Shaw outlined what they knew. Holme listened with his eyes closed, each swallow making his Adam’s apple creak.
When Shaw had finished he realized that Holme had been saving his strength, because when he opened his eye it was clearer, brighter.
‘You put it together in the basement of the house…’ said Shaw, recalling the chemistry lab equipment. He got his lips close to his ear. ‘But how did you do the swap?’
‘I got inside. Inside the machine. There’s a maintenance door, you can slide in by the belt, so you’re right there, just before the inner doors of the furnace. It’s hot – too hot to touch anything. But it only takes a few seconds. When the stuff came through I’d take a stash; not all – just one canister, maybe two. That’s the trick – don’t be greedy. Then I’d put the package I’d made up on the belt. Straight swap. Once the last batch was on the belt the coppers were off anyway – so I’d only be inside for two, three minutes, max. Bry would knock and I’d slip out. I never told him how easy it was – best that way.’ He tried to wink, the encrusted eye jerking open.
‘How’d you get into the hospital?’
‘Up the ladder, where Bry smoked. Foolproof – you just walk in off the street into the goods yard and wait until they take a break. You don’t have to wait long. They
He closed his eyes.
‘But then Bry wanted out? Like the family says?’
The eye came open, angry. ‘Shit. No.’ He shook his head despite the pain. ‘That’s Bry’s story because they all wanted him to stop. But Bry – he was happy. Happy as he’d ever be. No. I wanted to stop. We’d fought over it; I’d been telling him for months. But this big shipment was coming in and he wanted to do it. And he wanted some serious money back – a full share: fifty-fifty. I went up there that last day to tell him I wouldn’t do it.
‘I had a life once. I wanted it back. I stopped using about eighteen months ago. So I was looking for a new start – a bit of cash to get me out, and up. So I tried a couple of deals, and got caught. I was going down, whatever the lawyers say. I know enough people who’ve been down. If you supply it’s OK. But you use too – no one can resist that. I thought, if I go in it’ll kill me.’
He laughed silently, overcome by the irony.
‘The lawyer’ll tell you – we’re looking at a deal that’ll get us an open prison. One last chance. So I told Bryan we’d stop. I gave him a bottle of the Green Dragon – I told him if he wanted the stuff there’s a bloke on the docks can get it. But, like, it costs too – top end, two-fifty quid, more. It’s money he hasn’t got. But that was going to be his problem, not mine.’
‘What time did you see him?’
‘Three – maybe half past. I met him up on that ledge where he smoked. I told him again, that it was over. He wasn’t happy but, like, what’s he going to do about it?
Shaw sipped his Guinness. The Red House was silent.
‘So, there was a drugs trade. But Bryan Judd didn’t die trying to get out of it. He wanted in, not out.’
‘We believe this stuff?’ It was DC Lau, a bottle pressed to her lips. ‘What if they argued anyway? Judd might have gone for him, they struggle, and whack!’ She knocked the bottle on the table top.
‘What was there to argue about?’ asked Shaw. ‘Holme was going down – and they needed his expertise to do the switch. And we’ve checked his story with the brief and it all matches up. They’d agreed a change of plea, to guilty. There was too much hard evidence – CPS has the case, I’ve looked at the file. No, Holme was up for a plea bargain and there was a good chance he’d get it. There was nothing Bryan Judd could do about it.’
Chatter filled the room.
‘Let’s put drugs to one side,’ said Shaw, and the room fell silent. ‘I’m not saying forget it – I’m saying to one side, for now.’
Birley went to the bar to get refills, while Shaw nursed the Guinness, reading some of the reports from door-to-door. And three notes. The first was a progress report on tracking down Pete Hendre, the hostel resident Shaw had saved from the burning upper floor of number 6 Erebus Street, who’d slipped out of the Queen Vic
The second note was from Newcastle CID. He flicked over a few pages. They’d traced Ben Ruddle, the teenager who’d got Norma Jean Judd pregnant in 1992. He’d been released from Deerbolt, County Durham, in 1994, having been found guilty on the burglary charge. There was no record of him returning home. He was back inside in 2000, for burglary again. The case came up at Castle Barnard, County Durham – thirty-one other offences of a similar nature taken into account. Out eighteen months ago from Acklington, again County Durham. Probation service had a record of him working in a market garden, outside Middlesbrough. He went missing six months ago, after picking up his wages. Teesside Social Services had a record of him turning up in a homeless shelter: six nights. He was interviewed – then, next day, off the radar.
‘Middlesbrough,’ said Shaw, handing the note to Valentine to read.
The third note was from Twine. The Military Corrective Training Centre at Colchester, the military’s last remaining ‘glasshouse’, had contacted St James’s. They needed help tracking down Petty Officer Andrew Sean Judd, who had absconded from custody while serving
Valentine read that note, too.
‘Let’s dig a bit more on both of those,’ said Shaw. ‘This final Ruddle interview – with the social – see if we can get a transcript. And pictures. Colchester will have a mug of Sean Judd, and Acklington’ll have Ruddle. Let’s get both.’
‘What you thinking?’ asked Valentine.
‘I’m thinking I’d like to see the faces.’
Shaw stood, fished a handful of drawing pins from his pocket, and pinned a foolscap piece of white paper onto the jaundiced wallpaper. Someone whistled and a couple clapped. It could have been a drawing of anyone, but there was no doubt that in its own way it was a work of art. Shaw’s skills as a forensic artist were known to them all – he gave regular lectures at Hendon, the Met’s training centre, and was one of only half a dozen officers with the qualification in the country. He wrote articles for Jane’s Police Review. But seen in the flesh, as it were, the result was startling. This wasn’t a police ID with pencils. It was a living person, a classic example of the kind of animated graphic which was making forensic art part of mainstream police work around the world, replacing the disjointed jigsaw of the traditional photofit.
It was a striking face. The principal feature was the gap at the bridge of the nose, especially wide, pushing the eyes apart. One of the front teeth was chipped. The bone structure was heavy, the hair thick and black; but the jaw
Shaw was proud of this because it was the first time in a live investigation he’d used the techniques of age-progression to produce an image. And it was the first piece of work he’d done since losing his right eye a year earlier. He’d been told by the occupational therapists that his ability to sketch – and to take photographs – would actually improve with monocular vision. In effect he didn’t have to close one eye, the classic artist’s pose. What he saw now, with one eye, was a 2D flat image – exactly the image he could transfer to the sketch pad. He hadn’t believed them, but now he could see the proof.