They stood on the pavement outside the Artichoke in the steadily falling snow, Valentine using his mobile. Tom Hadden was in the Ark; he’d pick them up in ten minutes to run them to Sly’s houseboat. Duncan Sly — ‘the eyes and ears’ of James Baker?Sibley, and before that of his father. They’d need uniform back?up. Shaw and Valentine had got scalding tea from the late?night burger van parked opposite the pub. Under a canvas awning they’d reduced the investigation to its stark core: if Izzy Dereham was telling the truth, the only person who could have killed Harvey Ellis was Duncan Sly.
Valentine stood in the snow, his head sunk low on his shoulders so that the collar of the raincoat kept the back of his neck warm.
Shaw tried to call up an image of the boot mark they’d found in the bloodstain on Siberia Belt. Heavy duty, with a steel toecap, and the fern leaf burnt into the heel. It wasn’t Holt’s footprint, so was it Sly’s? They needed to turn over the houseboat, find the boots. The footprint was the only physical forensic evidence that could put the killer on the spot. They had to trace it.
The snow was making little drifts on Shaw’s shoulders as he stood under the swinging pub sign. He’d never really looked at the picture before: a gardener leaning on a spade, a line of artichokes still to be cut, a floppy white
Shaw looked a long time at the boots.
‘I’ll catch up with you at St James’s, George’ he said suddenly, the excitement in his voice as audible as the snow was silent. ‘I’ve got to check something out. Take Sly carefully, then bring him in to the station. Secure the site, leave the rest to Tom. The important thing is getting in the door before he’s got a chance to destroy anything. Boots, clothing. I’ll meet you at St James’s.’
Valentine nodded, trying to see it as a vote of confidence, but knowing he was being cut out of something.
Hadden arrived in the CSI van with two uniformed PCs for back?up, and as they pulled away Valentine could see Shaw still looking up at the swinging sign of the Artichoke.
The streets of Lynn were empty, snow settling despite the salt. A neon kebab?house sign pulsed on Norfolk Street, the gyro inside turning as a man sliced off the cooked meat. They pulled up at Boal Quay and Valentine led the way to the footpath which ran to the houseboat jetty. The communal fire still burnt, despite the falling snow, but there was no one tending the flames. Valentine went aboard Sly’s boat with Hadden and one of the uniformed PCs, the other skirted the hull of the boat, up on its blocks, round to the far side.
Valentine didn’t have to knock. Sly opened the double wooden hatchway, blinking into Hadden’s torch. He stood in his pants, nothing else, his skin as white as lard except where he couldn’t cover it up on the sands — the hands
‘Jesus! What…?’ asked Sly, covering his eyes with a hand as if he were looking out to sea.
‘Mr Sly? We’d like a word, and to look around.’
Sly looked back into the houseboat. Valentine sniffed, the cold air making his sinuses flood. ‘Or I can be back with a warrant in ten minutes.’ He’d give him one more chance, then they’d force a way through. Sod the warrant.
Sly didn’t move, but seemed to settle on his feet. Hadden opened his CSI bag and pulled on gloves. ‘I need to look around,’ he said, not waiting for Sly to give him permission. Valentine stamped the snow off his boots on the bare floorboards and led the way.
‘Like I’ve got a choice,’ said Sly.
‘You’ll need some clothes and a coat, sir. We have a car.’ There was a strong smell in the room but Valentine’s nose was blocked: peat perhaps, smoked fish?
‘Now? This is crazy,’ said Sly. ‘I’ve told you I’d nothing to do with James’s murder.’
Valentine, suddenly tired, felt sorry for Duncan Sly, so he decided to cut it short, spell things out. ‘Mr Sly. We’re going down to St James’s. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s got nothing to do with his murder. We understand you were on Siberia Belt the night Harvey
Sly stepped back again, and the single unshaded light bulb threw his face into relief. Valentine examined a large print of the Battle of Jutland on the wall. He thought what a defeat it must be, to end your life alone in a rotting houseboat, surrounded by the stench of tidal mud, when your dream was to be at sea.
