[PS & GV #6] Death on Demand (32 page)

She looked disappointed and the blood showed in her cheeks, but she said nothing as she slowly replaced the telephone receiver.

‘When I held your head up so that you could speak, in those few minutes which might have been your last in St Seraphim’s, why did you waste what time you had on a lie? Self-justification, perhaps, even so close to death?’

‘Riddles, Shaw. Valentine looks embarrassed. I hope there’s some factual basis to these allegations.’

Shaw tossed Hadden’s forensic report on to the duvet. ‘You can read that at your leisure. In summary your fingerprint was found on the drip stand by the deathbed in Hood’s front room. A clear, primary print. That means you were there, and you were the last to touch it. Which suggests you were there for the whole procedure; there for the moments of final persuasion. Did you have to calm last-minute doubts? Ignore, perhaps, last-minute nerves and questions? The court, I’m sure, will want every detail.’

‘I really do think I need one of those lawyers present.’ Something like anger flooded her eyes. ‘But does it matter, I mean really
matter
? This is an idea, a principle, not a parlour game: this is about life and death, Shaw. It’s not Cluedo.’

‘I’m not sure the criminal law works that way. But you’ll find out soon enough. Matter? Yes, I think it does. I think a jury will think it matters. I’m pretty certain the chattering classes will think it matters. That’s the thing about a mercy killing, fine in principle, but someone has to do the deed. At the point of death it’s a very personal relationship, between victim and killer. People seem to think that euthanasia is simply a policy you can enact, and then the deed is miraculously done. It isn’t like that, is it? Did Gokak refuse to turn the tap? Is that why your prints are there?’

She picked up and dialled a single digit.

Shaw carried on speaking. ‘People, most people, will see you in a different light. I think that’s going to have repercussions for what we can now call your public persona. Angel of mercy, angel of death. The debate goes on. Let’s see what a jury thinks.’

FORTY-SEVEN

D
id they see Javi Copon die? They certainly saw the precise moment when he was lost to view, which might, in Shaw’s opinion, not be quite the same thing. The Policia de Seguranca Publica in Lisbon alerted New Scotland Yard to the website film, having briefed the GNR – the local gendarmerie at Nazare – to take statements at the scene. Emails from the Portuguese resort began to arrive at St James’ early that morning, so the facts were clear enough. Javi Copon had arrived the day before the film was shot and slept in a beachside house with three friends, having completed the purchase of two jet skis from a local supplier – a Yamaha Waverunner, at 13,500 Euro and a Seadoo Rxt at 11,200 Euro. New winter suits and four locally made ‘long boards’ came in at a further 12,000 Euro. All transactions were made in cash, from Copon’s wallet.

The Atlantic sea state was perfect for an attempt on the world record, set by Garrett McNamara exactly a year earlier, at precisely this spot. A swell of fifty-two feet was building to sets of waves in excess of seventy-five feet off Nazare’s North Point. A fresh offshore wind was due to peak at dusk, creating perfect conditions to hold waves up, like glass walls, waiting to trip over the rocks of the continental shelf, and fall – headlong – on to Nazare’s sands. Copon and his three comrades took to the water at 6.35 a.m. from the Old Port. A woman in the beachside chapel, frequented by surfers, said all three had prayed and lit candles, leaving twenty Euro notes in the collection box. Her statement included an odd addition, the observation that surfers seemed to require more holy water than other visitors, splashing it on to the forehead like a fresh, daily baptism.

During the first hour Copon piloted the jet ski, towing his friend along the crest of the brewing waves, darting forward at speed to release the surfer into the path of the breaking water, hurling them down the glassy front of the great waves; recorded by officials from the Nazare Surf Observatory, stationed in the old lighthouse on the point. During those first few hours, in which they took alternate shifts at the controls of the jet ski, they rode waves measured at seventy-seven feet, along with dozens below the seventy foot mark. Their twin pair recorded seventy-six feet and seventy-six-and-a-half feet. Despite higher off-shore wind speeds and a persistent Atlantic swell, afternoon heights declined as the weather deteriorated, a heavy sea mist creating dangerous conditions in the rock-strewn approaches off the point.

