Shaw filed that detail in his memory, noting only that it clashed with the two etched green glasses, which had suggested a rituaclass="underline" something planned and meticulous.
Kazimierz turned her back to fill in some paperwork on a lab bench, dismissing them without a word.
Hadden’s suite on the far side of the partition was empty, so Shaw pulled out from the wall a blackboard on hinges. Taking a piece of chalk from the runnel he wrote ‘Arthur Melville’ at the top, followed by Nora, then ‘Albert Tilden’ and their dates.
‘What’s this?’ asked Valentine. ‘Hi-tech policing?’
‘Just keeping it simple.’ Shaw drew the rest of the family tree. The result was starkly instructive, because it didn’t look like a family tree. ‘It’s like the old Norfolk joke,’ said Shaw. ‘Everyone in the village has got a family tree — it’s just that they don’t have any branches.’
Valentine put a Silk Cut between his lips.
Shaw underlined Nora Tilden’s name.
Valentine stood and drew circles around three others. ‘Three of them are black,’ he said. ‘Latrell — Bea’s husband, their son Patrice, who becomes our victim in Nora’s grave, and then his son Ian. Three generations.’
Shaw stubbed the chalk on Ian’s name, breaking it. ‘What do we know about him? This isn’t all about the past, is it, George? Because we know that someone was out there in Flensing Meadow digging up that grave just six months ago. Which transforms the inquiry — even Max Warren would have to admit that. Someone alive, someone with enough youth left to dig a four-foot hole after dark, someone who feared what we’d find in that grave.’
He stood back. ‘So perhaps it’s a family secret, and Ian knows what it is.’
Valentine checked his notebook. ‘Ian Murray. He’s twenty-seven. School at Whitefriars primary, just round the corner. Then Springwood High. Trained as a chef at the college. Works in the kitchens at the Flask lunch-times — then evenings and Sundays at Kirkpatrick’s — the posh wine bar on the quay. Holidays, days off — that’s Monday and Tuesday — he cooks up at Bea Garrison’s B amp;B. Single — girlfriend works at Kirkpatrick’s too. Name of Sharon Hare; she’s local as well. He lives at the Flask, in the attic.’
‘OK. We’ll catch him later. I fancy an oyster.’
Valentine pulled a face. He didn’t do wine bars.
Shaw checked his watch and chucked the chalk back in the runnel. Outside the green glass windows of the Ark the dusk was gathering, so that they could see a scattering of Christmas lights in the gloom decorating a crane. They’d got a second interview set with Sam Venn at the London Road Shelter in an hour. Freddie Fletcher had eluded them: he was either out or ignoring the hammering on his door. The owner of Tinos, the greasy spoon downstairs, said he often went out canvassing for hours. He could be anywhere on the street. Shaw had asked for a uniformed PC to stay on his doorstep. Twine had overnight orders to put most of the manpower on the door-to-doors in the morning, in and around the cemetery, because they needed to throw everything they had at trying to find out who had dug up Nora’s grave in the last few months.
Shaw felt good. The inquiry was humming now: efficient, logical and professional. They’d got their break — thanks to Tom Hadden’s brilliant forensic work. Now, Shaw sensed, Pat Garrison’s killer was no longer an insubstantial ghost from the past. Whoever it was, Shaw felt that soon he’d be able to reach out and touch them.
14
The stumpy remains of Hunstanton’s pier shook with the impact of a storm wave, the white water erupting around the metal legs, spilling across the promenade. It was dark and starless, but the town’s streetlights caught the seawater in the air, a cloud like smoke, drifting in from a sea the colour of mulligatawny soup, and turned to orange the patches of snow in the ornamental gardens. Winter had turned violent. A single string of coloured Christmas lights swung and snapped in the wind between lamp posts.
