‘Jesus! What… ?’ asked Sly, covering his eyes with a hand as if he were looking out to sea.
‘Mr Sly? We’d like a word, and to look around.’
Sly looked back into the houseboat. Valentine sniffed, the cold air making his sinuses flood. ‘Or I can be back with a warrant in ten minutes.’ He’d give him one more chance, then they’d force a way through. Sod the warrant.
Sly didn’t move, but seemed to settle on his feet. Hadden opened his CSI bag and pulled on gloves. ‘I need to look around,’ he said, not waiting for Sly to give him permission. Valentine stamped the snow off his boots on the bare floorboards and led the way.
‘Like I’ve got a choice,’ said Sly.
‘You’ll need some clothes and a coat, sir. We have a car.’ There was a strong smell in the room but Valentine’s nose was blocked: peat perhaps, smoked fish?
‘Now? This is crazy,’ said Sly. ‘I’ve told you I’d nothing to do with James’s murder.’
Valentine, suddenly tired, felt sorry for Duncan Sly, so he decided to cut it short, spell things out. ‘Mr Sly. We’re going down to St James’s. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s got nothing to do with his murder. We understand you were on Siberia Belt the night Harvey
Sly stepped back again, and the single unshaded light bulb threw his face into relief. Valentine examined a large print of the Battle of Jutland on the wall. He thought what a defeat it must be, to end your life alone in a rotting houseboat, surrounded by the stench of tidal mud, when your dream was to be at sea.
Hadden was below decks, opening drawers, cupboards. The uniformed PC hovered. ‘Can you get some clothes on, sir – we need to go,’ said Valentine.
Sly stood his ground and Valentine wondered if they’d interrupted something. He walked to the sink. A box of firelighters stood on the shelf with a bottle of detergent, and the bowl had a black tidemark around it, a nail brush lying in the scurf.
Valentine turned quickly and caught Sly with his hands over his face. He took them away quickly and, realizing they were wet, he looked at his fingertips as if the water were blood.
‘I didn’t kill Ellis,’ he said.
Valentine treated him to a blank stare. ‘Fine. We’ll take your word for it, shall we?’
Sly clenched then unclenched his fists.
‘It’s a tidy boat you’ve got alongside,’ said Valentine. ‘No more cockle‐picking with scum on the sands, right? A bit of dignity, freedom. But at a price.’ Valentine looked round the cabin, then up at the roof where a wooden patch had been nailed up to keep the old boat weather‐proof. ‘Perhaps it was worth killing for,’ he said. He put a cigarette between his teeth but left it unlit.
Frustrated, Valentine turned on Sly. ‘What happened – did you argue about money? Did Ellis want a share of yours? Did he want you to sort it? Because you could, couldn’t you – with James – your mate, the boss?’
‘That’s tosh. Jesus!’ But Sly didn’t move.
Valentine took a deep breath, a collarbone creaking as his shoulders rose. ‘Just get dressed, sir. Now.’
Valentine went to the hatchway and called in the second uniformed PC, who was standing at the landward end of the gangplank. ‘Accompany Mr Sly below please, Constable – he needs clothes, an overnight bag.’
Sly reluctantly went down, a cat passing him on the steps coming up. It brushed itself against Valentine’s black slip‐ons, then made a figure of eight between his feet.
By the time Sly was ready Hadden had six pairs of shoes and boots lined up on a plastic sheet. Two pairs had steel toecaps. But he still hadn’t got a match.
‘I take it you found some footprints,’ said Sly.
‘Just one,’ said Valentine. ‘Under the security van in the convoy of cars on Siberia Belt. But a deep one – because Harvey Ellis’s killer was loading his body into the pickup’s cab, and he was standing in a pool of Ellis’s blood which had melted the frozen soil.’ Valentine watched Sly’s eyes, looking for signs of fear or confusion. ‘Once the body was in the van my guess is it was pushed forward to the pine tree – but those footprints couldn’t dent the
‘If we’re lucky,’ said Hadden, unhappy with Valentine’s methods: the hectoring, the implied menace.
‘Why would I kill Harvey Ellis?’ said Sly.
Valentine rolled the cigarette between his lips, tasting tobacco. ‘Because he wouldn’t do his job. And you worked out that he could do it just as well dead as alive.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Sly.
‘No?’ said Valentine. ‘Let’s go and hear what it was really like, shall we?’ He nodded at the PC: ‘I think we should cuff this one.’
The officer put Sly’s muscled arms behind him and handcuffed his hands. Valentine was rewarded with a look of undiluted hatred.
Valentine swayed slightly on his feet, enjoying the moment. They’d find the boots. And if they didn’t, they’d find blood. If Sly had struck the fatal blow then they’d find blood. Perhaps, he thought, there’d be time for the house on Greenland Street. The thought of the fan‐tan table made his pulse pick up so that he nearly missed it, nearly proved for the last time that his career was over. But there was something about that smell, the smokiness.
He filled his lungs. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘The fire.’ He threw open the double hatch doors, clattered down the steps and ran to the smouldering wood and rubbish, stumbling through the mud, splashing through the stagnant salt water. The heavy snow had almost put it out, the flakes sizzling in the embers.
He pulled out some wood, a branch, as Hadden joined him.
‘Got the fucker,’ said Valentine.
Shaw unlocked the filing cabinet in the incident room and took out John Holt’s file. The wad of scene‐of‐crime pictures was comprehensive. Holt’s Corsa, interior, exter ior, boot. And a black‐and‐white shot of the cast taken from his shoes. Slip‐ons, like George’s, with a crisscross tread and diamond motif on the heel.
‘Distinctive…’ said Shaw, to himself.
The building was silent, even the drunks in the cells were quiet.
He pulled out the file on the footprint found under the security van by Tom Hadden’s team. A boot, the steel toecap wide, the sole a grid‐iron of raised squares, cracked and fissured with age, the imprint of the burnt‐in fern, like a signature. Whoever had worn that boot had stood in Ellis’s warm blood.
He re‐read Holt’s statement. He’d been on an errand that night, to his daughter’s house, to cut back the magnolia tree that was knocking on his granddaughter’s window. Shaw had seen him finishing the job when they’d called at Blickling Cottages: he recalled the gardener’s jacket, the gloves and the heavy‐duty boots. Holt had said the police had just given his kit back from the Corsa.
Shaw went back to Holt’s file. Each car had been given a thorough forensic examination and each had a detailed inventory. Shaw read the one for the Corsa. The list for A–Z of Britain, a directory of builders’ merchants in north Norfolk, two old copies of the Lynn News, both open and folded at local football reports. On the back seat a pot plant, a hyacinth, listed simply as ‘gift’. A hatchback, so the list moved on to the large boot. A length of synthetic rope, a child’s kite with a Mickey Mouse design, and a holdall, with zip, containing ‘gardening kit’.
He rang Tom Hadden. The CSI senior investigator answered on the second ring. Breathless, the rhythmic thud of a heavy bag.
‘Sorry, Tom – you can talk?’