road came into view all too quickly and he slowed to a halt: 4 minutes 43 seconds. His body cried out for him to carry on, to push himself until his bloodstream pumped
He bent double, his palms in the snow, then straightened. His mobile buzzed, picking up text messages he’d been unable to receive overnight within the dead zone on Siberia Belt. He scrolled down: three from Lena, all pictures. His daughter in bed, a book folded over her head where it had dropped from her hands as she fell asleep, a snowman on the beach in front of the house, and one of Lena — cowering out of the wind on the veranda, taken by his daughter.
He jogged back along Siberia Belt, looking steadily ahead, imagining the cars the previous night, edging their way through the snow towards the sharp right?hand turn just before Gallow Marsh Farm. He rounded the bend and saw the stranded convoy. Each car and van sealed with signed plastic tags on the door handles and boots — except the Alfa, where he could see the CSI team still at work, the gentle buzz of a forensic vacuum within. The victim’s truck was hidden within a SOC tent, lit like a Chinese lantern. Ahead, the pine tree still blocked the road, but beyond it stood a fire rescue vehicle, and behind that an ambulance, blue lights silently flashing. Both emergency vehicles were parked in a lay?by Shaw had not noticed before, built to allow cars to pass each other on the narrow track.
The sound of a chainsaw serrated the silence and amongst the pine’s branches Shaw could see movement, the last of the snow falling from the needles.
Tom Hadden, the force’s senior crime scene investigator, was buried within, while a fireman cut wood on
‘Anything?’ asked Shaw, knowing he could leave the pleasantries aside.
Hadden struggled to turn his head amongst the pine branches. ‘Well. I’m pretty sure it’s a tree.’
Shaw pressed in amongst the pine needles, which released a wave of pungent scent. ‘How’d she come down?’
‘Three blows,’ said Hadden, reaching forward, parting branches to reveal the trunk, neatly severed by a series of axe blows. ‘Instant roadblock. I’d say it wasn’t the first time our woodman had swung an axe.’
Shaw recalled George Valentine’s summary of the crime: on one hand a disregard for leaving clues — the victim left to die in the cab, now the axe marks — combined with the complete absence of footprints.
‘Anything else I should know now?’
Hadden extricated himself, a kneecap clicking as he did so. ‘Pathologist is still at work,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll leave her to it, don’t you?’
The pronoun told Shaw all he needed to know. There
Edging past the pick?up they came to the Alfa, and Shaw noticed a small flag marked with an ‘A’ below the driver’s window.
‘Ciggy butt — menthol,’ said Hadden, not stopping. ‘Common brand.’ Shaw leant in at the Alfa’s open window. The interior smelt of money: soft leather and scent. A child’s picture was stuck on the dashboard, a girl with long hair, the ashtray bristled with dog?ends soiled with lipstick.
Behind that the old man’s Corsa. For the first time Shaw noticed the car had been vandalized: scratched lines, crossing, peaked like a hat, an angry inchoate scrawl.
‘They’re fresh,’ said Hadden. ‘A month old, maybe less. My guess is a diamond cutter — see how deeply the metal is scored. Nothing casual.’
They walked on. ‘Time of death on the victim, Tom?’ asked Shaw, smiling, the perfect teeth in a surfer’s grin. He’d never been surprised by the fact that in ten years of CID work he’d failed to get a straight answer to that question. He didn’t expect one now.
Hadden removed a pair of thin forensic gloves with theatrical care and his eyes closed. ‘Not my area, clearly — as you well know. Pathologist is the expert on that and she’s with the body — but you’ll get less of an answer from her than you will from me. I took her to the body last night; that’s the only time I’ve seen the victim. So — outside temperature was freezing, inside the cab perhaps twenty degrees or more. Temperature gradient like that
Shaw checked his watch. The CSI team had arrived at 9 p.m., the pathologist at 9.45. So death occurred somewhere between 4.45 and 7.45 that evening. The convoy had come to rest at around 5.15. Given that dead men don’t drive, that meant the victim died between 5.15 and 7.45.
