‘Who’s with you?’
‘Paul’s got two cars on the way, sir. It won’t be an easy search — it’s got to be ten, fifteen square miles of woodland.’
Shaw told her to start searching where the lights had been seen and work their way outwards, then he cut the line. He knew the spot — a mile west of the nature reserve, a stretch of pine woods where hardly anybody ever went in winter. There was a road in — a forest track, but part metalled. Voyce’s hire car had been dumped two miles away. It wasn’t good news, and the stench of roasting turkey flesh didn’t make him feel any better.
Jean Walker was back. She washed her hands at a grimy sink, then looked at Shaw. ‘You can smoke in here,’ she said. ‘Nobody gives a damn.’
‘Don’t smoke,’ said Shaw.
‘No,’ she said, trying to push a fringe of untidy hair back under her waitress’s cap. ‘You’re not really like Jack at all, are you? Just the looks. He broke a few hearts, too.’
She took a Silk Cut Valentine had left on the table for her, holding it as if it was the first cigarette she’d ever seen. She lit it with her eyes closed, and didn’t open them until she’d expelled the smoke from between her lips.
‘Who were Fletcher’s friends?’ asked Shaw.
‘Will Stokes — he’s dead now, but they were thick as thieves. There was Sam Venn. Like I said, Freddie picked on kids at school and Sam was target number one from the start — but Sam’s a survivor: he’d take anything Freddie dished out, then come running back. In the end they were a bit of a double act. Sam could be cruel too. I guess that was the point for him — making sure someone else was the target. Just like Freddie.’
‘Venn was in with the skinheads?’ asked Shaw, worried at an image that jarred.
‘No. No — after school, they weren’t so close, and Sam was in with the church and everything, and Freddie hardly fitted in there. But in an odd way Freddie was family for Sam — what passed for it, anyway. They all kept in touch, all of his mates did, from school, and there’s some club the boys are still in — they all meet for lunch at the Flask, raise a bit for charity, that kind of thing. Masons without the aprons. They’ll be upstairs now, hitting the bottle.’ She looked skywards. ‘Yeah — family. It was all Sam had, and Freddie. Like I said, Freddie went into care. And Sam’s aunt brought him up — the house is in Palmerston Terrace — and she was in the church, one of Nora’s cronies.’
Shaw had another question ready but there was something about the way Valentine’s sister licked her lips that told him she had something else to say first, but that, being a good woman, she wanted someone to drag it out of her.
‘The church …’ Shaw shook his head, searching. Then he had it. ‘Damn. I meant to ask — that’s right, isn’t it? Venn’s father was in the Elect, we were told that by Abney, the pastor. So where were his parents? Why was he being brought up by an aunt?’
She ground the cigarette under her black shoe.
‘Bit of a local scandal,’ she wriggled slightly in her seat. ‘Surprised George didn’t remember — but he was probably playing cops and robbers with his mates from school.’ She laughed bitterly, as if she too had wanted escape.
‘Thing is, Arthur Venn — Sam’s dad — was a bachelor, in his fifties. Then he discovered sex and along came Sam. Problem was, the woman he discovered sex with was a Venn too — his dead brother’s daughter. Uncle and niece, see? So they threw him out of the church — her too. And boy were they smug when they saw young Sammy.’ She shook her head, still appalled, at the distance of nearly fifty years, at how cruel the righteous could be. ‘It’s cerebral palsy, but you know what these people are like. God’s judgement — the face, the arm. It did for Arthur — and the niece — they left town. Rumour was they shacked up together in London — because they don’t care down there, do they? Anything goes in London. Up here we’re still burning witches. So that left Sam and the aunt. And she was a sour-faced cow as well — same pod as Nora.’
They heard plates being set out in the kitchen.
Shaw let this new image of Sam Venn take shape in his head. ‘Did you know, back in 1982, that Patrice and Lizzie were having an affair?’ he asked.
‘Not till the baby came — then we worked it out pretty damn quick, like everyone else. No, I don’t think people knew — not to talk about, anyway. But that’s different, isn’t it — so maybe they did know. I wasn’t really in the in-crowd back then — marrying a copper tends to put the frost on things. And Don thought the place was worth avoiding. He never drank on the manor — just like your dad, Peter. They’d go out of town — or use the Red House, the coppers’ pub.’
Shaw was rerunning the cine film of the wake in his head. ‘And John Joe Murray — he’d been keen on Lizzie, but she didn’t want to know?’
‘Everyone loved Lizzie,’ she said. ‘John Joe tried his luck — sure. But she could pick and chose, could Lizzie, and she chose not.’
‘Bad blood?’ asked Shaw.
‘No — just the opposite, really. Kind of a joke, you know? They’d play up to it with people around — flirting with each other, turning each other down, making out they’d be meeting up later. It’s just that she didn’t want anyone from here — from the town. She always said she’d marry someone who’d take her away. Knight on a charger — that kind of rubbish.’
The radio, which had been blaring out KL.FM from the kitchen, went silent. The manageress appeared at the door with a mobile open.
‘Either of you know first aid?’ she asked. ‘We need an ambulance — for upstairs. I need them now. Really. People are being sick. Jesus!’ She covered her mouth. ‘It’s like they’ve been poisoned.’
22
Shaw told Jean to ring 999 and went out into the kitchen. Most of the staff were standing in a huddle, heads together, but two of the men were already cleaning surfaces, sweeping floors, manically scrubbing pots. The oven door stood open, the meat cooling, turkey fat congealing on the metal roasting trays. A woman emerged from the store cupboard and put a large catering bottle of disinfectant on a worktop.
Shaw pushed through a pair of swing doors and found himself at the bottom of a wide wooden staircase, sagging slightly to one side, which led up to the banqueting hall. Here the double serving doors had been hooked back. The hall had a magnificent hammer-beam roof, a complex puzzle of gracefully curving oak beams from which hung six crystal chandeliers festooned with candle bulbs. The room was dominated by a statue in stone of a merchant, larger than life, set in a niche in the end wall, so that he could look towards the great west window which faced the river, as if waiting for one of his ships to come into sight.
The room was in chaos. About twenty circular tables dotted the oak floor, set for the festive charity lunch. But many of the guests were wandering from table to table, or kneeling beside others who were slumped in their seats. A Christmas tree at one end glittered with white fairy lights. The tables were crowded with unpulled crackers. Loudspeakers were still feeding in carols at a discreet if insistent volume, but over that background Shaw could hear a persistent groaning. Several of the guests were either clutching their stomachs or leaning forward, their heads in their hands. Others pressed napkins to their mouths. Several had vomited. One elderly woman was fussing, clearly distressed, telling a waitress she’d clean the mess up herself.
Shaw knelt beside her and took her hand. ‘A doctor’s on the way,’ he said. She must have heard because she tried to smile but then there was a spasm of pain and she doubled up. When she lifted her head again her skin had taken on a green tint and her eyes were bloodshot.
‘Soon,’ said Shaw, pressing her shoulder.
He surveyed the room, trying to see Valentine. A small crowd had gathered between two of the tables. Shaw pushed his way through, holding up his warrant card.