“Ever since the days of Agatha Christie, the great divide in the British detective story has been between plot and character…The novels of Jim Kelly are. . . a find.” —The New York Times Book Review Rookie detective Peter Shaw teams up with his father’s tough expartner to investigate both a gruesome series of present-day murders and some unfinished business from the past.
Death Toll: A Mystery (Detective Shaw Mystery)
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About the Author
JIM KELLY, the son of a Scotland yard detective and winner of the CWA Dagger in the Library award, lives in England.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
DEATH TOLL (Chapter 1)
Sunday, 12 December 2010
DI Peter Shaw stood amongst the gravestones of Flensing Meadow Cemetery, his walking boots invisible in a ground mist that had slipped off the river with the tide and trickled over the grass, filling the reopened graves. High tide: and on that high tide an Icelandic trawler was coming up the river in the night, a house of lights and rasping chains, and bouncing across the moonlit water the voices of men speaking a savage language. Stars turned above Shaw's head like a planetarium. The mist was damp and it made the meadow smell of rotting earth. Frost was in the air. Winter was hardening by the day, and snow was forecast before New Year. But Shaw had told his daughter not to get her hopes up, because it never snowed on Christmas Day.
The clock of All Saints Church, lost amongst the ugly egg-boxes of the old council flats, chimed ten o'clock. Shaw shifted his feet, aware of what lay beneath the damp cemetery grass. Fifty yards away stood a forensic scene-of-crime lamp, a splash of grass illuminated St-Patrick's-Day green. The light left the gravestones in stark contrast, casting ink-black shadows.
'Come on, George,' he said, turning on the spot, searching the darkness for the advancing silhouette of his sergeant. Shaw's nervous system was crying out for action, exercise, the release of physical energy. He wanted to run, to feel the endorphins surging through his bloodstream, and the oiled, rhythmic, beat of his heart. When he'd received the call he'd been on the beach with Lena near the house, their winter wetsuits laid out on the verandah. He'd been a moment away from the icy crush of the surf, the bitter-sweet trickle of freezing seawater into the suit. That was life. Not this: waiting amongst the dead.
What information the control room at St James's had passed to Shaw was characteristically elliptical. Several graves were being relocated as part of flood-prevention work along the riverside. During the opening of one of them that afternoon, 'irregularities' had been unearthed. The contractors had called the West Norfolk Constabulary, who had dispatched a forensic team and paged Shaw. By then it had been dark. Shaw was keen to get down to the graveside to see for himself what the fuss was about. But he couldn't take another step without a scene-of-crime suit, and that's what DS George Valentine was supposed to be fetching.
Midstream, the trawler dropped anchor. Beyond it, across the tidal river, he could see the Clockcase Cannery - a dismal landmark, a night-watchman's torch at a window, then the next, then the next. Upriver a necklace of traffic crossed the New Bridge. Shaw thought of the families within the cars, ferrying presents to family and friends, or driving home after the late-night Christmas shopping in the crowds packed into the Vancouver Centre. The thought made his shoulders jerk with a shiver.
Shaw stood alone. Six feet two, his blond hair cut short; slim, neat and self-contained. His jacket, oilskin, with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution motif on the chest, was zipped up to his chin. The face was broad, with wide cheekbones, the left eye the blue of falling tap water, the other blind, a pale moon of white. It was the kind of face that sought open horizons; a face suited to scanning the steppe, perhaps, searching for wild horses, or a distant wisp of smoke from a camp fire. A young face, yet one untroubled by the uncertainties of youth.
He heard DS George Valentine before he saw him, the laboured breathing, the squelch of his shoes in the damp grass. And then he was there: picking his way through the gravestones, carrying two sets of forensic trousers, gloves and overshoes. 'Tom's down by the lights,' he said, working a cigarette along the thin line of his lips. The smoke drifted into his eyes, making them water. On the fresh night breeze Shaw smelt alcohol. He slipped the trousers on by balancing on one leg. Valentine leant against a tombstone.
'It's all a bit macabre,' said Shaw, nodding towards the serried lines of open graves - some of the stones set back against the cemetery railings down by the riverside path. Did you know this was happening?' His voice was light, and held a musical, playful, quality that he often suppressed.
