from people twenty years younger than he was. He’d been a DI himself until they’d busted him after Jack Shaw’s last case, and he’d been to more crime scenes than Peter Shaw had been to university lectures.
Shaw cut the recording and looked Valentine in the eyes. He thought for the first time that he might have underestimated him, and he reminded himself that trust was not one of his strong suits. So he made himself ask the question. ‘What do you think?’
Valentine wasn’t a whiz, and he certainly wasn’t a kid, but the job ran as deep in his veins as it did in Peter Shaw’s. It wasn’t that he couldn’t analyse a crime scene. He’d done it a thousand times. He just trusted his instinct more than a fat textbook of procedural logic. So what did instinct tell him now?
‘It’s two crimes,’ he said. ‘This killing’s vicious, angry, unplanned. But signs of entry and exit are non? existent. The killer just vanishes, coolly.’ He took a breath, looking towards the sea. ‘And then there’s the other corpse — down on the beach. Two hundred yards away, a bit more. Where does that fit in?’ He squatted down, looking under the truck. Nothing. ‘He could have jumped, from the cab here, into the marsh…’
Shaw looked unimpressed, although he didn’t have a better scenario. ‘Why? Why risk drowning, or freezing to death, just to avoid leaving a footprint? And the splash would have caught someone’s attention.’
Valentine’s jaw began to vibrate with the cold.
‘We need pictures,’ said Shaw.
Valentine shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Tom’s boys from CSI?’ he asked. ‘What’s the rush?’
‘Well. Two reasons, I guess,’ said Shaw, talking to himself
Valentine buttoned the top of his raincoat. He’d been out of serious front?line policing for a decade and was honest enough to know he needed to sharpen up his act. Shaw was right in his summary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take.
From his pocket Shaw produced a small digital camera.
‘Not admissible,’ said Valentine, before he could stop himself. All specialist forensic photography was on film, reducing any chance of digital enhancement. No court would accept a digital image.
‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw, failing to suppress his irritation at being picked up by his own DS. ‘But we need a record,’ he added. ‘Even if we can’t take it into court. I’ll get what shots I can… Meanwhile get Control. Tell ’em what we’ve got. We’re getting CSI anyway for the victim on the beach — and the pathologist — but we need back?up. More bodies in uniforms. We need transport for the witnesses, and somewhere we can take them for the paperwork. We need statements, names, addresses, the lot.
‘Somewhere warm…’ said Valentine, taking a breath, ‘would be nice.’
Shaw looked along the coast towards the lights he’d seen from the beach. ‘Tell ’em to try Gallow Marsh Farm. If they’ve got a barn we could use that, but the unit will have to bring some air heaters. And we need a catering unit.’
He patted his jacket pockets. ‘What have I missed?’ There were times, thought Valentine, when Shaw looked like his father. Something in the face, but something subtle, the way he seemed to focus on the mid?distance when he was thinking. Valentine leant in the driver’s window, looking around the tomb that the truck cab had become, trying not to glimpse the victim’s face. The side pocket in the driver’s door was empty except for a single piece of neatly folded paper. Valentine lifted it clear with his gloved fingers. It was an invoice. Beneath it was a pair of spark plugs. He leant in closer, and sniffed.
‘Old plugs,’ he said.
‘So?’ said Shaw.
‘Rusted. Plugs don’t rust in situ,’ explained Valentine. ‘Too much oil about. If they’d been taken out recently they’d give off that burnt smell… but there’s nothing.’ He pointed at the tiny question mark of the contact points. Dull metal, a blush of oxidized steel.
The pick?up’s engine still ran, the heating system clattering.
‘So he took them out, left them there, they rusted. What’s the problem?’ asked Shaw. But he knew that wasn’t
Then two things happened at the same time. They heard the first flutter of the helicopter blades along the coast. Within seconds it was with them, hanging in the air with the stars, an RAF Coastal Rescue, the bay doors open to reveal two men in full flight gear and crash helmets. The pilot brought it down to thirty feet and then began to edge closer, trying to find a spot as close to the dyke ditch as he could get without losing his safety margin. The snow began to rise about them.
