The man, a young father, perhaps thirty, was silent, tears running down his face, which was white with fear. He clutched a child in a papoose to his chest, his lips in its hair. A boy and girl, Shaw guessed five and ten, still held hands, the girl’s jaw juddering with the cold, the boy glassy?eyed. The navigator jumped clear and put down a sand anchor; the crewman was already wading clear, calling: ‘It’s OK — paddle, just paddle.’
They clambered aboard but as the father swung his leg
The crew got him over the skirt and into the rear cabin, the papoose unclipped. Driscol radioed the station, standing down the inflatable inshore boat, and Shaw lifted the
Shaw made himself concentrate on the view ahead. He dropped her speed, using sonar and radar as back?up. Looking shorewards he saw a metal buoy in the foreground, the beach beyond, marked to the north by Gun Hill, to the south by the oyster beds off Gallow Marsh Farm. The farm itself was almost lost in a stand of trees, but he could just see the dilapidated white wooden dove?cote which had been lit like a beacon that night on Siberia Belt. Lining up the buoy and the dovecote Shaw saw that they marked a channel, a strip of open clear water between the muddled sandbanks, a passage to within a few hundred yards of Ingol Beach. He thought about the farmyard that night, the blizzard clearing to reveal the dovecote, lit a startling acid?white.
He pushed the microphone of the intercom away from his lips. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s a lighthouse.’
Valentine’s Mazda was parked in a lay?by off the muddy track which led towards Blickling Cottages; the home of John Holt’s daughter and granddaughter. Holt was clearly visiting, his Corsa — released from the police compound — was parked on the concrete forecourt. Shaw put the Land Rover behind the Mazda and jumped out, his hair still wet from the sea spray.
Bending his knees he dropped down to talk through the open driver’s window.
‘Did you get his dental records?’ asked Shaw. ‘Hadden says there’s no match with Holt. Nothing like.’
‘Shit!’ Shaw wiped salt off his forehead with the back of his hand. He’d been sure, so sure. The cloudless sky was beginning to darken to the east, dusk slinking along the coast like a black cat.
So if they weren’t John Holt’s teeth marks, whose were they? The hitch?hiker’s? Logic told them Holt was lying about finding Ellis alive at the wheel that night. But they had no evidence he was a killer. They weren’t his tooth marks on the apple. It wasn’t his footprint in the blood. Hadden had checked the boots and shoes of everyone in the convoy on Siberia Belt, and there’d been no match.
But they did know Holt had been borrowing money
‘We’re sure Holt’s here?’ asked Shaw, standing. Valentine swished a single snowflake off the windscreen. The cottages lay in a small copse of trees amongst vast rutted fields. A narrow lane followed the gradient of a shallow valley. To one side lay a sports field, the snow cleared from the lines of a football pitch. By the road and a gravel car park stood a pavilion: whitewashed wood with two onion?domed turrets on either end of a wide stoop, the roof supported by carved pillars and free of snow. An exotic fragment of Russian romance in a snowy Fen field. The windows were half?shuttered and Shaw thought he glimpsed a light within, but it was gone as soon as he saw it out of the corner of his eye. A reflection perhaps of the low winter sun.
Just beyond the pavilion a farm track led over the hill. An unmarked Ford was obscured by snow?laden bushes. ‘Twine got traffic to volunteer,’ said Valentine. ‘They’ve had Holt under surveillance since he left the hospital.’
‘OK, let’s do it,’ said Shaw, walking round the front of the Mazda and pulling open the passenger?side door. ‘We’ve still got more than enough to rattle his cage.’
John Holt was at the side of the house standing on a plank ten feet off the ground supported by two sets of stepladders. He wore a pair of new blue overalls, and heavy?duty boots. Two trees stood on either side of the door. Lopped branches from a magnolia tree lay on the path beneath. The sycamore had been pruned back
Shaw stamped his feet in the snow to get his circulation back. Holt didn’t look round and it occurred to Shaw for the first time that he might be deaf, but when he spoke he could see that his arrival was not a surprise.
‘Is that wise, Mr Holt? Shouldn’t you be resting?’
