The yard, the snow untouched when they’d picked their way in, was now a weave of frozen tracks, and jagged ruptured ice. On the far side was the old stable block in brick with the wooden dovecote lit a harsh aluminium white on the pitched roof.

Valentine looked at his Rolex, annoyed that the second hand had suddenly started moving. ‘They’re sending out taxis for the witnesses, we’ll start letting them go home.’ He managed to squeeze in an extra breath: ‘Soon.’

‘We’ve double?checked IDs for the lot?’

‘Unless the dog’s really a Great Dane,’ said Shaw, pacing the cork?tiled floor, as reluctant as ever to take a chair, his joints screaming for the release of exercise.

The door opened and the farmer’s wife, Isabel Dereham, came in, stamping on the flagged floor. She was in her mid?thirties and slight, but she hauled another plastic basket’s worth of dirty clothes in front of the washing machine with no apparent effort. Her arms and hands were suntanned, the tendons taut and strong. The sleepless nights, the hard physical work, the stress of running a farm were all in her face. And a restless energy, so that she didn’t look at home in her own kitchen. But there was something else too, and it wasn’t far from beauty. She flexed her wrists, relieving a pain, and smiled, the line of her lips slightly crooked. Shaw noticed that the upper and lower edges of her lips were marked by a natural red line: a textbook example of the vermilion border.

‘More coffee?’ she asked, pushing mousey hair off her forehead.

‘I’m sorry — we’re in the way, Mrs Dereham,’ said Shaw.

‘Well — yes. Yes you are, Inspector.’ She kicked the empty washing basket. ‘But I guess you’d rather be at home…’ She put her hands on her head, closing her eyes, resting, and Shaw watched her breasts rise under the rough shirt she wore. Beautiful? Yes: the body beneath unhidden despite the clothes. ‘It’s Izzy, by the way.’

‘Look. I have to get down to the beach,’ she said. ‘The oyster beds; the storm will have rocked the cages. Oysters are money, Inspector, big money. Unfortunately, I just manage them. But I do need to check. Is that OK?’

‘Sure. Just keep off Ingol Beach.’

‘My daughter’s asleep upstairs. Natalie. I’ve explained you’re here. She won’t be a problem.’

When she left the cold air blew in, making the fire crackle.

They checked their mobiles on the tabletop, the signal bars blank.

‘So what happened on Siberia Belt tonight?’ asked Shaw.

It was a rhetorical question, but Valentine didn’t spot it. He checked his notes. ‘The first squad car up Siberia Belt said there was no trace of the detour sign that all of the drivers swear was on the corner when they left the main road. The diving unit back?up came from Cromer to the other end of Siberia Belt and there was no sign at that end either. But the junction’s opposite a cottage and the owner swears he saw a no?entry sign there at around the right time, but he didn’t see it put up, or taken down. So that’s it — diversion at one end, no entry at the other, then both disappear.’

‘What about the AA?’ asked Shaw.

‘Nope. Same with County Highways, RAC, traffic control. No one put a sign out.’

Shaw poured more coffee. ‘So it’s a trap for the victim. They get him off the road, he never gets where he’s going — unless it was the cemetery, of course.’ He looked into

‘There’s one thing that works,’ said Valentine. ‘Holt. The old bloke in the Corsa. He goes forward. How long does it take? A single blow, then he leaves him to bleed to death.’

‘Where’s the murder weapon?’

‘In the coat — it’s big enough.’

‘True. He could have had an accomplice under it, and a getaway car. But the Baker?Sibley woman’s statement is clear — he kept his hands in his pockets. He didn’t lean in. She watched him.’

‘She could be wrong.’ Valentine shrugged. ‘Maybe she looked away, it only takes a second. Then chummy bleeds to death — slowly. Death throes, that’s what you saw from the hill, what she saw through the back window.’

Shaw undid the top button of his shirt — he never wore a tie. ‘But there’s a plan. We know someone put out the signs, then took them back in. Meticulous, premeditated. Then the killer takes a chance like that? That the witnesses are looking the other way when he strikes? Makes no sense.’

‘I’m just saying it’s all that works,’ said Valentine, his jaw set.

‘It is. Which is another good reason for keeping a round?the?clock watch at Holt’s bedside — so fix it. But let’s not get too excited. There’s no trace of blood on Holt. Not a drop. However, he is the last person to see the victim alive, so we need to interview him as quickly as possible. We’ll start the spade work in the morning,’ added Shaw. ‘We need to re?interview them all — check

Valentine tipped back the coffee cup, letting the last gritty granules fire up the taste buds on his tongue. ‘The runaway kid. Why run? And why run then? St James’s is on to the Mondeo’s registration — should be an hour, less.’

‘But he’s not a killer, is he?’

Valentine stretched his arms aloft, the joints cracking. ‘We won’t get anything tonight.’ Shaw stood. ‘Let’s touch base first thing. We’ll need to come back in daylight anyway — I’ve told them to keep the vehicles in situ until then. But the fact is that even by daylight the problem is still the same: we’ve got a murder scene with no footprints in and no footprints out.’

Valentine flapped his raincoat in front of the fire. ‘Let’s find a motive. Worry about footprints in the snow later…’

There was a silence again. Shaw remembered something his father had said about George Valentine. That when it came to the textbook he worked backwards: he found the criminal first, then the evidence which linked them to the crime. Had there been an unspoken inference: that if he couldn’t find the evidence, he’d make it up?

‘Right — anyone else?’ asked Shaw.

Valentine rubbed the pouched skin below his eyes. ‘The Chinky in the takeaway Volvo?’

Shaw winced at the casual racism, wondering if Valentine had said it deliberately. As far as his DS was concerned PC was something you stuck on your desk and didn’t want to use.

Shaw went to speak.

‘Perhaps they’ve got something going, the Chinese… people smuggling?’ Valentine continued.

Shaw shook his head. ‘One guy on a raft and he’s European. We had illegals coming in last year, but the trade’s dried up since the Coastguard started patrolling the Wash. That’s stopped it — and stopped it dead.’

‘OK,’ said Valentine. ‘Ciggies, then; drugs? We don’t know what the bloke on the beach might have had in that raft before he died. So there’s a welcoming party, one of the cars that’s stranded on Siberia Belt. Just because there’s a detour sign doesn’t mean none of them wanted to be there.’

Shaw was listening now.

‘So they get snarled up in the snow,’ said Valentine. ‘An argument about what to do. Low life, falling out. Do we stay, do we run? Who’s got the money?’ He stopped, hauling up his ribs to draw air into his lungs. ‘Do we get paid? We know the score with these people. It’s all sweetness and light until the shit flies, then they tear each other apart. Someone gets the chisel for their trouble.’

Shaw’s back stiffened. ‘And then the murderer disappears without leaving a footprint. How does that work?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Valentine, checking his watch.

Two doors led out of the kitchen. One into the hall and to the living room beyond, the other into a makeshift office. They could hear a woman’s voice: Sarah Baker?Sibley. Each witness had been offered one call on the landline, and they could hear her talking; the speech pattern oddly modulated, tiredness perhaps, blended with stress. Valentine had got a message through to her daughter’s voicemail via the control room at St James’s while they were out on Siberia Belt. Three messages, in fact: stay at home; check the security lights were on; pizza in the fridge.

‘God,’ they heard her say, stressed out. ‘OK, OK. Look, pass me over…’

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