As the iMac screen blossomed he tried to push Peploe’s face from his mind: the saliva in a colourless line across the tanned skin, the crowded eyes. He tapped into Google, then to the local council website, following the links to the Burney Housing Association which now ran the Westmead Estate. Garage rental was outsourced to a private company called OffStreet. It had an online register listing the sixty-three lock-up garages on the Westmead. Eight were empty and available for rental at an annual fee of £40. Management of the service on the ground was provided by a warden – Mr D. Holden. An address in the nearby Shinwell Flats was listed, together with a telephone number.
Shaw checked his watch: low tide, and 10.36 p.m. It was late, but patience wasn’t his strong suit. He rang and a woman answered, who said Don wouldn’t mind the Newsnight. Shaw assured her it was a routine inquiry.
Don Holden’s voice was a surprise; high and reedy, happy to help. Shaw had four names and wanted to know if any of them matched the tenants on the current roll. Four names: the three Askit apprentices he suspected were on the CCTV of the crash at Castle Rising, and Robert Mosse. Don said he’d be a minute and came back with the register. It was all on paper, always had been, because he’d been on a course for the computer but his fingers were too big for the keys. Shaw waited.
No match.
Did he have the register for past years? Yes – back to 1995. Before that he’d burnt the lot because it was a small flat and they had a cat to swing. Could he check back? Shaw sat, breathing in the sea air through the open window, as Holden went over the old registers.
No match.
Shaw laughed, thanked him, and rang off. He walked out on the sand and watched the distant white line of surf breaking out towards the horizon. He took a small rubber ball from his pocket and began to bounce it up against the wooden side of the café, catching it despite his one-eyed vision by gently moving his head a few inches from side to side – a technique which effectively gave his brain two images of the moving ball from which he could build a 3D image. He caught the ball three times perfectly, but missed the fourth by a good foot. It was a skill he’d have to hone.
He pocketed the ball and glanced up at the small sign set over the entrance to the café. It had been a big step Lena Margaret Hunte; licensed to sell beers, wines and spirits to be consumed on the premises.
Everything to do with the business was in her name – and she’d never taken his. He went back to his desk and found the file he wanted in the top drawer. The records on a juvenile court case from 1996, a case he’d been drawn to because of its links to the death of Jonathan Tessier. Three young men – Bobby Mosse’s gang – had admitted terrorizing a small boy called Giddy Poynter. The boy’s mother had tried to set up a Neighbourhood Watch scheme on the Westmead to try and curb vandalism on her floor of Vancouver House. The gang locked Giddy in a rubbish bin overnight, having tossed in half a dozen rats to keep him company, just to teach his mum a lesson.
Shaw read through the note on the proceedings until he got to a section in which each of the three gang members had been given the chance to produce an adult to speak on their behalf. They’d admitted the charges, but this was in mitigation. Two had produced fathers but the third – Alex Cosyns – had called his mother, a woman who described herself as the common-law wife of his father. She’d kept her maiden name. And there it was – Roundhay.
Shaw rang Holden back and asked him to check Roundhay in the list of tenants – but he didn’t have to.
‘Yes. Of course – that’s a big family on the Westmead, Inspector. They’ve always owned a lock-up – that’s
Shaw told him not to bother; one number was enough.
The picture in Shaw’s head was like a snapshot from a family album – in 1990s colour, brash and glaring. A hot Sunday afternoon, the lock-up garages baking, a small boy standing at an open roll-up door, a puppy yelping. At the side of the door two numbers screwed into the woodwork: 51. Then the snapshot moved, coming to life, so that the child was free to move. Someone said something and he took a step inside, out of the sunlight, then another, and then he was gone. For ever.
Valentine walked home along the quayside. The incoming tide brought with it the remnants of the cool mist which had acted as a shroud for Gavin Peploe’s yacht. Out in mid-channel a freighter had slid in along the Cut from the sea, deck lights ablaze. The sound of a radio playing music to a Latin beat bounced over the water. The ship swung in the tide, the stern coming round towards the quayside so that she could enter the Alexandra Dock. The steel starboard side came to within fifty feet of the quay, towering over Valentine.
He stopped, lit a Silk Cut, and watched the ship glide towards him, skewed, the great mass edging sideways. The engines churned up chocolate-coloured water. On the side was painted a huge flag. Something exotic, thought Valentine; the Philippines, perhaps? Some banana republic? A blue flag, a yellow rhombus, within which was set a blue sphere of the night sky with studded stars, and a curving green band containing letters.
‘Tin-pot,’ he said to himself. You could always tell a country that had its arse hanging out by the fact that it had a flag cluttered with rubbish: coats of arms, emblems, flowers, you name it – they’d stuff it on the flag in the hope that no one would notice that the country was on its uppers.
The flag flying from the mast was different, something
Smoking, he read out the words on the coloured flag. ‘Ordem e Progresso.’ He thought it didn’t take his education to work that one out. Order and progress. Trite, he thought, flicking his cigarette end in the water, then turning away.
Fifty yards down the quay he stopped, in no hurry to get home. The house, despite the summer’s day, would be cold – especially the bathroom, which always offered up the worst moment of his life, the last look in the mirror each night. He lit another Silk Cut, and thought about Alex Cosyns – about the cheque from Robert Mosse, and who he knew on the regional fraud squad who could wriggle him access to Cosyns’s bank account. There’d been no complaint from Cosyns. Which was good news, but also unsettling. He shivered slightly, rolling his shoulders.
He looked back along the quay when he heard the odd, taut complaint of the buffers on the ship meeting the wooden piling which protected the concrete wharf; just a glance, a random moment which, he would later have to admit, probably saved his career, maybe even his life.
The name on the stern of the ship was written in blue letters ten feet high:
MV ROSA.
Shaw woke a millisecond before the phone rang. Or was it the second ring? He could never quite catch the echo, but sensed it was there, bouncing round the dark room. He could smell Lena; her skin was so close, a subtle mix of sweat and salt. He fumbled with the receiver trying not to think it must be bad news. It was George Valentine.
‘Peter. I need to show you something – outside the Crane, on Erebus Street.’ For once Valentine’s voice was free of the corrosive edge of antagonism.
Lena turned away in her sleep.
Shaw propped himself up on an elbow and looked at the harsh red numbers on the alarm clock: 12.55 a.m.
Then he made a mistake. ‘Is this really necessary, George?’
He heard Valentine draw on an unseen cigarette. Shaw knew he shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t have questioned his DS’s judgement. George Valentine was his partner, and he’d got the best part of thirty years’ service under his belt. If he rang his DI in the middle of the night he had a reason – a compelling one. Shaw knew what Lena would say, and the word ‘trust’ would be at its heart. So he made himself cut in. ‘Sorry. Course it is. I’ll be there in twenty. Don’t move.’