Death's Door (23 page)

‘I don’t understand,’ said Osbourne, one hand automatically tightening, then loosening a G-clamp on the edge of the bench, spinning the well-greased metal handle.

‘Marianne said she was planning to go out to East Hills with a friend, Julie Carstairs. That Julie didn’t turn up, so she went alone.’

‘That’s right.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Shaw, and Osbourne seemed to flinch. ‘Julie says Marianne may have done this to meet men, Mr Osbourne.’ Shaw took a deep breath, because what he wanted to say was cruel, but he thought he should say it: ‘Several
different
men that summer.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ said Osbourne. He ran his still-oily hand through his hair, leaving a grey highlight. But the denial of the possibility he’d been cheated on was perfunctory, Shaw thought.

‘I think you knew all about it,’ said Shaw. ‘And I think you’d decided to do something about it. I think you were on East Hills that day. How did you get to the island – did you swim, or did Tug Coyle pick you up at Morston? That would have given you an element of surprise. So you could just walk out of the sea. What did you do? Look for Marianne? Then, when you didn’t find her, did you wander off into the dunes? She was there, wasn’t she – with White. And that’s when you killed him. But you picked up a wound – something bloody but superficial. So you had to swim for it.’

Osbourne swallowed, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his bony throat. His face seemed to ripple slightly, as if from a blow.

‘I don’t think you meant to kill him – did you, Joe? Just scare him.’

And then Shaw saw it more clearly. ‘Did he have a knife too? Was that what you didn’t expect? We know he had one and it’s never been found. And you
always
had one.’

Osbourne’s eyes widened, and Shaw thought that he was trying to work out what else they might know.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of it – not a word.’

‘Since your wife died you’ve been going into work I think – most days. That’s what Aidan told us. But the shop’s been shut. Where have you been Mr Osbourne?’

Osbourne seemed to focus on a point equidistant between them. ‘I walk. In the dunes. It helps.’

From the woods they heard the sound of dogs barking. Osbourne stood, knocking the bench, and walked to the back door of the workshop, keeping his back to them. He opened the top half of a stable door and looked out at the edge of the woods. Smoke was drifting out from the green shadows. Somewhere up the hill, under the canopy of trees, they could hear shouts. He fumbled in his pocket and produced his inhaler, and they heard three rapid breaths.

The shouts in the woods seemed to be getting louder, insistent, and Shaw heard a single police whistle, but a distance away, over the hill, towards the Old Hall Estate.

‘I’d like to take a DNA swab, Mr Osbourne,’ said Shaw, breaking the silence.

‘One of my detective constables will call a little later to take you down to St James’. We’d like a formal statement as well. And if you could stay in Creake – or Wells. If you need to leave the area, even for a few hours, I’d like you to inform DS Valentine here – he’ll leave you a mobile number. Are you able to accept those restrictions, Mr Osbourne?’

He turned then, and Shaw could see he was shaking, his narrow shoulders unsteady. ‘I was at the shop the day the Aussie died. In the back. Dad was busy; if he hadn’t been I’d have gone with her. I’d have been there.’

Shaw logged the denial in his memory, but was unmoved by it.

Osbourne’s eyes widened and he almost fell. ‘And Marianne, and that old man. You think I did that too?’

‘Did you?’ asked Shaw.

‘No,’ said Osbourne, simply. ‘Why would I do that?’ He looked at his own hands. ‘How could I do that?’

‘Because Marianne was a witness to White’s murder,’ said Shaw. ‘She lied to save you, as well as herself. But not this time – this time she couldn’t face it. Did she ask you to help her end it, or did you suggest it? Had she just had enough of life . . .’ Shaw looked back down the garden towards the house: ‘Life here, with you. Or just you?’

It was cruel blow but effective. Osbourne raised both hands to this mouth.

‘And Arthur Patch saw you that day in 1994, didn’t he? Saw the wound. So when we drew a blank on the mass screening, as you knew we would, you were afraid we’d start looking for witnesses along the coast that day and in town, and that’s when he’d step forward. So he had to die.’

A shout from the woods made them all turn to the still-open half stable door.

Emerging from the shadows was a man walking quickly towards them: Aidan Robinson, with a beater’s brush, a pair of overalls grimy with ash, the left foot trailing badly. When he got to the door he saw Joe Osbourne’s face and froze.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. The silver-grey eyes were bloodshot from the smoke in the woods.