In a hospital bed John Holt had appeared diminished, weak, held down it seemed by the weight of the blankets. He didn’t look a lot more robust now, perched on his makeshift scaffolding. The eyes still blinked warily from behind the thick lenses.
‘I’m fine, thank you, Detective Inspector,’ he said, peering down. Shaw sensed that discharging himself from hospital, completing the errand that was interrupted by Monday night’s diversion onto Siberia Belt, was part of a ritual demonstration that old age had yet to defeat John Holt. ‘Your people brought my gardening stuff back with the car, so I thought I’d better finish the job.’ He pulled back a branch and lopped it neatly with a pair of secateurs. ‘Sasha’s not very happy, mind you. We’ve had tears.’ Then he swung himself out onto the top rung of one of the ladders and climbed down, although Valentine noticed that he didn’t drop a step before getting a double grip with his hands.
Back on earth he looked out over the garden. ‘Pity about the snow, I had it all neat and tidy.’ Shaw could see a precise row of roses breaking through a drift, the edge of a hedge trimmed to a topiary finish. A large vegetable garden stretched beyond the flowers, leeks in military rows breaking through the snow cover.
‘I’m a farmer’s son. It’s in the blood.’
‘That’s quite something,’ said Shaw, looking out over the sports field to the pavilion.
‘Local bigwigs gave the field to the village back in the 1880s — pavilion came with it. One of them made a fortune as a merchant in Moscow. It’s listed, but the local kids don’t seem to mind. Vandalize it pretty much once a month. I keep an eye on the place — unpaid night watchman. They’ve got one of those security firms checking it out — bloody useless.’
He took off his gloves and rubbed his hands. ‘We better go in, warm up,’ he said. The front door stood open, a fresh coat of red paint still wet. Valentine thought it was an odd time to paint a door.
Inside seven?year?old Sasha played on the rug, crayons scattered over a series of pieces of white paper covered in delicate lines of colour. A glue pot and paints stood beside a neat pile of sycamore seeds — the tiny winged ‘helicopters’ that children love. A book lay open on the floor as well, and Shaw recognized the cover — one his daughter had struggled with over Christmas. The little girl stood, holding the book by the corner, so that it hung down. A black cat lay at her feet, dozing.
‘Bright kid, then?’ said Shaw, nodding at a woman he took for her mother.
She sat in one of the armchairs and hadn’t got up. She seemed startled that anyone had spoken to her. ‘Yes. I don’t know how that happened,’ she laughed, trying to
The bungalow was furnished in second?hand furniture, cheap but sturdy. There was a flat?screen TV, but it appeared to be the only luxury.
‘Yes, this is my Sasha,’ said Holt, not introducing his daughter.
‘This is Kit,’ said Sasha, holding the cat like a baby. Shaw smiled, working his way along the family snapshots on the sideboard. There were more frames on the mantelpiece and a side table. He tried to memorize each picture, overlaying them one on another, establishing the family face. And then he found the one he was looking for, the picture of the gawky teenage Michelle, a slip of a girl, the limbs all elbows and knees, but the face a haunting echo of her father’s. And another child, cuddling a black kitten. Shaw held the frame, tapping the glass, trying to age the child’s face into an adult’s. Wondering why she looked familiar.
‘It’s Michelle, isn’t it — Michelle Holt?’ he said, replacing the picture and offering his hand. He bounced slightly on
Holt’s wife brought him tea in a china cup and saucer, setting it on a side table which also carried a crossword puzzle book and a remote control for the flat?screen TV.
‘It’s not a coincidence, is it?’ asked Shaw. ‘Blickling Cottages. It’s your middle name — Blickling.’
Valentine smiled. He knew the young DI hated coincidence, while for him it was the sister of luck.
Holt’s eyes widened behind the thick lenses of the black?rimmed spectacles. ‘Yes, that’s right, Inspector. I built the cottages back in 1963. We lived here when we were married. As I said, I’m a farmer’s son, but not a farmer’s eldest son. So I had to find my own way in the world.’
He paused and Valentine wondered if he wanted a round of applause.
‘We went bust two years ago — just in time for a leisurely retirement.’ He smiled, but didn’t make a good job of it.
