Shaw flicked the mobile shut. He was sitting in the waiting room for the juvenile courts. White walls, blue carpet, a child’s playpen in one corner. He checked his tide watch. High water at home, and he wished he was there. The case he was waiting for would be up in the hour. Sooner. When it was over he’d drive straight to the beach, meet Lena and Francesca, catch the sunset. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself running.
When they’d got Valentine into A&E Justina Kazimierz had been waiting for them with the serum from the US laboratory which had identified the venom in Terry Brand’s blood system. When he’d regained consciousness he’d been able to explain more fully what had happened. Taking his torch into the pavilion, he’d bent down to peer into one of the glass cabinets. That’s when he’d seen the if he followed the consultant’s advice.
The doors of the court came open. The next case was called. A girl in jeans and a ripped T‐shirt went in, a woman in a suit holding her hand.
Shaw checked the court list. The one he wanted was next – T. G. Maddams.
CCTV footage outside a corner shop had given the street‐crime unit at St James’s the information required to track down the vandal who had superglued the door locks in Giddy Poynter’s flats, and the cars in the street outside. Fifteen‐year‐old Thomas Maddams, of Wilber‐force House, Westmead Estate, was identified purchasing the glue six hours before the offences took place. His home was three miles from the shop, which was 100 yards from Giddy’s block. Maddams’s fingerprints had been on several of the vandalized cars. Shaw had talked to the prosecuting officer and Maddams had been asked, under caution, if he was responsible for the added torture of the rat’s tail through Giddy Poynter’s letterbox. He denied it. There was no evidence that he was anything more than a vandal.
Shaw tried to focus his good eye on the court clock.
Peter,
Just a note, you’ll get an official letter from my office. I’ve read the file on Tessier very carefully. I agree the new forensics are interesting but nothing points, as yet, to Robert Mosse. The report on the spray paint found on the boy’s clothes is intriguing, but hardly compelling. The resources which would have to be invested in taking these leads any further are prohibitive.
Peter, this case is now twelve years old. I cannot recommend the inquiry is reopened. Furthermore, I have to ask you not to personally pursue the case. Given your links to the original inquiry – through both your father and George Valentine – I’d find it very difficult to deflect charges that you were undertaking some kind of vendetta. The same goes for George. I’ll send him a note separately when he’s back on duty.
I’ve returned both the file and the SOC box to Timber Woods. He will release them only on my signature.
Kindest regards
Max
He could go to Warren and tell him about Giddy Poynter’s suspicious death. But what did it amount to? The sudden, convenient, disappearance of a key witness, certainly. A potential witness, Warren would counter.
The heavy wooden door to the juvenile courtroom opened and one of the ushers gave him a nod.
The court was carpeted, the wooden seats polished, a single royal crest over the bench. The defendant was already in the ‘dock’ – in this case simply a table and chair to one side of the room. He looked fifteen, edgy in a school jacket, one hand constantly unclipping then reclipping a silver wristband. Shaw wondered why he’d bothered with this case. It was unlikely to reveal anything he didn’t already know. But something his father had once said had made him attend: if you can, he’d said, always take the chance to see people face to face. Up close.
A single magistrate sat with a clerk. A police prosecutor outlined the case and evidence. Maddams pleaded guilty to twenty‐six separate charges of criminal damage. The
Maddams’s solicitor stood. He said that there were circumstances the court should consider, although Maddams accepted full responsibility for what he had done. The solicitor had good skin with a winter tan, and blue eyes, not washed of colour like Shaw’s, but the vivid shade of a Greek sky. He was thirty perhaps, perfectly at ease in a sharp suit, one hand holding a statement, the other casually in his trouser pocket. His face had a cartoon symmetry which might have made him handsome, but his features were too bland. It was his movements that marked him out: languid, unhurried, almost entirely devoid of stress.
Maddams’s background was as bleak as a bus shelter. Low IQ, learning difficulties, excluded from three schools, his mother a registered heroin addict. His father, one of the original residents of the Westmead, had died that year from throat cancer. Thomas had been badly affected by his father’s death, and this was his first offence.
But the solicitor didn’t let it go at that. ‘I knew Bill Maddams well, and indeed I’ve known Thomas many years. It was a family which, until recently, was part of the local community on the Westmead which helped hold together some semblance of a civilized society. A society in which I too had to grow up.’
He had them now. The magistrate leant forward, the clerk’s head nodding.
‘I agreed to represent Thomas – in fact I’m happy to represent him – not because of some misguided sense of
The clerk nodded, touching a file on his desk. The magistrate leant back in his seat.
‘This offence was a bizarre aberration. He can’t explain it, and neither can I.’
Maddams shifted on his chair, trying to look the magistrate in the face.
Shaw could accept that there was no apparent explanation for the crime, but why had he walked three miles to commit it?
The magistrate stood. He’d confer with the clerk in the small office to the rear – or more likely share a cup of coffee, thought Shaw. Meanwhile he sent a text message to Lena: HOME SOON. Then he stood at the back, uncomfortably aware that if he was supposed to be following Warren’s instructions to the letter, he should be back at St James’s on his next case.
Warren’s letter. He’d photocopied it and taken it in for Valentine to read. His first bedside visit had been his last. Valentine was propped up, making the pillows look grey. They’d got halfway through the pleasantries before the DS asked if Warren had made a decision on the Tessier case.
‘Nothing formal,’ said Shaw, handing him the copy. ‘So it’s a no, then.’
‘Yup.’
‘So that was worth it.’
‘It was the right thing to do.’
Shaw had given him the camera phone, wrapped by Jacky, the paper dotted with images of dice. Then he’d left without a word.
A door opened and the court usher asked all to rise as the magistrate returned. The chairman started with the bad news, a sure sign he would end on the good. The value of the damage caused by Thomas Maddams was estimated in the thousands. Residents in the flats had been terrified by their ordeal – and in fact one had committed suicide that very evening, a fact which could not be completely disentangled from Maddams’s juvenile vandalism, although the court had to accept he could not have foreseen such a consequence of his actions. The use of the glue had been cowardly and reckless. But it was a first offence and there were extenuating circumstances. A custodial sentence was not, therefore, appropriate. Maddams would undertake one hundred hours of community service and pay a fine of £1,000 in twenty monthly instalments. He would report on a regular basis to the probationary service.