Valentine shook his head. 'News to me. There's a pen-pusher from the council up at the chapel when you've a sec - he's got the details. They're getting 'em all up - reburying the bones, shifting the stones, 'cos the place floods. Spring tides go over the top - every time.' He stuck his vulture-like head forward on its narrow neck. 'Global warming.' He spat into the grass. 'Environmental health people reckon it's a risk to the public.' Another shrug, touching a gravestone. 'Last ones down were in the eighties - it's not like they're fresh. So, what have they found?'
Shaw shook his head. 'Something they didn't expect to find, I imagine.'
Valentine pinched out his cigarette, put the dog-end in his pocket and followed Shaw towards the lights. The DS was wrapped in a raincoat with a grease mark where his hand held the lapels together. On the left lapel was a charity sticker: wood green animal shelter. Valentine loathed pets, but he couldn't resist a collecting tin. He rolled his narrow shoulders and let his head droop, his face as sharp and two-dimensional as an axe. He was fifty-three years old, sallow skin hung from tired bones. When the call had come he'd been in the Artichoke, on a settle by the coke fire, cradling a pint. He was profoundly irritated to find himself at work.
'No trouble seeing the fucker,' he said as they moved into the glare of the harsh white lights. He enjoyed swearing, chiefly because he knew it annoyed Peter Shaw.
Artificial turf had been laid round the letterbox of the open grave beneath the halogen floodlight. Figures, too brightly lit to be seen clearly, worked at the edges of the hole. One of them wasn't moving and Shaw realized with a shock that it was a statue of an angel, the hands cupped for water, one heel raised so that it seemed to be caught in the act of stepping forward.
As they arrived they heard the unmistakable sound of rotten wood shearing, two linen bands taking the weight of an unseen coffin as the men tried to edge it towards the surface.
Valentine looked away, aware that all too soon his own thin bones might be describing a similar journey, but in the opposite direction. When he did bring himself to look, the splintered, mud-caked casket was already set on a pair of wooden trestles, water draining away, gushing out through the fractured wood.
But it wasn't the thought of what was inside the coffin that made his heart race - it was what the lights illuminated so perfectly lying on top of the coffin.
A human figure. A corpse - more like a skeleton - the narrow noseless skull turned to one side, looking at them, eyes plugged with yellow clay.
Shaw thought instantly of a stone effigy, like the one on the Crusader's tomb in St Margaret's in the town centre: a carved version in life of what lay in death beneath. The narrow legs in chain mail, the breast plate, the hands together in prayer, the ankles crossed. But this was no marble image, rather an all too human one, the bones poking out of the rich layer of wet clay that coated them, filling the ribcage, the shallow bowl of the pelvis. And this body was the personification of pain, not repose - the skull to the right side, the torso twisted to the left, one arm thrown out, the other buckled underneath, the whole image giving the sense of a body that had been spun before death - a corkscrew in bone.
'Shit,' said Valentine, unable to stop himself from taking a step backwards.
Shaw knelt to look at the skull, now at the height of a hospital patient lying in bed. Shaw's whiz-kid reputation was partly based on being a fast-track graduate, but mostly on the fact that his degree was in art - a course which had included a year out at the FBI college at Quantico, Virginia, where he'd specialized in forensic art. He was one of only three serving police officers in the country with the ability to recreate an accurate hand-drawn image of a face from a set of skull bones, or produce a fifty-year-old face from a nine-year-old's snapshot, or draw the image of a suspect from an interview with a witness.
The human face had become Shaw's obsession, his area of expertise, his touchstone as a detective. He could read this skull as if it was a book: he could see, in his mind, what it had been, and what it might have become. And almost instantly he knew that this was a set of bones that would be defined by its exotic DNA. Even encased in clay the skull was dominated by the broad nasal aperture, in which nestled a fat orange slug, the prominent chin and jaws, with several large teeth still in situ, contrasting with the shallow sloping forehead.
'What's your story?' he said in a whisper, lowering his own face to within a few inches of the skull. Close up, the disadvantage of having sight in only one eye was at its most pronounced, so that he had to move his head constantly an inch to the left, an inch to the right, to allow his brain to construct a 3D image. He could smell death: the rich scent of decay - a human compost. Earwigs, beetles and spiders dropped from the coffin top to the turf below, their descent caught by the searing light.
