[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand Page 9

  Over a pot of tea, they dealt swiftly with introductions. Richmond was Assistant Licensing Officer for the council, based in Hunstanton. They’d received an application to allow Surf! to sell alcohol over the bank holiday weekend, three days, from 10.30 a.m. to 11.30 p.m.

  ‘Quite a place …’ said Richmond, trying not to look at two women sauntering by, topless. Surf! was a clear country mile from the family beaches at Hunstanton, and the atmosphere was cosmopolitan, more Chelsea-on-Sea than kiss-me-quick. Lena’s chin came up, proud of what she’d created, letting her eyes flit over the twenty picnic tables, already crowded with customers crumbling saffron cake, or pouring Nicaraguan blend from glass cafetières. One couple, in their mid-thirties, had a wine cooler between them, the stem of a bottle of Prosecco studded with drops of condensation.

  Yes, quite a place. It was certainly a very different place from the one they’d bought seven years earlier. That first day Shaw had led her along the beach, she’d seen it in the distance: The Old Beach Café – a wooden hut, with a stone cottage behind and the Old Boathouse – a slated shed, the roof held down by rocks strung in a net. All theirs for £80,000 freehold, with no road access, no mains power and a cesspit back in the dunes. Now, a thirty-foot wind turbine turned languidly in the breeze, each blade painted a different poster-box colour. (Fran’s idea – to mimic the sandcastle windmills.) The Boathouse, converted to a shop, now sold everything from Hunstanton key rings at sixty-five pence to para-kites at £4,000.

  She caught it then, the sudden malicious glint in Richmond’s dull eyes. Now that he’d recovered his composure, Lena could see he was late-twenties, his card had listed initials after his name: BA, MBA. It occurred to her she’d underestimated him, and that she needed to concentrate. Staying in business was about identifying risks. Suddenly she saw Richmond for what he was: a bundle of sticky red tape waiting to unfurl.

  ‘We’re minded to recommend to the licensing committee that your application be refused, Mrs … er, Ms Braithwaite. The timing is problematic. But perhaps you could explain …’

  ‘I’m in business, I want to make money. It’s a bar. There’s more people around at bank holiday.’ Lena smiled and was delighted to see Richmond’s face flush in response.

  ‘Yes,’ said Richmond, laughing joylessly. ‘But the pilgrimage, you’ll be aware of the kind of thing that can happen. The riot of 2001 for example …’

  ‘That would be nearly fifteen years ago, Mr Richmond.’

  The so-called Walsingham ‘riot’ was a piece of local legend of a tenacious quality. Lena suspected that the sight of colourful saris on the sands of north Norfolk, not to mention ceremonial swords, had delivered some kind of visceral culture shock to the largely white, middle- to upper-class holidaymakers, who provided the core of her clientele, and of every business from Old Hunstanton to Cromer. A hundred miles of old-fashioned, fifties English seaside heaven, a stretch of landscape and seascape which formed, quite accidentally, a kind of Enid Blyton theme park, a living, breathing, shoreline from a totally imaginary past.

  ‘Mr Richmond, I’m not from around here. I grew up in Brixton. I’m a lawyer by training. I used to work for the Campaign for Racial Equality. There were riots in Brixton in 1981 – 280 police officers were injured. In 1985 fifty-five cars were burnt out. In 1995 the Met had to enforce a two-mile exclusion zone, closing down the tube and stationing helicopters overhead. I only mention this because it means that I have a pretty vivid idea of what constitutes a riot, and I’m afraid half-a-dozen tanked-up Tamils having a quick pee over someone’s fence doesn’t do it for me.’

  Dimly a voice told her to calm down and she wished Shaw was there, because he was more objective about the business, and faced with a bureaucrat like Richmond he’d have simply sat back and played out a long rope, waiting for him to tie his own noose.

  ‘Machetes were confiscated, Ms Braithwaite. Last year several police forces coordinated in searching vehicles en route to Walsingham. Credible information suggested that guns were being carried.’

  ‘And what actually happened? Nothing. This isn’t about civil unrest, it’s about the cosy world of north Norfolk’s retirees being stirred by a sudden influx of outsiders behaving with a little less decorum than the local WI. I’ll say it if you won’t, Mr Richmond – black outsiders.’

