right? That’s how they think — they need to tell him why they want him out, to his face, like it’s a form of courage or something, even though they’ve turned up mob-handed. So they tell him that he’s trash. Spit in his face. Then — from behind — one blow. Lights out. Then they chuck the body in the grave and shovel in some topsoil off the pile.’ He pointed forward through the windscreen, suddenly animated. ‘In fact, Fletcher
Shaw found he could imagine it happening. ‘We need to see if that works — on the ground. Let’s get an address for Garrison’s flat. See if it makes sense that he’d walk home that way.’
Shaw closed his eyes, his nerves were making him fidget. One of the reasons he was finding it an effort to concentrate was that he hadn’t had his early morning swim, and he hadn’t run to the Porsche, because the tide had been too high and he’d had to pick his way through the dunes, so there was a lot of bottled energy in his system that needed to be dissipated. He’d spent the morning doing what he hated most: admin. Running a murder inquiry from behind a desk. His foot jiggled uselessly on the accelerator.
‘What about the cousins thing?’ said Shaw. ‘Nora was a regular at the church. It’s only a guess, but I reckon the Free Church of Christ the Fisherman doesn’t take too kindly to that sort of relationship. Sleeping with your relatives. It’s all part of the
Valentine thrust his head forward, his narrow shoulders squaring off. ‘So the Elect, or whatever, they get to know about it and they get uptight. Perhaps one of them decides to stop it — dead.’ He hit the dashboard with the heel of his palm. But it was a halfhearted blow. He didn’t believe it himself.
‘Doesn’t add up, does it?’ said Shaw. ‘It’s been legal to marry your cousin in this country since the reign of Henry the Eighth. Back then, big issue. Now — no issue. OK, this isn’t now — it’s 1982 — but it’s still thirteen years after we put a man on the moon. I’m not saying it wasn’t a principle that was important to the believers. But killing someone? I don’t think so. If this lot think Leviticus bans marriage between cousins then they sure as hell know their ten commandments. I don’t think murder’s an option.’
Valentine set the cigarette packet on its head. ‘What about money? You’ve got a nineteen-year-old girl like Lizzie — she’s not bad looking now, back then she must have been turning heads since she was fourteen. All of a sudden her mum dies and she’s left the pub. That ain’t gonna make her look any uglier, is it? I bet the likely lads were all over her like a horse blanket. This black kid was lining himself up for the money too, right? If he marries Lizzie, he gets the lot. And don’t give me any of that “it’s all a secret” tosh, either. I don’t think anyone had to tell anyone else what was going on — including the mother — Bea Garrison. She knew, betcha. Which means she’s lying. If they fancied each other then everyone knew — it didn’t need Alby to let his mates know from jail. I bet they all knew — just no one said. That’s what they say, right — you suspect it, then it’s happening. That’s a powerful motive.’
‘Maybe.’
Valentine put a cigarette in his mouth but didn’t light it.
Shaw took pity on him, kicking open his door. ‘Let’s get some air,’ he said.
They stood together in the street, their feet on the circumference of an imaginary circle six feet wide, their bodies angled in different directions. Flecks of snow began to fall.
Shaw took a fridgeful of cold air into his lungs. Valentine inhaled half of his Silk Cut.
‘Couple of things,’ said Shaw, holding up a handful of fingers. ‘Press Twine to track me down Alby Tilden, will you — it’s a loose end, and I don’t like loose ends. In her statement, Lizzie says her dad stopped seeing visitors in the late eighties. She said his mental condition was poor, and he was ashamed of what he’d done. He wanted her to remember him as he was. According to Paul, the Prison Service says he got out in the late nineties. Since then, nothing. Lizzie gets letters — his are postmarked Peterborough. She keeps them — it’s all pretty innocuous stuff, and no hint as to where he is. Return post goes via Bea Garrison to an address up north — then they’re passed on. Nothing for a year now, by the way. We’ve got the address off Bea Garrison and Paul’s been on to the local nick; they’ll go round, see if we can get the forwarding details. But he clearly doesn’t want to be found. And he’s got the perfect alibi as he was banged up in Lincoln jail on the night of his wife’s wake — but I want words, if he’s alive. Paul said he was going after the pension records — see how far he got.’
He thrust his hands down deep into the pockets of his RNLI jacket.
‘But the key is that night: the wake. The problem is, we can round up witnesses — and we will — but they’re all family and friends; that’s why they were there. Who do we trust? What we need is a reliable witness with nothing to gain from lying. Still no luck with the choir?’
‘It’ll take time,’ said Valentine. ‘One thought. My sister, Jean? She knew your dad. I think she did some kitchen work at the Flask, right through the eighties. Functions, parties, that kind of thing.’
Shaw remembered her: when Shaw’s father was alive his DI had been a regular visitor at the house, usually late at night, so that Shaw would hear them downstairs, talking over a whisky bottle, worrying away at a case. Jean had come to family celebrations because she’d married a copper: a DS from Peterborough. Shaw recalled a stoical woman, always in the background, helping in the kitchen, the kind of woman who only spoke to annotate her husband’s stories: a series of well-rehearsed asides.
‘She about?’ asked Shaw. A pair of seagulls dive-bombed the squabbling cats.
‘Yeah. Don Walker — the copper — he died years ago. But she’s about. Lives in the next street. I’ll ask her. Even if she wasn’t there, she might know someone who was. South Lynn’s a tight community — there’ll be someone.’
Shaw’s mobile buzzed. It was a text from Twine. Sam Venn at the Free Church had given them the names of two black men who’d been members of the Elect in 1982 and might have been at Nora Tilden’s funeral. St James’s had tracked them down through the old electoral roll and found a relative at the same address. Jesse and Emmanuel Rogers, father and son, were both alive and well in Northampton; Jesse retired, a widower, Emmanuel working as a hospital porter.
He handed the phone to Valentine to read.
‘They both lied,’ said Shaw.
‘Who?’
‘Venn and Fletcher. Venn was happy to track down the two black men — but he didn’t mention, when he could have, that there were three. Pat was at the graveside. So was Venn. An oversight — maybe? But what about Fletcher? He said there were two faces — and only two. He led us away from Pat Garrison.’
Valentine shrugged, judging whether he had time for another smoke. ‘It’s twenty-eight years. People forget.’
‘Maybe — like I said, maybe Venn forgot. But Fletcher? There’s a lot of things wrong with Freddie Fletcher, but being colour blind isn’t one of them.’
13
Inside the Ark the lights were neon; a bank of them hung from the old roof beams. The old chapel was partitioned across the middle. On the far side of a set of plastic swing doors was the force’s mortuary and autopsy suite. This side was Tom Hadden’s forensics lab complete with a ballistics chute, mass spectrometer, fume cupboard and a bank of computers. The team ‘hot-desked’, so that the nest of tables was paperless and clinical. Stores and files were kept in the old organ loft, reached via a metal spiral staircase.
Hadden was at one of the desks as they came in, his monitor showing a flock of Arctic tern in flight as a screen-saver.
‘Peter — for you,’ he said, closing his eyes to concentrate on what he was going to say. ‘Something you really need to see, I’m afraid.’ The way he said it stopped them in their tracks.
‘Soil profile from the grave,’ said Hadden. ‘I’ve got some graphics here. Take a seat — you’ll need it. Both of you.’
The lab had a large whiteboard for showing computer images. Shaw and Valentine dragged up some chairs and Hadden tapped a button on his keyboard to project a single picture of Nora Tilden’s empty grave. In order to get a flat shot of the long side of the grave it had been dug out so that the hole was nine feet by nine feet — a square, with three of the original sides preserved.
