John Joe flipped open a wallet to reveal a black-and-white snapshot — Lizzie, in a bikini on a sandy beach, her legs folded underneath her. ‘That’s Lizzie — twenty-first birthday. Talk about turning heads.’ He let his eyes linger on the picture, but Shaw noticed instead the ticket tucked into the other side of the wallet — the charity Christmas lunch at the Shipwrights’ Hall.
John Joe let the door to the old studio close.
‘And you were married when?’ asked Shaw.
‘In 1983 — the summer. Ninth of June. Just after she’d had Ian.’
‘That’s quick work,’ said Birley.
John Joe gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Yeah. Well, I tried my luck with Lizzie — a few times. When Nora died we were going out, but that kind of faded away. No hard feelings. It happens. When she fell pregnant, when the baby arrived, I understood why she’d been different that summer. I went back — told her I didn’t care what had happened. That I could live with that if she could. Ian’s my son. Has been pretty much from the day he was born. So that’s our story. You got it now. Satisfied?’
Birley didn’t flinch. ‘Did you try your luck that night — the night of the wake?’
Shaw admired Birley’s direct approach, and he couldn’t help thinking John Joe’s indignation at the question was manufactured.
He shook his head and walked to the watergate, unbolting the two quarter-circle doors. The light flooded in with the cold, straight off the water, which lapped at the stone edge. They all stepped out on the stone wharf. The tide was full. On the water bobbed a small sailing boat, clinker-built, covered in with a tarpaulin, the one that Shaw had seen the day before, moored to a single bollard.
‘The beer came in this way back in the eighties — always had done, I guess. Now the cellar floods once a year, sometimes more. We’ll have to do something about it — God knows what.’
He dipped the toe of his boot in the grey water. Across the river was the brick river frontage of the cannery. Shaw thought again of the Shipwrights’ Hall Christmas dinner, the promise of ‘local fare’.
‘The boat?’ asked Shaw.
‘Mine. I fish — up along the coast, days off. It’s an escape. Used to take Ian when he was a kid.’
Shaw wondered what he’d had to escape from.
‘One last question, Mr Murray,’ said Shaw. ‘Did you suspect that Lizzie and Pat were an item before the wake?’
John Joe spat in the water. ‘Others did — coupla my mates said later they knew. But me — no.’
The sailing boat nudged the quay, unsettled by the wake of a passing tug.
‘I tell you what I did know, mind …’ He smiled, tapping a finger to his temple. ‘Still laugh about it. I
19
The inquest into the death of Patrice Garrison was not the first to be held in the Flask. Stan Glover, the coroner’s officer, a former DS from Cromer, was an old friend of Shaw’s father. He’d been back through the records and found one in 1958. A child, a two-year-old girl, found strangled on waste ground down by Blubber Creek. They’d opened the inquest in the pub for the same reason they’d chosen to do it for Pat Garrison — to get the community involved, appeal for witnesses, and to give the coroner a chance to view the scene of the crime. A place like South Lynn had few secrets from its own people. In the nineteenth century they’d have had the body there on the first day as well, laid out on a couple of floorboards. Putting Pat Garrison’s bones on show would have achieved little, but Glover had arranged for a large-scale picture of the victim from a snapshot of 1982 to be mounted over a desk set aside for the coroner. On the desk was a glass water pitcher, an upturned tumbler and a bible. To one side was a seat for witnesses.
Glover’s close-shaved hair was greying, but the stubble on his face was still black. He came through the door marked staff carrying a bundle of documents.
‘Please rise for Her Majesty’s Coroner,’ said Glover.
The coroner, Dr Leslie Shute, followed him into the room. He wore a tweed jacket with leather patches, shirt and tie. Shaw always thought he looked like he’d been scrubbed with wire wool — his cheeks so flushed they might bleed, his ruddiness accentuated by a shaving regime which seemed to involve a machete. Shute ran a medical practice in Burnham Market. He was known widely as a breeder of greyhounds, which he ran at Mildenhall Stadium. Shaw sometimes saw him on the beach in the winter, the dogs circling him at speed as if on invisible gyres.
The dining room was packed, the round tables removed and replaced with rows of single chairs. Alby Tilden’s gold Buddha looked down on proceedings with an enigmatic smile.
Glover took a chair beside the coroner. ‘Mobiles off, please — all of them.’
Shute smiled inappropriately.
‘Thank you all for coming.’ He had a light clear voice that Shaw had heard him use to call the dogs. ‘I’m going to formally open the inquest into the death of Patrice Eugene Garrison and will presently adjourn those proceedings to enable the police to complete their inquiries and for any criminal prosecution to take its proper course.’ Shute began to search inside his jacket pockets for something he’d mislaid, and Shaw noted that he could do so without breaking the thread of his preamble. ‘What I need to do today,’ he continued, ‘is to confirm the identity of the deceased, the cause of death, and then my officer here will give us a brief summary of the details, the circumstances, so far as we can ascertain them, of the death in question. I’ve visited the spot where this young man’s bones were found, and I hope that opening the inquest here will encourage as many people as possible to come forward and help this court — and the police — to find the person or persons responsible for his death.’
Shaw was standing at the back and he noticed that Lizzie Murray had joined him, together with a young woman with blonde hair cut savagely short whom he recognized as a reporter with the local paper. She leant close to Shaw. ‘This isn’t worth my time, is it?’ she asked. She looked skywards, didn’t wait for an answer and slipped between rows to a desk set at one side for the press, already occupied by an elderly man who Shaw knew worked for Hospital Radio. Shaw thought the reporter’s doubts over the news value of the proceedings were probably justified. The powers of the coroner were a pale imitation of the office’s traditional authority — he could no longer name suspects or accuse the guilty. And while Shaw had agreed it was worth calling for witnesses to come forward, he wondered how many of the locals would have the courage to tell the court anything it didn’t know already.
‘We already have a list of six witnesses who have indicated they wish to speak — but anyone may do so, even at this stage. In fact, especially at this stage,’ said Dr Shute. He flicked open the single file he had before him. ‘First of all, I am able to confirm that a DNA analysis to be undertaken by the Forensic Science Service is expected to provide conclusive evidence of the identity of the victim. However, I am able to accept a preliminary identification based on a facial reconstruction of the remains together with forensic evidence from the scene and corroborating dental records. The deceased was an American citizen and the US Embassy has been notified of these proceedings. I can also report that a postmortem examination was completed here in Lynn and that the cause of death is understood to have been a single traumatic blow to the back of the skull with a pointed weapon — probably the billhook that was found with the remains. I have examined the medical notes in this case and discussed it with the pathologist — Dr Justina Kazimierz.’ He surveyed the ‘court’. ‘I am entirely confident this finding is the correct one. Given that the deceased had been dead for many years there is no likelihood of any forensic evidence being recovered from tissue. But the bones tell us enough.’
He readied a fountain pen over a blank notepad. ‘Anyone giving testimony will be speaking under oath and may subsequently be required to make a formal statement to the police. Mr Glover?’
