background. She thought the cruelty of it was almost unbearable; Andy, alone after Marie had died, hiding in a family photo.
Next, holidays. The Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, just bliss: the music, the heat, and the thought of all those miles between them and Erebus Street. They stood together, astonished at how much fun life could be.
Back home it was always family. She bit her lip. A picture of Neil next, a laughing six-year-old, thrown over his brother Bry’s shoulder, her grinning behind. And then, finally, Christmas this year: her and Bry on the beach at Old Hunstanton. Bry, trying to be happy, but
And a new picture. A secret picture.
It had lain on the bedside table slipped inside the psalter he’d given her. A snapshot, him in swimming shorts, on a beach. She covered her mouth with her hand. She had a right to be happy, just like anyone else. She propped the picture on the bedside table beside the night-light they’d lit together. And they’d said a prayer for Bry’s soul. They hadn’t even thought about the future. That would have been a sin too.
She broke the line of thought. Next door she could still hear the washing machines. Neil and Andy shared the flat above the launderette. But Andy was at the police station, and would be all night. Neil slept heavily, and noise wouldn’t wake him anyway, unless he picked up the vibrations. She’d leave it until the morning. Then she thought about sleeping, in this bed, their bed, and decided she could deal with the machines now.
The female PC had retreated from the front step to the squad car parked at the T-junction, blocking traffic, the thin squawk of the radio just audible. Looking up, Ally saw a clear night sky, the moon, going to earth now, over behind the abattoir. She put the key in the lock of the launderette and turned the Chubb — but the door wouldn’t open. She turned it back and it did. She’d left it open.
‘God,’ she said, thinking she might cry now. One of the washers had malfunctioned and there was a pool of water in front of it; a detergent slick. She grabbed a plastic laundry basket, knelt down in the water and pulled open the porthole, dragging out the contents.
Inside was a pair of heavy-duty overalls. They were covered in red stains. Pressing the material to her nose she caught the unmistakable scent of blood: ferrous, acrid. She fumbled for the name tag inside the collar.
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘No.’
12
As the seagull flies, Peter Shaw lay twenty-two miles to the north, on the cool sand of Old Hunstanton, watching the moon set. Despite the hour, nearly 3 a.m, along the high-tide mark small fires still burnt, the remnants of the surfing crowd staying up to see in the new day and enjoying what might be the last night of the Indian summer. Wavelets curled over to fall on the beach, creating the night’s only sound — a rhythmic whisper. Fran had made a seat in the sand in front of the cafe. He sat in it now, his skin drying after a swim, wrapped in a beach towel.
Lena swam fifty yards offshore, the rise and fall of her arms hypnotic. When he’d got back she was up, in a chair on the stoop, unable to sleep through the heat. He watched her coming out of the sea: black skin, white bikini, slim and compact, treading heel-to-toe as if following a line in the sand. She grabbed a towel from the cafe and sat down, their bodies touching at the hip and shoulder. She dug her toes into the sand. ‘We made some money today,’ she said. She had brown eyes, only ever half open, but with a cast in the right. ‘Fifteen hundred pounds in the shop — a thousand in the cafe.’
Shaw whistled, insinuating a hand around her waist. On his lap he had a reference book —
Liam Kennedy’s copy on the walls of the Sacred Heart of Mary had been faithful to the original — at least in the corner he’d finished — in every detail except one. A tiny omission amongst the memento mori.
Lena kissed him on the neck as he closed the book, but then he slipped a cutting out that he’d hidden between the pages of the index.
‘I found this,’ he said, knowing he’d just ruined the moment.
It was from the
An accident on the outskirts of town. A Mini had hit a Ford Mondeo at a lonely T-junction. The driver of the Ford — a 45-year-old woman — survived but the two passengers, both over seventy, died at the scene. CCTV footage showed clearly — the report said — that the Mini had jumped the red light. They’d got out of the car to inspect the wrecked Ford — three young men in peaked baseball caps, their car side-on to the CCTV. According to the police the footage showed the driver was alive — her forehead slumped over the wheel turning side to side, and one of the passengers in the back of the car, a hand at a rear window, pawing at the glass. Then the Mini drove away. It was nearly thirty-five minutes before another driver arrived at the scene and alerted the emergency
It was just the kind of crime Lena said damaged the way you looked at the world. Just the kind of crime she didn’t want to know anything about, not any more. She folded the cutting, handing it back. ‘Nice people. Perhaps they’ve paid the price for it — we’ll never know. I don’t want to know.’
But Peter Shaw did want to know. This was what he found almost impossible to tolerate: an open-ended question, the puzzle with no solution. Lena knew it was one of the things that made him a policeman.
‘The date,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘I know. It’s a few days before the day we don’t seem to be able to ever forget.’
She looked out at sea, annoyed — angry — that an almost perfect day had ended like this.
They both knew the details of his father’s last case: the murder of nine-year-old Jonathan Tessier on the night of 26 July 1997 — three days after this fatal car crash. The case that had left his father to retire under the shadow of that dreadful epithet ‘bent copper’. The case that had seen George Valentine busted down to DS, and banished to the coast.
Shaw held the cutting lightly. Lena watched the sea, hugging herself.
‘Tom Hadden’s done a re-examination of the forensics on Tessier. Remember there were tiny spots of paint on the kid’s football shirt? We linked those to the factory where some of Mosse’s mates worked. But there was
He flicked the cutting. Lena looked out to sea. ‘Widely,’ she said, expertly picking at the hole in the logic.
But she’d walked into a trap. ‘Tom’s done a mass spectroscope analysis and the paint is one produced for this specific model of Mini by British Leyland at Long-bridge in 1991. That’s about eight thousand cars in the batch — most went for export. That’s a very small number, Lena. Think about it — eight thousand in the world. What are the chances that fleck of paint
He gave up waiting for his wife to react, and watched the waves breaking instead. ‘So — a gang of youths in a fatal car smash do a runner from the scene. We know Mosse was involved in such a gang. Less than a week later we find Tessier’s body under the Westmead — and there’s a flake of paint from the Mini on his clothing.’
Lena looked her husband in the eyes. She was always saddened at how much of their lives seemed to get sucked into this other world.
‘This is it,’ he said, raising both hands in frustration. ‘They know there’s a camera at the junction. They probably guessed you couldn’t do an ID on the registration
She laughed without a trace of humour. ‘And you think that makes sense?’ Shaw had been at New Scotland Yard when he’d met Lena in Brixton. She probably knew more about crime on the streets than he did. ‘Why kill a nine-year-old kid because he’s seen you respraying a car? They knew where he lived. A threat would have done — sweetened with a five-pound note. Why would the sight of a Mini being resprayed have registered with the kid? You’ll have to do better than that, Peter. Max’ll have you for breakfast.’
Shaw snagged an ankle round hers.
‘Have you told George?’ she asked.
‘No. I can’t. I don’t know why.’
She threw her head back. ‘He’s a boozer — not far short of an alcoholic — and a nicotine addict with an aversion to exercise and a weak bladder who lives alone. You’re married, with a daughter, have an addiction to
