Shaw.
No one spoke.
‘You can smoke now,’ said Shaw. Valentine’s hand jerked towards his pocket, then pulled back.
‘Any idea who the victim might be, Mr Sly?’ Shaw asked.
Sly shook his head, watching the flames. ‘I didn’t get close enough. I didn’t want to.’
Valentine nudged a pebble into the fire with his black slip?on. ‘Anything unusual out here in the last few days? Any other pickers? Boats?’
‘This is our pitch, everyone knows that,’ said the man in the duffle coat. His voice was high, thin, but didn’t lack confidence.
‘Sorry — and who might you be?’ asked Valentine, with enough edge in his voice for them all to look up.
‘Andy Lufkin.’
‘So nothing?’ persisted Shaw. ‘Nothing unusual?’
‘Someone’s been dumping waste in yellow oil drums,’ said Shaw. He let Sly poke some more driftwood into the fire. ‘What have you seen?’
Sly took a deep breath. ‘We tend to keep our heads down.’
That sounded like a euphemism, Shaw thought. ‘Turn a blind eye?’ he said, a sympathetic pain suddenly running through the wound beneath the dressing.
‘Mind our own business,’ said Lufkin. Shaw wondered if he kept bouncing on his toes to try and look taller.
‘How about a child’s inflatable raft — a boat, in bright green colours?’ asked Shaw.
‘This weather?’ said Lufkin, and bit his lip.
‘Yes. This weather. Perhaps that’s what killed the bloke inside.’
They heard the thudding progress of a motor launch, hitting waves. Shaw could see Justina Kazimierz in the prow, letting saltwater spray her face.
Then Shaw’s mobile buzzed. A text message from DC Fiona Campbell at the hospital.
‘HOLT’S TALKING,’ it read.
They took the Eurocopter to the pad on top of the A amp;E department. Shaw radioed for the Land Rover to be brought there, then spent the rest of the flight with his forehead pressed to the window. He’d left Hadden and the CSI team working against the clock. Valentine had briefed the murder team back at St James’s and they were checking missing persons. But for now Shaw needed to focus on John Holt. He could see how the murder on Styleman’s Middle might be linked to the body in the raft — smuggling perhaps, trafficking, rival gangs fighting for a pitch. But if there was a link to the murder of Harvey Ellis in his pick?up truck then it had eluded him. Two violent killings within a few miles, and a few hours, demanded that Shaw searched for one. And Holt was his key witness.
As they swung round in low cloud over the roof of the hospital Shaw tried to re?focus on the line of cars in the snow that night. Harvey Ellis in the lead vehicle, John Holt in the Corsa behind Sarah Baker?Sibley’s Alfa. He quickly re?read the statement Baker?Sibley had made when re?interviewed that morning. Yes: she’d watched Holt go forward to the pick?up truck. But had she taken her eyes off him? No. Not for a second.
But that didn’t mean John Holt was not important. He
Holt’s room was hospital?hot — a cloying dry warmth suffused with the aromas of disinfectant, custard and stewed tea. The metal bed, the ubiquitous NHS bedside cabinet, the single seat, the grey linen washed a thousand times. As a doctor checked John Holt’s temperature Valentine tried not to touch anything, aware that his life would probably end one day in a room like this. He took a deep breath, trying to force air into shrivelled lungs, then retrieved the packet of cigarettes out of his raincoat pocket and dropped it in the bin.
The doctor finished, thrusting her hands down into the pockets of her white coat. She looked like she’d been on her feet for a week, dank hair held up in a Caribbean headscarf. ‘Ten minutes,’ she said to Shaw. ‘No more. No arguments, please. He thinks he’s as strong as an ox…’ Holt laughed, eyes owlish behind the heavy black?rimmed spectacles, his white hair lifeless, stuck to his scalp in the hot still air of the room.
On a chair beside the bed sat a robust woman, upholstered, grey hair too thin to hide the dome of the skull beneath. Respectable was the word that seemed to sum her up — but then Shaw remembered Holt’s address, the dockside slum. They’d clearly fallen on hard times.