At 3.30 p.m., as a premature dusk began to gather, safety marshals called surfers in using a fog horn on the lighthouse. Copon, noting a series of deepening wave troughs, persuaded his comrade to make one last run in the jet ski. This run, with Copon on his long board, was put up on the website and remained captured in thirty-one seconds of film. It showed the grey towering wave front, the plunging white wake of the surf board, Copon’s angled body, the accelerating foam crest, descending under the weight of millions of tonnes of seawater, curling over the frail figure, then obliterating him. For two seconds he reappears, a fleeting image of the arms outstretched, arrow-like, hurtling down the glassy ‘tube’ of the wave, speeding desperately for safety. The tube closes, the wave breaks, the water explodes in plumes and geysers as it runs through the rocks.

The wave height was recorded at eighty feet – a new
unofficial
world record – because Copon’s body was not found, sucked out by the undertow, plucked free by the coastal drift which no doubt took him north out into the vast expanses of the Bay of Biscay.

A verbatim account of an interview undertaken with Cheyne O’Brien, Copon’s partner, by the local GNR officer, surname Barroso, was forwarded to St James’ via Lisbon.

BARROSO: Why did Copon ignore the marshal’s signal – why did you ignore it?

O’BRIEN: Javi said there was a chance of the record. He said his time had come. God offers you this opportunity, he said this often but he meant it today. The swell of the ocean, the wind off the cliffs, the last few great waves before the darkness falls. He asked me to do this for him, and then wait out at sea. We gave him to fate – yes. Fate did not give him back.

BARROSO: There was no sign of his body once the wave broke?

O’BRIEN: None. I used the searchlight on the jet ski, but the sea then was in shadow, and his body must have slipped past. It was a risk but we always talk about this risk. In the chapel on the beach there is a motto, carved on the door.
It is not when you want, it is when God decides.

FORTY-EIGHT

J
an and Lena walked in the shallows, towing Fran on an inflatable raft. Shaw and Valentine sat at one of the picnic tables, a barbecue sizzling a few feet away, across which had been set a dozen kebabs: scallops, prawns, hake and artichoke, sprinkled with olive oil. Shaw tended it before refilling Valentine’s glass with Sancerre.

‘There’s been a series of unfortunate events,’ said Valentine.

‘OK,’ said Shaw, sitting down, facing him across the table. There was something in the tone, and the rehearsed phrase, which made his blood run cold.

‘Not for me, for others,’ said Valentine. ‘Death makes you see things differently. Makes you think,’ he added, heaving in some air. ‘But I’d never thought about my name – the surname. From
valere
apparently, Jan looked it up, means strong and healthy. There’s loads of saints, of course, droves, going back to God knows when. The romance thing’s modern, well, Chaucer. One of that crowd. Apparently it’s all about the day – February the fourteenth. It’s when birds pair up.’

He looked Shaw in his good eye. ‘Anyway. Point is I didn’t want to lose Jan in the end so I rang the Great Eastern and said I’d like to go for the op after all. Could they get me in under the knife. They had to check the paperwork, see if it was still possible, and I had to hang on. I hung on, like I’ve got a choice. I thought, I’ve missed the slot. One chance, and I’ve just ballsed it up, all because I just wanted to curl up and die. This nurse came on and I had to repeat my details, spell it all out, and then he said he’d call back if I could just sit tight for a few minutes.’

Valentine shook his head, the narrow skull going from sunlight to shadow and back again. ‘I aged, Peter. Right then. I sat on a public bench and watched the clock on the Customs House: eight minutes it took them. A doctor, this time – no, a surgeon, a
mister
– and he says he’s sorry but there’s been a mistake.

‘I knew then, but I didn’t know if it was good or bad. I remembered the day of the scan, how I’d met the man next to me on the appointment schedule: Juan Roberto Valenciana. I told you about him. I thought then I’d never forget the name, now I’m sure I won’t. The scan that showed the carcinoma, you see, that’s his lung, not mine. I’ve got chronic emphysema, but I knew that. So I said, “I’m all right then.” And this surgeon says, “Yes. You can walk free,” like a joke. “But I have to ring Mr Valenciana and tell him the bad news.”’

