He watched the walking shadow fade away. Within a minute he was on the step, sliding his St James’s security card down the door jamb, the lock springing. He stepped in, closed the door, and flipped on his torch. A bachelor’s house: no carpet in the hallway, letters in a pile on a table holding a cordless phone. In the front room a media centre, an armchair, an exercise bike. The kitchen was MFI – new – with the cupboards full of tins and nothing in the fridge except milk. He ran up the stairs and felt his
There was a footstep, outside the room, on the uncarpeted steps, and a dog’s claws skittering. The Yale on the front door was so well oiled he hadn’t heard it open. He felt the euphoria drain away. He looked at his watch: 12.28 a.m. He’d been a fool, and now – unless he could construct a plausible story – he’d just chucked away that promotion. Shaw had laid out Superintendent Warren’s instructions in a formal letter: he was not to approach Cosyns, or any other witness or suspect connected to the Tessier case, either in person, by letter, or by phone. And here he was, standing by his bed. He walked quickly to the top of the stairs and threw the torchlight squarely into Cosyns’s face. ‘Don’t move – police. Back down the steps, please – hands to the wall.’
Cosyns didn’t move; the man had the ability to maintain an almost eerie calm. ‘I live here,’ he said. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
Valentine pulled out his radio and let it crackle. It was on an open channel and they could hear a squad car calling in from a pub fight in the town centre.
Cosyns backed down the stairs, flipping the light
There was a picture on the wall Valentine had missed because it was behind the door – Cosyns, with a girl aged six or seven, both sitting on the bonnet of the souped-up Citroën. Cosyns took it off the wall and held it out. ‘I live here – look.’
Valentine got to the foot of the stairs. ‘We got a call – someone forcing the door. I live round the corner. It was open.’
‘Right,’ said Cosyns, smiling easily, and reaching down to unleash the dog. ‘But it wasn’t when I left.’ He examined the door jamb. ‘Nice job – clean as a whistle.’ He looked past Valentine and up the stairs. ‘Nothing up there, then?’
Valentine shook his head, helpless now, knowing he was losing credibility with every passing second. He took a step towards the door and the dog growled, its lips peeling back to show black gums.
‘I didn’t see the warrant card,’ said Cosyns.
Valentine took it out, wishing the light wasn’t on. Cosyns stepped forward quickly and held the wallet lightly, looking at the name and the picture. ‘Right. DS Valentine.’
Cosyns stood to one side, back against the wall, a smile on his face. ‘Reggie,’ he said, and the dog cowered at his feet.
Valentine walked past, pulled the door open, and looked out. ‘I’ll get a patrol car to keep an eye out – you need to check the contents.’
‘Right,’ said Cosyns, readjusting the position of a
Valentine made himself walk away without looking back. If he had, he’d have seen Cosyns at the front room window, the mobile in his hand, listening to the ring tone.
The line picked up. ‘Bobby,’ he said, the tone familiar, but strangely threatening.
Wednesday, 8 September
Shaw stood on the sixteenth-floor balcony of Vancouver House looking down on the Westmead Estate. The rising sun was on the far side, so he was in the dawn’s shadow; cool, almost chilly. Cars on the tarmac below looked like Dinky toys. In the flats opposite – a ten-storey block – lights were on in bathrooms and kitchens. Steam leaked from pipes, as if the insides of the flats were boiling. Shift work on the docks, or in the canning factories, meant that places like the Westmead didn’t do night and day like the suburbs did, just an infinite grey siesta. He could smell a breakfast cooking somewhere, fried bacon on the breeze, and something else, something spicier.
He looked at his watch. He shouldn’t be doing this; he had to be at the Ark at eight, and he needed to know what Valentine had organized for Level One. Tom Hadden had already sent him a text about the knife he’d taken into the lab the night before from Father Martin’s bedroom: no traces of blood, but the inside of the sheath held microscopic traces of bloodwood – a broad match for the traces found on the MVR torch. It wasn’t a fingerprint, but it was a powerful piece of physical evidence linking Father Martin to the scene of the crime. He’d ordered a cast made of the knife-tip. Father Martin had given a
So, he really didn’t have time for this. He looked at the door he was standing outside: Flat 163. His wallet held a small see-through pocket in which he usually carried a picture of Fran, but behind it was another passport-sized picture. He slipped it out now. Jonathan Tessier, just nine, an uncanny resemblance to Shaw himself at the same age: the wide high cheekbones, the tap-water eyes. He went to knock, hesitated, knowing that once the door was open he’d have lost control of events. But he had to do it; he’d promised Lena he’d do it – for them.
He’d arrived home the night before elated at the progress they’d made. He’d spent twenty hours a day on the murder inquiry from Day One; but when he got home all he wanted to talk about was the Tessier case, because he’d gone back to St James’s and watched the CCTV again. It was like a living memory now, those black and white images, shuffling around the floodlit junction.
He’d sent a text ahead and she was there to meet him on the beach. She’d brought a bottle of white wine from the fridge and two chilled glasses. The stoop was pine, the wood cool and worn, so they’d sat on the steps. Low tide, so the beach seemed to stretch to the horizon, where a necklace of lights marked the anchorage for freighters, waiting to slip into Lynn when the tide turned.
‘You look tired,’ she said, pouring his drink.
‘I watched the tape,’ he said, as the almost colourless
‘There’s something I’m missing. Something that’s not right.’ He readjusted the picture so that she could see, but she was staring out to sea. ‘Lena?’ he asked. But she still didn’t turn to him, and he knew by this gesture that tonight they wouldn’t make love. On the drive home, and the walk along the beach, he’d realized how much he wanted her, and the transformation that it always brought – the energy it released, the sudden alteration of everything, like a thunderstorm.
She was dressed in a loose sweater, with her arms out of the sleeves but tucked inside for warmth. She pulled up a leg and curled it under herself so that he didn’t see her hand slip out until it had put something on the wooden stoop.
It was a small tub of yoghurt: Madagascar vanilla.
‘What’s that?’ he said, but already he could feel the blood rushing to his heart. She held herself away from him, as if he was a fire and she didn’t want to get burnt. And he didn’t recognize her face, the focus on the middle distance, the ugly broken line of the mouth; and it made him realize that for a long time – he couldn’t guess how long – she’d arranged her face for him, like a screen around a hospital bed. But he was too desperate to know the answer to his question to ask himself what she thought she was hiding, what it was she didn’t want him to see.
‘What do you mean?’ His voice was loaded with anger; and guilt, because he knew he’d done nothing since he’d got back to the beach but talk about his work, not the daily work of the CID but his own private case, the one he’d inherited from his father, the one he’d promised to end.