‘We can’t rule out a link. He worked for the council back in ’94 — the car park at Wells, right by where the ferry leaves.’
Smyth pursed his lips, as if producing a soundless whistle. ‘And the body up in the woods?’
‘Too early to say anything, but clearly we’re concerned given how close the three deaths are. What? Half a mile apart. Hell of a coincidence. Give me your mobile number. Anything develops I’ll let you know if I can.’
‘An arrest?’
‘Maybe,’ said Shaw. ‘We’re hopeful.’
This time Valentine offered refills and they all said yes. At the bar he admitted, if only to himself, that Peter Shaw was a good operator under pressure. Valentine guessed he’d given the reporter the East Hills link to wrong-foot the chief constable. Could O’Hare really remove Shaw and Valentine from the inquiry if there was a triple killer at large? This wasn’t an academic cold case anymore. And all of a sudden that?400,000 mass screening bill didn’t look quiet so important up against the fact they had a murderer on the loose. It was a high-risk strategy. But it might work. And the cleverest thing of all was that the reporter had not been given the most important bit of news: that the mass screening had scored a total blank. Cradling three drinks effortlessly in his bony hands Valentine turned from the bar, squeezing through the holiday ‘scrum’ and back out into the garden.
Smyth was already on his mobile, arranging with Shaw to double-check dates, times and names. He cut the line, pushing away his pint. ‘We’ll talk,’ he said, standing, then walked away without looking back.
‘Smarmy bastard,’ offered Valentine when he was out of earshot, looking at the abandoned pint.
‘You’re not wrong,’ said Shaw. ‘But clever. He didn’t ask about the DNA results. Maybe he knows. That’s all we need.’
Valentine’s mobile registered an incoming text. An old colleague at Well’s nick, saying they had something on the Patch case for him: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. First Jan Clay comes up with the link to the museum, now one of his old mates wanted to help. Maybe his years at Wells weren’t all wasted. He showed Shaw the screen message.
Shaw stood, told him to finish his drink, and he’d see him at six down in Wells, outside The Ship. He was going east in the Porsche to Morston: he wanted to see the spot where the young Holtby had once stood, stand there too and imagine a figure wading out of the water that summer’s evening, and a young boy watching from the sand. Then he’d get on the phone and see if they could get Osbourne’s DNA result out of the lab by nightfall.
When Shaw reached the Porsche he could feel the heat radiating from the paintwork. Glancing north, towards the coast, he was startled to see the first storm clouds of the summer, a great billowing mass of cumulus, each one with a heart so black they hinted at purple. On the breeze, thrillingly, he scented rain.
TWENTY-NINE
The storm was still at sea as Shaw drove the coast road. Clouds churned over sunlit water. Thunder and lightning crackled together, the sound so immediate it appeared to be inside his head. The coast road was busy with holidaymakers quitting the beaches, heading back to cottages or the amusements at Wells. He turned off at the village of Morston, waiting several minutes for a break in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. A lane led past a line of stone houses and a small caravan site down to Morston Quay. Getting out of the car on the grass beside the wooden dock Shaw could see grey parallelograms of falling rain on the horizon, like solid ladders between sea and cloud. The wide expanse of water trapped in Blakeney Pit — the tidal waters between the coast and the long shingle spit of Blakeney Point — churned with energy, creating thousands of small pyramid shaped waves, slapping randomly at the boats tied along the quay.
Morston House was the last in the village, set on its own at the far end of the quay, with just the marshes beyond. Two storey, with playful Naval detail in the bay-windows and balcony, it commanded the landscape before it, and Shaw was not surprised to find a small blue plaque on the stone gatepost:
Harbour House
Official residence of Morston’s Excise Office.
1823–1941.
In the window by the front door was a poster for the Labour Party candidate in the forthcoming district council elections and a SOUL! placard, just like the one Tilly Osbourne had brought home the day her mother died. Shaw pulled a manual brass doorbell and stood back. The exterior woodwork of the house was bleached white, like whalebone, and unvarnished. There were no net curtains at all, but it was impossible to look in because the immaculately clean glass reflected the choppy water and the chaotic sky.
Jeanette Holtby, Paul Holtby’s aunt, answered the door and took Shaw through to the kitchen. The house had wooden parquet floors and high ceilings. Despite the summer the rooms were cool, a lot of the furniture stylish but threadbare. In the wide hall there was a grandmother clock, but there was no sound of it working. Ms Holtby was a small, sinewy woman in a darned skirt and a man’s linen shirt, and cork deck-shoes. Making Shaw tea, mashing a bag in the mug, she added milk from a plastic half-pint carton.
‘I’m sorry about Paul. You must have been close.’ He’d meant it as a statement but he could see her considering it as a question. She said it was oppressive inside, would he mind talking outside, at least until the storm broke? There was a deck beyond the kitchen, looking out over the marshes to the north. Thunder rumbled in steady beats, but the sky directly above was blue by contrast.
‘A policewoman called,’ she said, looking out to sea. ‘I told her. .’ She didn’t finish the sentence, letting the cool airlift her short, workaday hair.
‘Yes,’ said Shaw. ‘I just wanted to see for myself.’ He looked out beyond the reeds to a narrow shell beach.
She gave Shaw a potted family history. Paul’s parents had split up and she’d offered to take the boy in the summer holidays. It had become a ritual, one of the fixed points in his life. The house was full of cousins in the summer. She’d left his room in the barn untouched so he’d returned after university. His mother sent him money, the room was rent-free and he cooked his own food.
‘And you remember the East Hills murder in 1994 — a lifeguard, stabbed out on the island?’ asked Shaw.
She turned towards him then and for the first time Shaw could see she’d spotted his blind eye. ‘Of course — an Australian? And there was something in the paper on Monday. The Guardian.’ She glanced back at the kitchen door. The newspapers had been spread over a plane deal table.
‘Well, we think — just think — that the killer may have swum ashore from East Hills. If he did, then he might have come ashore here. And we thought there was a chance that Paul saw him. Or saw something. The killer may have been injured, you see. Bloodied.’
She shook her head. ‘There’d have been no blood, would there?’ she said. ‘What would it take to swim — forty minutes, an hour? That time the salt would have cleaned a wound — unless it was bad, really bad.’ Shaw thought she’d have made a good copper.
‘And that’s why he died — because he saw this man?’ she said, a note of disbelief in her voice. Another long pause. ‘It would be good to have a reason,’ she said at last. ‘Because as a random act of violence it’s pretty appalling isn’t it? So disproportionate.’
‘Were you born here?’ asked Shaw, thinking the only way he’d find out anything now, after all these years was by chance, by giving her time to talk. He’d been taught this at Quantico, at the FBI school. Accessing someone’s memory wasn’t like putting a key in a lock, it was like getting a cat to come to your hand.
‘Good God, no.’ She talked about her life while Shaw watched the storm clouds darken. A degree in law, a career in the City, getting out before the stress killed her.