‘We’ve never heard of Terence Brand,’ said Gail Zhao, too quickly, her voice an octave too high. ‘Have we, Stan?’
‘I’d like your husband to answer the questions, Mrs Zhao – for now at least. Mr Zhao?’
‘I know the name. The local radio had a story. He was found on the beach?’ Shaw spotted it that time, the fleeting micro‐expression, like a shadow moving across the face’s tiny muscles and tendons, a glimpse of the truth. He’d seen fear, before Zhao had reimposed a look of polite confusion.
‘Yes. The beach below Siberia Belt. Where you were stranded on Monday night. His aunt has this restaurant as a forwarding address. That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’
From the kitchen came the rhythmic rattle of the wok being shaken on the gas hob.
‘Why were you helping these people, Mr Zhao?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, giving up on the smile. ‘Do you know what I’m going to do if you don’t answer my questions truthfully?’ asked Shaw, and Valentine recognized the buzz of stress in the voice, the almost imperceptible segue from patience to menace.
Zhao licked his lips.
‘I’m going to get a forensic team from our headquarters at St James’s and I’m going to seal off your spare room
‘I can answer if I want to,’ cut in his wife, taking her husband’s hand. ‘We don’t know what Terry did.’
‘Terry?’ said Valentine.
‘He’s my son,’ she said, the chin jutting out. Downstairs they heard the sound of chips being thrown into hot oil. ‘Was my son.’
She took out a scrap of tissue and began to dab at her mouth, the eyes already swimming in tears. ‘Brand is my maiden name. I was just fifteen when Terry was born, here in Lynn.’
They sat in silence, letting the truth settle like dust. ‘Why are you only telling us this now?’ asked Shaw. Mrs Zhao tried to look through him. ‘Terry’s life was his own. We didn’t ask questions. I’m his mother, that’s what I do. I don’t ask questions.’
It wasn’t good enough, but Shaw let it go.
‘And I owed him, I suppose.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘I went to Hong Kong for a new life. Aunt Ruth was his father’s sister. She brought him up. His father didn’t stick around.’ She took her hands away, damp with tears. ‘She never wanted to know anything about me. But I kept in touch with Terry, she was OK about that. He was unhappy at Ruth’s; rebellious, I suppose. I
‘But the room he slept in, Mrs Zhao, it’s newly decorated, for a child,’ said Shaw.
‘Yes. I was seven months pregnant, Detective Inspector, but I lost the child. Last year. We shouldn’t have done that, tempted fate. But I guess we got excited. It was a girl,’ she added, attempting a smile.
Mr Zhao was looking at the sickly pattern on the shag pile.
‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘I’m sorry.’ He thought about it: losing two children in a year – one a grown man, the other unborn. ‘But I’d still like to know what your husband was doing on Siberia Belt the night Terry’s body was washed up. What did Terry do when he was staying with you – for money?’
Mr Zhao raised a hand to his mouth. ‘In the summer he surfed, wind sports. He spent money, I didn’t ask where it came from. We were fond of him.’
Shaw thought of the blood‐caked teeth. ‘Did you give him a ring, Mr Zhao? A man with a dragon’s tail carved in jet?’
He nodded, his eyelids almost closing. ‘Hsi, the first emperor.’
‘And in the winter?’
‘He had a wetsuit – and he fished at night, on the long lines. He hung around that café on the front by the fair.’
Shaw thought of the wetsuits swilling in the sea spray off Hunstanton, the fishermen huddled at night by lanterns, the magazines under the counter at the café, sticky fingerprints on the glass. Another lucrative trade for Terry Brand. A parcel on each trip perhaps, a little extra money.
‘How did he get down to the beach?’ asked Valentine. ‘Nearest surf is – what – fifteen miles. And he’s got all his kit. You’re not going to get sea rods on the bus, are you?’ Key question: Shaw bit his lip.
Mrs Zhao had frozen but her husband had an answer; the wrong answer. ‘His friends had a car.’
