He led the way back to the front of the pub, letting Campbell go in first. It had just turned twenty past eleven but the only customer was George Valentine. He pushed a half-empty pint glass away from himself as if it wasn’t his. Music played, filling up the empty room with something melodious from The Jam: ‘That’s Entertainment’.
The quarry-tiled floor had been mopped, though the disinfectant hadn’t quite erased the fug of the cellar, or the odours of a fried breakfast. But there was another smell — a scent — which drifted from a vase of white orchids on the bar. The room was panelled, wooden settles running round the walls, the windows glazed with coloured Victorian glass. Old prints crowded the walls — whaling ships, dockside scenes. Christmas decorations gilded the woodwork and ceiling beams. There was a large brass gong at the foot of the stairs, mounted on a dark wood frame, and Shaw recalled Sam Venn’s words: that when Alby Tilden had returned from his exotic travels he brought back a cargo of equally exotic memorabilia.
Two bay windows looked out on the wide river, the clear glass engraved with the name of Lynn’s Victorian brewers — Cutlack amp; Sons — now long defunct.
The barman did a little routine out of central casting: rearranging the beer cloths on the bar, touching one of the pumps, trying out a smile. He was in his late forties, early fifties, but clearly clung to the years of his youth — a vain shock of greying black hair swept back to flop over both ears, and he wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a bleached-out portrait of Ian Dury. The bones of his skull had once supported a handsome face: a narrow pointed chin, high cheekbones and a thin, fine nose. On his neck was a tattoo of an electric guitar in a vivid moss green. His eyes were green too, bright and youthful, but his skin had all the surface tension of a week-old party balloon.
The little ceremony of welcome didn’t include saying anything, while his right hand picked out a complicated beat to match the track playing through the speakers.
‘Coffee?’ asked Shaw, nodding at a well-used Italian coffee machine. He ordered an espresso. Campbell went for fizzy water. Valentine got a second pint on Shaw’s round. As the barman pulled it Shaw noted a wedding ring and a bronze bracelet.
‘Landlady around?’ asked Shaw, laying his warrant card on the bar.
The smile on the barman’s face fell like a calving iceberg. Behind the bar was a small wooden door, as narrow as a coffin. The barman inched it open. ‘Lizzie,’ he shouted. They heard footsteps on the wooden floor above.
‘What?’ asked a disembodied voice.
‘Police, Lizzie. They want a word.’
‘I’ll be five.’
Everyone pretended to relax. Another customer came in — a pensioner in a threadbare jacket, shirt and tie. The barman pulled a pint without asking what he wanted, holding the finished article up against the light to check its clarity.
He turned to set up the coffee machine for Shaw’s espresso. ‘So, what’s up?’ he asked over his shoulder. ‘Postman said you’d found something in one of the graves — something you shouldn’t have. That right?’ Shaw noted that as the barman set aside the crockery he held it with both hands, one on the rim of the small cup, one on the saucer.
‘I’m sorry — you are …?’ asked Shaw.
‘John Joe Murray,’ he said. ‘It’s over the door. I’m the landlord.’
‘Ali, at the shop,’ said the man in the threadbare jacket, butting in, ‘he says it’s one of those Polish immigrants. Ali says they cut him up, in bits.’ He extended a purple bottom lip to the edge of his pint glass.
‘Ali’s talking out of his arse,’ said Valentine, reaching for his pint, then stopping himself. He was nearly at the bottom. Then his mobile rang and he got up and went into the back bar, which had once — he guessed — accommodated a full-sized billiards table, because a raised platform that had run around it for chairs and tables was still there, but it had all been cleared away to make a dining room. Each table was neatly laid for a meal. In one corner on a plinth was a gold Buddha, glowing against the polished dark wood.
Shaw and Campbell took a seat in one of the bay windows in the bar, the river at their backs. Valentine came back in, still rolling his shoulders to get rid of the morning’s damp. He waved the mobile at Shaw. ‘Voyce took the hired car out to the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital to visit Chris Robins. Bit late — even for his funeral. He left flowers and fruit juice with the ward sister — so clearly Robins’s death was all news to him. Makes you wonder why, though. What did he think Robins could tell him? Anyway — it shook him up. He drove back, dumped the car, then bought a bottle of vodka from an offy on the London Road and drank it in the park. Then he walked back to the hotel and phoned Mosse.’
Campbell looked bemused as they beamed at each other.
Shaw thought about Chris Robins. An original member of Bobby Mosse’s little teenage gang, who’d lived a life of petty crime and diminishing mental powers until he’d been sectioned under the Mental Health Act.
‘What did he say?’ asked Shaw.
‘Didn’t use the phone in the room — he’s got a mobile. We’re trying to trace it. But we heard his end of the conversation: he said he was in town seeing family, thought they should catch up on old times.’
‘Where?’
‘Pier at Hunstanton — six tomorrow night.’
‘It’s all shut up.’
‘I guess. They’ll go somewhere — a pub? Car?’
‘OK. We need to be there. Sort it, George.’
Shaw watched Valentine’s narrow back as he retreated to the bar, downed the rest of his pint, then left, holding the lapels of his raincoat tight to his throat, braced for the cold outside. Campbell shifted uneasily in her seat, aware she’d been shut out of something but equally aware she shouldn’t try to muscle her way into another inquiry.
They heard a door hinge scream and turned to see a woman appear behind the bar, through the coffin-top door, coolly assessing the clientele while trying to get an earring in place: a diamond stud just catching the light. She was about John Joe Murray’s age, but her hair was still a lustrous black, like a patent-leather shoe. Her face looked hard, but not effortlessly so. Shaw thought she betrayed not the slightest remnant of the DNA which had built the face of her mother, Nora Tilden. This face was a fine one, sculptural, like a ship’s figurehead. Keeping her eyes on Shaw and Campbell she let her hand rise to find a switch she knew was there, and a one-armed bandit in the corner flickered into life.
‘Someone wants to see me?’ she asked, resting a hand on the bar, demanding an answer, radiating the kind of self-assurance that women rarely feel in a pub bar unless they own it. Her voice helped: it was furred by nicotine and had an edge, like corrugated paper. She rearranged one of the bar towels, again without looking at it, and Shaw reminded himself that she’d probably spent her entire life in this building, and that she must know every nail and latch, like a ship’s cabin.
John Joe nodded at Shaw. ‘Coffee, love?’
She didn’t answer but glanced up at the optics behind the bar, which seemed to be a signal. A crew of four men came in, all in overalls. John Joe turned away to serve them.
Lizzie Murray flipped up the bar top and walked to Shaw’s table. She had a good figure still, a narrow waist, and something of a catwalk step. She wore black trousers and a fitted top with a V-neck, in butterscotch, and practical plain court shoes. As she walked she smoothed down the material, and Shaw noted the absence of a visible panty line, imagining something in Lycra beneath, comfortable and snug. When she sat he saw a necklace in gold, again with a single diamond.
‘Is there somewhere private?’ asked Shaw.
‘Not really,’ she said, sitting. She licked at the pearly lipstick at the corner of her mouth. ‘This’ll do. Sorry — it’s just that Mondays are hell. Brewery delivers at noon — then comes the frozen food for the week. So …’ She briefly held Shaw’s good eye. Hers were green, like her husband’s, but flecked with brown and blue, catching the Victorian colours of the bar’s windows. ‘What’s this about?’