  ‘I see,’ said Richmond, blinking, calculating. ‘We don’t think it is a particularly good idea to open a bar all day, and pretty much all night, when certain volatile elements may be in the area. I’m sure you understand the realities of the situation.’ Richmond seemed especially pleased with this meaningless gem, so much so that he couldn’t stop himself saying what was in his head: ‘There are, after all, nearly 160,000 Tamils in Britain.’

  Even he knew he’d gone too far. There was a long silence in which a flock of seagulls overhead tried to dismember the skeleton of a rock salmon.

  Lena stretched out her legs. ‘Oh. I see. We’re going to be inundated, are we – overrun, even? No, there’s a better word. Swamped.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Most Tamils are Muslim, Mr Richmond. I don’t want to be rude, but you might get your facts right. Less than six per cent are Christian. That’s 10,000, or less, in total. Is each one a volatile element, or is it just a collective threat?’

  ‘The bar could encourage anti-social behaviour. Especially late at night.’

  ‘Well. Two things. This place will be shut and shuttered by 11.35 p.m. all three nights. Second: you’ve just walked the beach from the nearest road, Mr Richmond. If you don’t mind me saying so, you don’t look too pleased with the effort required. Coachloads, or even carloads, of pilgrims will bring their own alcohol. Do you think they’re really going to hike a mile along the beach for a sundowner at £4.50 a glass?’

  Her voice had climbed a notch and she saw Leo D’Asti on the terrace of the café looking her way, trying to work out if she needed help; she shook her head quickly and he melted away.

  ‘We’re minded to recommend refusal,’ said Richmond.

  ‘I’m minded to ring the local paper and give them a rough précis of our conversation so far. Would you like to see what that means in terms of newsprint on a page?’

  Richmond’s eyes went blank.

  ‘There’s been threats,’ he said, and bit his lip. ‘Specific threats. I shouldn’t tell you this, but we are concerned. There are people planning to disrupt the pilgrimage. Activists.’

  ‘What threats, against whom? What kind of activists?’

  ‘I’ve said too much. But I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Then be specific.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘When will I hear about the licence?’

  ‘In twenty-four hours. Less.’

  He extricated himself from the picnic table bench before pointing to the telegraph wire which ran in a loop between Surf! and the Old Boathouse shop. Midway along a pair of brightly coloured trainers swung on their laces.

  ‘You should let the police know about those – they’ve got a shoe squad to take them down in Lynn. They’re linked to drug sales, apparently, or worse. Unsightly at the very least, don’t you think?’

  ‘They’re my daughter’s,’ said Lena, staying in her seat. ‘She threw them up to celebrate her GCSE results and a new pair of trainers. It’s what kids do.’

  Lena watched him walk away, her reflective black Ray-Bans mirroring the first clouds of the day.

  FOURTEEN

  Julia Fortis, administrator of Marsh House, commanded an austere attic office. A set of two wide dormer windows looked north towards the sea and the sun, reflected off the flood tide, bounced and shimmered in blue and green light on the plastered ceiling. Thrown open, the windows admitted a warm breeze and the distant brittle jangle of rigging against masts. A whiteboard on the wall was covered in intricate mathematical calculations, dominated by a single equation: w/10 + 20 = mph, which Shaw recognized. There was very little in the room which looked personal, save a half-le
ngth summer wetsuit hanging from a hook, a fitness bike and a picture on a bookcase shelf of an elderly woman holding a spray of flowers.

  Fortis, in a white blouse, sat rigidly behind a modern desk, upon which was a flipped-open laptop, listening to Shaw’s brief summary of what the CCTV had revealed: that Marsh House’s six-camera security system was actually a five-camera system, that Camera D was effectively ‘blind’, or worse, programmed to simply repeat a standard pre-recorded shot; a digital facade, beyond which anything might happen, unseen between eight in the evening and six in the morning.

  From the terrace below they heard the thin strains of Radio Four, and a single clash of a china cup on a china saucer, while somewhere the water pipes hummed as a shower unit ran. It occurred to Shaw that while every home had a series of distinctive noises – pipes banging, floorboards creaking – Marsh House presented a much richer soundtrack, reflecting the many lives lived under one roof.