‘Who are they – these friends? What do they look like?’ said Valentine, flipping open the notebook, biro in his teeth, playing the role perfectly.
‘We didn’t see them,’ Zhao said.
‘They’d stay in the car – sound the horn,’ said Mrs Zhao, joining in.
‘In the car,’ repeated Valentine. ‘What sort of car?’
‘A white van, dirty,’ said Zhao.
Shaw zipped up his coat. ‘I think you were the transport, Mr Zhao. I think that’s why you were there that night. To meet Terry. I think you’d done it before. And I think you know he wasn’t sea fishing, or looking for the perfect winter wave. He was smuggling. Dangerous work – so dangerous it killed him. I think he was curious about what he was bringing in, curious to know what price it would fetch. Did he talk to you about that, Mr Zhao? Mrs Zhao? And the merchandise? Did he bring it here?’
‘Merchandise?’ said Stanley Zhao, shaking his head.
‘A suitcase perhaps,’ said Shaw. ‘Reinforced, aluminium probably, so it wouldn’t weigh too much. Or plastic containers, baskets – what did they use, Mr Zhao? You tell me. Is that why you didn’t contact the police when we released his name?’
Mrs Zhao rubbed her eyes and looked at Shaw for the first time. ‘If Terry was dead… is dead… what’s the point in contacting the police? Terry never brought anything home, Detective Inspector,’ she added. ‘Never.’
Shaw guessed she was telling the truth, or nearly the truth. The magazines came home. But no, he didn’t bring the consignment home. So where did it go?
‘Whatever he was smuggling that last night probably killed him. I’m going to have to ask you to identify the body, Mrs Zhao. Can you do that for me?’
Shaw watched her face collapse, watched her lose control of the nerves that held the line of her mouth.
‘No, I don’t think I can,’ she said, but she reached for her coat.
Shark Tooth’s plant was on the single‐track road beside the Wash at Wootton Marsh. Snow at sea had smudged out the horizon, and the reed beds were frozen. The plant’s buildings were flat‐pack sheds, between which tractors scurried, buckets aloft, seawater draining from the shellfish within. From the main processing shed the sound of cockles rolling on a conveyor belt was punctuated by the hissing of a cheap radio. At the corner of the yard a flag flew, the blue clamshell on a white background.
Shaw watched the flag unfurl in a slight breeze, then smelt the salt on his fingers from his early morning swim. ‘Terry Brand’s body was found at the beach below Gallow Marsh Farm. Shark Tooth owns the farm. It also employs the cockle‐picking gang which works on Styleman’s Middle. It runs boats through the sandbanks off Ingol Beach. On the night of the murder I saw a yacht off the beach – a blue clam insignia on the sail.’ They both looked at the flying flag. ‘Part of the answer’s here. Got to be.’
Valentine flipped open the file he’d got one of the DCs to put together on the late shift. He rubbed his eyes, forcing them to focus. He’d spent a second night in the house on the corner of Greenland Street but this time he’d run out of luck, and that always made him tired. Three hours sleep, maximum. He’d read the file at the kitchen table by dawn’s light, and he summarized
Now the company employed between fifty and eighty people, depending on the season. They had a dozen boats, with the focus on commercial shellfish, although they still ran fishing trips in season. There’d been a wodge of newspaper cuttings in the file following the Morecambe Bay disaster – in which a gang of ethnic Chinese cockle‐pickers, mostly illegal immigrants, had died when they’d been cut off by the treacherous tides off the Lancashire coast. Colin Narr, CEO of Shark Tooth, had told the press all his workforce – Chinese or other – had legal papers, a fact verified by Lynn CID. But the Conservancy Board that regulated the harbour had brought in new safety rules for the cockle boats: limiting numbers, requiring a manifest of those going out on each tide, enforcing a licensing system for gangmasters. Ownership of the privately registered company was obscure: Colin Narr described himself as a minority shareholder. Five years ago they’d bought Gallow Marsh Farm to develop the oyster beds.