Valentine’s facial features struggled to represent a single emotion. ‘Which means that if I hadn’t changed my mind I’d have gone on thinking it was over, and I’d have just waited to die, and Jan would have walked out, because she’s not a quitter, is she? And Juan Roberto would have struggled with the symptoms – the nausea, the vomiting, the fatigue. So it wasn’t bad news at all, because now he’s got a chance, and even if it fails there’ll be palliative care. Although that’s a euphemism I don’t like the sound of anymore. But overall I’m glad I rang. What do those two Aussie’s say on the Foster’s XXXX ad?
Good call
.’

Shaw turned, watching Jan kicking a splash at Fran.

‘Does Jan know?’

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She knew I’d made my mind up to go for the op, which is important, at least it feels like it’s important, that she knew I was up for the fight. But the rest, no. I don’t know where to start. I’ll tell her now. She might have a drink. Only she doesn’t usually, but if not now, when?’

Valentine smiled, the full hundred-watt version, which was so rare Shaw decided that this was the moment
he’d
been waiting for ever since he’d returned to the coast from London and the Met. They had unfinished business, and it couldn’t wait any longer.

He refilled the DS’s glass. ‘I’d come back for the weekend to the house,’ he said, knowing Valentine knew the street well; a playful Victorian villa, on a hill going down to the pier head at Hunstanton, built like the rest to be a guest house, the house he’d been brought up in, the house Jack Shaw died in. The window opposite held its little hanging sign: VACANCIES.

‘It’s hard to recall precisely …’ Valentine was looking out to sea, his face set hard. ‘Dad was in the final stretch, and so what weight there was seemed to pin him down in that bed in the front room upstairs, like he was made of lead, sinking. Mum said you’d stayed with him at night, so she could rest. I tried to help but I got in the way.

‘There were nurses. They didn’t call it palliative care then – that’s new, slicker. I felt excluded, envious really, they came and went with their own key, talking, making cups of tea. I felt like an outsider. And you were part of the mystery, part of what was going on in that bedroom. It was like being a kid again, with you and him in the Job, and never saying what it entailed, what was really happening.

‘I just wondered, George. I know it’s late, but was he ready to die? I can’t imagine he wanted to linger. It’s brutal, isn’t it, but he knew when he wasn’t wanted. Not in that state. That’s what he always told me about the booze … That if you’re not enjoying it, go home.

‘Did they hasten the end? I’m not angry, or vengeful – it’s just I left, and he was alive, and then I got the call, the next evening. Mum had it pat – died in his sleep, just floated away. I’ve seen a few people die, George. It’s never looked good. This last case just made me think again.’

Valentine re-filled his own glass from the bottle in the cooler. Taking an inch off the top, he held the back of his hand to his lips. ‘The pain was bad – he could hide it for twenty minutes, then he had to be alone. At night it was worse – a sort of delirium, I don’t think he knew I was there.’ He looked at Shaw. ‘He did ask. Not for the end, not directly, but he said he wanted the pain to stop and he didn’t mind how it stopped. They upped the medication, the morphine, we didn’t ask questions. Hours, they said, but they’d said that for weeks. Your mum stayed up til two, maybe three. I took over.

‘I’m not making this up. I should have said this all to you, one day, that day, but the moment passed and we’re all different people now.

‘There was a picture on the fireplace in that room, of you on the beach as a kid. This beach. You in a hole with a spade, Jack on his knees.

‘That night he asked me to put it by the bed where he could see it, by the glass of water and the whiskey. I did it straightaway. Then he fell asleep. The window rattled – there was a storm off the sea – so I got up and opened it out wide. I don’t know why. I stood there breathing in the air and when I looked back it was over. You can tell instantly because the lines of the face fall away, I’ve seen it before, like you’re watching a time-lapse film. I should have said before, Peter. It was a good death.’

They had a party then, on the sand, until dusk, when the conversation came back to St Valentine. Fran, using her smartphone, found a picture of the skull of the saint, encased in a glass and gold reliquary, in Rome. The Wikipedia entry said he was the patron saint of happy marriages, which prompted Valentine to announce that he’d asked Jan to marry him, although that had been against the backdrop of his – possible – imminent, death. She confirmed that the date was still in the diary.

Valentine stood, and they expected a toast, but instead he put his left foot on the bench and eased off his black slip-on shoe, followed by the right, then his socks.