Mrs Holt looked at her hands, then at her feet. ‘He’s not well. It was a dreadful night — his blood pressure’s really bad. He had a haemorrhage so he’s lost a lot of blood.’ Shaw could see the broken blood vessels in the old man’s nose and a bloodstained wodge of cotton wool. ‘He’s not been well for a long time,’ she added.
Martha Holt flushed. ‘Michelle’s our daughter — she’s worried about her dad. She wanted to make sure he stayed in hospital until he’s well. He’s sixty?eight this year — we both think he should take it easy.’
‘My daughter thinks I’m going to die on her,’ said Holt. ‘Worried she’ll have to pay a bill for the first time in her life.’
‘John,’ hissed his wife. She turned to Shaw. ‘Families,’ she said, smiling thinly.
‘My wife’s too forgiving,’ said Holt.
Shaw wondered if he always talked about people as if they weren’t there.
Valentine began asking questions. It was his interview, Shaw had said on the way up in the lift. Step by step the DS tried to find out what the witness had seen, what he’d heard, what he’d felt. So far the interrogation was faultless.
Sweat gleamed on Holt’s upper lip. ‘Michelle lives in Hunstanton,’ he explained, the voice healthier than his body. ‘With Sasha — my granddaughter. I was driving over to finish pruning some trees — they cast shadows on Sasha’s window when the moon’s out. It’s frightening in winter. She’s had nightmares.’
‘A regular visit?’ asked Valentine. ‘Couldn’t your daughter prune the tree?’
He laughed. ‘Michelle’s
Martha Holt stiffened, but didn’t interrupt.
‘I’m retired, Sergeant. Ill?health. This heart of mine,’ he said, tapping a hand on his chest. ‘Although I can still get up a set of stepladders. But I had to close down the business. Dizzy spells on hundred?foot scaffolding isn’t a very bright idea, is it? There’s no real routine. But like I said, I’d been over on Sunday to trim the sycamore — but Sasha said to leave the magnolia because she likes to climb the branches. But then Sunday night she had a nightmare — the shadows again. So I went back on Monday to finish the job.’
Martha Holt touched a card on the bedside table. A piece of folded A4 paper, a child’s picture of a house. Beside it another card, more expertly drawn, of a black cat curled on an Aga.
‘That’s hers,’ said Holt, catching the movement. ‘That’s my Sasha.’ He touched the first card, ignoring the second. He rubbed his arm where a drip had been fed into the vein.
‘You live in town?’ asked Valentine briskly, keen to get the besotted grandfather off his favourite topic.
‘Quayside.’ He held the DS’s gaze while his wife watched her hands.
But it wasn’t the quayside. The quayside was renovated warehouses looking out over the water, rabbit hutches for the upwardly mobile at London prices. Devil’s Alley was a world away, just round the corner.
‘Is that where the car got vandalized?’ asked Valentine.
‘Right.’ He held his hand to his forehead, confused, trying to focus. ‘I went along the quay, then out by St Anne’s to the ring road. Just past Castle Rising the AA sign was out on the road so I turned down the track. Came up behind that woman.’ There was no mistaking the note of dislike. ‘Well spoken, in a hurry. She thought I should check if we could move the tree. She wasn’t worried about the driver, mind you. She didn’t seem to care about anyone else — she just wanted to make her next appointment. Like the whole world has to stop for her.’
‘And in the cab you found…’ prompted Shaw.
Holt shrugged. ‘The driver.’ He let his fingers drum an annoying rhythmless tattoo. ‘And the passenger.’
Shaw and Valentine locked eye contact, and in the silence they could hear the Rolex ticking.
‘Let’s take them one at a time,’ said Shaw quickly. Valentine took out his notebook.
‘Driver was a young man,’ said Holt. ‘Nervous type, said he was doing some work at Hunstanton — a bit of