Shaw had agreed to sit out the surveillance as a passenger in Valentine’s Mazda, and he was unhappy with the heating system, fiddling constantly with the switches. Valentine smoked with the unhurried focus of the true addict. Shaw’s mobile phone buzzed and he brought up a text message and picture from Lena — a shot of Fran out on the snow-covered beach at dusk, standing by a snowman with a snorkel.
Shaw checked his watch. It was five forty. Twenty minutes until Robert Mosse’s appointment with Jimmy Voyce. They’d agreed to meet at the pier head — but all that was left of the pier was a cafe and a bowling alley, both closed for the winter. The main pier had largely burnt down in 1939, and what was left had been similarly damaged during the 1950s, leaving the superstructure to be washed away in a storm in 1978. An attempted partial rebuild in 2002 burnt down, too. The people of Hunstanton — who included Shaw after his parents had moved out of town when he was a kid — could be forgiven for thinking someone was trying to tell them something: that perhaps they could do without a pier. But no. Shaw noted a developers’ billboard advertising the project for a new one, the finance provided by the EU.
In a peculiar way Shaw was proud of the place. Because of its position on the coast of The Wash, looking west, it had a unique claim to fame. ‘It’s the only pier on the east coast that faces the setting sun,’ he said.
Valentine stirred in his seat. ‘Far as I’m concerned, if it’s facing the sea, it’s facing the wrong way.’ Valentine had always hated the beach — any beach. There was the grittiness of it, and the sunburn on the tops of his feet, and the cloying scent of cooking flesh. As a child he’d come here from South Lynn on school trips and with his parents. The best part of the day was the ride home. He’d never admitted, even to himself, that it was the sea that really made him anxious: the way it seemed to draw you away from the promenade towards its dangerous, shifting edge. He always thought it was a bit like a net, being cast and recast on to the shore, as if the ocean was fishing for him.
They heard the town clock at the top of the green strike a quarter to the hour. Snow began to fall in the gusts of wind off the sea. All they had to do was wait. One unit had tracked Voyce north in his hired car to the edge of town, then backed off before they’d seen him park. Mosse had left home an hour ago, driven north, but the unit had lost him on the road. Mosse was here, they were sure of that, they just didn’t know where. But they knew where he’d agreed to be at 6.00 p.m. precisely. By the pier head Shaw watched a flock of seagulls land, fighting over scraps, then tumbling on to the green, standing — each one — identically angled into the onshore wind.
Shaw reviewed the interview they’d just completed with Sam Venn, warden of the London Road Shelter and a member of the Elect of the Free Church of Christ the Fisherman. DC Twine had provided them with a brief CV culled from Venn’s employers, the Vancouver Trust. Born in Lynn in 1959, both parents members of the church, attended the grammar school and took a degree in sociology at Lampeter College, University of Wales. He’d worked in the voluntary sector since graduating — Age Concern, Shelter in Leicester, then back to Lynn to take over as warden at London Road. He also worked two days a week for the council’s housing department, with a remit to oversee social housing in the town. Unmarried, he lived alone, in a flat at the shelter, which provided food and a warm place for the homeless from 6.30 a.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Venn had been in an office behind the kitchen, working through the order book for foodstuffs. Shaw had been struck again by his first mistake — that he’d underestimated this man’s intelligence because of that face, one side sloping down, as if gravity was stronger on the left than the right, and the hand, held awkwardly on the lap or set on the desktop like a paperweight.
Shaw wasted no time: Why had Venn failed to mention the presence of Patrice Garrison at Nora Tilden’s wake?
Venn’s answer was smooth and plausible. He knew Pat Garrison, he’d talked to him in the pub that summer, seen him about the town. Bea Garrison had even come to the church one Sunday with her son. They’d joined in the prayers for Nora, although Venn said he suspected they’d come to pray for Alby. He hadn’t mentioned Pat Garrison because he didn’t think of him in terms of his colour, but in terms of his character, which was typically American — brash, confident, focused. But, Venn admitted, vanity was his principle vice. Shaw guessed it was a characteristic to which Venn was acutely tuned.