Tom Hadden, head of St James's forensics unit, stood back, letting Shaw do his job, his own face aged by the horizontal light. He was a pale man, with strawberry blond hair thinning above a freckled face, his forehead marked by the lesions of skin cancer. A small scar indicated that at least one had been removed surgically.
'Peter,' he said, beckoning Shaw to his position behind the skull. He closed his eyes before he spoke, a mannerism that indicated he was deep in thought and was about to deliver a statement of fact. 'Now that,' he said, when Shaw arrived, 'is a lethal blow.'
There was a single puncture hole in the left parietal bone, close to the sagittal suture - the line that marks the division...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The evil that men do....,
By
This review is from: Death Toll: A Mystery (Detective Shaw Mystery) (Hardcover)
The words that most clearly convey the theme of DEATH TOLL are spoken by Mark Antony is Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" - "the evil that men do live after them...."The story opens on December 12, 2010. The bodies buried at a cemetery are being moved to higher ground to avoid flooding. When the grave of Nora Tilden, buried in 1982, is opened, grave diggers are shocked to find another body, a skeleton, on top of the casket. The body had to have been thrown into Nora's grave on the day she was buried. Nora was the owner of the Flask, a popular pub, which she inherited from her father, Arthur Melville. Nora is a hard woman and her relationship with her husband, Alby, is stormy, that is, until the night Alby pushed Nora down the stairs. With Nora dead and her father in prison, their daughter, Lizzie, becomes the owner of the Flask. As was her mother, Lizzie is only nineteen when the business is passed to her. Alby wants to protect her so he contacts her aunt, Bea, Nora's younger sister who has been living for many years in the United States, asking her to return to East Lynn to help Lizzie. Bea does as requested and moves back to her home town with her son, Pat, who is twenty. The major players are now in place but they are by no means the only characters who will walk across this stage. The catalyst of the story is Latrell Garrison, an American GI, a black man, who marries Bea. Together they have their son, Pat. When Bea returns to East Lynn with Pat, the resentments created by Latrell's presence awaken. Pat doesn't have an easy time and when he disappears Bea doesn't look for him, believing that he returned to the United States. Now Pat has been found in Nora' grave. Detective Inspector Peter Shaw and Detective Sergeant George Valentine are assigned this very cold case. On their own, Shaw and Valentine have been working on another cold case, the murder of Jonathan Tessier, a nine year-old who knew too much about a puppy. Shaw is determined to solve the case because it is the one his father couldn't let go. Valentine wants the solution to be found because a misuse of evidence cost him his rank and derailed a trial. Shaw and Valentine are both in danger of losing their jobs if they antagonize the chief suspect, a wealthy and respected solicitor. DEATH TOLL is a saga, a big story about a family. Arthur Melville fathered Nora and Bea. Nora gives birth to Mary, who died when still an infant, and Lizzie. Bea is the mother of Pat, the mixed race child she has with Latrell. As other characters are introduced, the frailty of the bonds of the descendants of Arthur Melville are revealed. DEATH TOLL is a saga that addresses big issues as they impact on one family. There is the hatred between Bea and Nora that surfaced when Bea decides to go to America with Latrell. Nora swore that she would never speak to Bea again if she left with him. Nora isn't a racist; she doesn't want Bea to be out from under her control. Nora keeps her word. She never speaks to Bea again. Racism is the elephant in the parlor of East Lynn. Latrell was welcome, a well-liked man. But by the time Pat arrives in East Lynn, PEN, the Party of English Nationalism, is gaining supporters among the electorate and a black man is suspect. Overshadowing life in East Lynn is incest, literally and figuratively. There are frequent references to Leviticus , the third book of the Bible. Leviticus describes the punishment in store for those who violate the boundary that protects the family unit. Incest among the players and characters in East Lynn is a poison that is destroying the family Arthur Melville established. DEATH TOLL is a book that cannot be put down. From the beginning scene, when Nora's grave is found to contain the body of another victim, everyone must question their relationships. Trust is violated. Secrets are hiding in plain sight. The evil that men do live after them and engulf their posterity, an inheritance that poisons the lives of those who should not be punished for the sins of their fathers. This is an exceptionally engrossing book and a satisfying mystery. ET IN ARCADIA EGO, (I also lived in Arcadia (paradise) is engraved on Nora's grave stone. On one hand, it is a gross mistake. There was nothing of paradise in East Lynn. But another interpretation of the phrase has Death uttering the words. No matter the place, no matter the innocent, death can be found lurking in the shadows. The author does the reader a considerable favor by including a family tree on page 164.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
