echoed the human life that had recently fled, and those which seemed effortlessly to acquire the status of cold meat. This one, he reflected, was already on the butcher’s counter.
‘Wallet? Papers?’ he asked, pushing the image aside. ‘I’ll have to cut through the clothes to get to the pocket,’ she said. ‘I need help; you’ll do.’ Even though she looked away, Shaw knew that the honour had been calculated, even if it had been so ungraciously bestowed. When he’d first met Justina Kazimierz Shaw had put her brutal rudeness down to unfamiliarity with a new language. That was a decade ago.
‘Now. Here,’ she said, indicating a bulge at chest level beneath the overalls. ‘We need this?’ It was his call. They could remove the body, get it back to the lab and cut the clothes off there. Doing it this way risked destroying evidence, but gave the inquiry a vital head start if they could get an ID. He knew what his father would have done, which made him hesitate.
‘Go ahead,’ he said at last, holding the cloth taut as she
Carpenter/plasterer/builder
Two telephone numbers: a landline and a mobile. A Lynn address: a block of seventies flats on land reclaimed from the estuary.
On the flip side of the compartment was a picture. A boy, age impossible to guess, the hair shaved clean of a white skull, a feeding tube to the nose. And the kind of smile that’s for other people. Shaw turned to look at the photo hanging from the rear?view mirror, the family shot. Same kid, just less of his life left to live.
Dr Kazimierz had seen something else. The corpse’s right hand had fallen to the side as they’d cut into the fabric of the overalls, revealing six inches of skin above the wrist. She could see another wound, a cut leading to a puncture near the crook of the elbow, blood caked in the sleeve itself. ‘Looks like he managed to ward off one blow at least,’ she said.
Shaw thought about Holt leaning in at the Vauxhall window. One blow unseen, perhaps, but two?
‘The distribution of blood on the victim is the first
‘All of which means?’
‘I think he bled on his back — and was then placed in the van where death occurred. Also, at some point he emptied his bladder — there are traces of urine in the clothes. But there’s none on the seat. Again — points to the lethal attack taking place somewhere else.’
‘
‘Clearly. The chisel’s shaft caught the ocular bone and fractured it, then sheared off into the soft tissue at the rear of the eye, then into the anterior lobe of the brain,’ she said, snapping off the forensic gloves. ‘I think he lost a lot of blood then — blood that is not at the scene. Then he was put in the driver’s seat, where he died.’ Shaw imagined the impact of the chisel blade, the internal crunch of the bone giving way, the painless thrust into the brain.
‘So,’ said Shaw. ‘To sum up. I’ve got a murder scene with no footprints and no blood.’
‘Least you’ve got a corpse,’ said Kazimierz.
Shaw parked the Land Rover in its usual slot beside the lifeboat station, triggering a security floodlight. The building was wooden, a throwback to the fifties, with Dutch gables. Beside it stood the new building, steel, with blue metal beams exposed. He unlocked the side door and slipped into the darkness.
The hovercraft sat on its deflated rubber skirt like a cat in a basket. His eyes constructed it out of the shadows and the ambient light seeping in through the high double?glazed windows. She was perfect for working out on the sands, up the shallow creeks and over the mud flats of the Wash. Shaw sniffed the air: detergent, engine oil and polish. He reached out and flicked a single switch, bathing her in light, the paintwork polished to a deep orange patina, the two rear fans gleaming in silver and black. He felt a rush of excitement and a sense of being home. The adrenaline made him want to run, so he locked up quickly and set off along the beach in the half?light of dawn.
The clouds out at sea delayed the moment when the sun would break free and start the day. The sands stretched ahead of him. In winter nothing moved here but the sand. A mile distant he could see home: a low wooden building with a long veranda, behind it a stone cottage, beyond that the old boathouse, beach stones strung over the felt roof to keep it down in the storms. Lena had
A busy year. Lena was organized, businesslike in pursuit of an ambition. The stone cottage was watertight now, the cafe stripped pine with an Italian coffee machine gleaming like a vintage motorbike, the boathouse converted to sell everything the sporty London beach crowd wanted: surfboards to wetsuits, hang gliders to sailboards. The exterior wooden panels of the cafe had been painted alternate yellow and blue. Shaw could see the flag hanging limply from the pole over the shop: a silver surfer on a blue sea. His seven?year?old daughter’s discarded summer swimsuit hung on a hook by the outside water tap, bleached by the rain.
He sat on the stoop, planning a dawn swim in the winter wetsuit, trying to focus only on the forthcoming rush of icy white water. But two things gatecrashed his mind: if Sarah Baker?Sibley’s daughter was alone at home to whom had she passed the phone when her mother asked her to? And then there were the spark plugs in the pick? up’s door pocket. Rusted. Spent. But Harvey Ellis’s cab had been otherwise neat. Unless the truck was rarely used — an unlikely scenario — then the plugs had not been in an engine for several months. He saw the tiny metal question mark of the spark plug’s contact points. Corroded, black, scarred by the constant electrical explosions of years bringing an engine to life. But if they hadn’t been recently taken out of an engine — which the lack of
He squinted at the sun, then heard the thudding steps of his daughter running down the corridor which linked the cottage and the cafe. He smiled, turning, prepared for his other life.
George Valentine’s toast rack was almost empty, the charred crumbs scattered over the plastic tablecloth of the police canteen. He held his coffee with both hands, trying to disguise the tremble in his fingers. Toast, no butter. It was what George Valentine called ‘solids’, and it would have to keep him alive until he found a chip shop before going to his bed. He touched the half?finished packet of cigarettes in his pocket, tired of finding proof that he was a weak man.
Peter Shaw stood by the canteen’s plate?glass window, drinking bottled mineral water and looking across the tumbled rooftops of the old town towards the sea. He’d been on time, to the minute. At home he’d cleared ice from the gutters, snow off the veranda where it had blown in off the beach, then ferried coffee to Lena, who had been up early with Francesca because they wanted to collect driftwood on the beach to decorate the surf shop before school. He’d held a weathered plank up to the wooden door of the old boathouse as Lena hammered it into place.
She was five feet two, slim, compact. Her hair was cut short, angular, rising from her scalp like a surprise. At rest her face was melancholy, although the line of the lips always hinted, at least to him, of a smile. A slight cast in the right eye, the imperfection he had noticed first. Her
‘So, George Valentine?’ She’d smiled, watching her husband closely, but he didn’t answer. Shaw had told her about his new partner, the dishevelled, chain?smoking toper. ‘I can see the funny side,’ she said, her smile widening.
‘You’ve never met him,’ said Shaw, looking out to sea.
‘You mean he wasn’t at the wedding?’
They both laughed at their oldest joke. No one had been at the wedding, least of all Shaw’s father or his onetime partner George Valentine. Lena’s family was troubled, dispersed, in an almost constant state of family warfare which ruled out any kind of concerted action. Shaw’s family just didn’t want to come. His father was already ill, already dying. Shaw hadn’t been surprised by his father’s prejudices, but he’d been saddened by his mother’s. Lena had tried to forgive them, pretended that she had, but she knew it was a day in her life she couldn’t have again, and they’d taken some of the joy out of it.
‘You should give him a chance, you know. It’s ten years, Peter — more.’ ‘Unforgiving’ — it was a trait she’d identified
‘He might surprise you,’ she said. ‘You surprised me.’ He picked up his tea and looked at her, knowing he didn’t have to ask.
‘I thought you were just a copper.’
