Valentine shifted in his seat. It was a measure of the degree to which he’d buried his emotions for the last thirteen years that the simple fact that they might at last bring Robert Mosse to justice had made his eyes flood.
Warren looked at his watch, frustrated to find that so much of his life seemed to be about stopping one thing he didn’t like doing in order to start something he didn’t like doing even more. He went to a mirror on the wall and set his peaked cap straight, but Shaw calculated that his superior officer was carefully considering what he said next.
‘All right. I’ll give you ten days. You can peel off the manpower from the murder unit. Then that’s it. Case closed. If it’s not wrapped up by then, I’ll burn the sodding file myself.’
He stood and looked at Shaw, some of the belligerence which had once made him such an effective police officer returning. ‘I am making you, Peter, personally responsible for Voyce’s safety. Screw up and you will look upon George’s career as a sparkling success. The highlight of your working week for the next twenty years will be lecturing on speed awareness courses to spotty boy-racers. And I’m still expecting a result on the body in the cemetery. Now, get out, both of you.’
6
A freezing fog the colour of pickled eggs had fallen on the waterfront as Shaw drove alone down to South Lynn: under the black bones of the quayside cranes, a Meccano set lost in the gloom, then round at the Millfleet into the gridiron of streets around All Saints. He was aware that the Porsche — black, polished and sleek — turned heads in this poor neighbourhood. He’d chosen it because it had a narrow ‘A’ bar — the stanchion which separates the windscreen from the side windows. In most modern cars the ‘A’ bar was at least a couple of inches thick — a considerable handicap for someone with only one eye. He’d taken advice from websites set up to help the partially sighted and found the cash to pick the car up third-hand. The bodywork was dented here and there, the engine well past its sell-by date, but even so, parked overnight on these streets it would be gone by daybreak, or up on bricks minus its spoked alloy wheels.
He slowed to take a corner by Whitefriars primary school and noted a man standing back on the pavement, most of his body hidden in an overhanging hedge of copper beech laced with snow. He wasn’t standing still: one arm jerked without rhythm, his head ticking like a metronome, and he was greeting the freezing fog in a T-shirt emblazoned with red letters that spelt espana. He watched the Porsche balefully as it crept past.
Shaw rang the control room at St James’s on his hands-free mobile, reporting the dealer’s presence. Most of Lynn’s drugs came in off the ships, peddled in pubs and a handful of town-centre clubs. Street-selling was rare, and Shaw guessed this man was desperate to fund his own habit; desperate and disorientated, because trying to peddle outside a primary school was not the recommended first step in a career as a drug baron. The lack of topcoat suggested he hadn’t come far to his pitch, so he was probably a resident of the brutal block of low-rise flats which clustered around All Saints — a cordon of concrete that effectively encircled the medieval splendour of the old church.
The Porsche cut through the street-mist until the lines of terraced houses petered out. Shaw trundled the car forward along the narrow quay — the river to one side, the tide low enough to reveal the thin grey outline of a wrecked wooden barge on the near sandbank, the cemetery on his left showing glimpses of hawthorn and cedar crated with snow. Early-morning dog walkers had hung plastic bags on the railings, like offerings for the dead. He could just see the outline of the Flask, no lights showing in the three floors of its timbered facade.
At the cemetery gates he found DC Jacky Lau by her parked Megane. Lau’s car was adapted for rallying, with a complete set of spoilers, multiple spotlights and a trio of go-faster stripes. She was leaning on the car, staring into her mobile phone. Outside the office she always wore reflective sunglasses. She was ethnic Chinese, and possessed a kind of unpredictable energy which matched her driving. She was respected in the squad, but not especially liked. Her ambition, to make DI within five years, was naked. When she wasn’t pursuing that ambition she was wrapped up in her hobby: cars, and the men who drove them.
‘Sir,’ she pushed herself off the car’s bonnet with her thighs. ‘Paul said to meet you here. Cemetery’s still sealed off. Forensics are down by the open graves. I’m leading house-to-house, starting at nine — St James’s are sending a dozen uniforms down for the day. What are we looking for here?’
It was a good question. Shaw took in a lungful of fog. ‘For now, stick to the houses overlooking the cemetery. Anything over the years, I suppose …’ He suddenly felt the weight of the task before them — solving a crime at a distance of nearly three decades. ‘See if any group is known to hang around the place regularly after dark — druggies, lovers etc. We don’t know when chummy got dumped, but it’s probably way back. Throw in Nora Tilden’s name — if anyone remembers the funeral, get a full account. Names, anything unusual …you know the routine.’
He wondered what was going on behind the reflective glasses. ‘We should have more from Tom and Justina to go on later.’
He left her making a note and walked on through the open gates of Flensing Meadow Cemetery, the visibility down to twenty yards so that his world was reduced to a circular arena of tombstones and the path cutting through them, the only movement coming from the crows that flitted in and out of view over his head as they swapped branches in the trees, prompting showers of damp snowflakes. He wondered whether the silence of graveyards was an illusion. He strained his ears to catch the swish of traffic on the new bridge and — just once — the distant crackle of a police radio.
He’d left Valentine back at St James’s organizing the bugging and surveillance of Jimmy Voyce. Max Warren had given them ten days and it would take twenty-four hours to put a unit fully in place. The priority was to get listening devices into Voyce’s hotel room and, if they could, into the car he’d hired. Twine had been scouring the airline passenger lists and had just discovered that Voyce was booked on a flight to Auckland via Hong Kong leaving in six days’ time.
That was a break: if Voyce was going to try to blackmail Robert Mosse his timetable was actually narrower than theirs. Today they needed to get a rough idea of Voyce’s movements so that they could time the bugging operation — and obtain a court order allowing them to carry it out. Once Valentine had got the ball rolling he was due to meet Shaw at eleven to interview Lizzie Tilden, now Lizzie Murray — Nora Tilden’s daughter and, in her own turn, owner and landlady of the Flask.
The cemetery chapel came into view. When Shaw pushed open the Gothic-arched door he was surprised by the efficient hum of activity, and the mechanical gasps of a coffee maker. Twine had put in place a standard incident room in record time: desks, phone lines, internet link and a screened area for interviews. Outside, the St James’s mobile canteen was still on site; beside it was a 4x4 Ford with CAMBRIDGE ARCHAEOLOGICAL TRUST tastefully signwritten in gold on the passenger door. Despite the early hour Twine had found two civilian switchboard operators to answer the phones. A perspex display board in front of the altar was covered in photographs taken at the graveside and one that Shaw hadn’t expected — an enlarged black-and-white shot of a woman in her mid-fifties, greying hair pulled back off her face. It was a hard face, and no doubt she’d had a hard life to go with it, but Shaw doubted it had been
Twine brought him a coffee.
‘Paul,’ said Shaw, looking round. ‘Well done. This her?’
‘Nora Elizabeth Tilden.
Shaw took a closer look, thinking for the first time what a mismatched couple they seemed: Nora Tilden and her fun-loving errant husband, Alby.
DC Fiona Campbell unfolded herself from the nearest desk. She stood six feet two but tried to look shorter, shoulders slightly rounded, always in sensible flat shoes. Campbell was a copper from a family of coppers — her father a DCI at Norwich. She’d come out of school with the kind of A-levels that could have got her into university — any university. But this was her life. And she wasn’t just smart. She’d earned her street stripes the hard way. The