But no footprints except Holt’s, and he didn’t have the time to deliver the fatal blow if Baker?Sibley’s evidence was sound. Shaw shook his head. He was missing something. He forced himself to lower his shoulders, releasing his neck muscles.
Shaw looked back up the line to the tent over the victim’s truck. ‘Prints in the victim’s vehicle?’
‘Yeah — it’s like a sweet?shop counter. We need to input them all, get them on the database. You don’t get many crime scenes with this many potential murderers in situ. We need to mix and match, see what comes up.’
Shaw tried to empty his head, switching crimes, trying not to make any assumptions which might derail the investigation before it had even started. ‘Anything from the beach — the corpse in the raft?’
‘Standard make, beach?shop inflatable — we’ll check it out, but one of the uniforms said his kids had one. Argos sell them as well. Nothing else in the thing with him — except a pint or so of blood. We presume it’s his blood — but it’s just that at the moment. A presumption. Nothing
Shaw pressed his thumb and forefinger on either side of the bridge of his nose. Finding the yellow oil drum seemed like a distant memory. ‘I need to see inside the truck cab,’ he said.
‘Sure.’ Hadden smiled. ‘I’ll leave you that pleasure. She’ll have an ID once the jacket’s off, with luck.’
Hadden set off for the beach, Shaw for the tent over the victim’s truck. He approached it slowly, making sure his footfalls gave due warning of his approach. Dr Kazimierz was a woman who didn’t suffer fools gladly, and thought almost everyone was a fool. She worked in silence, and valued it in others. And she worked alone, even in a crowd.
The first thing he saw was that the body was still in place. Dr Kazimierz held the head up by the chin, looking into the eyes, the chisel still in place in the left socket. For a second Shaw saw the scene differently, two lovers perhaps, folding together their personal spaces. Then she leant forward and, with a pair of tweezers, removed something from an eyebrow. She held it in the light of a torch she’d taped to the headrest: a hair. She pocketed it in a clear plastic evidence bag, quickly sealing and signing the sticky label.
She looked up, ready to dismiss whoever had interrupted her. But when she saw Shaw she nodded, the merest hint of an acknowledgement. Then she cut a short length of tape, using the sticky side to lift a series of particles from the victim’s overalls.
Shaw wondered what Justina Kazimierz had looked like in her youth. He imagined a school photograph perhaps, a face not yet overwhelmed by heavy middle?European features, dark brown eyes showing off her olive skin. He’d been to her fiftieth birthday party at the Polish Club in the North End, an occasion marked by blood sausage and iced vodka with all the subtlety of lighter fuel. She’d danced then, with her husband, a diminutive man with delicate hands, light rapid steps despite her sturdy build.
Shaw circled the vehicle, squeezed between the tent and the bodywork. The tax was up to date, the registration plate the right year for the model, the tyres almost new. The paintwork was off?white, with a signwritten panel: Fry amp; Sons, Builders, followed by a Lynn telephone number and a website address. The tailgate was chipped and scraped in places, with rust showing in the hinges. The tarpaulin had been folded back to reveal several sheets of plasterboard, some insulating board and a bundle of wooden wainscoting.
Returning to the front of the vehicle, Shaw found the pathologist sitting on a camp stool. Plastic evidence bottles were arranged in groups on a collapsible table, glass phials laid in a plastic box, a black briefcase open to reveal a line of tools, torches, tapes and camera lenses.
Through the windscreen the dead man’s head could be seen, thrown back now, the chisel protruding up as if it had been an arrow that fell to earth.
‘How’s
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget the worst might happen.’
Embarrassed by the intimacy, he looked through the truck’s windscreen at the victim. ‘How do you think he died?’ he asked, and they both laughed. In Shaw’s experience corpses fell into two distinct categories: those which
