Shaw was behind the plumber’s van now, and through the heated rear window and the grille he’d seen a young man in the passenger seat reading a magazine. He came alongside, noticing for the first time the paw prints in the snow between the footprints, and tapped on the driver’s window, then opened the door.
‘Police,’ he said, putting his knee on the driver’s seat
‘Name?’ said Shaw.
The man shrugged. ‘Das Fleisch,’ he said, mangling the words. ‘They got Turkish blokes on site, they bring them in from Frankfurt.’
‘Your name.’
‘I found it, the last job this morning. Building site down in the Arndale, in the Portakabin where I brewed the tea. There was loads. Worse…’
Shaw waited. He studied the young man’s face. Noted the premature hair loss at the temples, the acne scars, and the pronounced dimple in the chin – the mental fovea.
‘Sean Harper. That’s my boss,’ said the young man, nodding forward to the group standing in the pool of light. ‘Fred.’ He grinned as if this was the ultimate character reference.
‘I’ll keep this, Mr Harper,’ said Shaw, folding the magazine inside his jacket.
‘Like – it’s not a crime.’
‘Well, it is actually,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’
‘You go out?’ asked Harper, pointing at the RNLI lifeboat motif on the lapel of Shaw’s jacket, trying hard to smile.
‘Yup.’
‘That’s cool,’ said Harper, watching his magazine disappear from sight. ‘I’ve thought of it… you know? Volunteering.’
‘You should,’ said Shaw, not smiling.
Next in line was the revamped Securicor van. The driver refused to open the window until he saw the warrant card pressed up against the glass, then he cracked it an inch.
‘Any trouble?’ asked Shaw, knowing he’d seen the man before – in the dock of the magistrates’ court. The crime? He searched his memory but couldn’t pinpoint the case. Something violent, he knew that. Something violent with his hands, in pursuit of cash. Why then, Shaw asked himself, was he sitting guarding a van full of the stuff? He was twenty‐five to thirty, dark good looks marred by a narrow nose which had been broken and badly reset and which only just managed to separate his eyes, the eyebrows almost meeting at the bridge. He had a halfhearted moustache and designer stubble.
‘You got a control desk to contact?’ asked Shaw.
The driver found his voice. ‘We don’t have radios – and there’s no signal on the mobiles.’
Shaw stepped back, looking along the line of vehicles. ‘Get my DS to radio through for you – there’s enough chaos after the storm without half the force out looking for you and your bars of gold. What is in the back?’
The guard checked a clipboard. ‘Cash. We do corner shops, the supermarkets on the estates, wholesale fish
‘Sit tight,’ said Shaw, wondering if his employer knew about the criminal record. He approved of rehabilitation, but putting the alcoholic behind the bar was asking for trouble.
Ahead he could see the Corsa’s two nearside doors open, two figures standing back, watching Shaw. One, a man in overalls, waved and placed a hand on his heart, patting a quilted jacket. Shaw raised a hand.
‘Problem?’ he shouted.
The man pointed inside the Corsa, patted his chest again. ‘Heart.’
He moved quickly past the next car – a Volvo, an old model estate, a hand‐painted sign reading ‘The Emerald Garden’ on the rear window. The distinctive aroma of soy sauce was laced with petrol fumes. No driver, no passengers.
An elderly man lay tilted back in the Corsa’s front seat. Shaw guessed he was sixty‐five, perhaps seventy. He had heavy spectacles, with black plastic rims, and thin white hair stuck to his skull. His face was the colour of the streaks in Stilton cheese, saliva catching the light at the corners of his mouth. Vomit covered his chin and the front of the heavy jacket, a slimy eggshell‐blue. Shaw picked up the strong scent of pine needles but couldn’t see the air freshener.
A woman in a yellow jacket stood back, smoking. Kneeling, the man in clean blue overalls held the sick man’s hand, his neat face screwed up with anxiety, a small wound on his forehead still wet with blood. A Jack Russell
‘Like I say, heart attack, I reckon,’ said the man in the overalls. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got a mobile signal? You stuck too?’
‘I’m a policeman,’ said Shaw. ‘We’ve radioed. Can I see, please?’
He bent down and found that another man was on the passenger seat. Chinese features, his knees drawn up beneath him. ‘Can’t find a pulse,’ he said, the consonants dulled by his accent.
Shaw took out a pocket knife and cut the tie which had become fiercely knotted at the man’s throat. Then he pulled both sides of his heavy oversized jacket and shirt apart, the buttons popping clear. He turned the collar away from the neck and noticed a name tag: RFA. He leant in close to the man’s face, putting a hand to his forehead. He knew instantly that the man was alive: the drops of water in his eyebrows were warm, and although his lips were blue and didn’t move they were moist with the breath that was passing between them, like the draught under a door.
He backed out and shouted to Valentine, who was down on his haunches by the Morris, talking through the driver’s window.
‘George,’ he shouted. Valentine stood slowly, one hand on the Morris for support. ‘Get a chopper. Medical emergency – cardiac arrest, male about sixty‐five years of age. They’ll see us from the air, tell ’em to come down on the seaward side – it’s flat sand under the snow.’
Shaw ducked back into the Corsa and, feeling inside
The man on the passenger seat said he was called Stanley Zhao. Even folded on his knees Shaw could see he bucked the racial stereotype by being the best part of six feet tall. He looked fifty, but his hair was still as black as a penguin’s feathers. Shaw told him to stay in the Corsa, run the heating at half blast and sound the horn if Holt came round or got worse.
Shaw shut the door and straightened his back, bringing his face up level with the roof rack, the two sets of ladders strapped up neatly with webbing. The woman in the yellow coat and the man in the blue overalls stood between him and the first two vehicles in the convoy.
‘My name’s Baker‐Sibley; Sarah Baker‐Sibley,’ said the woman. ‘I need to get a message to my daughter. I should have picked her up from school – St Agnes’ Hall – and I’m worried. I’m always there on time – or I ring. She won’t have Clara with her – that’s her best friend. She has a clarinet lesson after school,’ she added. ‘She’ll walk home. She’ll try to walk. Two miles, she’s done it before and she has a key, but never in winter… in this,’ she said, looking out over the snowfield. ‘She’s thirteen. So she won’t think twice about trying.’ She laughed, then dropped the half‐finished cigarette and fumbled for the packet. ‘I’m sorry – can I see your warrant card again?’
‘This your Alfa?’ Shaw asked her, walking forward. ‘I’d stay put for now,’ he added when she didn’t answer. ‘And the vehicle in front?’
‘The man who’s ill went forward and checked when we first got stuck,’ she said. ‘The driver hasn’t been out. Perhaps he’s getting some sleep; he had some horrendous racket at full blast to start with.’
The radio still played, but the volume was now low, the sound reedy.