Hadden was below decks, opening drawers, cupboards. The uniformed PC hovered. ‘Can you get some clothes on, sir — we need to go,’ said Valentine.
Sly stood his ground and Valentine wondered if they’d interrupted something. He walked to the sink. A box of firelighters stood on the shelf with a bottle of detergent, and the bowl had a black tidemark around it, a nail brush lying in the scurf.
Valentine turned quickly and caught Sly with his hands over his face. He took them away quickly and, realizing they were wet, he looked at his fingertips as if the water were blood.
‘I didn’t kill Ellis,’ he said.
Valentine treated him to a blank stare. ‘Fine. We’ll take your word for it, shall we?’
Sly clenched then unclenched his fists.
‘It’s a tidy boat you’ve got alongside,’ said Valentine. ‘No more cockle?picking with scum on the sands, right? A bit of dignity, freedom. But at a price.’ Valentine looked round the cabin, then up at the roof where a wooden patch had been nailed up to keep the old boat weather?proof. ‘Perhaps it was worth killing for,’ he said. He put a cigarette between his teeth but left it unlit.
Frustrated, Valentine turned on Sly. ‘What happened — did you argue about money? Did Ellis want a share of yours? Did he want you to sort it? Because you could, couldn’t you — with James — your mate, the boss?’
‘That’s tosh. Jesus!’ But Sly didn’t move.
Valentine took a deep breath, a collarbone creaking as his shoulders rose. ‘Just get dressed, sir. Now.’
Valentine went to the hatchway and called in the second uniformed PC, who was standing at the landward end of the gangplank. ‘Accompany Mr Sly below please, Constable — he needs clothes, an overnight bag.’
Sly reluctantly went down, a cat passing him on the steps coming up. It brushed itself against Valentine’s black slip?ons, then made a figure of eight between his feet.
By the time Sly was ready Hadden had six pairs of shoes and boots lined up on a plastic sheet. Two pairs had steel toecaps. But he still hadn’t got a match.
‘I take it you found some footprints,’ said Sly.
‘Just one,’ said Valentine. ‘Under the security van in the convoy of cars on Siberia Belt. But a deep one — because Harvey Ellis’s killer was loading his body into the pickup’s cab, and he was standing in a pool of Ellis’s blood which had melted the frozen soil.’ Valentine watched Sly’s eyes, looking for signs of fear or confusion. ‘Once the body was in the van my guess is it was pushed forward to the pine tree — but those footprints couldn’t dent the
‘If we’re lucky,’ said Hadden, unhappy with Valentine’s methods: the hectoring, the implied menace.
‘Why would I kill Harvey Ellis?’ said Sly.
Valentine rolled the cigarette between his lips, tasting tobacco. ‘Because he wouldn’t do his job. And you worked out that he could do it just as well dead as alive.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Sly.
‘No?’ said Valentine. ‘Let’s go and hear what it was really like, shall we?’ He nodded at the PC: ‘I think we should cuff this one.’
The officer put Sly’s muscled arms behind him and handcuffed his hands. Valentine was rewarded with a look of undiluted hatred.
Valentine swayed slightly on his feet, enjoying the moment. They’d find the boots. And if they didn’t, they’d find blood. If Sly had struck the fatal blow then they’d find blood. Perhaps, he thought, there’d be time for the house on Greenland Street. The thought of the fan?tan table made his pulse pick up so that he nearly missed it, nearly proved for the last time that his career was over. But there was something about that smell, the smokiness.
He filled his lungs. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘The fire.’ He threw open the double hatch doors, clattered down the steps and ran to the smouldering wood and rubbish, stumbling through the mud, splashing through the stagnant salt water. The heavy snow had almost put it out, the flakes sizzling in the embers.
He pulled out some wood, a branch, as Hadden joined him.
