[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (22 page)

‘We invite pilgrims to record their visit and add a line of prayer.’

Across the page had been scrawled, in blood, the words:
The Wolves Have the Scent.

TWENTY-NINE

S
haw took a call on his hands-free, edging the Porsche through a tailback on the outskirts of Wells. The caller ID read: FORTIS. He knew instantly from the sonar-like echo that she was outside, on a beach, if not actually in the sea, because she had to shout through the sound of the surf.

‘Inspector Shaw? Julia Fortis. Can we meet?’ she said. ‘I’ll be brief, but I need to give you something. We’re on Holme Beach, it’s a barefoot ski club meeting. Just head for the sound of the jet ski. We’ll be here till sunset.’

Shaw said he’d be twenty minutes. The traffic crawled along the coast road until Holme, where he turned off into the car park down by the dunes and then crossed the golf course to reach the sands.

The jet ski was a hundred yards off the beach, the engine noise coming in blasts with the onshore wind, a skier behind travelling at – Shaw estimated – thirty-five miles an hour. On the beach wet-suited skiers waited their turn.

Fortis, in a one-piece costume, was walking towards him, a wetsuit over her shoulder. At Marsh House she seemed stiff and ill-at-ease, although the circumstances had hardly been auspicious. Here, on the sands, she followed a catwalk sinuous path, as elegant as a supermodel. The swimsuit was a vibrant, stand-out green.

‘Gardening leave?’ asked Shaw, before she reached him.

She smiled, collecting her hair in a bunch with a band. ‘I spent the first twenty-four hours at home, thinking I’d done something terribly wrong. I haven’t. So I thought I’d enjoy myself. And I thought I’d clear my conscience too.’

Her eyes kept flitting over his shoulder, up the long incline of the beach towards the edge of the pinewoods.

‘The crime was not telling us about Camera D.’

‘I know. My lawyers are dealing with that. I’m told I can expect a custodial sentence, suspended. I don’t know if I should believe them, it’s in their interest, you see, to keep me happy and carefree. The trust has a home in Bude, in Cornwall. I’m told the manager’s job is coming up and I’m a shoe-in. I don’t know what to believe.’

Shaw was in bare feet and he’d begun to sink his toes into the sand, wishing he could spend the rest of the day with this much space to savour. The thought of the CID room back at St James’ made him feel tired and irritable.

‘You had something for me …’

‘A moment,’ she said, dropping the suit on the sands, as if discarding a mink coat.

Shaw watched her walk away, up the beach, until she reached an elderly woman in a folding chair, with what looked like knitting on her lap. The chair had slumped slightly on one side and Fortis expertly levered herself against the frame to set it straight before rummaging through a set of bags and a picnic hamper.

She ran back with a piece of paper.

‘Patient?’ asked Shaw.

‘I guess. It’s my mother actually, she’s at Marsh House, upstairs. Staff get a substantial discount, you see. Mum’s been ill for several years. That’s all part of the deal too, of course, that she can move to Bude with me. But it’ll break her heart to leave. Most days she forgets my face, but she likes the view out of her room, the wallpaper in the TV room, the sunflower crockery. It’s all she’s got to hold on to.’

She handed Shaw the paper. ‘Read this.’

It was a memo, dated, on Marsh House notepaper, with copies to several Starlight Trust executives, but addressed to Mr John E. Travis, Norfolk Regional Administrator.

Dear Mr Travis,

A brief note on Irene Coldshaw, with reference to my earlier notes. Irene is distraught about the situation she finds herself in at Marsh House. To summarize: her assets comprise her pension and a £226,000 trust fund, from which our fees are paid. Due to her condition, an intermittent but severe senile state, her power of attorney lies with her niece, Mrs Sarah Towton, who lives with her family in Scunthorpe.

Mrs Towton suffers from acute kidney failure and is subject to daily dialysis. They have four children under twelve, a limited income from Mr Towton’s job at the ICI works in Scunthorpe, and are in poor housing. Mrs Coldshaw was, briefly, housed with them after her husband died six years ago.

The Towtons are in an invidious position. They are, according to Irene, sole beneficiaries of her estate. It also falls to them to decide if she should stay at Marsh House, and incur the fees. Irene has written to them to explain that she would feel better if she were transferred into a council facility. In fact, she is very happy here at Marsh House.

