Jim Kelly: Death Wore White

I’ve returned both the file and the SOC box to Timber Woods. He will release them only on my signature.

Kindest regards

Max

He could go to Warren and tell him about Giddy Poynter’s suspicious death. But what did it amount to? The sudden, convenient, disappearance of a key witness, certainly. A potential witness, Warren would counter.

The heavy wooden door to the juvenile courtroom opened and one of the ushers gave him a nod.

The court was carpeted, the wooden seats polished, a single royal crest over the bench. The defendant was already in the ‘dock’ — in this case simply a table and chair to one side of the room. He looked fifteen, edgy in a school jacket, one hand constantly unclipping then reclipping a silver wristband. Shaw wondered why he’d bothered with this case. It was unlikely to reveal anything he didn’t already know. But something his father had once said had made him attend: if you can, he’d said, always take the chance to see people face to face. Up close.

A single magistrate sat with a clerk. A police prosecutor outlined the case and evidence. Maddams pleaded guilty to twenty?six separate charges of criminal damage. The

Maddams’s solicitor stood. He said that there were circumstances the court should consider, although Maddams accepted full responsibility for what he had done. The solicitor had good skin with a winter tan, and blue eyes, not washed of colour like Shaw’s, but the vivid shade of a Greek sky. He was thirty perhaps, perfectly at ease in a sharp suit, one hand holding a statement, the other casually in his trouser pocket. His face had a cartoon symmetry which might have made him handsome, but his features were too bland. It was his movements that marked him out: languid, unhurried, almost entirely devoid of stress.

Maddams’s background was as bleak as a bus shelter. Low IQ, learning difficulties, excluded from three schools, his mother a registered heroin addict. His father, one of the original residents of the Westmead, had died that year from throat cancer. Thomas had been badly affected by his father’s death, and this was his first offence.

But the solicitor didn’t let it go at that. ‘I knew Bill Maddams well, and indeed I’ve known Thomas many years. It was a family which, until recently, was part of the local community on the Westmead which helped hold together some semblance of a civilized society. A society in which I too had to grow up.’

He had them now. The magistrate leant forward, the clerk’s head nodding.

‘I agreed to represent Thomas — in fact I’m happy to represent him — not because of some misguided sense of

The clerk nodded, touching a file on his desk. The magistrate leant back in his seat.

‘This offence was a bizarre aberration. He can’t explain it, and neither can I.’

Maddams shifted on his chair, trying to look the magistrate in the face.

Shaw could accept that there was no apparent explanation for the crime, but why had he walked three miles to commit it?

The magistrate stood. He’d confer with the clerk in the small office to the rear — or more likely share a cup of coffee, thought Shaw. Meanwhile he sent a text message to Lena: HOME SOON. Then he stood at the back, uncomfortably aware that if he was supposed to be following Warren’s instructions to the letter, he should be back at St James’s on his next case.

Warren’s letter. He’d photocopied it and taken it in for Valentine to read. His first bedside visit had been his last. Valentine was propped up, making the pillows look grey. They’d got halfway through the pleasantries before the DS asked if Warren had made a decision on the Tessier case.

‘Nothing formal,’ said Shaw, handing him the copy. ‘So it’s a no, then.’

‘Yup.’

‘So that was worth it.’

‘It was the right thing to do.’

Shaw had given him the camera phone, wrapped by Jacky, the paper dotted with images of dice. Then he’d left without a word.

A door opened and the court usher asked all to rise as the magistrate returned. The chairman started with the bad news, a sure sign he would end on the good. The value of the damage caused by Thomas Maddams was estimated in the thousands. Residents in the flats had been terrified by their ordeal — and in fact one had committed suicide that very evening, a fact which could not be completely disentangled from Maddams’s juvenile vandalism, although the court had to accept he could not have foreseen such a consequence of his actions. The use of the glue had been cowardly and reckless. But it was a first offence and there were extenuating circumstances. A custodial sentence was not, therefore, appropriate. Maddams would undertake one hundred hours of community service and pay a fine of?1,000 in twenty monthly instalments. He would report on a regular basis to the probationary service.

The solicitor shook hands with Maddams, who embraced him awkwardly. Shaw followed the sharp suit out into the lobby.

‘Can I have a word?’ he asked, flipping open a warrant card.

The solicitor nodded, the hand slipping into the trouser pocket, the weight switching to one leg. ‘How can I help?’

‘Why those flats? They’re miles from his manor.’

Shaw thought he was supposed to be charmed by the frankness.

They stood, at an impasse. ‘Look. My next case is up. Ring any time, obviously. Thomas is keen to help the police if he can.’

The solicitor took out a card from a small silver case. ‘Just ask for me. Robert Mosse,’ he said. ‘Mosse, Devlin amp; Parker. We’re down on College Lane.’

As Shaw took the card their fingers touched, the static from the cheap pile carpet making an invisible spark jump.

He stared at the embossed lettering, trying to keep his face in neutral. Mosse flicked a fringe of hair out of his eyes and Shaw wondered what his father had thought of him that night he’d gone to the flat in Vancouver House. Had he detected the arrogance? The self?regard? Was the twenty?year?old law student from Sheffield University anything like the successful young solicitor?

Shaw zipped up the lightweight RNLI jacket, trying to work out the connections — from Mosse, to Maddams, to the Westmead, to Giddy Poynter, to Askit’s tractor works, to Jonathan Tessier. And he tried to work out what he could say. Warren’s warning had been explicit: the Tessier case was closed. But he wasn’t on the Tessier case. He was on Giddy Poynter’s case.

Mosse looked back towards the open door to the court, a ballpoint between his teeth. When he turned back Shaw had the warrant card out again, at eye?level this time, where he couldn’t miss the name.

‘It just got smaller,’ said Shaw.

Mosse’s face had turned pale despite the tan and he licked his lips to speak, but the usher was at the door. ‘This one’s yours, Mr Mosse…’

‘Just for the record…’ said Shaw, holding up his mobile, snatching a picture, the flash bouncing off the window.

Mosse tried to laugh, walking away. Shaw looked at the picture. It was only luck but he’d caught the fleeting micro?expression on the young solicitor’s face: fear. Something inside him uncoiled, like a knot pulled free. He felt suddenly, inexplicably, close to his father, as if they were standing together.

He took the steps down to the ground floor two at a time, the last four in one jump. Out in King’s Street the air was spring?like, the tarmac dry where the sun had burnt off the overnight rain. Along the quayside gulls wheeled around a tourist struggling with a sandwich in a plastic pack. Shaw stopped by Vancouver’s statue and filled his lungs with sea air. He called up the picture of Mosse, and scrolled down to Valentine’s number.

Then he thought again, and hit SAVE instead. No: it was his case now. His alone.