Jim Kelly: Death Wore White

Shaw breathed out, watching the plume of steam hang in the air like an accusation, his knee jiggling as he tried to think. What if the temperature rose? If the snow melted he’d lose the evidence; his crime scene would disappear.

He needed fresh eyes, even if they were hooded.

‘OK, George,’ he called back. ‘Follow my tracks.’ Valentine struggled to match Shaw’s confident strides in

‘Fuck,’ he said, unable to stop the recoil in his neck muscles at the sight of the victim.

‘Indeed, George. Fuck it is. Let’s take it carefully, shall we?’

Valentine sniffed and looked away. His guts began to contract rhythmically, his mouth flooding with saliva. But he fought the urge to vomit again, biting the inside of his cheek until he drew blood.

Shaw retrieved a small voice recorder from his pocket, checked it was working and pressed the record button. A pinprick amber light glowed.

‘DI Peter Shaw. Monday, 9th of February 2009. Eight thirteen p.m. I’m standing beside a pick?up truck. Make and registration…’

Valentine worked his way carefully to the rear of the truck. ‘It’s a Vauxhall Rascal,’ he said. ‘Ten years old — more.’ The licence plate was clear of snow and he read out the number, his voice sharp and discordant in the still air.

Shaw went on, his breath making the hand?held recorder damp. ‘The driver of the vehicle is dead. Cause of death appears to be a violent stab wound to the face which has penetrated the left eye socket. The weapon used was a chisel with a wooden, worn handle. The vehicle is first in a line of eight stranded on Siberia Belt, Ingol Beach. Six feet in front of it is a fallen tree. Before I approached the pick?up the only footprints in the snow to the rear were those of John Blickling Holt, one of the other drivers, who walked forward shortly after the convoy became stranded,

Valentine looked back into the headlights of the Alfa Romeo, along the bank above the star?studded water of the marsh, and ahead to the fallen tree.

‘Check the other side,’ said Shaw, handing him a heavy?duty torch.

Valentine stepped across the rear of the truck, noting a pool of urine staining the snow by the nearside rear wheel arch, paw prints scattered nearby. Immediately below him was the deep gash of the dyke ditch. Looking back along the line of traffic he could see that after about eighty yards the ditch disappeared into a brick culvert which ran into a sluice gate — the point at which they’d crossed over from the sands. The snow over the top of the sluice and around it had been untouched when they’d climbed across. The bank on the far side of the truck was a sinuous sheet of silver white, with no sign of disturbance.

He edged back. ‘Nothing — no one’s been in or out.’ Shaw clicked the recorder and held it to Valentine’s face. ‘For the record,’ he said.

Valentine’s hooded eyes opened a few millimetres beyond normal. He’d never quite got used to taking orders from people twenty years younger than he was. He’d been a DI himself until they’d busted him after Jack Shaw’s last case, and he’d been to more crime scenes than Peter Shaw had been to university lectures.

Shaw cut the recording and looked Valentine in the eyes. He thought for the first time that he might have underestimated him, and he reminded himself that trust was not one of his strong suits. So he made himself ask the question. ‘What do you think?’

Valentine wasn’t a whiz, and he certainly wasn’t a kid, but the job ran as deep in his veins as it did in Peter Shaw’s. It wasn’t that he couldn’t analyse a crime scene. He’d done it a thousand times. He just trusted his instinct more than a fat textbook of procedural logic. So what did instinct tell him now?

‘It’s two crimes,’ he said. ‘This killing’s vicious, angry, unplanned. But signs of entry and exit are non?existent. The killer just vanishes, coolly.’ He took a breath, looking towards the sea. ‘And then there’s the other corpse — down on the beach. Two hundred yards away, a bit more. Where does that fit in?’ He squatted down, looking under the truck. Nothing. ‘He could have jumped, from the cab here, into the marsh…’

Shaw looked unimpressed, although he didn’t have a better scenario. ‘Why? Why risk drowning, or freezing to death, just to avoid leaving a footprint? And the splash would have caught someone’s attention.’

Valentine’s jaw began to vibrate with the cold.

‘We need pictures,’ said Shaw.

Valentine shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Tom’s boys from CSI?’ he asked. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘Well. Two reasons, I guess,’ said Shaw, talking to himself

Valentine buttoned the top of his raincoat. He’d been out of serious front?line policing for a decade and was honest enough to know he needed to sharpen up his act. Shaw was right in his summary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.

From his pocket Shaw produced a small digital camera.

‘Not admissible,’ said Valentine, before he could stop himself. All specialist forensic photography was on film, reducing any chance of digital enhancement. No court would accept a digital image.

‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw, failing to suppress his irritation at being picked up by his own DS. ‘But we need a record,’ he added. ‘Even if we can’t take it into court. I’ll get what shots I can… Meanwhile get Control. Tell ’em what we’ve got. We’re getting CSI anyway for the victim on the beach — and the pathologist — but we need back?up. More bodies in uniforms. We need transport for the witnesses, and somewhere we can take them for the paperwork. We need statements, names, addresses, the lot.

‘Somewhere warm…’ said Valentine, taking a breath, ‘would be nice.’

Shaw looked along the coast towards the lights he’d seen from the beach. ‘Tell ’em to try Gallow Marsh Farm. If they’ve got a barn we could use that, but the unit will have to bring some air heaters. And we need a catering unit.’

He patted his jacket pockets. ‘What have I missed?’ There were times, thought Valentine, when Shaw looked like his father. Something in the face, but something subtle, the way he seemed to focus on the mid?distance when he was thinking. Valentine leant in the driver’s window, looking around the tomb that the truck cab had become, trying not to glimpse the victim’s face. The side pocket in the driver’s door was empty except for a single piece of neatly folded paper. Valentine lifted it clear with his gloved fingers. It was an invoice. Beneath it was a pair of spark plugs. He leant in closer, and sniffed.

‘Old plugs,’ he said.

‘So?’ said Shaw.

‘Rusted. Plugs don’t rust in situ,’ explained Valentine. ‘Too much oil about. If they’d been taken out recently they’d give off that burnt smell… but there’s nothing.’ He pointed at the tiny question mark of the contact points. Dull metal, a blush of oxidized steel.

The pick?up’s engine still ran, the heating system clattering.

‘So he took them out, left them there, they rusted. What’s the problem?’ asked Shaw. But he knew that wasn’t

Then two things happened at the same time. They heard the first flutter of the helicopter blades along the coast. Within seconds it was with them, hanging in the air with the stars, an RAF Coastal Rescue, the bay doors open to reveal two men in full flight gear and crash helmets. The pilot brought it down to thirty feet and then began to edge closer, trying to find a spot as close to the dyke ditch as he could get without losing his safety margin. The snow began to rise about them.

And as Shaw turned away, looking down the line of cars, he saw the teenager in the baseball cap crawling back up the bank from the marsh. He reached the top, then stood and broke into a run. Shaw watched him for twenty yards before he slipped again, almost down into the ditch on the far side. He knelt for a few seconds, looking back at the cars, and Shaw guessed he was considering a return to the warmth of the Mondeo. But instead he turned away and began to run, into the half?light first, and then into the night itself.