Death Wore White

Saturday, 14 February

George Valentine lay in bed listening to the gentle throb of a three?litre engine. It was parked below his bedroom window. The street light still showed between the curtains, and the alarm clock said seven. He wanted to sleep, to stave off the yearning for nicotine, the pillowcase still holding the dim memory of his last illicit Silk Cut.

‘Well, fuck this,’ he said, getting up, pulling back the curtain and running up the sash before he’d looked out. The cold air hit him like a bucket of iced water. DI Peter Shaw was standing by the Land Rover, the engine running, a police radio to his ear.

‘I said early start,’ he said, looking up. ‘I meant very early start — sorry.’ A gust of sea breeze blew off the freezing river and rippled through Valentine’s pyjamas. He slammed the window shut.

As soon as Valentine opened the door Shaw knew that this was part of the DS’s life he’d not imagined. The hallway was uncarpeted, but spotless, a picture on a hook of Valentine as a teenager, sitting on a beach with a woman with long legs and a smile hidden in the shadow from a stylish sun hat. Valentine at twenty, perhaps still a teenager even, a mop of hair over the narrow face, the cheekbones rakish rather than cadaverous. Did Shaw remember his

The kitchen was 1950s basic. A wooden draining board, ugly taps and a stone basin. Valentine made tea, changed, then smoked while the pot brewed. He poured the liquid into two mugs, added milk from a fridge which was otherwise empty.

He hadn’t said a word, and Shaw sensed he was enjoying the silence.

‘No cards then?’ said Shaw.

‘What?’

‘There’s nothing on the mat. It’s Valentine’s Day.’ Valentine ignored him, taking a scrap of paper from his pocket and placed it on the table.

Shaw leant back, balancing the stool on two legs. ‘This is the mark left on Holt’s car.’ Valentine coughed, stubbed out the cigarette, played with the packet. ‘Chinese name character for Joe. I asked some questions. He’s a loan shark with a reputation for using muscle to collect. I think we can take it that daubing one of these…’ he stabbed the Chinese character with his finger, ‘on someone’s car door is a final demand. A very final demand.’ He knocked a fresh cigarette on the table top. ‘Holt.’

‘It’s a motive?’ asked Shaw.

‘Yeah. Think about it.’

Shaw did. Holt needed the money — he was desperate; living in a slum down by the docks, supporting a daughter who couldn’t work, a granddaughter. So James Baker?Sibley recruits him. Ellis too.

‘There’s more,’ said Shaw. ‘I’ve got Twine out at Holt’s dentist. Night he was taken in the Queen Vic he lost his

‘The apple?’ asked Valentine.

‘Maybe.’

‘I should have thought of that,’ said Valentine, annoyed with himself.

‘We both should have,’ said Shaw.

Valentine stood and went to the raincoat hung on the pantry door. He took out a plastic evidence bag: inside was the toy eagle which had hung from the roof of Harvey Ellis’s truck.

Shaw went to touch it, then stopped.

Valentine held up his hands. ‘It’s all booked out. No problems — it’s been dusted, everything.’

He unpopped the seal and retrieved the toy. He found a tag on the underside with his index finger and a plastic door opened to reveal a slot for a single AAA battery. Against the light he held the plastic evidence bag. Inside was a battery.

‘Hadden’s team didn’t check it. I did. It’s flat.’ Valentine produced a TV remote control from the kitchen drawer and knocked out a battery, slotting it into the toy. Then he flipped a switch on the breastplate. The wings flapped, up and down, a jagged movement. Standing, he turned on the kitchen light and held the toy up to the bulb. Shadows danced around them — the kind of shadows Shaw had taken for movement that night on Siberia Belt when he’d first spotted the pick?up truck.

They sat in silence for a moment, Shaw laying both hands out flat on the table, palms down.

‘Except that dead men don’t drive pick?up trucks,’ said Shaw.

‘Then the killer did. Footprints, or no footprints.’

‘We should do it now,’ said Valentine, standing in the street. The road was flagged with stones, snow lying in the cracks between. ‘Let’s get him into St James’s. It all fits. Holt takes his money as the backstop but Ellis gets cold feet. Holt kills Ellis. Forget how. Nothing else works,’ he added, spitting into the snow. ‘The stress gets him, his ticker packs up, then we turn up and fly him out of the crime scene.’

‘We need the dental records, something solid to put him inside the cab. Tom said mid?morning. We can wait,’ said Shaw, aware there was a combative edge to Valentine’s voice.

The DS looked at his watch. ‘It’s wasting time,’ he said.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Shaw, angry now. ‘How’d he kill Ellis on Siberia Belt before arriving at the scene himself? Houdini would be proud of that one. How did he strike the lethal blows? Where’s the blood on him? Does the hitch?hiker exist? Is she an accomplice? How’d she get out of the truck without leaving prints? How many more questions do you need unanswered?’

Shaw felt a pulse in his pocket from his RNLI pager.

Three 7s: the code for the hovercraft.

‘It’s a shout,’ he said, pleased to be offered a route of escape. ‘OK. I’ll text when we’re back on shore. Meantime,

The tyres on the Land Rover screeched as he pulled away. Valentine watched, humming the theme tune from Batman.

Shaw hit the inner ring road at a steady 80 mph. The coast road had been salted and the sudden sunshine had dried it out. He was the last one to the lifeboat house but made the crew as the only pilot, eye injury or no eye injury. He slipped forward into the cabin and checked the systems, redirecting the airflow from the fans down into the flotation skirt, lifting the Flyer over the concrete footings. Shaw cleared his head: tried to forget about John Holt, Harvey Ellis — and George Valentine.

An outbound trawler from Lynn, the Scullion, had spotted figures on Peter Black Sand, the wrong side of Snettisham Scalp, a mile offshore from Ingol Beach. The skipper had reported one adult, two children, possibly another being held or carried. It was a popular spot for digging worms, but a death trap in a rip tide because the long spit of sand held a treacherous secret — its lowest point was where it met the land, the highest point the furthest extent out into the Wash. Even in winter it could entice the unwary too far from the safety of the dunes. The trawler had got within 300 yards before the danger of grounding had made her swing back out to sea.

They had a visual contact within nine minutes.

‘Jesus,’ said the commander, a man named Driscol,

The tide was still three hours off the full but had completely covered Peter Black Sand. The stranded family had been forced away from the coast, back out to the higher ground, but now even that was gone. They stood in the freezing water, footless, an adult holding a child, two other children clutching hands, beside them a large bucket, a deflated sack. The sea around them turned in whirlpools, seagulls picking fish in the shallows.

Shaw hit 60 knots, the noise of the fans deafening despite the ear protectors in the helmets. At 100 yards he throttled back, the note changing, the nose of the Flyer dipping, the craft slewing sideways slightly as the speed dropped and she began to pick up friction from the water surface. The gulls, hoping for a stream of fish guts, began to flock behind them. A sea wind was picking up and miniature waves clipped the forward skirt, spray arching over the crew.

Drifting, Shaw got her to within twenty feet of the man, then cut the down current, so that Flyer floated.