  ‘Your CV lists a degree in computer science, Ms Fortis,’ said Shaw. Armed with a magistrates’ warrant the CID team had gained access to the trust’s employee records. Fortis had worked at Marsh House for five years, taking up a trainee position in 2010 straight from university. She was unmarried, lived in a harbour-side flat conversion in Wells, and had from 2007 been a member of the British Barefoot Skiing team, an extreme watersport which required skiers to ride barefoot at high speeds behind a tow boat. The sport was popular on the coast because of its wide, open, rock-free beaches and shallow, gently shelving sands. Lena sold the appropriate gear in the Old Boathouse, ranging from special wetsuits and ski shoes for beginners to padded neoprene shorts and harnesses.

  ‘Did you install the CCTV override on Camera D?’ Shaw asked.

  To one side of Fortis’ desk sat Guy Edgecombe, whose business card had described him as a partner in a City law firm that represented Starlight Trust, the owners of Marsh House. Shaw had rung Fortis less than half an hour earlier to arrange an interview, so the presence of Edgecombe meant either that he was on the premises anyway, or that he had been drafted in from his holiday, given his office address was High Holborn, in London’s West End. As he was dressed in a pair of navy blue designer shorts and what could only be described as an Hawaiian shirt, the latter seemed likely.

  ‘I think the answer to that question can wait,’ he said. His feet were bare and, Shaw noted, still coated on the upper side with sand.

  ‘This is a murder inquiry, so I’ll decide what can wait.’

  Edgecombe’s narrow, equine face – deeply tanned – beamed a charming £500-an-hour legal smile at the detectives.

  ‘We’re keen to observe the proper procedures.’

  Valentine, standing at one of the dormers, watched a patient being pushed in her wheelchair down towards the sea. Out on the marsh – a mazelike expanse of reed and water shielded from the ocean by Scolt Head Island – schools of training boats sailed in neat battalions.

  ‘Proper procedures, really?’ asked Shaw. ‘Like obstructing a murder inquiry? I intend to make an arrest today, Mr Edgecombe, unless I get answers to pertinent questions.’

  ‘Obstructing a murder inquiry? Really? An oversight, perhaps. But entirely innocent,’ said Edgecombe, his eyes flitting to Valentine, whose narrow, skeletal frame filled the floor-to-ceiling window.

  ‘The digital CCTV records,’ said Shaw. ‘Did you install the override Ms Fortis?’

  Edgecombe unfolded himself from his chair and gave Shaw and Valentine each a single sheet of A4: a neat five-hundred-word statement, signed crisply in Fortis’ name. Shaw, never a believer in the cod-science of reading character from someone’s script, noted that the writing was expansive, even florid, in contrast to Fortis’ crisp demeanor.

  Shaw got the gist in a few seconds. Fortis was admitting that she knew about the dud camera and the ‘overlay’ images, which she stated had been used to allow staff to smoke outside and take ‘a fresh air break’. She had discovered this practice shortly after the system was installed eighteen months previously. On an unexpected visit to the night nurse station during a medical emergency she’d been unable to locate the nurse on duty. Five minutes later she observed her from the French doors, outside, smoking. At the time she had been interviewing nursing staff and several had made it clear they would not work a shift system without access to regular smoking breaks. She had decided to turn a blind eye.

  Shaw’s team had interviewed the day staff at Marsh House in the last two hours and six of them had admitted to knowing about the blind camera. All were also regular night nurses, and all smoked. They were left with the fact that the CCTV override was a long-established workplace abuse. What did it tell them about their killer? Was he – or she – a member of staff?

  Fortis, a fingertip on the rim of a glass of water, went to speak and, although Edgecombe raised a hand, she carried on: ‘There are nearly thirty care homes on the coast, it’s a competitive market for qualified nurses with the necessary geriatric training. A lot are senior and have worked in homes for decades. Smoking breaks help relieve tension in what is a very stressful job.’

  Edgecombe beamed. ‘There is no causal link between this practice and the murder. The trust has reluctantly accepted Ms Fortis’ resignation. She was a highly respected member of our team, our national team. She will be taking owed leave from five o’clock today for six months.’ Edgecombe checked his watch, as if keen to get back out in the sun.

