out cold by the time he hit the water.
‘Jacky — I want you to concentrate on this.’ DC Jacky Lau was ethnic Chinese, a tough operator with links well established in the local community, and an ambition to become West Norfolk’s first female DCI. She was short, compact, but you’d never call her petite. She’d joined the force late, in her mid?thirties, chucking in a job with her father’s taxi firm. Outside the job her life was stock?car racing, and a series of boyfriends she’d dragged along to , all with leather jackets, tattoos, and engine oil under their nails.
‘Is he local? Or is he a floater from up the coast? Let’s do a check with all forces — Lincolnshire, Tyneside, Northumberland — even Lothian and Borders. But if he’s one of ours then my guess is it’s something to do with the sands. We need to know what’s going on out there. That’s got to be what this is about. Is it linked to smuggling? Let’s dig away at the cockle?pickers.’
In his memory he saw the bone?white yacht slipping into the creek the night Harvey Ellis died. A blue clam motif on the sail. He’d sketch it, see if Lau could find the yacht along the coast.
‘Let’s get copies of this face along the docks, the marinas, see if we can get an ID,’ he said. ‘We need background, context, that’s your job. Check everything.’
DC Campbell dropped her chin and smiled. They’d had a sweepstake before the briefing, trying to guess how many times Shaw would use the word ‘check’.
‘And finally,’ said Shaw. The last evidence board. A photo of Harvey Ellis, cut from the family shot his wife had provided, smiling into the sun with the sea behind, the water dotted with swimmers. CSI shots of the inside of the victim’s pick?up. A close up of the dead man, slumped forward on the wheel.
‘Last case — but this is where we sink the resources in the next twenty?four hours. We have a firm ID — we can do some solid work here. But it’s not easy. At the moment this case makes the
‘According to forensics,’ said Shaw. ‘Harvey Ellis died sometime between 4.45 and 7.45 p.m. The convoy pulled up at around 5.15. Ellis was driving the first vehicle — with him was a hitch?hiker. John Holt talked to him. Sarah Baker?Sibley saw him moving about in the truck — saw
He let the silence linger.
‘Could Holt have done it?’ asked Campbell.
‘We can’t rule him out but it looks very unlikely. He couldn’t have known the woman in the Alfa — Baker? Sibley — wasn’t watching him. Did he really risk two thrusts through the open window? She says his hands never came out of his pockets. And no blood on his clothes? And someone was still playing with the radio and CD ninety minutes later. Plus — the evidence tells us he didn’t die in the cab.’
Another silence.
‘We know someone was out to divert traffic on to Siberia Belt,’ said Shaw. ‘The two AA signs were put out, at either end, and then taken back in. The AA is sure it’s
‘The question is — who was the target? Ellis? There’s a pair of blown spark plugs to hand. If he’d put them in the engine he’d be going nowhere. Was that the plan? To use the pick?up to block the road? If so, why’d they change the plan? Either way it’s a trap — we just can’t be sure Harvey Ellis was the fly. If he wasn’t — who was? The security van?’
He unscrewed the top of the water bottle and drank half of it. ‘OK. We’re nearly done,’ said Shaw. ‘We better stop soon before everyone explodes with anxiety about the approach of closing time.’
Valentine pretended to laugh with everyone else. He really could do with a drink.
‘But…’ added Shaw, ‘we also need to find two missing people. First. Ellis’s passenger.’
Shaw flipped the picture of Harvey Ellis back over the board to reveal his sketch of the hitch?hiker Holt had described. ‘We’ve got this out to the media now, as you’ll have seen. This is John Holt’s best guess. Female, young. Sexy. She said she was heading for Cromer — let’s check that. She’s our first priority. She could be our killer.
‘Then there’s the runaway kid in the stolen Mondeo. Perhaps he’s the backstop, put there to make sure no one can get out. Because the Mondeo’s the last car. What do we know about the kid? He’s just stolen a car. He’s drunk the best part of a bottle of vodka — if you think the best part is the bit with the alcohol in it. He’s not very good
‘And there’s this rubber?stamp thing on the back of his hand. BT. Do we check with them?’ asked Campbell.
‘Telecom?’ said Shaw.
‘It wasn’t anything fancy,’ said Valentine, shaking his head. ‘Kind of thing you get on your hand at a nightclub.’
‘We need to find this witness. He’s important. So let’s think of ways to find him, shall we?’ said Shaw.
They heard footsteps in the corridor and the double doors swung open. Tom Hadden held a single sheet of computer paper, a tracing across it like a read?out from a seismograph.
Under the neon light he looked ill, his eyes pink, matching the strawberry?blond wisps of hair above his ears. Hadden always reminded Shaw of a laboratory rabbit, pink ears, pale flesh under thin white hair, and the eyes set back, as if glimpsed under ice.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Go ahead — just winding up,’ said Shaw. ‘Anything?’
‘Yeah. Fred Parlour, the plumber. He hit his head on the door of the kid’s Mondeo. We did all the checks. The blood on the door is Group O, as is Parlour’s. But there was a smudge on Parlour’s overalls… here.’ He put his right hand over the left thigh of his cords. ‘It’s not O. It’s AB — same as the victim.’ He held up the print?out.
One of the DCs clapped slowly.
‘Is that definite?’ said Shaw.
‘Well, it’s more likely you’ll be hit by a meteorite on the way home, Peter, than this blood belongs to someone other than Harvey Ellis.’
Everyone started to talk but Shaw raised a hand. ‘Tom. Thanks.’
‘Unfortunately…’ Hadden was looking at the printout. ‘It’s never that easy. I can match the blood, no problem. But the smear isn’t just blood. There’s something else and I can’t ID it, not 100 per cent. Spectrometer says it’s organic. The nearest match I’ve got is bone.’
‘Ellis’s eye socket was chipped,’ said Twine. ‘The pathologist’s report mentioned fragments.’
‘Yes,’ said Hadden. ‘But not fragments of sheep bone.’
Valentine snapped a pencil.
‘As I said, I haven’t got it exactly right. But it’s an animal bone. Possibly more than one. Anyway, you’ll have it in writing in the morning.’ He was already retreating through the doors. ‘I’ll be in the Ark if you want me.’
There was a moment of silence as the doors banged shut. Shaw took a deep breath.
‘OK. That could be the breakthrough we don’t deserve. On the other hand it might not be — so let’s keep our heads. We do the legwork tomorrow. George and I will deal with Parlour.’
Valentine cracked the joints in his left hand. ‘He’s got the victim’s blood on his trousers.’
There was a silence that made all the other silences sound like the Hallelujah Chorus.
‘And carrying a dead sheep,’ added Valentine.
The murder team dispersed quickly to the Red House. Shaw had told the team not to get excited about Hadden’s forensic evidence. But it hadn’t worked. He could feel the almost palpable rush of adrenaline. He didn’t blame them for their optimism. Parlour had lied. He’d sworn he hadn’t gone further forward along the line of cars than Holt’s silver Corsa. But at some point that night he’d got very close indeed to Harvey Ellis. He’d be on a murder charge by lunchtime unless he could talk his way out of it. And Valentine was right — not for the first time. Their job was to catch a killer, not solve some arcane forensic puzzle. They could work out