No one answered.

He looked at Shaw. ‘I’ve been helping up in the woods, keeping the fires down. You need to come up – we’ve found someone.’

TWENTY-TWO

D
ead air filled the woods, the midday heat cloying, the trees stifling the thin breeze from the distant sea. The path led through the clearing with the lightning tree and then deeper into the woods, where drifting smoke and steam threaded the tree trunks. The world was reduced to a fifty-yard circle, branches dripped water, the pine tops above lost in smoke, the colours washed out to leave just greys. By the path, nailed to a tree, was a single sign . . .

THE OLD HALL ESTATE

PRIVATE PROPERTY

TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED

‘Where we heading?’ asked Shaw. ‘And what are we going to find?’

Aidan Robinson turned. He pulled one of his fingers straight, making the joint crack. Shaw was struck again by the stillness of the man, as if time didn’t run as fast for him as the world around him. ‘Down the valley a bit, through the woods. Not far. I don’t know what’s there; one of the uniformed officers said he’d found remains – human remains – and wanted you up fast. They sent me because I know the woods.’

Valentine had caught up: ‘Fresh remains?’

Robinson shrugged, then turned and led the way.

Shaw ploughed on, concentrating on the rough path, watching each boot fall before lifting the next, avoiding the tree roots which occasionally arched over the track. Shaw tried to concentrate on the route ahead but he was worried about Joe Osbourne: he’d left him with DC Twine at the incident room, waiting for a squad car to take him into St James’. The stress had brought on an asthma attack and they’d arranged for him to see a doctor when he got down to police headquarters.

They reached a gully where a stream had dug down through the sandstone rock. Ahead, through the trees, they could see Old Hall far below them – a Georgian ruin, like an abandoned doll’s house, just the four walls left, and a thicket of chimney stacks. Just over the gully, on a stretch of bare hillside was what looked like a stone folly, a rotunda, graced with pillars, and a low dome. On the grass beside it lay something more modern that defied any easy identification – a concrete circle, its surface grooved with what looked like a pair of bronze rails. Shaw filed the image away and set off after Robinson.

The trees here were burnt, smouldering still. Ahead, for the first time, Shaw saw flames – a gout, quickly doused, so that the wood was full of the sound of sizzling steam. Around them now they could see beaters, working in short lines, and a hose crossed their path, leading from the stream up into the woods.

And then they smelt it: instantly, the three of them. Only Robinson kept walking, his limp less noticeable now they’d moved on to flatter ground. Shaw had it in his mouth, nose and lungs before he could retch. Cooked meat, like a hog roast. But sweeter, infinitely sweeter. He heard Valentine retch behind him but he didn’t turn to stare. He just stopped in his tracks and told himself this was a detail he’d have to make sure he didn’t take home.

Robinson came to a halt, looked back, then down at his feet, giving them time.

Shaw and Valentine paused, as if waiting for some hidden barrier to lift, and then they took the next step, together.

A young PC stood guard on the rough path. He held up a hand, searching their faces, relief flooding into his eyes when he recognized Shaw. ‘Sir, over there . . .’ He pointed to a small clearing. ‘And there’s loads of this around . . .’ In his hand he held a damp wodge of folding money, burnt at the edges, or blackened through. ‘It’s just blowing around,’ he added, as if
that
was the crime. ‘Twenty-pound notes.’

Whatever lay at the centre of the clearing it was still alight. While there were no visual clues Shaw knew it instantly as a corpse: the smell was beyond argument, but it was the emotional resonance that was indisputable. Even in death it radiated a personal space – diminished,
diminishing
, but still present. Thick white fumes pumped out of it like a smoke bomb. A single flame flickered on a limb-like projection which stuck up like a wick. The whole body was about the size of a large animal – a sheep, perhaps – and angled, like a collection of disparate bones and in a skin bag. But the surface was charred, furrowed, like wood left in a cold fire. Shaw’s eye skated over the surface, trying to find a face, a foot, a hand, something he could recognize that was human, but all he found was a single unambiguous shape: a semicircular curve – two curves, in iron, almost joined together.

‘Tom’s nearly here,’ said Valentine, taking a step back, working on the mobile.