  Looking down he wriggled a big toe. ‘I have agreed to represent Ms Fortis at this juncture. I’m a corporate lawyer, so it’s not really my gig. But we have a criminal division and one of my colleagues is on his way north. I’ve advised Ms Fortis to remain silent until he is able to represent her in person. I hope I don’t have to repeat that advice.’

  Valentine, who’d been roaming the room, walked to the desk and lobbed a tin ashtray on to the blotter; earlier, standing at the open windows, he’d detected the engrained aroma of nicotine in the woodwork; so perhaps she didn’t need to use the terrace.

  ‘Sympathize with the smokers, do you? How many are you on?’

  Fortis was fish-white, her lips stretched in a murderously straight line, but she wasn’t sweating and Shaw sensed a deal had been made through Edgecombe with the company: her silence, the paid leave and eventually perhaps a job at one of the other care homes. None of which necessarily meant she was lying, or a killer.

  ‘So you’ve known for some time that the security system had this inherent flaw,’ said Shaw.

  She nodded.

  ‘A system installed, presumably, in the wake of Irene Coldshaw’s death. Did you know her?’

  Edgecombe had a hand up but Fortis’ eyes betrayed a sudden surge of fear.

  ‘There’s no connection …’ she said.

  ‘My advice, Ms Fortis …’ The lawyer’s hand moved to rest on a brown envelope on the desk. The tone of voice was everything; as if he was admonishing a child who’d picked up a forbidden crayon.

  ‘Really?’ asked Shaw. ‘No connection? I think there are several connections. Mrs Coldshaw got out of a secure building without being detected. How? There were no cameras then, I accept that, but there were security pads. The really interesting question is why did Mrs Coldshaw flee in the first place? What was she afraid of? Did Mrs Bright know? Is that why she wanted to write to the local newspaper?’

  Edgecombe’s languid bones snapped to attention, but he didn’t speak, perhaps remembering the lawyers’ mantra: never ask a question until you know the answer.

  So instead of a question, a statement: ‘I expect that any reputable newspaper would contact us for a statement before going to print.’

  ‘You’d hope,’ said Shaw, happy to allow the lawyer’s discomfort to deepen.

  ‘Ruby Bright knew something. I think that’s why she’s dead. That’s the heart of the matter. Marsh House has a secret. Do you know what it is, Ms Fortis?’

  No answer. Edgecombe opened his hands out, palm-up, then consulted the Rolex again, shaking it, so that the
metallic strap made a rasping noise.

  Shaw edged forward. ‘I think that’s why someone went to Ruby’s room, got her in her wheelchair and, knowing that Camera D was blind, went out through the French doors. Then they pushed her down the track to the sea, put a freezer bag over her face, and strangled her. She put up a fight, you know. You didn’t see her face, did you, Ms Fortis? You looked the other way. Or could you not bear to see it again? Did you kill her, Ms Fortis?’

  She stood up and seemed unable to decide where to put her hands. Edgecombe rose slowly, trying not to appear hurried or discomforted by Shaw’s allegation.

  ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Mr Paterson, my colleague, is about an hour away. Unless you wish to arrest my client, it’s over, Inspector.’

  ‘Did you kill her, Ms Fortis?’

  The word ‘no’ was a whisper, but perfectly distinct.

  ‘I said it’s over,’ said Edgecombe, to his client, not Shaw.

  ‘Actually, it’s only just begun, Mr Edgecombe. A couple of things. First, I’m told you have Javi Copon’s passport in that safe. I’d like to take that with me. Javi’s agreed to this, you can check with him in person, he’s downstairs talking to one of my DCs. His story’s illuminating. He says Camera D was an open secret with all the staff, a perk if you’re a smoker, just as you have pointed out. But not just for smoking. On moonlit nights he’d run down to the beach to check out the surf. Seems to be a lax regime, Ms Fortis.

  ‘Although I don’t see Javi Copon as a killer, do you? But we’re looking forward to finding out all he knows about Marsh House, he’s very keen to talk. In the meantime, I’d rather have his passport in our safe. I certainly don’t want it in yours.’