Hadden was examining a piece of nylon rope which had been threaded through the four handles of the bag. Shaw could see where the rope was still kinked by the memory of the knot.
Hadden nodded. They were all thinking the same thing. The sack, weighted down with the rope attached to an anchor or lead weight.
‘If the knot hadn’t slipped we’d have never seen chummy again,’ said Shaw. ‘He’d have been fish food within the week. How long’s he been in, Tom?’
‘Rigor’s still apparent,’ said Hadden. ‘So – given the water’s not that warm – forty-eight hours? Maximum of forty-eight – maybe less, Peter.’
Shaw still couldn’t see the face. But he could see the victim was male, white, middle aged, wearing jogging pants and a sweatshirt, the head shaved. The skin showed all the signs of immersion, puckered and swollen, but was otherwise intact, free of feeding marks. There was a washed-out bloodstain on the sweatshirt chest. Hadden used gloved hands to lift the material, revealing a gunshot wound.
‘Justina needs to tell you about this,’ he said. ‘But if you want an amateur’s opinion, I’d say this killed him. It’s very close to the heart.’
‘Calibre?’ asked Shaw.
‘Nine millimetres – a handgun. Difficult to tell range, Peter. He’s been in the water too long for any residue to be left on the skin. But it’s not point-blank. I can’t say any more.’
Shaw leant in. He couldn’t smell anything except an intense aroma of the sea, like oysters on a bed of ice. He noted acne on the body’s exposed neck. ‘It’s not Blanket,’ he said. ‘Height and weight are wrong.’
And one detail he didn’t see first time – only three
‘This is why I called…’ said Hadden, handing Shaw an evidence bag. Inside was a plastic charity wristband. Valentine had seen Shaw wearing one in the spring – red and blue, with RNLI printed on the ring. Shaw turned it to catch the early slanting sun and saw that three letters were stencilled in the white plastic.
MVR.
Shaw thought about that – about what kind of organization would have charity bands made, and issue torches with the letters on as well. Silently he decided that he needed to make a personal visit to the hospital vehicle pool.
‘The band’s luminous, by the way,’ said Hadden. ‘If that helps.’
Shaw handed Valentine the bag. ‘Can we see the face – you’ve not turned him over?’
Hadden called up one of his team, who took a set of pictures. Then Hadden took hold of the dead man’s shoulder, Shaw his thigh, and they rolled him over, the dead arm flailing.
The face was almost perfect – untouched. The lips were blue, a light stubble on the chin, the nose slender and almost feminine. There were only two things missing.
The eyes.
Valentine watched a thin line of tourists in blue and red cagoules walking out over the tidal mud on duck-boards, queuing to climb aboard one of the seal trip boats moored on Morston Creek. Valentine had brought ‘solids’ from the National Trust shop – a game pie, a coffee, and a packet of Hula Hoops.
Shaw was on the mobile, tracking down DI William Creake.
‘Bill?’ he said, cupping the phone, turning his back on the sea breeze.
‘Yeah – fine, good. She’s well. Look. I need your help. You know this stiff down on the docks – the one they found on the storm grid? Right. I know. Have you got the records down from Cleethorpes yet – the missing person?’
Shaw looked at Valentine and couldn’t help a weary glance up to the sky. ‘No? Yeah – it takes time. But you’re sure of that – the widow says he never wore a watch? Right. I was in the Ark for the autopsy on our man from the hospital and I couldn’t help noticing your one had marks on his wrist. So, if it’s not a watch…’
Shaw’s shoulder sagged. He listened for a minute, then cut the line.
He walked towards Valentine’s Mazda talking over his shoulder. ‘Creake’s just read the original witness statements.
Shaw was angry, but not as angry as George Valentine. He’d spent ten years of his life on the north Norfolk coast – busted down to DS – running a case load dominated by petty theft at weekend cottages and the odd half-hearted armed robbery at an amusement arcade. Meanwhile police officers as incompetent as Bill Creake had been made up to DI.
‘Ring Justina for me, George. Tell her I want another examination of the floater – tell her to make up any excuse she wants to get it off Rigby. It doesn’t usually take much.’
Valentine made the call. He threw the mobile onto the dashboard. ‘Why wristbands?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know, but I can have a guess. They’re ID bands; last thing you want to do in a transplant operation is mix up donor and recipient. Maybe it’s that simple – white for donors, red for recipients. Like I said, I don’t know. But if Bill Creake had done his job I could have started trying to find out yesterday – which would have been a big plus.’
Valentine thought how often it was that the simple details brought a crime to life. He still couldn’t get the image of the victim they’d just found out of his mind. ‘There’s a market for human eyes?’ he asked, avoiding Shaw’s.
‘And MVR?’ asked Valentine.
‘I still think it’s the motor pool – especially now. This isn’t some backstreet one-off op, George. This is trade. This has to be a donor. Bill Creake’s floater too. Then there’s Blanket – where’s he gone? This isn’t just about Bryan Judd’s murder any more – although as he isn’t a donor, he may be the key to this. We need to get this info to people who can help us. As soon as we get to the incident room get on it, George – Interpol, the Yard, Customs, the lot. And we need to shake down the hospital – surgeons, nursing staff, everyone.’
Valentine drove, lighting a Silk Cut from the Mazda’s dashboard lighter, keeping his eyes on the road. He had that trick of being able to keep his eyes open even when the smoke got in them. When they parked outside A&E, they slapped a ‘Police’ sign on the windscreen. Twine was in the incident room, with Birley still running through CCTV footage.
‘Where’s Jofranka Phillips?’ asked Shaw, taking a coffee from a tray.
‘Organ bank, sir, with the inquiry team. She’ll be there all day.’
‘Right.’ He told Twine what they’d found on Warham’s Hole, and the link with Bill Creake’s floater in the storm grid. ‘MVR. There has to be a link,’ he said. ‘So let’s shut the garage down – seal it. Get a description of the body out on the sands to all the papers. Hadden says there’s a missing finger – the scar’s an old one, so that helps. Don’t mention organ removal. We’ll hold off for another
Twine nodded, expertly sifting through documents on the computer, then printing out two sheets of A4. Shaw read Peploe first – a life in 350 words. Standard education for the son of a Perth doctor. A good school, then Edinburgh University, then a post at a New York clinic specializing in restorative cosmetic surgery for young children. He was forty-five, married, with two grown-up children. In 1989 he had taken part in the Whitbread Round the World Race as part of a team based in Southampton, sponsored by Goldman Sachs.