A liar then, certainly. But a killer — not just of Shane White, but a multiple killer? The deaths of Marianne Osbourne, Arthur Patch and Paul Holtby were linked to East Hills — even if they couldn’t, as yet, uncover the link. Was Roundhay capable of killing them all just to save his own skin? Shaw had met several murderers, shook their hands, given them tea to sip, listened to them talk, watched them cry. He didn’t think there was a single, common telltale sign that someone was a killer. No cold eyes, no preternatural calm, no twitching facial muscle. But in each case he’d felt just like this: a victim himself, manipulated, controlled.
He felt empty, but most of all, hungry. Not just for food but for human company. He watched Valentine appear out of the dark. A bone saw buzzed from inside the tent.
‘George. Let’s get something to eat.’
THIRTY-THREE
‘George, parmesan?’ said Lena, passing the dish to Fran.
They’d put Valentine at the head of the table so that he was looking out to sea towards the light that was still in the sky. It was the guest of honour’s chair. The heavy heat of the long drought had returned after the storm so they’d all agreed to eat outside, the table set on the wooden stoop of the cafe. Shaw had hoped the deluge marked the beginning of autumn, his favourite season. But it seemed that the summer would cling on, weakened by a series of storms, each one only sapping a little heat from the landscape.
Somewhere out at sea, beyond the horizon, thunder and lightning still crackled.
Valentine prodded at the shell-like pasta in its rich anchovy sauce. It was a small helping because he’d served himself from the large pottery bowl in which Lena had put out the meal. A bowl decorated with painted chillies which had made him wary. Fran stood at his elbow and shaved some cheese over his plate until he raised a hand.
They drank iced water poured from a jug and Valentine tried not to think how long it had been since he’d eaten a meal with another human being. He shared his chips with the gulls every night, although they always dropped the ones with curry sauce on. And in the canteen people would sit at the same table, but only if the place was packed, and even then you weren’t sharing a meal, you were just sharing the table. His last meal with Julie had been fish and chips out of the paper. They’d sat on the front step and shared the chips, which meant he’d had to do without salt, and she’d had to do without vinegar, which was sweet, but annoying.
Shaw had invited Valentine home because his DS said he’d taken a room in Wells. And besides, he didn’t want to be alone in the car driving the coast road after the exhumation: there was something about reversing the process of burial — hauling someone’s bones into the light — which unsettled him. More practically, his DS must be hungry. Shaw rarely saw Valentine take solids, but he presumed he did eat. He imagined greasy breakfasts in one of Lynn’s many cafes. The question would he like to eat with them?, was out of his mouth before he realized he’d crossed a line. They’d been partners for four years and this was the first time his father’s one-time DI had come to the house. Now, looking down the table at Valentine’s gaunt face, he knew he’d left the invitation too long.
The atmosphere was tense, not so much because of Valentine’s unexpected presence, but because Shaw had shouted at his daughter; a very rare flash of visible temper. They’d been close to the house, walking in the exquisite light of dusk, when they’d seen her digging a hole out on the wet sand; just her head showed, and she was still shovelling gritty sand, which flew out in fan-shaped fusillades. Beside the hole the child’s old dog barked.
They had house rules about holes in the sand. As a child Shaw had been on this beach, a mile south, near the pier, one late summer’s day. Two families had started digging pits in competition — a long, hot, afternoon of spadework, until they’d both got down ten foot. Shaw, an only child, had watched in envy as the two teams had revelled in the contest. Fathers, uncles, big brothers stood back, shouting, drinking beer from cans, while the children dug. That would have been fine. They could have posed for pictures, then gone home. But the holes were only twenty foot apart — why not dig a tunnel between them? Shaw had joined the crowd on the edge of one pit, watching as a child’s legs disappeared into the horizontal shaft.
Then the tunnel had collapsed. He’d run for his father, who’d been up in the dunes reading his paper in a deckchair. When they got back men were in the two holes, trying to dig through with their bare hands. When they got the child out they passed him up and laid him out on towels. The gritty sand was pressed into him: his eyes, his mouth, his ears, his hair. Then Shaw’s mother had led him away and his father, finding them later at a prearranged spot up in town, had never told him if the child had lived, which was stupid, because if he had survived he’d have said. Shaw was pretty certain that was his first dead body. The eyes had been closed so there was no clue there, but there had been one hand, turned out, ugly, and one foot, turned in, uglier still.
So they had rules.
Shaw walked to the hole and shouted: the anger so sudden, and mixed with so much fear and anxiety, that what he said was just a burst of noise. Then he took her hand and hauled her up so that she shouted, this time in pain.
‘I was just finishing,’ she said, looking up at him, scared, a note of defiance in her voice for the first time. Now she was looking at Valentine across the table as he ate his pasta. ‘Did you know granddad?’ she asked. ‘Granddad Jack?’
Valentine looked at her, sensing that Lena and Shaw were waiting keenly for the answer.
‘Yes, I did. He looked like you — a bit. Just round the eyes, and the way you look out through your lashes.’ He and Julie hadn’t had kids. It was wrong to say he didn’t like them. It was just that he didn’t know them.
‘Like Daddy?’
Valentine caught Shaw’s eye and saw he was laughing. ‘No. I don’t think so.’ He coughed, trying to clear his voice of the effects of thirty years of cigarettes and booze. ‘He looks like your Grandma. He sounds like your Granddad. You know, sometimes, when I’m not looking and he says something, I think — for a second — that Jack’s there.’
Valentine intercepted a look between Lena and Shaw. He’d never been good at interpreting such looks. They had a word for it now, probably an exam in it: emotional intelligence. This look between Shaw and his wife seemed to radiate reproach with disappointment. It was a wild guess but Valentine thought it meant one of two things: either that the next time Shaw brought someone home to dinner he should let her know in advance, or that they should have asked him to dinner before.
He wondered, for the first time, whether she’d told Shaw she’d been to Valentine’s house to talk about his eye. He thought about Brendan O’Hare wrapped in his fluffy towels, seeking betrayal.
Fran announced ice cream, everyone else passed, and she went off to help herself from the Walls fridge. When she was out of earshot Shaw took Lena’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have lost it.’ He looked along the table at Valentine. ‘Bit of a domestic.’
Lena shook her head and turned to Valentine. ‘He beats her daily with a rock. Now. Coffee,’ she said, getting up. Valentine didn’t have the nerve to tell her he only drank tea. She was one scary woman. He checked his mobile — nothing. When he looked up he knew something had happened because Shaw had got up and was holding his head in both hands.
‘Peter?’ He wondered if Shaw’s eye had lost vision, but when he saw his face the DI was laughing, an incredulous laugh.