‘And where’d the billhook come from?’ asked Shaw. ‘It’s not as though it’s a Swiss Army knife that you can slip in your back pocket.’ He leant forward and, overcome by a sudden weariness, surprised himself by pouring a glass of wine for himself. They seemed to be circling this case without being able to reach its heart.
‘You’re right,’ said Valentine, refilling his own glass. ‘I can’t see him doing it on his own. People like that, I’ve seen ’em on the street: BNP, National Front, British Party — never one-on-one, always in a crowd. That’s the way they work. No way he’d have gone after Pat without back-up.’
Shaw told his DS everything his sister had remembered about the night of Nora’s wake, and about Freddie Fletcher and Sam Venn. Valentine looked up at the intricate oak roof. ‘Venn, then — it’s a motive. They’re cousins, first cousins, Pat and Lizzie. It’s not …’ Valentine paused, assembling the right words. ‘It’s not some biblical debate for him, is it? It’s his life — it’s what he’s like, because of what it did to him.’ He took a third refill from the bottle. ‘What he thought it had done to him. I’m not saying he’d kill for that, but if his mate Fletcher was on a mission, perhaps he joined in. Cowards killed that kid — we know there’s more than one of them. Venn and Fletcher fit the bill — nothing on their own, but together they’re dangerous. That’s where my money is.’
‘Don’t forget John Joe Murray,’ said Shaw. ‘He says he didn’t know about Pat and Lizzie, but we’ve seen the film, and I think we can say that’s a lie. Why lie? Well, it’s a sensible thing to do if you want to avoid being a suspect in a murder inquiry. He doesn’t know we’ve got the film. Perhaps he saw them at the bar that night talking? A bit too close, a bit too knowing. Had he really given up on Lizzie? He admits he thought Lizzie was pregnant, so perhaps he was on the lookout for the father. Perhaps he wanted to scare Pat off, make it crystal clear he wasn’t going to get his feet under the table at the Flask. Murray says he stayed until midnight — so get Twine to check that out with our witnesses.’
Shaw stood. ‘That’s the problem with this crime, George. It’s all motive — you can’t move for motives. What we haven’t got enough of is evidence. Even if we could put all of them in the cemetery that night, at the right time, could we prove which of them struck the fatal blow? I doubt it. Unless one of them breaks down and gives us a nice neat confession I can’t see any way forward. One fact hasn’t changed right from the start — this is a twenty-eight-year-old crime. Not many of those get solved.’
Valentine rubbed his stomach under his raincoat. ‘’Cept we know someone was out there trying to dig up the grave this year. Six months ago. That’s not a cold case.’
Shaw took a menu off the neighbouring table, turned it over and began to make a list.
‘OK — let’s concentrate on that. What do we know? Either someone dug the hole and found what they were looking for, or they dug the hole and didn’t find what they were looking for. The second scenario seems marginally more likely as we know they were probably spotted and that the police turned up — and went on turning up on a nightly basis, so they couldn’t go back. So that implies that what they were looking for was still in the grave when we opened it up.’
Shaw completed the note, aware that outside they could still hear the electronic crackle from the mobile TV unit. He turned the napkin round for Valentine to check. On it was a list with three headings:
‘Have I missed anything?’ asked Shaw.
The DS studied the list for a full minute, then shook his head.
‘One of these items means more than we realize,’ said Shaw. ‘It means a lot to someone — someone close, someone we know.’
‘The glasses?’
‘We checked that out. The pub was presented with a set of a dozen etched glasses by the brewery before the war. There’s just three left behind the bar — Lizzie uses them. So — they came from the pub, that’s all we know.’
Valentine leant back in his chair, his neck bones clicking together like billiard balls.
Shaw thought about the model boat, the tiny shrouded bundle of Mary Tilden. ‘Alby Tilden — the father, what’s the latest?’ asked Shaw, clutching at the one piece of the jigsaw that was still missing from the family picture.
‘He’s been out for eleven years. Had some psychiatric problems, apparently — agoraphobia. Fear of the outside. They had to drag him out. In 2003 he was on some out-reach network run from Lincoln. Living on benefits. After that he slips off the radar. We know Lizzie Murray writes regularly, and was getting replies until a year ago; her letters to Alby go via Bea Garrison to an address in Retford. That’s been checked out, by the way — dead-end. The flat number we’ve got matches one that’s empty. Has been for a year. Tenant died. He was an old lag from Lincoln. And Twine’s having a real job getting the pension details as well. Latest promise is sometime today — but who knows?’
Shaw stood, the chair scraping horribly. He was struggling to think straight, haunted by the dead face of Charlie Clarke, who’d survived a world war only to be struck down by a can of rancid soup.
‘So that would explain why Alby hasn’t written for a year — Lizzie’s letters weren’t being passed on,’ said Shaw.
Valentine continued to stare at his notepad. ‘Well, you’d think so, but there’s an odd detail,’ he said. ‘When the Nottingham boys checked out the address in Retford they found that a neighbour’s been keeping the post. Twine asked them to check through, and there was nothing there from Lynn.’ He straightened his arm so that he could see his counterfeit Rolex. ‘I’ll get back to Bea Garrison — see what should be there.’
Shaw picked up the list of forensic exhibits from the opened grave.
‘Bea. The victim’s mother. Perhaps the only person in the world who really knew him. Lizzie had known him for, what, five months? Bea’d seen it all — twenty years of growing up. Get over to the Ark, George; sign out the forensics that were on Pat — the knife, the billhook, the sketch, the lot. Tom’s got copies of the sketches. Let’s see what she has to say about the contents of her son’s pockets.’
‘And Warren? We still haven’t told him about Jimmy Voyce.’
Shaw closed his eyes. Monocularism put a strain on his good eye, which gave him headaches. He rubbed the temple beside the pain.
‘Leave that to me.’
24
On a good day Morston House looked out over the harbour at Wells-next-the-Sea. This wasn’t a good day. The mist on land ran hard here into a sea fret, a thick broiling band of fog that tracked the coast. Visibility was fifty yards and falling, light leaching away, ushering in a premature dusk. They’d crawled along the seafront in the Porsche, past a Dutch barge which was always moored at the spot — a floating pub with fairy lights strung up the rigging and along a gangplank peppered with snow. They could just see the chocolate-coloured seawater — a wide channel at full tide choked with ghostly white yachts moored to orange buoys. The quayside was reserved for the little fleet which trawled for scallops, mussels and crabs. Just beyond was the edge of the wide marsh which protected the harbour from the sea, the reeds clogged with ice.
The little kiss-me-quick seafront had lost its daily battle with the bleak winter landscape. From every lamp post hung a gaudy poster for Christmastide, the annual festival in which thousands of children crowded the water’s edge to see Santa Claus drift in by boat under a sky full of fireworks. Shaw had taken Fran last year and had promised a return. He noted the date: Saturday, with the evening high tide. The posters were almost the only splash of colour on the street. The two chippies were closed, John’s Rock Shop alone spilling some electric light out on to the snow-swept pavement. There was a thirty-foot Christmas tree on the quay, but its lights were off. Down the channel which led to the open sea an automatic foghorn called to a beat as slow as a dying heart.