Shaw had thought about interjecting the correct figure, but let it go.
‘Next month, if we don’t have the killer in custody, I will put out an internal memo to say that the senior officer in charge of the East Hill’s inquiry has requested a transfer,’ said the chief constable. ‘That’s you, by the way, in case you hadn’t noticed, because I certainly might have missed it. The internal memo will leak inexplicably to the press. George can pack his bags too. Wells’ nick is up to compliment — but I’m sure we can get him back in somehow.’ O’Hare glanced at his diary. ‘You can both attend the presser on Thursday. In fact, I insist on it. Back row. I’ll do the talking if there’s something to say. If not, you’re giving the presser and I’ll be in Whitehall; otherwise known as the West Norfolk golf course.’ He pushed his chair back on oiled castors and stood. ‘I think you should consider your future. Maybe a transfer isn’t for you. Your wife runs a business, I think, locally. Long-distance marriages do work, of course. Mine didn’t — twice.’ O’Hare smiled inappropriately and then touched the file on his blotter. ‘I see that following your unfortunate accident you were required to attend annual medical checks and a thorough ophthalmic examination. Should you fail to satisfy the police committee of your ability to continue in the job, certainly at an operational level, we would be in a position to recommend a disability allowance and pension.’
O’Hare looked at him for the only time in their interview. ‘You’re a good copper, Peter. But even good coppers have to be lucky. Get lucky by Thursday, or you’re out. One way or another.’
Shaw requested authorization to spend a further?7,000 on asking the lab to run a familial search through the national DNA database to see if there was a close match to Sample X, rather than a direct match. As long shots went it was pretty much intercontinental. The chances of the East Hills killer being randomly related to someone on the main database by family were slight. But could they afford not to do the obvious? It was the standard next step. If they got a close match at least they’d know where to start looking for the killer.
O’Hare turned him down flat; in fact, he’d make a point at the press conference that he’d refused a request to chuck good money after bad. The next time the West Norfolk paid for a DNA mass screening the officer in charge of the inquiry would do his homework first, said the chief constable, talking to his blotter, and make sure they weren’t frittering away taxpayer’s hard-earned income.
Shaw had been wordlessly dismissed. The anger he’d felt at the humiliation was still with him. The sound of a bell echoed round the lido to mark the hour.
Valentine reappeared, texting on his mobile.‘Lincoln CID,’ he said, waving the phone. ‘They tracked down Julie Carstairs — the girlfriend who stood Marianne Osbourne up on the day of the East Hills murder. She says that was a little white lie. She never intended to go out that day, and there’d been no agreement to meet. Marianne came to see her — she lived in Wells — the evening of the killing, after she’d given her statement to us at St James’. Told her what she’d told us: that she’d planned to meet Julie but she hadn’t turned up. She told Julie she’d lied because she was meeting a boy out there and she didn’t want her parents to know. Apparently she’d been out with Marianne a couple of times to East Hills because her Dad wanted her to have a chaperone. Julie was eighteen. She admits she didn’t exactly watch her every move out there. So I think we can read between the lines. She says the boys followed Marianne like gulls after a trawler. She’s got no idea who she was going to see that day. And Marianne didn’t say if she had met him. And no names.’
They heard light steps on the tiled floor. ‘DI Shaw?’ Ruth Robinson was in a tracksuit and her skin was dry and flushed despite the heat, so that he guessed that she’d just done some lengths and showered. The subtle reflection of Marianne’s Pre-Raphaelite looks was stronger in daylight. Shaw actually shook his head, trying to dislodge the image of Marianne on her deathbed. Ruth had to be twice the weight of her sibling, possibly three times. Despite that she had a strange buoyancy, as if she could float in air as easily as she no doubt could in water. She held her arms and hands away from her body as if they too were floating free. Mass she had, he thought, but not weight. An attractive woman, because she seemed to wear her size well. Happy, thought Shaw, in her own skin.
The pool was crowded, inflatables clashing, children toppling off airbeds, balls being lobbed into screeching clusters of school friends. There was no shade except a single slash across the blue water — the silhouette of the high diving board. A grass perimeter was crowded too, this time with sunbathers, older teenagers, young adults. A cluster of toddlers with armband floats were being shepherded along the poolside and Robinson gently cleared a way forward with the calm assurance of an adult confident in the company of children.
Three sides of the pool were open, with the perimeter wall providing a windbreak. The fourth side was changing rooms. There was a single-storey cafe built into the perimeter wall — a long glass window displaying a rack of ice-cream flavours. Robinson went in through a side door and emerged with a cafetiere on a tray and three large cups.
‘I wanted to talk about Marianne,’ said Shaw. ‘But mostly about your brother-in-law, Joe.’
She didn’t look at him, but at the children in the shallow end. It struck Shaw that this woman, childless, spent much of her life with kids. He wondered if she’d tried for children with her husband Aidan. Ruth smiled, cradling the coffee. Shaw was struck that someone so benign, the word was difficult to avoid — wholesome — could also hint at something else, something slightly darker, because there was a calculating facet to her stillness: a stillness so like her husband’s. She looked up at the sky where a line of geese were heading out to the marshes.
‘Joe,’ she said. ‘Why would you be interested in Joe?’
Shaw ignored the question. ‘Your sister said, in her original statement back in 1994, that she’d planned to go out to East Hills that day with a friend, Julie Carstairs. But that, we now know, is a lie. Julie didn’t know she was going out that day. Why would Marianne tell that lie?’
‘I loved my sister very much, Inspector. But I don’t think I ever understood her. I don’t know why she told that lie. She told lots. I think she thought it was one of the privileges of beauty.’ She held one hand down on the table top with the other as if it might float away. Her voice was very light, lighter than air, and musical.
‘We think she met someone out on the island — a lover,’ said Shaw. ‘And we think there’s a good chance she was being blackmailed by White — the lifeguard who was murdered. Or, possibly, White was her lover.’
Ruth’s eyes were small and quick and they were on Shaw’s now, or glancing, sideways, at Valentine. ‘You don’t think Marianne was the killer, surely. .’
‘No. But someone killed White. Which was good news for Marianne.’ Shaw let the espresso slip down his throat, following it quickly with the tap water. ‘Do you think Joe knew what was going on — that Marianne was playing the field?’ Shaw noted that despite the calm exterior the colour had drained from the woman’s face. He wondered if she really didn’t know about her husband and Marianne Osbourne. Could such secrets survive in a small town?
‘Marianne told him later about the others,’ she said. ‘Once they were married, once Tilly was born. She was proud of it — the lovers. I always thought that was a calculated cruelty because she didn’t have to tell him, did she? She made out that she wanted total honesty. I think that was a lie.’