However, it is obvious that she wishes the Towtons to eventually benefit from her estate, which is being diminished by the monthly payments for Marsh House.

The Towtons insist that Mrs Coldshaw is confused and they believe she would want to stay at Marsh House if she did not feel a duty to them. Mr Towton has offered to visit Mrs Coldshaw, but the offer was declined. I have to say that Mrs Coldshaw, even if this background is taken into consideration, seems peculiarly anxious. There may be other hidden pressures.

I wish to propose a possible solution. We could provide Mrs Coldshaw with a nurse for the day, and transport, so that she could visit Sarah Towton. She believes that if she can see her in person she can persuade her to agree to the transfer to council care. After all, the most important thing is that Mrs Coldshaw is happy, and it seems certain that the current situation is making her unhappy.

Mrs Coldshaw’s condition is deteriorating rapidly, largely due to stress. She feels she is directly responsible for the plight of her niece. I attach an assessment by Dr Flitt, and an additional report from the psychiatric care unit.

I look forward to your response.

Julia Fortis

Administrator

‘I’d like you to make me a promise which I know you can’t keep,’ said Fortis, waving up the beach at the woman in the folding chair.

‘You can have that, it’s a copy. The coroner at Irene’s inquest did not request access to the documentation and the trust suggested to me that making it public would only distress the relatives. The truth, of course, was that it would put them in the dock, because they declined my suggestion. Three times. I suspect they felt
their
interests lay with collecting the fees.

‘I thought it might help. It explains a lot. Also it exposes what I believe is a significant loophole in the law, which allows beneficiaries to act with the power of attorney – an intolerable clash of interests. I can’t help feeling that in many cases the care homes simply play on the guilt of relatives, telling them that their loved ones deserve the very best care. Or the most expensive, which is not the same thing.

‘If the trust knows you have a copy they’ll know I gave it to you. And that will be the end of my Faustian pact. I can live with that – and so can Mum – otherwise I wouldn’t have done this. But if you can keep me out of it by not referring directly to the letter, I’d be grateful. We’d be grateful. Perhaps you could suggest that your interviews with staff at Marsh House have uncovered Irene’s story?’

Shaw looked away, out to sea, reluctant to make promises. A whistle blew and the barefoot ski club members beckoned Fortis to join them.

‘My turn; I better go,’ she said. ‘It’s a good sea, glass-like.’

‘What do you think Irene was thinking that morning she drove away?’ asked Shaw.

Fortis picked up her wetsuit. ‘I think she was caught in a dilemma the old have to face, a sharper dilemma in her case, but essentially the same. There comes a point when they know the world would be a happier place if they weren’t there. They’re a burden, an obstacle in the path of the young. She couldn’t live with that, so she decided to act. What was her aim? I think she wanted to talk to her niece and try and make her see that she just wanted some peace of mind. But perhaps she just needed to drive until it was over – one way or another; sometimes the weight of decision is too much, and we give ourselves up to fate.’

THIRTY

T
he keys, two identical for the front door, and a single for the back, had come with a printed key ring label which read: 32 Hartington Street, The Causeway Trust. Valentine, picking them up from a solicitor’s office on the Tuesday Market, had asked about a fourth key on the iron ring – small, slight and gold – and been informed it sprung a padlock on the side gate which led down the tunnel-back alleyway to the yard.

Now, standing in the street, he saw that couldn’t be right after all, because there was just a bolt on the gate. Shaw peered in the front window where the sunlight glinted off the old silvered mirror and splashed down on a threadbare patterned carpet. The glass in the lattice-work sash had been recently cleaned by a professional, but the sill inside was dusty and held the desiccated remains of a few flower heads. A bottle of Lucozade and what looked like the remains of a Chinese takeaway lay on the table, a spoon sticking out of a livid tray of sweet and sour sauce.

‘So what’s the story?’ asked Shaw, putting his knee against the front door, turning the key and pushing it open. The empty hallway, bare-boarded, with a print of George VI, set a dismal note.

In contrast, Valentine appeared to relish getting inside the house. In a few strides he was checking out the downstairs front room. He seemed energized, focused and even a little light-headed. Shaw hoped it wasn’t just a brief, irrational interval of post-diagnosis elation.

