Tiredness overwhelmed him, so that he slept for a nano-second, waking up with a heart-thumping start. He stood, both hands on the glass, looking out on the bleak
Shaw’s heart missed a beat. He looked at his CCTV print, at the window within a window cleared by the windscreen wipers. He’d seen it so many times – and yet hadn’t seen it. He looked out of the window at the HGV, back at the Mini, back at the HGV.
‘Jesus,’ he said, burying his head in his hands. He’d known all the time – or he should have realized he’d known. The paint he’d tracked down through forensics was for a batch of Minis for export.
‘Anything wrong?’ asked Galloway, who was playing computer games silently on his desktop PC.
‘No, just the opposite. Here, have a look.’
Galloway came over, his knees slightly arthritic, the mug of whisky still in his hand.
‘What’s the difference between this windscreen,’ said Shaw, touching the print, ‘and that…’ He pointed at the HGV.
‘This windscreen’s covered in water – that one’s covered in shite.’
Shaw shook his head. ‘Nope. This one…’ he said, letting his finger vibrate on the print of the Mini. ‘This one is left-hand drive. See – the shape of the cleaned area
‘Well done. So what?’
‘This picture was taken a few moments after a fatal crash. One man got out the driver’s side, two out the back. At least, I thought it was the driver’s side. But it isn’t. The driver is still in the car. There were four of them. But the driver’s smart enough to stay out of sight.’
He gave Galloway the surfer’s smile. He felt a flash of joy in his life, like a distant view of the sea. ‘Got any more of that whisky?’
Thursday, 9 September
Jan Orzsak stood on a chair in the hallway of his house, a picture of his mother, cut from the family album, held to his chest with one hand. He’d been standing still for nearly two hours and the pain in his legs was making them shake. Around his neck was a noose he’d made from a bed sheet, the end attached to the newel post of the banisters above.
The dawn sun shone through the 1930s stained glass over the front door. The light – blue and yellow – caught dust motes in parallelograms of colour. A heavenly beauty, he thought. And the fittingness of this thought made him smile.
He’d heard the six o’clock siren on the docks. He wondered if he could die by inaction, if he just stood and let the world grow old around him. He’d almost taken that decision when there was a sharp knock on the door.
The intrusion broke the spell. Whoever it was tried to flip up the letterbox, but he’d had it nailed shut after the latest dogshit package. ‘Mr Orzsak?’ said a muffled voice. ‘We saw the light. I’m sorry, can we talk? It’s the power engineers – from next door.’
The last twelve hours had been the worst of Jan Orzsak’s life, and he was determined – as a determined
He’d set the DVD player in his room to Chopin, a nocturne, playing in a continuous loop. It had reached the closing bars. There’d be silence in a minute and then all he had to do was step off the chair, and it would be over. But how many times had he listened already to those same closing bars? Twenty? Each time the beautiful music demanded another performance. A final curtain-call.
The knock at the door was more insistent. ‘Mr Orzsak. We need to cut the power. I can’t go ahead unless you agree. Ten minutes, sir, then we’ll be done and out of your hair. Sir?’
Beyond the front door he could hear the foreman muttering – stringing together profanities.
The music died.
Orzsak felt very cold, the blood rushing to his heart, the sudden certainty of what was to happen next making his vision clear. He gripped the picture to his heart and he thought what a child-like impulse that was, and that made him even more determined to go back there – before all this happened – back to a time of innocence.
He stepped off the chair into the spangled air.
Weightless, for a second, he felt sublimely happy.
Shaw rang the head of security for the docks, an ex-DI from Peterborough called Frank Denver, at 7.01 a.m. Shaw thought the timing was acceptable – but wasn’t surprised to discover otherwise. When Denver had stopped shouting about being woken up Shaw told him the good news: that there was every chance a series of major crimes had taken place within the docks, unnoticed by either his security staff or the Lynn CID. His cooperation was now urgently required. He didn’t have a choice.
Denver arranged for a taxi to call at the dock security booth and pick up the written record of vehicles entering and leaving the quayside, then drop it at the agent’s office. The CCTV footage from dock security was available at the booth – there was a back room for viewing and DC Birley was on his way down to start running it through. The Port Authority manager was told that on no account was he to meet any request from the Rosa to leave Lynn; if asked, he was to say that the Home Office had an immigration issue and was sending up an officer to interview the captain.
Shaw arranged for a former colleague in the Met to liaise with Whitehall to make sure they had a credible set of case notes to begin an inquiry. Meanwhile, Shaw got Twine to search for the Rosa online; he wanted details on ownership, crew, and cargoes.
Rosa’s gangplank at 7.06 a.m. It was booked out at 8.13 a.m. At 4.30 a.m. the next morning it returned, leaving at 5.13 a.m. Each time there was a chauffeur. The man who was the passenger – dropped on the first morning, picked up the next – was grossly overweight and walked badly. The Rosa sailed at six on Tuesday morning.
The BMW’s registration plate led them to a car-hire firm in Lynn. The vehicle was still on hire, at a private address in Burnham Overy Staithe, a village deep in the heart of ‘Chelsea-on-Sea’, booked out in the name of a Ravid Lotnar.
Shaw left by taxi, meeting Valentine in the Mazda on the Tuesday Market in a lay-by on the east side. First, news from St James’s. Andy Judd had been charged with arson and criminal damage and then released on police bail. Three conditions: he had to report daily at St James’s, had to stay within a mile of Erebus Street, and he had to keep away from Jan Orzsak.
‘Jewish,’ said Shaw, as they picked up the coast road running east. ‘Peploe gave me some files, background material on the organ traffic trade. Israelis are major customers – know why?’
Valentine drummed his fingers on the steering wheel; the Mazda was trapped behind a caravan. ‘Money?’
‘Nope. It’s one of the few developed countries which do not recognize the concept of brain death. That seriously reduces the supply of organs for transplant, which forces thousands onto the black market. Which means we are almost certainly about to meet our first organ transplant customer.’
The radio crackled. It was Birley. He’d cut into the CCTV footage at hourly intervals for Sunday. The power had gone at 12.15 precisely. Luckily, the CCTV cameras were on a circuit which fed the new dock, so had remained live. He was able to see that at dusk most of the ships had switched to their onboard generators and had begun to show lights. The Rosa, however, had remained in darkness until 12.13 a.m. Shaw worked with that time frame: if an operation had been under way on the Rosa
They got to the village and turned off towards the beach, the lane snaking through an ocean of reeds where the spring tides flooded the marsh.