They left Twine to organize a DNA swab off Joe Osbourne after their interview. Shaw wasn’t even going to ask O’Hare to OK the costs of that. This was still Shaw’s inquiry, and he could authorize expenditure under?5,000 without going up the line of command.
Out on The Circle a marked police car was parked outside No. 5. The porch of the house was crowded with bouquets and wreaths, dominated by a single bunch of sunflowers. Shaw looked at the card and saw they were from Kelly’s, the undertakers, Ella Assisi’s signature scrawled across an embossed card. Best Wishes.
Again, thought Shaw, a curious lack of love.
Inside the house, Joe Osborne stood in the hallway. ‘What’s this about?’ he said.
His fair hair was unkempt and his hands, slender, almost feminine, hung by his sides, smudged with oil.
‘A few questions,’ said Shaw. ‘Routine. There’s been some developments.’
Osborne looked into the front room, then towards the bedroom, as if trapped in his own house.
‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Please.’ He looked at his feet; his shoulders slumped.
Shaw waited. ‘There’s a workshop,’ volunteered Osborne. ‘Down the garden, we can go there. I often go there.’
A picket fence just two feet high separated the back gardens of No. 5, and the Robinson’s next door at No. 6, which was mostly chicken-run. The Osbourne’s was dominated by the allotment vegetables and a patch of rough grass, leading to a wooden workshop — almost the width of the garden, with just a narrow alley left to a gate which led out to the pine woods.
One of the padlocks on the workshop was proving difficult to open and the frustration seemed to be too much for Osbourne. He dropped his hands, eyes closed, as if trying to hold himself together. He tried again, and the lock gave. Inside, the workshop was a surprise — more a study or a den. Books lined one wall; there was a leather battered armchair in one corner, a gas heater for a kettle, a digital radio, a desk with pencils neatly lined up beside a mug. There was a workbench too, and Osborne took the wooden seat beside it. As he sat he slipped an inhaler out of his pocket and took two surreptitious breaths.
‘What developments?’ he asked.
Shaw told him about the explosion at Arthur Patch’s house, the traces of cyanide in the old man’s blood, his tenuous link to the East Hills murder. Then he told him that they now thought the East Hills killer might not be amongst the thirty-five men on the island that afternoon in 1994.
Did he know Patch? Did he ever use the little car park by the quayside?
Osbourne laughed. ‘Everyone knew Arthur. Bit of a character. He was in that caravan, or sat outside it, every working day of his life. ’Course I knew him. Never needed to park though — always had the bike. We have deliveries but I know the wardens and they turn a blind eye for twenty minutes, so no, I never used the car park.’
‘Mr Osbourne,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ve also discovered some new information about Marianne, about the day she was out on East Hills. I’m afraid she didn’t tell the truth — not the whole truth — about that day.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Osbourne, one hand automatically tightening, then loosening a G-clamp on the edge of the bench, spinning the well-greased metal handle.
‘Marianne said she was planning to go out to East Hills with a friend, Julie Carstairs. That Julie didn’t turn up, so she went alone.’
‘That’s right.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ said Shaw, and Osbourne seemed to flinch. ‘Julie says Marianne may have done this to meet men, Mr Osbourne.’ Shaw took a deep breath, because what he wanted to say was cruel, but he thought he should say it: ‘Several different men that summer.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Osbourne. He ran his still-oily hand through his hair, leaving a grey highlight. But the denial of the possibility he’d been cheated on was perfunctory, Shaw thought.
‘I think you knew all about it,’ said Shaw. ‘And I think you’d decided to do something about it. I think you were on East Hills that day. How did you get to the island — did you swim, or did Tug Coyle pick you up at Morston? That would have given you an element of surprise. So you could just walk out of the sea. What did you do? Look for Marianne? Then, when you didn’t find her, did you wander off into the dunes? She was there, wasn’t she — with White. And that’s when you killed him. But you picked up a wound — something bloody but superficial. So you had to swim for it.’
Osbourne swallowed, the Adam’s apple bobbing in his bony throat. His face seemed to ripple slightly, as if from a blow.
‘I don’t think you meant to kill him — did you, Joe? Just scare him.’
And then Shaw saw it more clearly. ‘Did he have a knife too? Was that what you didn’t expect? We know he had one and it’s never been found. And you always had one.’
Osbourne’s eyes widened, and Shaw thought that he was trying to work out what else they might know.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of it — not a word.’
‘Since your wife died you’ve been going into work I think — most days. That’s what Aidan told us. But the shop’s been shut. Where have you been Mr Osbourne?’
Osbourne seemed to focus on a point equidistant between them. ‘I walk. In the dunes. It helps.’
From the woods they heard the sound of dogs barking. Osbourne stood, knocking the bench, and walked to the back door of the workshop, keeping his back to them. He opened the top half of a stable door and looked out at the edge of the woods. Smoke was drifting out from the green shadows. Somewhere up the hill, under the canopy of trees, they could hear shouts. He fumbled in his pocket and produced his inhaler, and they heard three rapid breaths.
The shouts in the woods seemed to be getting louder, insistent, and Shaw heard a single police whistle, but a distance away, over the hill, towards the Old Hall Estate.
‘I’d like to take a DNA swab, Mr Osbourne,’ said Shaw, breaking the silence.
‘One of my detective constables will call a little later to take you down to St James’. We’d like a formal statement as well. And if you could stay in Creake — or Wells. If you need to leave the area, even for a few hours, I’d like you to inform DS Valentine here — he’ll leave you a mobile number. Are you able to accept those restrictions, Mr Osbourne?’
He turned then, and Shaw could see he was shaking, his narrow shoulders unsteady. ‘I was at the shop the day the Aussie died. In the back. Dad was busy; if he hadn’t been I’d have gone with her. I’d have been there.’
Shaw logged the denial in his memory, but was unmoved by it.
Osbourne’s eyes widened and he almost fell. ‘And Marianne, and that old man. You think I did that too?’
‘Did you?’ asked Shaw.
‘No,’ said Osbourne, simply. ‘Why would I do that?’ He looked at his own hands. ‘How could I do that?’
‘Because Marianne was a witness to White’s murder,’ said Shaw. ‘She lied to save you, as well as herself. But not this time — this time she couldn’t face it. Did she ask you to help her end it, or did you suggest it? Had she just had enough of life. .’ Shaw looked back down the garden towards the house: ‘Life here, with you. Or just you?’
It was cruel blow but effective. Osbourne raised both hands to this mouth.
‘And Arthur Patch saw you that day in 1994, didn’t he? Saw the wound. So when we drew a blank on the mass screening, as you knew we would, you were afraid we’d start looking for witnesses along the coast that day and in town, and that’s when he’d step forward. So he had to die.’
A shout from the woods made them all turn to the still-open half stable door.
Emerging from the shadows was a man walking quickly towards them: Aidan Robinson, with a beater’s brush, a pair of overalls grimy with ash, the left foot trailing badly. When he got to the door he saw Joe Osbourne’s face and froze.