Death Wore White

She shook her head. ‘No. Nobody else.’

So one lie at least, thought Shaw. ‘Couldn’t have been her father, for example?’

She folded her hands on her lap, scrunching slightly the heavy velvet black dress. ‘We’re divorced, Detective Inspector. James lives in Greece now, when he’s not in the City. He has a flat in the Barbican.’

‘And your daughter…’

‘She’s thirteen and I have custody of her, naturally.’

‘Right. And you pick her up each evening?’

‘Yes. St Agnes’ Hall at Burnham Westgate. Just along the coast road. I usually pick her up earlier but Mondays it’s later because she has a clarinet lesson after school. I’ve always picked her up, even when James was with us.’

She made the family sound like a corporation, thought Shaw. ‘But not last Monday night?’

‘So what did she do?’ asked Shaw.

‘She walked home. She has a key.’ She folded and unfolded her hands, a little dance of exaggerated patience.

‘But your house is where?’ He made a pretence of checking his notes; the address was in Burnham Overy Town, a hamlet just inland. ‘There must have been three feet of snow on the road by the time she got there.’

‘Did she have a choice?’ she asked, the aggression in her voice misplaced.

‘Is she at school today?’ asked Valentine, closing his notebook.

‘No.’ Baker?Sibley stiffened. ‘She’s doing school work here, she’s not well enough to go in.’

‘Anything serious?’ asked Shaw.

‘Just a chill.’

‘Can we see her then, briefly?’ Shaw sat back, while Valentine leant forward, helping himself to a fresh cup of coffee.

‘Why?’ she asked, but Shaw guessed she regretted it immediately.

‘We don’t want to have to bother you again,’ said Shaw, pleased at the elegance of the implied threat.

‘This is a waste of time — principally my time,’ she said.

She was gone a long time and they both wondered why, but said nothing. Shaw’s pager buzzed and the call? back number was the RNLI station at Wells, along the coast. That meant their boat was out, and that Hunstanton had to stand by. Shaw was less than five miles from home

‘We might have to wind this one up, George,’ he said. ‘There might be a shout.’

Valentine knew all about Shaw’s role in the RNLI. He thought most coppers found being a DI was job enough without being a part?time hero. He wasn’t the only one at St James’s who thought it was out of order. He glugged some phlegm, stowing the cotton handkerchief quickly when he heard footsteps above, the floorboards creaking.

When she appeared Jillie Baker?Sibley was a walking contradiction: thin, with fragile bones, a pale face free of make?up. She was hugging a copy of Bleak House to her chest. But there were hints of another life. A single tattoo of a teardrop peeking out from the cuff of a crisp white collarless shirt, and the hair, cut short like a boy’s, was savagely severe, with an uneven fringe. Shaw remembered the little framed picture on the dashboard of the Alfa Romeo: Jillie with long straight hair, the perfect public?school daughter. He guessed there’d been a family argument about hairstyles and that this time, at least, the teenager had won. He also noted the mobile hitched by the buckle: an expensive model in turquoise. Her face was formless, puffy, almost insolent, as if it might resolve itself into something more mature and structured by the end of the day. But the eyes were extraordinary: violet rather than blue. Film stars’ eyes, an extra’s face.

‘Hi,’ said Shaw, trying to hit the same adult tone he used with Francesca’s friends. ‘Studying?’

‘You had to walk home the other night — that must have been frightening?’ asked Shaw.

‘I’ve walked before — it’s not a problem.’ Her eyes didn’t meet Shaw’s. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of in the dark. Dad always says that. And Mum always checks…’ She touched the mobile. ‘Mum and I are always in touch.’ Her voice was flat, emotionless, so that Shaw couldn’t tell if that was a good thing.

‘Clara — my best friend — we’ve walked home before, she lives up the lane. If you go back to school you have to work with the boarders — they do homework early. Losers.’

‘Jillie,’ said her mother. ‘There’s nothing cool about not working hard at school.’

Shaw held up a hand. ‘But this time you set out on your own?’

She shook her head, thinking, so that Shaw could see the confusion behind the eyes. ‘Clara has music lessons too on Mondays. But she does an extra hour. I like snow,’ she added. ‘It was beautiful.’

Shaw thought about the head teacher’s character summary: disruptive, violent. She flicked her head as if to clear a strand of hair from her eyes, a strand of hair she didn’t have. Then she crossed her legs, interlacing the

Shaw looked at her hands. There was a slight tremble in both, a vibration like a taut piano wire. On the top of the left one was a blue mark, a circle with the letters BT at the centre, identical to the one Valentine had described on the hand of the young driver of the Mondeo.

‘What does that mean?’ he asked pointing, unable to keep a note of excitement out of his voice.

Valentine sat forward, realizing he’d missed it. Hands: you should always look at their hands.

‘Oh, Jillie, really — I did ask.’ The annoyance in her mother’s voice was partly manufactured, Shaw sensed. Ritualistic.

Jillie smiled. ‘A disco at the village hall — at Burnham Thorpe. It’s Sodom and Gomorrah when the lights go down.’

Her mother bit her lip.

‘And when was that?’ asked Shaw.

‘Saturday night.’

‘It’s for charity,’ said her mother. ‘For meals?on?wheels. She never washes those things off — it’s to show off at school, isn’t it?’

Valentine hadn’t taken his eyes off the teenager. ‘Have you got a boyfriend, Jillie?’

Her mother snorted like a horse. ‘She needs to rest,’ she said, rising.

‘One last question,’ said Shaw. ‘When your mother phoned you on Monday night she asked you to pass the phone to someone else. Who was that, Jillie?’

Sarah Baker?Sibley took her daughter by the arm, gently letting her stand. ‘Indeed, as I said. Now, Jillie needs to rest.’

When she returned Shaw stood up, giving her the impression the interview was over. But he’d saved two questions. ‘You told Fred Parlour — the man you first informed that you thought John Holt was dead out on Siberia Belt — that you were very keen to get back on the road and see if Jillie was OK because you’d let her down before. When was that, Mrs Baker?Sibley?’

Her eyes danced around the pictures on the office wall — a poorly executed landscape of Hunstanton cliffs, a watercolour of Holkham Hall. ‘It was one of the discos, at Burnham Thorpe. It was stupid of me — I fell asleep at home and when I got to the hall it was all shut up. No one. You can imagine. I just freaked out.’

‘But she was all right?’ asked Valentine, standing too. ‘She’d gone home with Clara — she was fine. I think she enjoyed it, actually — showing me up.’ A bitter smile.

‘Colin Narr,’ said Shaw. ‘You’re friends?’

It had been an act up until now, Shaw could see that, because this was the question she hadn’t expected. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I ask the questions.’ Shaw smiled the surfer’s smile. ‘And why on earth do you think I should answer them?’

Valentine noted the subtle shift again. The voice shedding its polite sugar coating.

‘Your car was stranded the other night near Ingol Beach; Gallow Marsh Farm owns the land, and Mr Narr’s company both owns Gallow Marsh and runs the cockle?picking business out on Styleman’s Middle, where another