Stephen Booth - The kill call

‘Of course. No ventilation either, I suppose?’

‘A couple of sliding vents, but they were rusted shut.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if they’d been open,’ said the pathologist. ‘Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Without a pump to replenish the atmosphere, he wouldn’t have survived very long. As things went downhill, he would have become confused and disoriented, losing co-ordination. His breathing would have progressively weakened, like a fish out of water, and then he would have lost consciousness. Sometimes, people die from cardiac arrhythmia before the asphyxia.’

‘So he was already dead when the bunker started to flood?’ asked Fry.

‘Mmm.’ Mrs van Doon tapped a scalpel thoughtfully against a stainless-steel dish, a habit that Fry normally found irritating. Today, it didn’t seem to matter. ‘Perhaps not when it started to flood. It would have taken time.’

‘So he would have lived long enough to see the water coming in?’

‘I think so. It’s all a bit academic, perhaps.’

‘I bet it didn’t feel academic to Mr Clay,’ said Fry, trying half-heartedly to get a reaction.

‘Perhaps not.’

‘More like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.’

‘Poe?’

‘He was the writer obsessed with premature burial.’

‘I don’t remember that particular story,’ said the pathologist mildly. ‘I was always scared by the one that had the walls gradually closing in. That used to give me serious nightmares.’

Fry shook her head. ‘For me, it’s drowning slowly, as the water gets higher and higher. Trying to get one more gasp of air, but feeling the water reach your mouth. As far as I’m concerned, it would be a blessing to pass out from lack of oxygen first.’

Then the other woman met her eye properly for the first time. Fry felt a physical shock from the contact. Was there sympathy in her expression? Surely not pity? God, please don’t let the pathologist be feeling pity for her.

‘We all have to be thankful for our blessings,’ said Mrs van Doon. ‘However small they may be.’

Cooper knew from personal experience that Fry’s smile was worse than any verbal threat she might have made. It sometimes reminded him of a snake opening its mouth to reveal the poison on its fangs. Perhaps it was lucky that E Division hadn’t introduced video cameras into the interview rooms yet. Those whirring tapes caught the words being spoken, but not the gestures or the facial expressions.

‘So, Mr Massey,’ she said. ‘Do you still say you don’t know whether you meant to kill Mr Clay?’

Massey was very composed now. All that he had bottled up inside him had come out, and he was facing everything that happened to him now with a quiet resignation.

‘I thought about it a time or two over the next few days,’ he said calmly. ‘I wondered whether to go and let him out. I even walked towards the post a couple of times. But it was so quiet, I just turned round and walked away again. I might have let him out, but I didn’t know what to say to him, how to explain it. And as time passed, it became more difficult to explain. After a while, I knew I would never be able to explain it to anyone. I don’t suppose you understand what I’m saying, even now?’

‘It’s hard for us to put ourselves in your position, Mr Massey.’

‘Yes, I see that. It’s hard for me too.’ He looked from Fry to Cooper. ‘I’m not a killer, you know. Not really. It was, well… sort of circumstances that just came together. The kind of thing I never thought would happen. You just react without thinking when it does happen. It was almost as if I’d been trained for it, had it drilled into me what to do in that situation. I really didn’t think about it. I never thought, “I’m going to kill him.” So I don’t think you can say that I had the intention. Can you?’

‘That will be for a court to decide, Mr Massey.’

‘I suppose so. What happens now?’

‘We’re going to have to charge you.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Why did you hate him so much?’ asked Cooper. ‘Was it to do with the death of Jimmy Hind?’

‘Of course,’ said Massey. ‘Les had brought his son to the post that night. He was a new observer, learning the ropes. Strictly speaking, there was only supposed to be a crew of three on duty. Les told me not to mention it. But then, a few days later, I saw Shirley. And I saw who she was with. It was Stuart.’

They both stared at him for a moment, thinking they’d misheard.

‘Stuart?’ said Fry.

Massey nodded. ‘Like I said, Stuart wasn’t supposed to be there. But it was him I saw with Shirley a few days later. And I realized he’d been after her all that time. He was Jimmy’s rival. It was him that left the loose knot on the siren, I’m sure of it.’

‘Stuart? Did you say Stuart?’

‘Yes, Stuart Clay, Les’s son.’

Fry stared at him. ‘Mr Massey, Stuart Clay died last year. He had pancreatic cancer.’

Massey looked completely uncomprehending. ‘That’s not possible. He was there on Wednesday.’

‘No.’

‘It was Stuart Clay, Les Clay’s son. I knew him — he was with us at the post that night. He killed Jimmy.’

Cooper shook his head. ‘DS Fry is right, Mr Massey. Stuart Clay died nearly a year ago. The man who visited you was his younger brother, Michael. Here’s a photo of him — ’

‘That’s him: Stuart.’

‘No, it’s Michael. He was eight years younger than Stuart. Stuart would have been your age now.’

‘No.’

‘Michael had to deal with his brother’s affairs when he died,’ said Cooper. ‘We think that it was when he cleared out Stuart’s papers that he first came across references to the ROC and the post at Birchlow. Then he found other things — there was a cap badge, a photograph of the crew. And, above all, there were a lot of newspaper cuttings relating to the death of Jimmy Hind. That was why Michael came to have a look at the post while he was in Derbyshire. It was part of the process of putting his older brother’s memory to rest.’

But Massey still wasn’t convinced. It was obvious from the stubborn expression on his face, the distant, unconnected look in his pale, blue eyes.

For one last time, Cooper produced the photograph of the crew of the Birchlow observer post, Post 4 Romeo. He was confident that he was finally showing it to the right person.

‘Mr Massey, do you remember this photo?’

Massey screwed up his eyes, and held the photograph to the light.

‘That’s us, in the 1960s sometime. There’s me and Jimmy. The big bloke is Les Clay. And there’s Stuart Clay, Shirley Outram. I know all of them. They’re just as I remember them.’

In the photo, Jimmy Hind was wearing round, wire-rimmed glasses, like John Lennon’s. He was the only one in glasses, though Peter Massey had also been squinting a little as he looked at the camera.

‘Do you normally wear glasses, Mr Massey?’

‘Only when I need them.’

‘Are you short sighted, or long sighted?’

‘Short sighted, I suppose.’

‘If I left the room now, would you be able to describe my face to someone? Would you know me again if you saw me in forty years’ time?’

‘Why would I need to?’

Cooper lowered his head, no longer able to look Massey in the eye. He was thinking of the man who’d died in the underground bunker, starved of oxygen as the flood water crept higher around him.

‘Why?’ he said. ‘So that you don’t make a mistake about someone’s identity again.’

‘He’s hopeless without his glasses,’ said Cooper later, when he and Fry had concluded the interview. ‘He says he doesn’t need to wear them around the farm. He doesn’t miss anything that he wants to see. But there are some things he doesn’t want to see too clearly, anyway.’