PENGUIN BOOKS
Death Wore White
Jim Kelly lives in Ely, Cambridgeshire, with his partner, the writer Midge Gillies, and their daughter. He is also the author of The Water Clock, The Fire Baby, The Moon Tunnel, The Coldest Blood and The Skeleton Man, all featuring journalist Philip Dryden. The series won the 2006 CWA Dagger in the Library award for a body of work giving ‘the greatest enjoyment to readers’. The Water Clock was also shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Award for best first novel and The Fire Baby for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.
Death Wore White begins a scintillating new series, featuring DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine.
To find out more about Jim Kelly and other Penguin crime writers, go to www.penguinmostwanted.co.uk
Death Wore White
JIM KELLY
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offfices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published 2008
Copyright © Jim Kelly 2008
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re‐sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-90901-1
For Bob
Acknowledgements
There are three women without whom this book would not have reached publication: Beverly Cousins, my editor, who has again brilliantly spotted what works, and what doesn’t; Faith Evans, my agent, for her gifted interventions on character and style; and my wife, Midge Gillies, for providing a touchstone service on how to unravel knots in the plot.
Trevor Horwood has again been our talented backstop, providing meticulous copy‐editing. Jenny Burgoyne was again the backstop’s backstop, to great effect.
In addition, I owe a continuing debt to a team of advisers who have been generous with their time and expertise: Alan Gilbert on forensics, Martin Peters on all things medical, Paul Horrell on all things motorized – including an exquisite essay on spark plugs. Michael and Brian Houten took time to help me get my hero’s passion – running – just right. Allen Frary at Wells RNLI advised on boats and the dangers of boats, Eric Boyle on the chemistry of toxic waste, Chris Pitt at the RSPCA put me on the right track to discover the shadowy world of animal trafficking. And regarding that world, I have relied on the help of Ken Goddard, Director of the National Fish & Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon.
I have benefited hugely from two excellent textbooks: Forensic Art and Illustration by Karen T. Taylor, and Crime Scene by Richard Platt.
1
Monday, 9 February
The Alfa Romeo ran a lipstick‐red smear across a sepia landscape. Snow flecked the sands at the edge of the crimped waters of the Wash. To the landward side lay the saltmarsh, a weave of winter white around stretches of cold black water. And out at sea a convoy of six small boats were caught in a stunning smudge of purple and gold where the sun was setting.
The sports car nudged the speed limit as Sarah Baker‐Sibley watched the first flake of snow fall on the windscreen. She swept it aside with a single swish of the wipers and punched the lighter into the dashboard, her lips counting to ten, a cigarette held ready between her teeth.
Ten seconds. She thrummed her fingers on the leather‐bound steering wheel.
It was two minutes short of five o’clock and the Alfa’s headlights were waking up the catseyes. She pulled the lighter free of its holder. The ringlet of heated wire seemed to lift her mood and she laughed to herself, drawing in the nicotine.
A spirograph of ice had encroached on the windscreen, so she turned the heating up to maximum. The indicator showed the outside temperature at 0°C, then briefly –1°C.
She swished more snowflakes off the windscreen. Attached to the dashboard by a sucker was a little picture frame holding a snapshot of a girl with hair down to her waist, wearing a swimsuit on a sun‐drenched beach. She touched the image as if it were an icon.
Rounding a sharp right bend she saw tail lights ahead again for a few seconds. And a sign, luminous, regulation black on yellow, in the middle of the carriageway, an AA insignia in the top left corner.
DIVERSION
Flood
An arrow pointed bluntly to the left – seaward down a narrow unmetalled road.
‘Sod it.’ She hit the steering wheel with the heel of her palm. Slowing the Alfa, she looked at her watch: 5.01 p.m. She had to pick her daughter up at 5.30 outside the school. She was always there, like clockwork. That was one of the big pluses of owning her own business: she kept her own time. And that’s why she always took the old coast road, not the new dual carriageway, because this way there were never any traffic jams, even in the summer. Just an open road. Once, perhaps twice, she’d got caught up at the shop and phoned ahead to say she’d be late. Jillie had walked home then, but Sarah didn’t want to let her down.
Looking in the rear‐view again she saw that the following car was close, so she put the Alfa in first and swung it off the coast road onto the snow‐covered track. The headlights raked the trees as she turned the car, but she failed to see that they fleetingly lit a figure, stock‐still, dressed in a full‐length dark coat flecked with snow, the head – hooded – turned away. But she did see a road sign.
Siberia Belt
Ahead were the tail lights of the vehicle she had been following. There was a sudden silence as a snow flurry struck, muffling the world outside. The wind returned, thudding against the offside, fist blows deadened by a boxer’s glove. She searched the rear‐view mirror for the comforting sight of headlights behind. There were none. But the tail lights ahead were still visible: warm, glowing and safe. She pressed on quickly in pursuit.