac unit, blankets, a medicine chest. In the gutter lay the thick spillage from the beer. Yeast, thought Shaw. It had been Murray’s footprints on Sam Venn’s stairs.

The semicircular watergate was still open, framing the dark river on which the snowflakes settled like miniature lilies. On the far side they could see the Clockcase Cannery, just visible, the illusion almost complete now: that it was a liner, edging from the quayside, bound for an Atlantic crossing.

Shaw stepped out on to the stone quay. Below him lay the wooden clinker-built sailing boat they’d seen when they’d first come down to interview John Joe Murray. He was in it, lying on an overcoat, wrapped in blankets. His eyes were open, but studied the falling snow. One ankle was bare, and Shaw winced at the sight of the raw wound where a rope had cut down through the flesh. He pushed aside an image of Jimmy Voyce’s shattered leg, his broken, transparent body.

A paramedic was kneeling beside Murray, checking his pulse.

Shaw put a foot in the boat, expertly counterbalancing his weight by putting a hand on the far gunwale. He squatted down, trying to get close to Murray’s face. The smell was extraordinary — the smell of the sea, like the crushed ice on a fishmonger’s stall. Shaw noted the salt drying on his face.

‘Where’s Ian?’ he asked, close enough now to see that there was still life in those remarkable green eyes.

‘The sea chest,’ said Murray, and Shaw realized he wasn’t watching the snow fall, he was studying the lit attic windows above. ‘He’s up there now. He knows the truth.’ He licked his cracked upper lip. ‘Keep Lizzie away.’

Shaw sensed someone at his back and turned to see paramedics, the stretcher between them. He retreated to the cellar, where Valentine was briefing Fiona Campbell. ‘Get a description out to St James’s,’ Valentine told her, then, noting Shaw, added, ‘Landlady’s missing. Shortly after he turned up,’ he said, nodding to the watergate. ‘Barman said she’d been hit — bloody lip, and she was crying — pretty much out of control.’

They heard the water slapping against the quay outside.

‘Get a unit along the riverside, Fiona,’ said Shaw. ‘She might do something stupid. George — follow me.’

As they climbed the narrow wooden stairs behind the bar Shaw looked over the banisters and saw John Joe, flat on the stretcher, being carried out through the coffin-shaped door to the bar. Even in the minute since he’d last seen him the colour had returned to his face, the flesh three-dimensional, alive again. A few seconds later the distant sound of the crowd, joyful, festive, died instantly.