hair, then ran a hand through it. Over their heads was a loudspeaker and they heard the opening piano chords of ‘Oliver’s Army’ from the juke box. There was a wire hanging loose from the speaker, within reach, and she took it and with one abrupt tug pulled it out, cutting the music dead.
Shaw waited for her to speak but the figurehead face remained immobile, the piercing green eyes locked on Shaw’s.
‘Pat saw other girls, then?’ he said.
‘I need a smoke — so can we keep this short?’ she asked. She knocked out a cigarette and held it in her lips, and Shaw thought that was one of the reasons her beauty had diminished over the years, that she’d taken on the manners of men, living and working in a man’s world.
‘Kath Robinson?’ Shaw suggested. ‘Was she one of the others?’
Lizzie smiled. ‘Yup — she was the first. Nothing happened. Kath’s always been a bit slow, a bit trusting. These days they’d have a word for it. But we just looked out for her. She fell for Pat. Pat should have walked away, but he didn’t. She tried to play him along a bit. Not clever. She was just looking forward to a first kiss, I think — but Pat had other ideas. Like I said, nothing happened. But Kath was upset. Confused.’
‘She told you this?’
‘She’s always told me everything — we were best friends at school. She spent more time here as a kid than she did at home. Mind you, her old man was in the bar most of his life.’ She took the cigarette out of her mouth. ‘Yes, she told me. This wasn’t long after Pat had arrived. We hadn’t started seeing each other then. I had words. Pat was sorry — he said he hadn’t understood.’
‘She’s a quiet girl,’ said Shaw, offering her the chance to paint a fuller picture.
‘Cursed with beauty,’ she said bitterly, and Shaw thought Lizzie’s abrupt and tetchy manner might hide a fine mind. ‘She wants someone to love her — always has. But men can’t see past the boobs and the Barbie-doll looks. Married a couple of times but she’s not interested any more — she’s taken refuge as Bea’s housekeeper up at the B amp;B, does most of the cleaning, cooking and stuff. She wears a wedding ring — it’s like mosquito repellent. Works, too.’
‘So, despite Pat’s reputation — I presume there were others if Mrs Flowers’s statement is true — you became lovers?’
‘He didn’t cheat on me, if that’s what you’re after,’ she said. ‘Once we were together, that was it. When he went, disappeared, I thought he had found someone else. I admit that. But it turns out we were all wrong. He didn’t run away, did he? He would have stayed if someone hadn’t killed him. So perhaps I was right to trust him.’ She took in a ragged breath, her fingers working at the skin of her neck.
Through the door marked staff her son Ian appeared in his chef’s whites, using his back to push through, with three plates effortlessly held. ‘Three daily specials,’ he announced before heading across the room in response to a waved arm.
The place had filled up quickly with lunch tables and diners. At one of the tables Shaw recognized Pastor Abney from the Free Church, and at another Michael Brindle, the chargehand from the cemetery labour gang who’d walked him to Freddie Fletcher’s office that first morning of the investigation. Shaw was struck again by the claustrophobic intimacy of this small community, even now, in the first years of the twenty-first century, as incestuous as it had been, perhaps, when the whaling fleet was still coming home.
Lizzie’s eyes followed her son across the room.
‘Presumably Pat carried keys, Mrs Murray? A key ring?’
‘Yes. Flashy — like fake gold, in the shape of that mountain with the presidents’ heads on it …’
‘No spare?’
‘No. But he had one for here — Bea gave it him.’
Shaw’s mobile rang so he stood and apologized, walking to the window that looked out onto the cemetery. It was DC Twine: Sam Venn had changed his story. He remembered now. He’d been ill that night — and it wasn’t the first time. His illness, the cerebral palsy, made standing for long periods of time difficult, and he’d often had to leave midway through public performances, because the effort of keeping his bones still, and the stress, made him feel sick. So, yes — he’d gone early that night, after the break, and walked alone to his uncle’s house. But his uncle was dead now, so they’d have to take his word for it.
Shaw agreed with Twine’s recommendation that they release Venn for now; they had no evidence he’d followed Pat Garrison to the cemetery that night, none that would get them past a magistrate’s court hearing, let alone to a trial. Shaw cut the line, troubled that they were uncovering so many lies, and troubled also by that strange detail — that Venn had gone to his uncle’s house rather than his own home. But Pastor Abney had said his parents lived locally, that his father had been a member of the Elect.
When he turned back to Lizzie Murray she was gone.
20
Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital stood on a wooded hill overlooking the estuary of the River Welland — a culvert of glistening black mud with boats beached in pools of water left by the outflowing tide. It was the bleakest spot in a bleak landscape. A stand of cedar trees on its southwest side had been bent over the building by the wind like thinning hair over a skull. Snow and ice lay in the ditches — a mathematical grid traced over a landscape rolled flat by steel-grey snow clouds blowing in from the sea. As Shaw approached in the Porsche he thought how the hospital’s position, eight miles from the nearest town at Sutton Bridge, encapsulated the planners’ attitudes to mental health. Bellevue was as far away from anything as anything could be. And, despite its name, the view was a study in melancholia.
He swung the Porsche over to the opposite side of the road to avoid a patch of ice. The days of the warm snow had gone. Shaw had the window down and the wind smelt of iced ozone and carried a Polar chill. He’d just been out to Holkham woods to see how the search for Jimmy Voyce was going. Beneath the canopy of pines the dry needles on the forest floor had been frozen too. And so far, no trace of Voyce, but he’d left Valentine in charge, organizing a systematic trawl though the Holkham estate, around the great eighteenth-century hall. In winter, a few estate workers were the only people to wander the acres of parkland. If Voyce was in there it could take them months before he was discovered. The problem was that, if he
Then Shaw got the call. A firm of solicitors called Masters amp; Masters. Apologies for the short notice, but could he make a meeting with a client? The client was Mrs Peggy Robins — the mother of Chris Robins, one of the four young hoodlums who’d made up Bobby Mosse’s juvenile gang on the Westmead Estate. Chris Robins had died in Bellevue. His mother had a part-time job in the kitchens at the hospital. Shaw didn’t really have time for the diversion, but the idea of escaping the twisted maze of Lizzie Murray’s family history, even for an hour, was irresistible. And getting closer to Robins — and, through him, Mosse — was too good an opportunity to pass up. What did Peggy Robins have to tell him? And why was she telling him now?
The Porsche slipped between the twin pillars of the hospital gates and Shaw pulled up at a brick kiosk, flashing his warrant card to a man behind glass. The gravel drive snaked up to the main building: a residential facility for patients with chronic mental health problems. A hundred years earlier it had been Bellevue Lunatic Asylum, and the word Bellevue had since become a Fenland euphemism for madhouse. Shaw had checked the hospital’s website before setting out: there were rooms for 132 patients, and a training unit for nurses wishing to gain accreditation in the care of the mentally ill. Half of the original building was mothballed, the windows covered in metal shutters. The only press cutting he’d found was of a coroner’s court hearing on a patient who’d been found in the mud down by the river. There had been the usual ritual calls from relatives for tighter security and surveillance.
He went to reception in the main block, an echoing marble hall with a black-and-white chequered floor. A child’s mural of a townscape covered one wall in primary colours. Mrs Robins was in the grounds, he was told. She had left a note for him with a sketch map attached showing where Shaw could find her. He followed a sinuous path through snow-laden cedars. With the sudden Arctic cold had come a preternatural calm, so that when a crow flapped its way from a branch the dislodged snow fell straight to earth.
Shaw saw her before she heard his snow-quietened footsteps. A small woman, neat, self-contained, reading