And as Shaw turned away, looking down the line of cars, he saw the teenager in the baseball cap crawling back up the bank from the marsh. He reached the top, then stood and broke into a run. Shaw watched him for twenty yards before he slipped again, almost down into the ditch on the far side. He knelt for a few seconds, looking back at the cars, and Shaw guessed he was considering a return to the warmth of the Mondeo. But instead he turned away and began to run, into the half?light first, and then into the night itself.
Gallow Marsh Farm lay sunk in the snow, as if the weight on the roof had pushed it down into the damp sandy soil. Firelight flickered in the Georgian windows of the old kitchen. Inside, Shaw and Valentine sat at a plain deal table, the statements of the six witnesses left at the scene spread out in neat piles. Attached to each was a set of CSI pictures of their vehicles; interior and exterior, plus a set of Polaroid shots of each witness. Black and white prints; Shaw always insisted on that, so that he could study the faces in stark relief. Across the hallway the living room had been set aside for the witnesses, a nervous, over?excited party, each now dressed in the plain white SOC suits they had been allocated while their own clothes were taken for forensic examination in Lynn.
The mobile police canteen, parked in the farmyard, had produced coffee, tea and soup, hot dogs and cake. The farmer’s wife had donated a bottle of Johnnie Walker and what was left of the Christmas store of Gordon’s gin. A small bowl of dog food had been supplied for the Jack Russell, which had been shut in a utility room behind the kitchen. A uniformed PC stayed with the witnesses to make sure the conversation did not include any discussion of the events of the evening so far.
A cheap wooden 1930s clock on the windowsill read 11.30 p.m. The kitchen was an odd amalgam of two ages:
Shaw took the limpet shells from his pocket and laid eight in a line, returning two to his pocket. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Eight vehicles. First in line the victim — no name as yet. Pathologist is with the body on site.’ He felt the familiar thrill of the hunt, the intellectual buzz of the unsolved puzzle. In the silence he could hear Valentine’s watch ticking.
‘Second in line…’ He looked at the statement. ‘Sarah Baker?Sibley in the Alfa Romeo.’
‘Posh bitch,’ said Valentine.
‘Thank you for that,’ said Shaw. ‘Least we know who we’re talking about. Third. The Corsa. John Holt — latest?’
Valentine had radioed the Queen Victoria hospital on the half hour since the helicopter had left Ingol Beach.
‘The hospital says he’s comfortable — comfortable for someone who’s had a heart attack.’ Valentine shook his head, trying to fight off the tiredness that was making his bones drag him down. ‘DC Campbell’s with him — if he talks, she’ll shout, but she says he’s drugged up to the eyeballs. Wife’s with him too.’
‘Right. Fourth vehicle — the Volvo. Stanley Zhao of the That’s one takeaway dinner that won’t get delivered. Fifth. North Norfolk Security. His statement’s clear enough. But I’ve seen him somewhere, and he’s seen me. Criminal record — I’m sure of it. Let’s check that first thing. Name again?’
‘Shreeves,’ said Valentine. ‘Jonah Shreeves.’ He hadn’t checked the statement, and Shaw wondered if he’d committed all the names to memory.
‘Next?’
‘Express Plumbers. Fred Parlour and Sean Harper.’
‘Parlour’s head wound — we need to check that, double?check it.’
Valentine took an extra breath. Shaw shuffled papers. ‘Then the old dear in the Morris, Cynthia Pryce, and eighth the Mondeo. That’s a full house.’
Shaw stood up and moved over to the window. His eye throbbed beneath the dressing. The farmyard was packed with vehicles: the mobile canteen, the CSI mobile lab, the diving unit’s van and back?up, two squad cars, and the police bus which had ferried out a steady stream of uniformed officers for the fingertip search of the beach.
