checked at eight fifteen. The child wasn’t breathing. She started screaming, the husband went up, they called an ambulance which arrived at eight thirty-two p.m. The child was DOA at the Queen Victoria.’
Lena covered her mouth at the appalling euphemism. DOA.
‘Awful,’ said Dawid. Shaw presumed they didn’t have children — certainly none were ever mentioned. He wondered if that had been their choice.
‘The child’s coffin contained something else,’ she said. The pathologist produced an iPhone and touched the pad to bring up a picture, then slid it across the table. A model ship, exquisite, made of wood and lovingly painted. It was clear this was a specific vessel, hand crafted. A cargo ship. The superstructure was oddly out of balance with the dimensions of the hull, a small double crane set on the deck and a single gun on the fo’c’s’le. Shaw recalled that Alby Tilden had been a war hero, Arctic convoys with the merchant navy. Perhaps this had been his ship. A touching last gift for his daughter.
‘How did it survive?’
‘Child’s coffin was lead lined — watertight, airtight. Most of the paint’s fallen off since we took the picture.’
Lena stood abruptly and brought them more coffee, bringing the discussion to a close.
Later they all stood on the verandah, despite the raw breeze. Justina and Shaw had broken open a bottle of malt, Lena had a glass of wine. The Labrador, anxious about smells it couldn’t locate, tried to force itself under the cafe into the space where the sand had blown. The heavy snow clouds had drifted on so that the sky was clear and moonless, and across it fell a meteor storm. They watched the sudden lines of light, gone almost before they could be seen. Shaw turned to see Justina’s face turned upwards, at the exact angle of Lena’s. But Dawid’s eyes looked out to sea.
12
The car park at St James’s was full so Shaw parked the Porsche behind the Ark on a narrow side-street behind the Vancouver Shopping Centre. When Shaw cut the engine he and Valentine could hear the tinny soundtrack of piped-in Christmas carols leaking from the back of Wilkinson’s. An inflatable Santa flew over the multi-storey car park. In the road two cats pulled at a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken in the snow. The clock on St Margaret’s chimed the quarter hour. Mid-afternoon, but the December light would soon be dwindling fast. They had fifteen minutes before the autopsy on Pat Garrison. It was the third day of the inquiry, and they were little nearer finding his killer. They knew so much about him, so much about his family and his life, but the truth about that night twenty-eight years earlier remained elusive. It was like having a family photo album from which the vital picture had been torn out.
Shaw felt thwarted, frustrated, and worried that despite setting in train a textbook murder inquiry he was missing something obvious. For now all he could do was stick to his basic rules: keep it simple, check everything and share everything. He’d spent the morning getting everyone up to speed on the tangled history of the Melville family — including Tom Hadden and Max Warren. Then he’d organized a trawl through the list of guests Lizzie Murray had given them of all those she could recall being at her mother’s wake. They needed witnesses, and after twenty-eight years that was going to be their biggest hurdle. Every name had to be tracked down, even if some of the trails led only to the cemetery. So far DC Lau’s door-to-door operation had yielded little: a couple of people had been at the wake but memories were shaky, detail scant.
Valentine had contacted the secretary of the Whitefriars Choir and they had a volunteer trawling through old cine-film tins to see if they still had the one filmed on the night of Nora’s wake. A few members of the choir remembered the evening and they’d be giving statements — but so far they’d uncovered nothing substantial, nothing new.
Overnight, Twine had made contact with the FBI and the state police department in North Dakota, based in the capital, Bismarck. He’d requested the paperwork on Pat Garrison — including his birth certificate and medical records. Shaw obtained clearance from Warren for DNA tests to be undertaken by the Forensic Science Service on the bones they’d found in the grave on top of the coffin and on a saliva sample provided by Bea Garrison. That was one relationship they needed to nail. Formal statements had been made by Bea, Lizzie Murray and Kath Robinson. Valentine had taken all three and reported that Robinson appeared to have learning difficulties — she seemed often confused and was unable to read her own statement. She was nervous and disorientated before being reunited with Bea, who had driven her home.
Shaw had talked to the coroner, who’d agreed to open an inquest, using Bea Garrison’s identification of Shaw’s forensic reconstruction as the basis for a preliminary identification of the victim. The brief hearing, scheduled for the following day, would be used as an appeal for witnesses to come forward, then adjourned until the police inquiry was over. To maximize publicity the opening hearing would be held at the Flask — which would also allow the coroner to visit the scene of the crime. It was a rare example of the coroner using an ancient power — to call an inquest close to the place of death, rather than in the characterless surroundings of the courts. The rarer the better, thought Shaw, because it would guarantee coverage in the local media and possibly even make the national newspapers. It was a long shot, but it was just possible, in a tight-knit community like South Lynn, that it would encourage witnesses to step forward whom they’d otherwise have missed.
Shaw checked his watch: 2.30 p.m. Low tide.
Valentine worked a finger into the hole on the dashboard that had once held a cigarette lighter. His mind constantly drifted from the case in hand to the Tessier case. He briefed Shaw on the surveillance units he’d set up for the scheduled evening meeting between Robert Mosse and Jimmy Voyce: a textbook operation — three mobile units, a back-up on standby and the police helicopter on call.
‘Anyone farts, we’ll have it in triplicate,’ said Valentine.
Shaw left the heater running. He was aware that through the chassis of the car he could feel the gentle rumble of cars queuing on the ramps of the multi-storey car park, busy with less than nine full shopping days to Christmas. He made an effort to focus on Pat Garrison’s death, trying to file away any anxieties he had about that coming night’s operation at Hunstanton. There was nothing more he could do until the two men met. Meanwhile, any real progress in the hunt for Pat Garrison’s killer remained elusive. As cold cases went it was beginning to feel icy. They needed to breathe life into the dead.
‘So what do you
Valentine’s stomach rumbled. Breakfast had been a single round of toast and a mug of tea in the canteen at six that morning, the brew laden with enough tannin to keep a shoe factory supplied for a month. He didn’t really do lunch in terms of solids. His main meal of the day was usually administered after the pubs closed — a tray of chips and curry sauce, or a Chinese takeaway, noodles crammed into a silver-foil container. He played with his packet of Silk Cut, setting it at 90 degrees on the dashboard, then 180, then back to 90. He wanted to get a smoke in before the autopsy, but he forced himself to concentrate on Shaw’s question. He knew the DI didn’t ask questions unless he wanted answers. This was team-work, and as much as neither of them wanted to be in a team, they had to make it work.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I think the killer was at the party. I don’t think anyone in the family is telling us the whole truth — but that’s because there are family secrets, and they’re not sure what’s coming out in the wash and what isn’t. But the heart of it’s clear …’ He heaved in a lungful of air, but it wasn’t enough, so he flicked a switch to drop the passenger side window to cover up a second breath. ‘It’s dynamite, isn’t it? Black kid …’ He held up both hands. ‘Black
‘Go on,’ said Shaw, knowing he was right, knowing this is what he could learn from Valentine, the ability to hold on to the obvious in the middle of a complex murder inquiry.
‘Pat leaves the pub,’ said Valentine. ‘A couple of people who think like Fletcher are beered-up; they follow him out along the riverbank through the cemetery. Maybe Fletcher goes too. They confront him — they’d do that,