Shaw took another step closer, put a knee down, and felt the warmth still in the ashes. ‘It’s a trap, right?’ he said. ‘An animal trap.’

Robinson was behind him, over his left shoulder. ‘Not one of the estate’s,’ he said.

‘They lay traps?’

‘Sure. Fox, badger, stoat. Keep the woods clear for the deer.’ Shaw heard Robinson crunch something in his mouth. A mint. ‘But nothing this size.’ Hadn’t Robinson said he didn’t come into the woods anymore – not since he’d been a child?

‘Can’t we put
it
out . . .?’ asked Shaw, angry, but with no one.

They called in a fireman who set a fine spray on the burning corpse, turning smoke to steam. Shaw tried to see the shape of the jaws of the trap, which had sprung, then closed round a limb – a leg, but the foot had seared away, leaving a blackened stump. In the ashes he saw a buckle – metal, like a rucksack brace.

They heard footsteps coming through the trees and the sudden ghostly shape of Tom Hadden in a white SOC suit. He’d come into the woods from Old Hall, up the valley, so he came at the charred body from the opposite side of the clearing. He looked at Shaw. ‘You need to be this side, Peter. George.’ He pulled up a face mask which was over his Adam’s apple so that it covered his mouth.

They circled the burning body. Valentine saw it first because Shaw heard his breathing quicken, rattling in his throat. And then he saw it too – a human head, untouched by the fire, the skin still white, even the lips still red. The white flesh of the neck simply ended in the white ash of the rest of the body. It was a thought which shocked him, but Shaw thought it was as if the head was a cigarette filter, the rest of the body spent ash in an ashtray.

‘Christ,’ said Shaw, looking up at the tree tops, hoping to see a splash of blue sky, but finding only the drifting smoke. He’d let his eye return to the face for a nanosecond, but it had been long enough to know he recognized the victim, or recognized the birthmark on the unblemished cheek.

‘It’s one of the demonstrators – from up by the wind farm. George?’

Flames suddenly flickered within the body, crackling, so that the smoke thickened. Valentine covered his mouth with a handkerchief and stepped closer.

‘It’s him,’ he said.

‘Human candle,’ said Hadden. ‘Once the temperature’s high enough the body fat just goes on burning. The head’s the last bit left – the rest has gone. I’d say the source of the heat was on his back – there . . .’

Shaw thought of the night-light left beside Arthur Patch’s bed, burning until it ignited the gas in the house, blowing itself out. These flames had proved more tenacious.

Hadden leant forward, using a pair of forensic callipers to mark the spot where the vertebra of the back showed through the white ash. The bone was black on the surface, but flaking away from the white calcium beneath, like a firestone in a chimney, set behind the hearth to collect and radiate the heat. ‘It’s a slow process, could go on for days,’ said Hadden. ‘We’re going to have to cover it, Peter, cut the oxygen supply, otherwise the head will burn. I’ll need a fire blanket . . .’ he said, looking back at a fireman on the edge of the clearing. Then the CSI man let his eye run over the bundle of flesh and bone. ‘There,’ he said, using the pincers to point. ‘Looks like a torch to me.’

There was cylinder, reduced to the metal core, and what looked like a reflective disc.

So night time, thought Shaw. At Hendon they’d done work on victims of fire. There was a common belief that human beings can
spontaneously combust
– burst into flames, only to be found later, a pile of ashes in a room untouched by fire. But the science was clear. There needed to be a flame first – an intense source of heat, then the flesh burnt slowly, body fat feeding the flame, until nothing was left. The forest fire had flashed past the trapped victim, whatever had been in the rucksack had ignited and provided an intense source of heat for several minutes, igniting the body fat. Then the long, slow burn had begun. Question was: was he dead by the time the flames arrived, or did the fire overcome him?

The head was chin up, looking at the treetops, so Shaw got to within a few inches of the face. He thought if he did this now, quickly, the image wouldn’t end up in his nightmares. It was certainly the young man from the Docking Hill demo, the one who’d kept pace with the Porche. Had it only been last Friday? They’d been driving down to Wells for the East Hills press conference. The young man with the strawberry birthmark had put his hand on the passenger side sill, and Shaw had noticed the smart, stylish watch which showed the movement of the moon, catching the sunlight. ‘Should be a Rolex – separate windows for the sun and moon,’ he said.