Death Wore White

cigarette smoke.

‘No. Well, sometimes. But kids at this age are best left to themselves. There’s been no trouble.’

‘We’d like a word with Gee,’ said Birley. ‘Just to double?check.’

‘OK,’ said Belcher, ditching the cigarette and getting back in the car. The dashboard bristled with the calm, sophisticated telemetry of a?45,000 motor car. The engine purred into life. The finish was teak, a SatNav unit attached to the windscreen, the seats in tan leather. Valentine reached in and turned the ignition key, killing the engine, because around the steering wheel there was a snakeskin cover, the design unmistakable — black chevrons on a silver background.

Jillie Baker?Sibley could hear the traffic in the sea mist but she couldn’t see the pus?yellow headlights until they were thirty yards away; the cars whispering past, the drivers bent forward, trying to see something where there was nothing. Fossdyke, the ancient Roman bank which kept the sea back off the land, stretched out into fog ahead of her, like a drawbridge over an unseen gorge.

She was getting colder, her arms held awkwardly at her sides, her jaw aching with the effort of not shivering. Any warmth she’d gathered overnight was bleeding away. She’d slept in the shed at the bottom of Clara’s garden, wrapped up in a picnic blanket, with a paraffin lamp on. Her friend had got her soup in a flask and a microwaved stick of garlic bread.

At dawn she’d crept out and left a note.

Thanks. Don’t tell them. I’ll write.

J. x

She picked up her first lift on the coast road, round Lynn, and west towards the Midlands. The mist had cleared for an hour and she’d seen the horizon. To the north, reclaimed land ran to the shore of the Wash, a patchwork of mathematical fields dusted with snow, a power station the only feature, catching the sunlight like

The icy wind had made the legs of her jeans flap. ‘Fuck it,’ she’d said to herself, wishing she hadn’t forgotten how to cry. In her pocket she clutched a key, but its power to still her rising panic was fading. Alone, stranded, she felt an almost overwhelming urge to scream.

She’d got a lift, finally, from a truck to Sutton Bridge where the old mechanical swing bridge loomed, a giant’s Meccano set crossing the grey waters of the Welland. The mist closed in again beyond the town, curling over the thirty?foot?high bank like dry ice. Grey cottages built on the wide dyke came and went, but they saw no one. Villages dripped in the damp cloud which had fallen on the world.

Then another truck: Luxembourg plates, a single silver container. She’d answered the driver’s questions.

Where was she heading? The M1.

Was this the right way? It was the right way. Shouldn’t she be in school? She was sixteen.

Where would she go when she got to the M1 — north or south? To the airport.

Did she have a ticket? Did her parents know?

She said she needed to get out at the next roundabout. He said that it would be best to go to a police station, they could check she was OK. She said she’d tell them he’d tried to rape her, in a lay?by, that he’d used his weight to lie on top of her, that you couldn’t hear her screams because of the traffic thundering by. He didn’t see her cut a thin line along her cheekbone with a fingernail.

They drove to a service station in silence and she got out at the exit. Standing on the grass verge she’d spat on his windscreen. That made her feel better, in charge, powerful. Empowered. She liked that word.

He’d pulled away and she’d watched the tail lights fade in the mist, the world around her a shifting jigsaw of grey and white.

The car that picked her up was a black Jag.

It went past once. Then she heard it brake. She didn’t notice it going back the other way, or hear it pulling an unseen U?turn. When it coasted out of the gloom the second time its tyres crunched in the kerb on broken glass and she recognized the umbrella furled on the back seat.

She took a step back, looking around as if trying to find a way off the bank. But the field below was a milk? white pool of mist, weaving its way between wooden posts.

The passenger side window came down electronically. She shook her head, but then she got in.

A POLICE — NO ENTRY sign blocked the way forward on Siberia Belt.

‘Weird,’ said Shaw. ‘Tom said he’d have it wrapped up by last night. Why are they still here?’ He got out and stamped in the snow while Valentine struggled into his raincoat. They heard a marsh bird’s call, like fingers down a blackboard. Walking, Valentine smoked doggedly, while Shaw tried to set in order, in his own mind, everything that they’d learned.

He’d left DC Birley to interview Rob Belcher and his son Gee about the whereabouts of the BMW — and the snakeskin wheel cover — on the night of the blizzard on Siberia Belt. DC Campbell was told to get a unit down to the cockle?pickers’ hostel in the North End and round them up for interview. But the big breakthrough was Sarah Baker?Sibley. Her statement would provide a cornerstone for the inquiry; laying out the foundations of the plan her ex?husband had so meticulously laid to abduct his daughter. Luring her mother into the mobile black spot, and then bottling her up like a spider in a jar for the crucial hour it would take to spirit Jillie out of the country. The sudden snowstorm had all been to the good, turning the lid on the jar ever tighter.

But to achieve that James Baker?Sibley had to put in place a conspiracy. How many? Two on Siberia Belt — Ellis

Valentine slipped on the ice, his arms flailing to keep his balance, the black slip?ons skating. The sharp right turn in Siberia Belt was still two hundred yards away. So they plodded on.

And then there were James Baker?Sibley’s killers, thought Shaw. What if Jillie’s mother had used her second telephone call from Gallow Marsh to reach someone other than Jillie and her father? Sarah didn’t really need to phone him back at all. She knew what he planned, and as far as she knew her daughter was going to go with him. What she really needed was to stop her. What better friend to call than Colin Narr at Shark Tooth? All roads led to Narr, and to the cockle?pickers Fiona Campbell was assembling for interview.

They reached the turn in the track and, once round the corner of the high flood bank, they saw ahead a single SOC tent, lit within.

His radio buzzed so he took the call. It was DC Twine in the murder incident room. They’d made progress in tracing the teenager at the wheel of the Mondeo on Siberia Belt. According to parish council chairman Rodney Belcher his BMW, and its distinctive steering?wheel cover, were in use on the night of Harvey Ellis’s murder — but not by him. The Belchers’ eighteen?year?old neighbour, Sebastian Draper, was teaching Belcher’s son Gee how to drive. By way of payment they let him have use of the BMW on occasional weekday evenings when Belcher was up in the City. Draper was on a gap year, waiting to go up to Oxford to read maths in September. Responsible, sensible, polite — according to Belcher. Draper’s father had refused to allow his son to answer questions when DC Lau had called, until the family solicitor was present. An interview had been arranged for the morning at St James’s. Lau could have arrested him, but Twine had counselled caution. Shaw agreed. They knew where he lived and nobody was doing a moonlight flit from a million?pound address.

Other news: John Holt had discharged himself from hospital, and was under surveillance, and Jake Ellis — Harvey Ellis’s son — had died overnight at the hospital, his mother at his side. The Lynn News was reporting a

Valentine relayed the messages and then stowed the radio.

‘Perhaps that’s Harvey’s pay?off for playing his part in the abduction,’ said Shaw. ‘Baker?Sibley said James stopped off in Morston to post letters — let’s try and trace the trust. But if it’s the Swiss they’re good at hiding money.’

Shaw turned on the spot. Late afternoon: a grey sky loaded with snow, pinned up above their heads in folds, like a dreary circus tent. Siberia Belt had been churned up by vehicles, the ruts frozen.

‘So we know a bit,’ said Shaw. ‘At last.’