Shaw nodded in agreement.
‘When your dad arrested Bobby Mosse for killing that little boy, everything changed. Chris never said anything, but I could see the fear in him — feel it. Those months before the trial, he never got over that. He’d sit in the front room watching the TV — anything, sound down. I didn’t see Alex at all, or Bobby, or Jimmy Voyce, and that was what made me think the worst. One day I took Chris’s dad out along the riverbank — he was in a wheelchair after a stroke, the year he died — so we went out along the towpath by the Boal Quay and I saw the three of them on the scrub there, sat in the wreck of a boat. I didn’t get close but I know my son — he was crying, and Alex had an arm round him, and Jimmy was drinking cider from a big bottle.’
She stopped. Shaw let the silence stretch. Snow thudded down off one of the trees.
‘When he got off — Bobby — things changed again. He went back to university, of course — escaped, like I knew he would. Jimmy Voyce was the next to get out — running off to New Zealand. Then one night there was a uniformed PC on my doorstep. They had Chris down at St James’s — they needed me to come down. He’d been caught climbing out of a back window of a house in the North End with a video recorder under his arm. I’m pretty sure Alex was with him — but he’d got away, of course. Chris got a suspended for that, but he got caught again within weeks so they sent him down. Durham. When he got out he didn’t come home. He never came home. I tried to keep in touch but he was in and out for years until one of the judges ordered a mental-health review — that was in 2003. They sent him here. He’d tried suicide before, inside, and he tried again and again here, but he just couldn’t make the cuts deep enough.’
Shaw wondered how many times a mother had to repeat that before she could say the words without tears.
‘I used to look at his wrists when I came, to see if he’d tried again. They kept knives away from him in the end, so he’d try to make one out of bits of metal, or sharpened nails. Alex Cosyns came to see him a few times. I don’t know why. They had a secret — not just the past — but something else they wouldn’t share. About three months after Alex’s last visit I got a cheque — drawn on Alex’s personal account — for?1,000. There was a note. He said he’d keep in touch with Chris, but that he didn’t think there was much point giving him any money, so I might as well have it, because it was his due. He said there’d be more. A few weeks later Chris was dead. He finally had another visitor just before he did it. Whoever it was didn’t sign in, so they never got a name — they’ve upped the security since; anyone visiting a patient has to fill in a form now. But I think it was Bobby Mosse who came to see him, and I think he gave Chris the knife.’ Shaw went to speak but she carried on. ‘And now he’s had another visitor.’ She laughed, shaking her head. ‘The woman on the ward who looked after Chris — kept an eye on him for me. She said Jimmy Voyce had been looking for him, all the way from New Zealand. He left a card, some grapes. She said Jimmy cried, which is nice, but I wonder who he was crying for?’
She flattened and folded a sheet of greaseproof paper that had been on the bench beside her — the remains of a packed lunch.
‘I said I understood things, Inspector, and I do. But some things are frightening still. I had Chris cremated. There was just me and my sister at the service. When we got home someone had been through the flat — torn it apart. I had a tea chest from the ward, with Chris’s stuff, and they’d literally taken it apart — the wood, smashed it up. I don’t understand that.’
She stood and offered her hand. She seemed light on her feet, suddenly weightless. ‘That’s odd,’ she said. ‘I somehow feel better for talking about it. I thought I didn’t care any more.’
‘Is your shift finished? I can run you back to town,’ said Shaw.
Peggy Robins shook her head. ‘There’s a mini-bus, on the hour.’ She rearranged her scarf. ‘The Westmead’s changed over the years, Inspector, but it’s still not very clever to let anyone see you being dropped off by a DI from St James’s. It’s still my world, and it’s a world away from yours.’
21
Thursday, 16 December
Lynn’s medieval Shipwrights’ Hall stood on Cross Bank, its red-brick decorated facade looking out across the sea wall, a narrow band of reeds and the black river. Built in the thirteenth century, it was a monument to the fortunes made by the merchants of Lynn. Today a freezing mist clawed at its mullioned win dows, while a rusting German coaster in midstream vented water. The wind had died by noon, so that the damp air just lay in the Fisher Fleet like a ghostly spring tide.
Shaw and Valentine sat in the Porsche. The atmosphere was one of mutual anxiety. A search of the woods and estate at Holkham had been suspended overnight, resumed that morning, but had still failed to find any trace of Voyce. Tom Hadden’s team had crawled over the hire car and found nothing. Shaw had not yet reported to DCS Warren that their surveillance operation on Mosse and Voyce had been a fifty per cent failure, but he had an urgent message from Warren’s secretary on his mobile requesting an update — a request he couldn’t ignore for much longer. He’d sent DC Twine to the magistrates court to obtain search warrants for both Mosse’s house and the BMW.
Shaw had a large-scale map of west Norfolk on his lap, showing the coast road down from Hunstanton that Mosse had taken once he’d left the town at speed. How had Voyce’s hired car ended up further back up the coast at Holkham? He thought carefully about the night they’d lost Mosse and Voyce on the road. The BMW had turned down a side-street before accelerating away from Hunstanton. What if Mosse had dropped Voyce off by his own car? They hadn’t been close enough to see whether Mosse had a passenger, and the glass was tinted anyway. What if they’d made their deal at the Wash amp; Tope. Voyce gets dropped back at his car and agrees to disappear. Did they know they were being followed? Is that why he’d ditched the hire car?
‘You ain’t gonna find him on there,’ said Valentine, looking down the street, waiting for a familiar figure to walk out of the mist. The main doors of the Shipwrights’ Hall were open now, and a steady line of people were filing in, mostly elderly, all smartly dressed. As he watched, a Daimler glided into the kerb and the mayor got out, rearranging a chain of silver links around his neck. A photographer stood by the main doors but didn’t bother to take any pictures.
Shaw snapped the map wider. ‘What do you suggest, George — a seance?’
Valentine held his raincoat lapels closer together. ‘We could take Mosse down town, shake him up.’
Shaw shook his head. ‘Yeah. Once we’ve got the warrant, that’s our next move. But forgive my reluctance, because it’s also our last move. He is a solicitor, George. I think he’ll have a response ready. What d’you reckon — a complaint to the chief constable? Police harassment? Two bitter coppers trying to prove a judge was wrong? Warren will have us off the streets in half an hour.’
‘Hey up,’ said Valentine, pushing open the door, hauling himself up out of the Porsche’s bucket seat. A woman had appeared out of the mist, middle-aged but with a jaunty walk, a raincoat failing to conceal a black waitress’s uniform.
‘Georgie,’ she said when she saw Valentine, stepping closer and taking his head in her hands. Shaw looked away, embarrassed by the sudden intimacy.
‘This is my sister Jean,’ said Valentine, looking at Shaw. ‘Jean, DI Shaw.’