family ties,
By MV (East Bay, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Death Toll: A Mystery (Detective Shaw Mystery) (Hardcover)
the plot is complicated--mom (Nora) is killed by dad (Alby) in 1982, today another body is found in the grave when the graves are exhumed in an archaeological dig. Patrick, the surprise body of an African american buried also in 1982, is that of another parent, the father of Ian, a local racially mixed young man, the grandson of Nora and the son of Lizzie, who was 19 when her mother was killed. Lizzie, with dad in jail and mom dead takes over the local business, a pub, and marries John, another local who adopts Ian as his step son. As if these family dynamics are not complicated enough, throw in an Aunt, Dad's release from prison and eventual disappearance, another dead baby and some religious fanatics.Racial tensions in the 1980's suggest one motive for murder, and a convenient group of three local racists (including John) looms large as suspects. One of the potential suspects is even in the process of planning a dinner to raise money for a local racist organization. But other factors don't fit and the detectives must look further afield--at Bea, Lizzie's aunt who returned from the US when her sister was killed to help care for Lizzie; at Kate, the mentally disabled young woman who lives with Bea and who let it be known that the three suspects followed the dead man to the grave yard, or is it Lizzie, the soon to be mother killing the father of her child on the same day as her own mother's funeral? To complicate matters, two of the three major suspects are poisoned at the dinner, along with 60 other people, coincidence or attempted murder? Newly appointed detective Shaw and his sidekick Sergeant Valentine are busy enough trying to prove that Shaw's father and Valentine were not once guilty of police corruption, but they take on the new case as well. Shaw is also trying to play his role of father with his own young daughter and racially mixed wife. This part of the plot does not get as much development as we might like, and if there are any weaknesses, it is that Kelly makes this family relationship seem more important than his attention to it actually indicates. Similarly, Valentine, a depressed and lonely alcoholic, seems intriguing but we don't get enough about this side of him. Still the two work well together and follow the leads for both cases, in the process almost losing their jobs when they allow an innocent man to be killed by one suspect. So, what makes this book worth reading-it's well plotted, the story works, and it engages not only with teasers to get you to figure out who did it but with the relationships among the many characters and the difficult and sometimes murderous ties of family. It's not melodramatic, the characters aren't too depressed (even Valentine), whiny or constantly reflecting on the meaning of life, as in some British detective fiction. Yet, they are generally fleshed out so they do not feel like cardboard or one dimensional. The book is long, but I actually wished for a bit more development of Shaw and Valentine's lives.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Past is Prologue,
By
This review is from: Death Toll: A Mystery (Detective Shaw Mystery) (Hardcover)
A protagonist like DI Peter Shaw gives the author license to throw more curve balls at the reader than a major league pitcher. Shaw, a super-cerebral, over-intuitive detective who develops more and more theories as a case develops and he encounters more facts, certainly proves the point in this novel, which has two plot lines, both based in the distant past.As a result of severe river flooding, graves along the bank in a cemetery are being exposed. When one is opened, a skeleton is found atop the casket which contains the remains of the landlady of a local pub. This sets off an investigation leading Shaw to discover a number of family secrets, with dire consequences to all concerned. The inquiries move back and forth, uncovering events from a decade ago. Meanwhile, Shaw, and his partner, DS Valentine, continue to try to prove one Bob Mosse a murderer. It was Shaw's father who arrested Mosse years before, only to see the charges thrown out of court because the judge declared a crucial peace of evidence had been contaminated by mishandling. Consequently Shaw pere took early retirement under a cloud, and his partner, Valentine, was demoted and sent into limbo. The story moves forward on both plot lines, more or less simultaneously, with Shaw, Valentine and the rest of the team uncovering a clue here, a fact there, until finally it all comes logically together, even if the conclusion requires a bit of manipulation by the author. Well done, and recommended.
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