‘She left the house to the charity – apparently it’s linked to Help the Aged, but the solicitor was a bit vague,’ said Valentine. ‘They rent it out, fully-furnished, through a local agency, with the solicitors as agents. What’s left of the rent goes to the charity. Current tenant is a’ – Valentine consulted a note he’d made on his mobile phone – ‘Polish migrant. Name’s beyond me, but he works out of the Alexandra Dock. Currently at sea. Rent’s two hundred and fifty pounds a month, which is dirt cheap, but then nobody wants to live on Parkwood Springs. Long-term strategy, according to the agents, is to sell when the developers start waving cash about.

‘Current market value is sixty-eight thousand pounds, but if the developers buy up the rest of the street, it’s suddenly worth a lot more. They might see one hundred thousand more.

‘But that can’t be the whole story. I had a look at this place from the outside a few nights back and the takeaway wasn’t on the table. That night the place reeked of fish and chips. But the Pole’s been at sea for a week. So, he’s either sub-letting or he’s had uninvited visitors.’

They split the rooms between them and then met back on the upstairs landing. Shaw had little to report save the hand marks on the wallpaper, all at the same height; Hood had been blind for the last six months of her life, and the trailing hand had left its mark, feeling along walls, finding corners, seeking out switches. That was an insight which made the trip worthwhile, he felt, solidifying an image of the frail woman, alone and blind, surrounded by the decay of Parkwood Springs.

Valentine, besides noting the cardboard over the broken pane in the kitchen door pinpointed by Dr Roy, found further evidence of burglary: a cellar door jimmied open (the cellar empty, damp, but for a rustic cider press, which still gave off a faint aroma of crushed apples). And the kitchen looked strangely depleted of white goods: no fridge and the plumbing for a dishwasher, but no dishwasher.

The tenant had slept in the smaller, back box room. It was an odd choice but then Shaw raised the blind to reveal a fine view of the Cut, stretching out like a runway towards the sea. Two grain ships were passing in the mid-distance. The single bed held a sleeping bag and a girlie magazine with a Polish title. A rather fine china cup and saucer were set on the floor, containing a film of green tea. A bedside book lay spine up, splayed open:
Typhoon
by Conrad in the original English. Briefly, Shaw wrestled with the irony of the choice – the Pole who’d chosen English to write a British classic. Valentine touched the cup: cold, the tea stain almost fossilized. The wardrobe held worn work clothes, mostly high-quality thermal jackets, boots, double-skin socks, leather gloves with fur liners. Curled on the dressing table was a line and extension for a PC and a WiFi AirPort.

The front bedroom was very different.

It was dominated by a hospital bed, with hoist and stripped-down mattress, which looked almost new. The bedside table was NHS standard issue as well, as was a stand for an intravenous drip, complete with clamp and on-off metal tap. It was the only room in the house which smelt of disinfectant and the only room without a carpet.

‘If you’re going to die at home this is the price you pay,’ said Shaw. ‘Home looks like a hospital. I reckon Hood died in here. No wonder chummy’s taken the back room. Odd they left the gear here.’

The fourth, gold key seemed superfluous, until they got to the kitchen, which had been upgraded at some point in the eighties galley-style. The cat flap had been torn off its hinges. They let themselves out and Valentine spotted a new padlock on what had been the original toilet and bathhouse. Overhead a set of telegraph wires ran zigzag down the backs of the houses. A pair of white trainers hung above them, one spattered with blood.

Through the single window in the bathhouse, choked in cobwebs, Shaw could see a cracked mirror and a brush on a hook. Within the layered image lay something else, oyster-like and pale. Cleaning the glass with his cuff, he thought it might be the reflection of his own good eye, swimming in the silvered glass, but it didn’t blink when he did.

The key slipped the lock easily, but the hinges fell away from the rotting wood when they had to force the warped door open, the sunlight illuminating the broken toilet pan, encrusted with dead spiders. Taking up most of the space was a homemade smoker – a garden brazier with the top altered to form an ‘oven’ in which fish, or meat, could be cured over charcoal or wood. The smell was overwhelming, the tang of salty flesh.