Woods looked at the spot where Shaw’s tie should have been. ‘He’d have been proud of you.’
‘He didn’t want me to be a copper.’
‘He wanted you to have a life. He just didn’t think you could have both,’ said Woods, hiding a frayed cuff. ‘He’d still have been proud of you.’
‘Is there a box for the Tessier case?’
‘A file?’
‘No. A box – a scene‐of‐crime box.’
Woods took some keys from a metal drawer and led the way down the room. The door set in the far wall was iron, fireproof, the black paint peeling. He reached inside and flicked a switch, a solitary light bulb illuminating the final cellar beneath an identical brick roof.
Open wooden shelving this time, metal boxes, navy blue, stacked in lines, each secured with a small padlock, each with a card inserted in a groove. Shaw turned one to the light:
ATKINS. June 1974.
DI R.G.WILLIS. CN 778/8
TESSIER. July 1997.
DCI Jack Shaw. CN 1399/3
They each took a handle, lugging it to a wide table, scratches polished into the surface. Woods unlocked the box and tipped back the lid. Dust rose like a final breath.
There wasn’t much inside. Shaw held up a plastic bag containing a single black leather glove. The label was in Jack Shaw’s writing. Date. Time. Place. Countersigned by DI George Valentine.
‘And there we have it,’ said Shaw, wanting to believe. Another cellophane bag. Items of clothing cut from the body in the morgue. A football top – Celtic – and a pair of white shorts. Pants, socks (odd, both football, but one green one white), a pair of football boots with the studs removed, and a red sweatshirt. Another held the contents of the shorts pocket: a 20p piece, two 10p pieces, a single wrapped Opal Fruit. A third bag had been set aside for a scrap of paper covered in oil stains.
Shaw held it up to the light. ‘Chip paper,’ he read off the label. ‘Beef dripping – those were the days, eh, Timber?’
Next was a glass phial, empty now apart from a dirty tidemark, but the label said it had held water and oil from
‘The original forensics report will be with the file,’ said Woods, nodding as if the question had been asked. ‘But this is a copy.’ There was an envelope attached to the inside of the box lid, and he slid out a sheaf of papers in close type. ‘You often get those empty tubes with these old cases. Nothing left after a standard set of DNA tests in those days.’
‘I’d like to book the box out.’
Woods heaved a ledger round. ‘Got a bit of spare time, have you, Peter? A coupla murders would keep most DIs busy.’
‘Can’t sleep,’ said Shaw, laughing.
‘Your dad was the same,’ said Woods, locking up.
‘I’d like the box and the copy of the lab reports taken over to forensics – Tom Hadden’s attention. Get a signature there as well, OK?’
Woods checked the entry. ‘You know what this place used to be?’ he asked, looking round.
‘No idea, Timber.’
‘Before we had to bring the records down it was cells
‘So everyone says. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work, Timber.’ Shaw couldn’t keep the edge of anger out of his voice. ‘I’m supposed to be convinced by the evidence. So.’ He tapped the evidence box. ‘Let’s see what twelve years’ worth of advances in forensic science can tell us, shall we?’
They walked back into the records room. ‘I’d like the file too,’ said Shaw, closing his good eye, resting it now that the tiredness was blurring his vision.
Woods took a big breath. ‘The file on Tessier’s out.’ Shaw stopped and looked at his heavy, fleshy face. ‘Who… ?’
‘According to the book it was George Valentine,’ said Woods. ‘You two should talk to each other.’
An hour later Shaw was walking back along the line of the dunes towards The Old Beach Café. Despite the hour Lena was still working, that day’s delivery of stock spread out on the wooden floor of the old boathouse shop: wetsuits spreadeagled in lines, a rack of swimwear, and a brace of new surf boards encased in bubble wrap.
She was in a tracksuit, her hair pulled back in a stylish knot.
‘Did you have a run?’ said Shaw, sitting in a wicker chair by the racks of beach shoes.
‘Just down to the sea at dusk while Fran was reading.’ Shaw glanced at the baby monitor Lena still left on when she worked in the shop. Fran was old enough now to
‘Drink? I heard the latest on the radio.’
She fetched a wine bottle, the cork eased out, and two small glass tumblers.
‘George Valentine told me something I didn’t know about Dad,’ said Shaw, holding the wine up to the light. It looked like blood. He drank it quickly and helped himself to a second glass.
Lena knelt, spreading out one of the wetsuits, testing the seams. Shaw’s family was not a subject they ever discussed. When he’d come back from London after his year with the Met he’d brought Lena with him. His mother had tried to see past her skin, but Jack Shaw couldn’t even do that. The atmosphere at home was toxic in the aftermath of the Tessier case. Jack Shaw had taken early retirement to protect his pension. Which meant the Tessier file was closed. The subject was never mentioned, but had permeated his father’s bitter last year of life. It hadn’t been the best moment to ask him to embrace an inter‐racial marriage. The clash marked the final break between father and son. Lena couldn’t believe so little could be said as a family tore itself apart.
‘He said Dad asked
‘And has he?’ she asked.
‘No. And I don’t think there’s any chance he ever will.’ Shaw thought about what he was going to say next, knowing it revealed a cynical side to his mind which Lena hated. ‘Which raises two questions. Did Dad really ask him to clear his name? If it’s a genuine question it’s a kind of proof in itself, isn’t it? And second. He’s taken the file on the Tessier case out of the records at St James’s. Why? Perhaps there’s something in it that incriminates them both.’
Lena stood, holding up a new suit, a sky‐blue wave picked out on the stippled black chest.
‘But if Jack did ask him?’
‘Then I suppose I could try to help,’ said Shaw. ‘Should try to help. If we could prove Mosse was the killer it would lift the cloud over the case – not entirely, of course, even if Mosse is guilty it doesn’t mean they didn’t plant the evidence. But it shifts the probabilities. They didn’t follow the rules that night, nobody’s going to rewrite that. But if Mosse is the murderer then it’s odds on it was his glove, and that it was bagged when they took it to the flat.’
‘How are you going to prove he was the killer?’ she asked, ever practical.
‘I’ve got the forensics – the original box. Valentine’s a good copper, in fact he’s a bloody good copper…’
Shaw stopped, realizing that Valentine had earned the compliment. Lena just smiled, knowing how difficult he found it to admit he’d got someone wrong.
‘A bloody good copper,’ he said again. ‘But forensics aren’t his strong point. I’ll get Tom Hadden to run through, see if they missed anything. Or I can put it up to Warren, see if he’ll look at the file at least.’
‘Good. Do that. Don’t stew in it, Peter. You don’t know what happened, so find out. If you don’t trust either of them implicitly then it’s all you can do.’
Implicitly?’
It was one of her favourite words, but only because it hid what she really wanted to say. Faith was the word she was thinking about. ‘Maybe,’ she said, toying with a simple silver cross at her neck.