Jim Kelly: Death Wore White

Shaw winced. The English language’s most overrated word.

‘OK. Can you ring Tom — tell him what happened? They’re on a job right now at Boal Quay. When they can, they need to get over to Old Hunstanton, Blickling Cottages. DS Valentine knows the address — he’s with Tom. If these boots haven’t been destroyed then that’s

‘Sir.’

‘Tell them I’ll get a warrant for Holt’s properties. I’ll meet them there.’

He rang the number for the night?duty judge. Mr Justice Lamprey. A big house, a hobby farm, out on the silt fens at Wiggenhall St Germans, where the river cut under the walls of the old church. He’d be ready in an hour. Shaw needed to bring the paperwork for signature.

Shaw took out his mobile and swore. He’d left it off in his pocket, and when he turned it on it buzzed like a bluebottle. He scrolled to his inbox. He’d missed a message, an hour earlier.

STOP

Just that. He rang the number back and it rang just once before it picked up.

‘’Ello.’ The voice was loud, stressed.

‘Hi. This is DI Peter Shaw, King’s Lynn CID. You rang me an hour ago — I’m sorry, I don’t understand the text you sent.’

‘It’s not my phone,’ said the voice, then he heard a series of bangs as if it had been dropped, then the voice again, out of breath. ‘It’s Giddy’s.’

Giddy Poynter’s phone? ‘Where is he?’ asked Shaw. ‘In the bathroom, but I can’t get the door open.’

‘You’re a friend?’

‘Not really. Flat next door. Did you say police?’

‘We need you. Some bastard’s put glue in the locks on the front doors. I’ve just had the carpenter round to let us out — twenty?eight fucking quid. We looked at Giddy’s and they’d done his too — so the chippy cut his lock out.’

‘OK — look, I’ll pop round. Just stay put. Wallflower House, right?’

Shaw ran down the back stairs and out into the yard to the Land Rover. Wallflower House was on the London Road, a fifties block on blighted ground beyond the city gate; a two?minute drive.

Frederick Armitage, the neighbour, introduced himself. He was wearing a jumper and running pants. He’d be sixty, wiry, the hair a wodge set at an angle, as if he’d just taken his head off the pillow.

‘That’s mine,’ he said, nodding at an open door. ‘This is Giddy’s.’ The door had been thrown back. The flat had a single living room in which Giddy had put one chair — wicker, with a cushion. A footstool lay on its side by the wall. There was nothing else except a TV, flat?screen, a pile of DVD games and a chessboard set on a tea crate.

Armitage took him down a short corridor to the bathroom door.

‘Giddy?’ said Shaw, shaking the handle. He turned to Armitage. ‘What makes you think he’s in there?’

‘We heard him come in. At midnight. It’s always midnight. Then out at three, back at five normally. He fishes at night, down off the Millfleet. Then out at six. That’s Giddy. Clockwork.’

He thudded his fist on the chipboard. ‘Giddy!’

‘He’s not deaf,’ said Armitage, stepping back.

Shaw put his shoulder to the door and the hinges popped, screws lifting almost effortlessly clear of rotten wood. A toilet, the lid down, a washbasin, spotless, a shower unit with the curtain pulled back to reveal tiles in alternate black and white. A window stood open, a fire?escape beyond. He hesitated, just one second, before checking the bath. Spotless, empty.

‘Nowt,’ said Armitage.

As they walked back into the main room the front door creaked, a second hinge working its way loose, so that it began to swing into the room, revealing the hooks on the back.

Giddy was hanging from one of them, a piece of electrical flex round his neck. His toes, in socks, brushed the lino as the wood groaned with the weight. His face was distorted by the broken neck, one side compressed into a series of folds. The dove?grey eyes were open.

‘Giddy,’ said Shaw, moving forward, knowing it was too late. ‘Call an ambulance,’ he said, pulling up the discarded footstool and lifting Giddy’s body clear of the hook, then laying it down. It was as light as a child’s, and Shaw couldn’t stop himself pressing it briefly to his chest. He knew it was pointless but he checked the pulse at the neck anyway, massaged the heart. The arms were still flexible, the joints free. He’d been dead an hour, maybe less.

Armitage stood his ground, beginning to shiver in his

But had it been suicide? Had a random act of vandalism pushed him over the edge? Had Giddy locked the bathroom door to keep someone out? Shaw searched the flat looking for a note. Giddy was convinced he was being followed. Had someone seen him talking to Shaw in the churchyard at St Martin’s? But he’d said he’d been followed before that. Or had an imaginary enemy become a real one?

Shaw didn’t step into the bedroom, but viewed it from the threshold, the interior lit by the hall light. A single bed, and no other furniture; but this had been Giddy’s special place: the walls were painted sea green up to head height, sky blue above, the horizon encircling the bed, the two windows open. But Giddy’s glory was the ceiling: night?black, scattered across it hundreds, thousands of children’s homework stars in silver. Constellations had jostled over Giddy’s head.

He heard an ambulance siren and walked back into the living room. Now that Giddy’s body was on the floor Shaw could see the letterbox. There was something caught in the flap. He walked to it, knelt down and felt his skin goosebump. He slipped on a glove and pulled it clear. It was a rat’s tail.

By the time Shaw reached Blickling Cottages with the search warrant one of Tom Hadden’s CSI units was parked in the lane by the sports field. The windows of the house were as dark as sockets in a skull. Shaw got out, the snow creaking underfoot. But the wind from the sea had lost its polar edge. The snowflakes were fat, spidery, falling lazily like leaves.

He’d left the duty DI from St James’s at the scene of Giddy Poynter’s untimely death. He hadn’t had time to fill him in on the background to the case but he urged caution: it might look like a lonely and desperate suicide but the rat’s tail had unnerved Shaw. It was too pointed a reminder of Giddy’s childhood nightmare. Had Giddy been deliberately driven to his death? He remembered Giddy’s fear, the figure stalking him from the shadows. Shaw left as quickly as he could, promising a witness statement when he got back to the station. Giddy’s corpse had left at the same time, a life reduced to an anonymous black body?bag, shuffled into the back of a silent ambulance.

Headlights swept across the football field and settled on the front of Blickling Cottages. Valentine’s Mazda rumbled along the lane at a steady 10 mph. His overcoat flapped at his knees when he got out but he didn’t seem unhappy to be in the fresh air. He smoked a cigarette

‘There was a fire by the boat,’ he said, looking Shaw in the eyes. ‘Tom got to it before it was cold. Snowfall had saved a bit. Material — looks like a set of blue overalls. They’re stained. Tom says it’s definitely blood. In fact the material’s soaked in it, and a belt. He’s doing a type test now. He’s got the stuff back at the Ark. And we can link Sly with the fire — there’s ash in the boat, round the sink, on his hands.’

‘Boots?’

‘In the fire too. But there’s not enough to get a footprint.’

‘What’s he said?’ asked Shaw, trying to keep the inquiry balanced, trying not to let it turn into a lynching.

‘Fuck all, really.’ Valentine watched the smoke drain out of his nostrils into the night air. ‘Denies killing Ellis. He wants his lawyer.’

‘What’s his story?’