Death Wore White

extra, he said. That’s exactly what he said — I’ve got a good memory, you see.’

His wife nodded dutifully.

‘He said the tree was too heavy to move so I went back to reverse out.’

‘Nervous type?’ pressed Shaw, trying to slow him down.

‘Yes. He had a tape on… Well — or one of those CD

Shaw raised a finger. ‘And the passenger?’

‘Young girl. Twenty?odd, I reckon. I think she’d hitched a ride.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I asked where they were going and she said she was heading for Cromer. “Heading”, that was the word. I think she was trying her luck, you know — seeing where I was off to. But as I said, no one was going anywhere for a while. She said she had a job, that she was an artist. Bubbly type. She had a bag, like a knapsack, on her lap, and she sort of hugged it when she said that — like she had something in there.’

‘What kind of knapsack?’ asked Valentine.

Holt looked at the DS, his eyes shifting out of focus behind the glasses as if he was seeing it again: ‘Multicoloured, yellow and black patches, with a kind of drawstring. Not very big.’

‘This girl — was she good looking?’ asked Shaw.

‘I think so, yes.’ Holt re?focused on a point just above his toes. ‘I didn’t get that good a look because I had to bend down to see in the cab — my back’s not what it used to be.’ He paused. Shaw thought it wasn’t a hopeful sign,

Shaw gave him some time, trying not to push too quickly for information. ‘How did she seem? You said Ellis — that’s the driver by the way, Harvey Ellis — you said he was nervous. Was she?’

‘No — bit excited if anything. Flushed.’

‘Any accent — was she a local girl, d’you reckon?’ asked Valentine.

‘No. I’d guess the Midlands, you know — sounded like she had a bad cold.’

They laughed and Mrs Holt withdrew her hand from the counterpane.

‘How did he die? The driver,’ countered Holt, suddenly, the tone of voice wrong, as if he were asking a question at a supermarket checkout.

‘Someone pushed a chisel into his eye socket, into his brain,’ said Shaw. ‘Although I’d like you to keep that to yourself at the moment — we’re not giving the details out to the press.’ Martha Holt looked at her husband, but his face just froze.

‘Who would do that?’ he asked, blinking behind the glasses.

‘How about a leggy blonde?’ said Valentine, coughing up some phlegm.

They stood.

‘Mr Holt, it would be really helpful if we could put

Holt shrugged. ‘Soon as you can get your artist, Inspector, I’m happy to help.’ He smoothed down the counterpane.

‘I’ll be five minutes,’ said Shaw.

He was four. Shaw always kept his basic kit in the back of the Land Rover in a black attache case: a sheaf of high?quality cartridge paper — Bristol, with a slight pink tint, and a rough texture like skin. Then pencils, woodless plastic?coated leads, chisel?point, and a range of H, F and B hardnesses. A piece of J?cloth for blurring, a set of tortillions — cone?shaped sticks made from compressed paper used to blend graphite lines to produce a smooth finish. Erasers, eraser shields, brushes and pastel chalk sticks. Shaw had studied art at Southampton University. He’d always drawn as a kid, an only child’s escape, encouraged by his mother. What his father didn’t know was that the course at Southampton offered a year out in forensic art at the FBI’s college in Quantico, Virginia.

He opened his dog?eared copy of the FBI Facial Identification Catalog. Over the years he’d added to the basic catalogue. Thousands of mugshots compressed by category: bulging eyes, broken noses, pouting lips, lantern jaws, providing the basic building blocks for composite imagery. He’d added his own, cut from newspapers, brochures, and magazines. There was also a recorder for the cognitive interview, so that later he could reconstruct the order in which the witness had accessed their memory. Recall first, then if that failed them, the catalogues for

Twenty minutes later Shaw had the basics of the face established.

‘I’m not much good, am I?’ said Holt. ‘I just can’t see her face. Not clearly.’

‘You don’t have to — the memory’s not like that. You’ll see her in flashes, we just have to wait for them. Each time try and take something new from the image. Don’t force it. It’ll come.’

And it did. They talked about that night, about the snow, about walking forward in the icy wind. Slowly Holt’s memory gave up its secrets. Another twenty minutes and they were done. Shaw was pleased. The face looked out at him: dominated by the wide arched eyebrows, the small mouth with too many teeth.

Holt had closed his eyes while Shaw worked, sketching in the features, adding a light source from the right to add the 3D effect.

‘Oh — yes, yes, that’s her. That’s terrific.’ Holt sat up, holding the sketch book.

There were other last?minute changes. They darkened the hair at the parting, lowered the ears, added a shine to the teeth as if they’d been polished.

Finished, Shaw fetched the ward sister and she counter?signed the sketch, with Holt and Shaw. They used a date stamp off the ward desk, the hospital motif underlaid by the symbol of a ship at sea — the Lynn badge. Shaw gave it to Valentine, who bagged it in cellophane and signed it as evidence received. He’d book it in with the desk at St James’s, then they’d use photocopies.

Sitting in the Land Rover, Valentine looked at the sketch through the clear envelope, trying not to let his admiration for the skill of the artist show.

‘Next step?’ he asked.

‘TV, papers. Posters too — along the coast. Let’s give it all we’ve got. She’s either a killer, or she knows who is. So let’s find her.’

The Ark was a converted chapel across the street from St James’s, a red?brick shed in the shape of the living?quarters on a child’s model of Noah’s boat. For nearly a century it had been home to one of the nonconformist sects. But the church had sold up in the sixties and moved out to the ring road. West Norfolk Constabulary had been the purchaser, and, despite the constraints of a Grade II listing, had quickly renovated the Victorian structure to house the force’s principal forensic laboratory. This had freed up space in the main building, where the force was struggling to deal with a crime wave brought about by the influx of East Enders to the new estates. Not that the newcomers brought with them any crimes that the locals hadn’t tried. It was just that there were more of them.

Most of the town’s 200,000 inhabitants had no idea what went on behind the Ark’s freshly sandblasted walls and bottle?green and cream stained glass. Now, in the falling snow, lights shone from the savagely sharp lancet windows.

Shaw and Valentine sat in the Mazda, parked in one of the spaces reserved for CID at St James’s, waiting for the hour to strike. Being early for an appointment with Dr Kazimierz was a crime second only to being late. They had six minutes to kill. The news that Harvey Ellis had picked up a hitch?hiker, and that she was in the truck and…’ he said, letting the world slur along, ‘and she stuck her thumb out at dusk for a lift off a truck on a lonely road. He thinks the hitch?hiker’s up for it; she isn’t.’

He stopped, watching the snow, and his shoulders rose with a breath. ‘He pushes his luck, she’s sat on the passenger side with the toolbox between them. She’s scared, he makes a move, she flips the top, grabs a tool, and goes for his eye.’

‘Then she disappears, not a trace,’ said Shaw, shivering as he watched a uniformed PC running across the yard, the snow clinging to his back.

Valentine blew his nose, took a quick breath. ‘If Harvey Ellis was murdered, and if the murderer isn’t John Holt — then the killer left without leaving tracks. That’s a fucking fact. There’s no way round it — so you can’t use that fact to rule anyone out, can you?’

Shaw’s father had always said that George Valentine should have made DCI before any of the rest of them. But there’d been just too many rough edges.