corpse was discovered yesterday morning. Plus you’re insisting on telling me lies about the call you made that night at Gallow Marsh Farm. I heard you ask to be passed to someone else. So I can ask that question, and if you choose to not answer it, you can choose not to answer it down at St James’s. Was Mr Narr at home with Jillie?’
She gave him the full 100?watt stare. Then she led the way to the plate?glass door at the front of the shop, opening it to let some snowflakes blow in over the marble floor. A woman walked past outside, a pair of corgis wearing gaberdine jackets trailing on leads in her wake.
‘Colin and I have been seeing each other since shortly after my marriage broke down, Inspector. I don’t think we have any secrets, from either each other or the police. Any suggestion to the contrary might be of interest to his lawyers. If you insist on continuing this conversation at a police station then I will have to notify
DC Jacky Lau stood on the rotting wooden jetty at Morston Creek, watching a pair of seals in the tidal run bobbing up, then down, like fairground ducks. In the mud the crabs scuttled, and the sound of the water draining out of the marshes was as loud as the wind. She’d parked her souped?up Renault Megane by the National Trust information hut. A light peppering of snow was obscuring the glass lenses of her wraparound Foster Grants.
Lau had good eyes: 20:20 vision. The creek ran out through the marshes towards the open water protected by the long shingle arm of Blakeney Point. A few yachts bobbed in the tide. But one, on the edge of the marsh, looked odd — its mast set permanently off the vertical.
‘Ian,’ she said, not turning round.
A small man came up beside her and trained his binoculars on the sea breaking out on the distant point. Ian Norton was the harbour master at Morston, a part?time post he combined with running the National Trust booth and tea shop. Norton was stocky, powerful, like a crab on its hind legs. Jacky Lau had gone out with his son Paul for a year, and his racing Mini with outsized wheels stood on the wharf. Ian was one of her best contacts, watchful, sceptical, with an eye for detail.
‘What you looking for, Jacky?’
Norton trained binoculars on the dipped, distant mast. ‘It’s run aground.’
‘Seen the owner?’ she asked, turning to look him in the face.
Norton shook his head.
There was a gust of snow?crated wind. ‘Can you run me out?’ she asked, shivering, thinking about the warm interior of the Megane, the heated driver’s seat.
Norton collected his wife from a cottage on the old quay to look after the coffee shop. The NT launch was a twoman dinghy with an outboard which laboured as they nosed out into Blakeney Channel, edging up towards the yacht, the wind beginning to chop the wave tops off, spraying them with spume. Visibility dropped, the snow thickening like feathers from a pillow fight, so that by the time they came alongside they couldn’t see the quay or the church up on the hill. Somewhere a foghorn sounded.
They were lucky to find it — a white yacht in a snowstorm. They could just read the name on the prow —
Lau shouted, ‘Ahoy,’ thankful none of the stock?car?racing crowd could hear her. Norton climbed aboard using a short rope ladder which hung down from the deck. Lau followed, willing her short muscular legs to work properly in the cold. She felt relieved to get on deck,
A seagull stood on the varnished wooden decking, its head and bill into the wind, balancing serenely on one leg. Norton jumped into the cockpit, pulled open the double hatch to the cabin. She followed him down the three? step ladder quickly, embracing the moment when her head fell below deck level and out of the polar wind.
She slid off the dark glasses, stashed them in an exterior pocket on her leather driving jacket and let her eyes get used to the gloom. There were narrow windows at deck level, but small pleated blinds were fastened down. Norton found a switch and lambent light flooded from beneath teak panels.
The boat continued to rock, a bottle of wine rolling back and forth on the wooden decking. In the open forward galley a chopping board on the flip?down worktop held two or three pieces of cheese, a six?inch tubular piece of garlic sausage and a plastic delicatessen tub of olives.
From the forward part of the cabin she looked back towards the cockpit and saw a small TV screen, inlaid in the wooden bulkhead, the sound down, the channel showing BBC News 24. Interference zigzagged across the picture like lightning.
Beside it was a framed photograph. A man hugging two children — a young girl, an older boy — on the deck of the yacht. The sail was catching some breeze, billowed
Norton was checking the map on the chart table — a stretch of the north Norfolk coast, from Lynn round to Wells. He traced a pencilled route with his finger around Blakeney Point and out to sea. ‘Some summer sailor’s got caught out by the weather, doesn’t know the local waters, drops his anchor in deep water and then rows ashore. It happens. He’s probably tucked up in a nice hotel asleep in his bathrobe.’ Norton shivered as the hull rocked under them. ‘Lucky bastard.’
‘We need to double?check,’ said Jacky Lau, knowing what Shaw would do. ‘Find a name.’ The boat lurched, and she fell on to one of the padded benches. ‘Where do you sleep on one of these things?’
Norton showed her a small door in the forward bulkhead. ‘Through here,’ he said, flicking a switch.
Two bunks, only one of them disturbed. But it was what was lying across the other one which made Jacky Lau’s pulse quicken.
She leant in and touched a skein of human hair. Thick, like a horse’s tail, but soft. Holding some to her nose she caught a hint of scent, a soapy aroma. She ran it between her hands as if she were carding wool. Two feet of human hair, natural blonde streaks, brushed to a sheen like a liquid mirror.
Norton stood back now, his shoulders pressed against the panelled bulwark. Jacky lay the hair back on the bed, knowing now she shouldn’t have picked it up.
‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘Just take a seat, Ian — don’t touch anything.’
‘We’re fine,’ he said. ‘What d’you reckon?’
‘I reckon this might be it.’ She moved into the galley. A small bowl, the water stained pink, a heavy wooden gaff for stunning fish standing in it. The light from the galley porthole caught the sticky matt surface of it, a stain in black, with a hint of red as subtle as the flush on a medium?rare steak. And a piece of skin the size of a stamp stuck to the stain, its surface pitted like goose flesh, but with a single hair attached.
A hearse purred in the dark outside the Ark, like a black cat with the milk. A body in a grey bag was slid in from a gurney by two lab assistants, the tailgate closing with a visceral, oily click.
‘Goods out,’ said Valentine, lighting up on the step as they watched the hearse creep out of the yard. ‘Anyone we know?’
‘Styleman,’ said Tom Hadden. ‘Next stop, undertaker’s morgue until you sign it off. Can’t bury him without a name, right?’
Shaw stubbed the toecap of his boot against the kerb. ‘So no progress — any forensics off the boat?’ he asked. The yacht at Morston Creek discovered by DC Jacky Lau had been towed into Lynn’s Boal Quay, where a full forensic examination was under way.
‘Bit early,’ said Hadden. ‘But Jacky’s got a briefcase off the boat — she’s inside.’
DC Jacky Lau had a pile of documents on a trestle table, a pair of anglepoise lamps burning into the pages. She was working with gloves, sifting into piles, a mobile?phone mic at her lips. She looked confident, in control, every micro?movement charged with adrenaline.
‘So far?’ said Shaw.
She held up a finger, finishing a call. ‘Thanks — that’s great.’ She unhitched the earpiece and threw it on to the
She paused for a second, long enough to let them know that she’d made the connection too.
‘Address in the Barbican, London. Electoral roll puts him in a house in Burnham Overy Town in 2005. Local family, one of them was something big in the Royal Navy back in the sixties. Documents back up the ID — including a passport. A British passport — with plenty of Greek entry stamps from the nineties. But most of this stuff…’ She pushed a glossy company report aside to reveal a set of faxed figures. ‘Looks like business transactions — there’s a
