Valentine noted that the mechanic had stopped welding and was now on a mobile phone.
‘They gave us the cash in an envelope. Twenties, always twenties. Then we had to go back and wait by the office for a lift into town. That was it, every time.’
The snow was heavier now, settling on the lawyer’s cashmere coat. There was a partly wrecked bus parked by the leylandii – a double‐decker, its windows out. Shaw led them on board and they sat on the stiff icy seats. It was out of the snow but somehow colder, like sitting in a fridge.
Draper told them what had happened that night on Siberia Belt. He’d stolen a car, got caught on Siberia Belt, panicked when the police arrived and fled the scene. One unexpected detail. Draper might have stuck it out for longer that night, but he said he’d recognized Sarah Baker‐Sibley. He said she always picked her daughter up from the discos at Burnham Thorpe. It was a small world, he said. That was the problem with growing up in it.
The interview was, as Shaw had suspected, a depressing dead‐end. He let Valentine take over the questions while he rang St James’s and got put through to the car‐crime unit. They’d need to check out every wreck on the yard before the management had time to cover their tracks.
Valentine was shivering now, holding his raincoat to his thin neck. ‘That night – how’d you get home?’ he asked.
‘In the snow? I got down to the coast road… I fell
‘You memorize that?’ asked Valentine, offering him a smoke.
Draper looked at his lawyer, then the Silk Cut, then took one. ‘I don’t need to. I can’t forget numbers – not once I’ve seen them.’ Shaw recalled Parlour’s description of the teenage driver of the Mondeo on Siberia Belt; the T‐shirt logo Pi is God.
‘Why’d you take the steering‐wheel cover with you when you stole the car?’ asked Shaw, taking an interest now, realizing that Valentine had been right to probe.
‘I didn’t have gloves,’ he admitted. ‘I’d been along for the ride before, nicking cars. But they said this one was mine. That way I got the money – all the money. I didn’t want to leave any prints. I used my T‐shirt when I opened the door.’
Draper smoked the cigarette cupped in his hand. ‘We don’t need to go to the station,’ said Shaw. Barrett nodded, catching his client’s eye with a wink.
‘I think you’ve been honest with me, Sebastian,’ said Shaw.
‘Seb,’ he said, then bit his lip.
‘Seb,’ said Shaw. Valentine jiggled his dice key ring. But Shaw hadn’t finished. Something about Seb Draper intrigued him. He wondered what it was like to have the kind of brain that couldn’t forget a number.
‘Seb, we’re trying to find out what really happened out there on that road on Monday night. You know what we found?’
‘That’s right. We think he was part of a plan to divert the traffic off the road. Mrs Baker‐Sibley’s daughter was abducted that night – while she was stranded out on Siberia Belt.’
Draper’s mouth opened to reveal perfect dentistry.
‘I just need you to tell me precisely what happened,’ said Shaw. ‘You’re good with details, Seb – that’s what we want. That’s where the devil is, right? You left Gayton in the Mondeo when?’
‘Five. Five past. I left the BMW under the trees by the gate to The Walks. Outside number 56. I drove out towards Hunstanton – I took the old road ’cos it’s always quieter. I got behind another car at the lights at Castle Rising. I kept my distance after that, ’cos, like, I didn’t want some stupid shunt on the road. You need to keep it simple, nicking cars – no accidents.’
Barrett was looking at his client, his eyes hardening.
‘I saw lights ahead turning down onto the sea wall. I got to the diversion sign, so I turned too. The lights were ahead, moving away from me. By the time I got round the corner the lights were ahead of me again – but they’d stopped.’
Shaw nodded. ‘So you’d followed the same car from the lights at Castle Rising, to the turning, and then down the causeway until you came to a stop?’
‘Well. Yeah. But that’s an assumption right? For you. Not for me.’
‘Why not for you?’
He didn’t laugh because he wasn’t joking, and Shaw felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He thought about it. ‘Because if you hadn’t noticed the registration number and the make of the car it didn’t have to be the same vehicle?’
‘Yeah – I lost sight of it twice. Once on the coast road, and then when it went round the corner on the causeway.’
‘Because in the time it was out of sight it might have pulled off the road, and another one pulled out to take its place?”
‘That’s it,’ said Draper.
Out of the mouths of babes… thought Shaw. He pictured the scene that night on Siberia Belt, able at last to see the events unfolding, creating the puzzle which they’d been unable to break. Until now.
‘Here,’ said Shaw, tapping on the windscreen of the Mazda. Valentine pulled the car over where Siberia Belt met the track to Gallow Marsh Farm. Shaw kicked open the passenger door. The snow had stopped and the red disc of the sun was setting between banks of cloud the colour of theatre curtains. The air temperature was falling like a hailstone. It felt good, standing on the bank, now that he thought he knew what had happened that night.
He had to see if it worked on the ground, in the real world. So they’d come straight to Siberia Belt from Kimbolton’s yard. En route St James’s had radioed Valentine. They’d got a call at 3.30 that afternoon. One of Izzy Dereham’s farm labourers had been walking down to check the oyster cages in the sea when he’d seen something in the dyke – metallic, floating in the tidal wash from the beach. DC Twine had told them to leave whatever it was, and wait for Shaw and Valentine. A fire‐brigade hazardous materials unit was on its way too – just in case they needed specialist handling gear.
‘Could be what killed chummy in the raft,’ said Valentine, as the wind thudded against the offside of the Mazda. He wanted to get up to the farm, check out what they’d found in the dyke, get back to the station. What he didn’t want to do was get out of the car.
Shaw walked back to the turn in the road, then round the corner, leaving Valentine shivering in the wind. Once out of sight of Valentine Shaw could see down to the coast road; a bus lurching towards Lynn. Then he retraced his steps until he could see the Mazda again, and beyond it the rest of Siberia Belt, and the spot where the pine had been felled that Monday night.
‘Check it, check it, check it…’ said Valentine under his breath, annoyed at being kept out of the loop. He felt the damp insinuating its way down his throat and into his lungs, so he coughed, a deep hollow boom, like a goose. Shaw was upbeat, excited, but he hadn’t shared whatever the good news was.
Shaw walked back. He stood still, then spun round, taking in the circular horizon of water, marsh and trees. He’d got it clear in his head now, and it made sense; at last, it made sense. He clapped his hands and listened to the echo ricochet off the farm buildings at Gallow Marsh.