Finished, she looked out to sea with a smile on her dry lips.
‘I met Paul just a few days ago, up at the wind farm protest,’ said Shaw. ‘He tried to give us a leaflet through the car window.’
‘Well he was nothing like that, not really. .’ she said. ‘That was an act, a performance. I mean that, precisely. Psychologically it was actually a performance, as if he’d fooled himself into thinking the real world was a stage. Inside, privately, he was fantastically self-conscious — the birthmark, I suppose, but maybe there was something else, something more rooted. Or uprooted.’ The laugh again.
‘He played on the beach — alone?’
‘Well, not quite. The house was always lively in summer. Family, friends. But books were the thing for Paul. Later, politics and books. But back then, just books. Science fiction — that got him started. Clarke, Dick, Huxley. Then the classics — Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Conrad, Faulkner, anything he could pick up. We talked about books and politics. Thank God we had that.’
Which was odd, thought Shaw, because he hadn’t seen a book in the house, let alone a bookcase.
‘But he wasn’t a book worm — not a little nerd,’ she said. ‘He loved all this — the sea, the beach. So he’d have gone down with the rest — over there? Do you see? There’s a slip of sand at low tide. The seals come in too and they used to swim with them. But Paul just used to sit; make himself a chair out of the sand. I did see him swim but it was pretty rare. Usually he was wrapped up — clothes, books, just wrapped up.’
Shaw felt the first rain drop on his head. It felt as big as a marble, and icy.
He didn’t even have to ask to see his room. Behind the house was the barn, half brick, the loft converted to a bedsit with shower and loo. One wall was a scrapbook of political activism — an old poster from the Grunwick dispute, the Miners’ Strike of ’82, a black and white print of Castro. The bed was unmade, like a human nest, the sheets swirled. In the corner was a mechanical poster printer and fresh pile of SOUL! placards.
Ms Holtby flipped the window open from the bottom so that it lifted up, like the shutter on a counter, and at that moment the first lightning struck down to the marshes — forking like a synapse. The light lit the room as if it was a flashgun, and Shaw saw again what wasn’t there.
‘There’s no books. .’
‘There’ll be a few,’ she said, flipping back the duvet. Two books: a study on green power and a biography of Ghandi.
Shaw recognized the cellophane binding, the Dewey Decimal code number on the spine. ‘Library books?’
‘Always. Paul grew up in a single parent household, Inspector. No money for books. And I’ve always been a big fan of libraries — the public services. We take them for granted, don’t we? With the cuts and everything we won’t have any left in ten years. Odd, isn’t it, people always think civilization goes forward. But it can go backwards too.’ She looked at the bed, as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Libraries were an escape for both of us. So we went every week to stock up.’
Electricity crackled in the damp air over the quayside. When he turned to look at her she’d covered her mouth with both hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘A Saturday?’
‘Yes. I always drove into Wells, for the week’s shopping. Usually after lunch — no, always after lunch. Then the library. We’d be back by six because we’d stop on the way and get fish and chips for everyone. Saturday treat. So he wasn’t there that day — he couldn’t have been. How stupid of me.’
The rain fell at last: a curtain of almost solid liquid, drumming on the hard earth, the scent of fresh water for once overcoming the tangy salt of the sea. Shaw said he’d keep in touch if there were any developments, then ran to the car, soaked before he got to the door, so he gave up, and just stood in it, his mouth open, looking up at the falling drops.
THIRTY
George Valentine didn’t take a seat. He stood at the duty desk in Wells-next-the-Sea police station, profoundly unhappy to be back. He’d spent ten years of his working life in this building; he’d hated each room, and the view from every window. In summer he’d watched the thin white wisp of cloud crossing the hills as the steam railway took tourists up to the shrine at Walsingham. It was a sight that had always added to a feeling of dislocation, as if his life had taken a branch line too. He’d been up to Walsingham himself once — way back — before Julie had died, before he’d been busted back to DS, before he’d been shipped out from St James’ to the sticks. By chance they’d chosen a holy day for the visit, and they’d wandered the streets of the town, watching the pilgrims, then crowded into one of the pubs for lunch. Then, on the edge of the old abbey ruins, they’d found one of the churches, the congregation bursting out, following a procession down to the shrine. So the smoke always made him angry too, for what he’d lost.
‘George?’
He turned to find the station sergeant, Ken Blackmoor. He had the decency to flip up the counter flap and come round. He gave Valentine a file.
‘Thanks for coming — you need to see this. Frankly, you should have seen it last week. I understand if you want make a formal complaint. But I thought I’d try to save us all the trouble. .’ He had the decency to look away.
The file cover had a typed note pinned at the top right hand corner which read:
ARTHUR JOHN PATCH
Case No. 4662
IO. DC Rowlands.
‘Problem is Don Rowlands was on leave and no one picked up the link.’ Sgt Blackmoor looked out the plate-glass door, which gave a view into town, so that they could just see shoppers spilling off the narrow pavements into the road. ‘So that’s a fuck up,’ he added. Above them thunder rolled, and the lights in the station seemed brighter in the gloom. ‘It won’t be the last.’
‘Tell me,’ said Valentine.
Blackmoor filled his lungs, squared his shoulders. Valentine recalled that in his ten years at the nick he’d often seen Blackmoor take flak directed at his juniors. ‘Patch was burgled — end of last year. Nasty, actually. Two youngsters in the house, didn’t bother to sneak in, just turned up, cleaned him out of some silver, bit of cash. Both in balaclavas. What do the yanks call it — house invasion? Then knocked him over when he cut up a bit rough. Broke his hip.’
Blackmoor was in his mid-fifties, but Shaw remembered that he played badminton, and kept fit. He bent down easily and picked up an ice-lolly wrapper off the fake wooden floor. ‘And?’ prompted Valentine.
‘And, Rowlands had organized an ID parade here at the station for this Friday morning. Clearly not much point now.’
Valentine joined up the dots. ‘What kind of ID parade — specific suspect, or usual suspects?’
‘Specific. Kid called Tyler. Never been in trouble before — no record. But he’d been trying to flog a piece of silver round the backstreets of Lynn — one of those platters. It was Patch’s. Tyler said he found it in a bag on waste ground behind the station. Plus he fitted the description of the kid who’d knocked Patch down.’
‘How was Rowlands going to get an ID given the balaclavas?’
‘The old bloke had guts. Either that or he was stupid. He spat in one of the kid’s faces, so the kid knocked him down, probably thought he was out cold. But Patch was on his back, looking up, and he saw him take the hood off. Got a good look. He said he wouldn’t forget the face, and that it wasn’t one of the local kids from Creake.’
Valentine flipped the file open. He’d get Twine to run the name through the computer, make sure there was no direct link with East Hills. But what link could there be? He hadn’t been born in 1994.
‘How’d we think he and his mate got out to Creake?’
‘Scooter. Neighbours heard the whine. Tyler’s got wheels. A provisional licence, so he shouldn’t have been carrying a pillion, but you know, sounds like he isn’t exactly a law-abiding citizen.’