Peggy Robins shook her head. ‘There’s a mini-bus, on the hour.’ She rearranged her scarf. ‘The Westmead’s changed over the years, Inspector, but it’s still not very clever to let anyone see you being dropped off by a DI from St James’s. It’s still my world, and it’s a world away from yours.’
21
Lynn’s medieval Shipwrights’ Hall stood on Cross Bank, its red-brick decorated facade looking out across the sea wall, a narrow band of reeds and the black river. Built in the thirteenth century, it was a monument to the fortunes made by the merchants of Lynn. Today a freezing mist clawed at its mullioned win dows, while a rusting German coaster in midstream vented water. The wind had died by noon, so that the damp air just lay in the Fisher Fleet like a ghostly spring tide.
Shaw and Valentine sat in the Porsche. The atmosphere was one of mutual anxiety. A search of the woods and estate at Holkham had been suspended overnight, resumed that morning, but had still failed to find any trace of Voyce. Tom Hadden’s team had crawled over the hire car and found nothing. Shaw had not yet reported to DCS Warren that their surveillance operation on Mosse and Voyce had been a fifty per cent failure, but he had an urgent message from Warren’s secretary on his mobile requesting an update — a request he couldn’t ignore for much longer. He’d sent DC Twine to the magistrates court to obtain search warrants for both Mosse’s house and the BMW.
Shaw had a large-scale map of west Norfolk on his lap, showing the coast road down from Hunstanton that Mosse had taken once he’d left the town at speed. How had Voyce’s hired car ended up further back up the coast at Holkham? He thought carefully about the night they’d lost Mosse and Voyce on the road. The BMW had turned down a side-street before accelerating away from Hunstanton. What if Mosse had dropped Voyce off by his own car? They hadn’t been close enough to see whether Mosse had a passenger, and the glass was tinted anyway. What if they’d made their deal at the Wash amp; Tope. Voyce gets dropped back at his car and agrees to disappear. Did they know they were being followed? Is that why he’d ditched the hire car?
‘You ain’t gonna find him on there,’ said Valentine, looking down the street, waiting for a familiar figure to walk out of the mist. The main doors of the Shipwrights’ Hall were open now, and a steady line of people were filing in, mostly elderly, all smartly dressed. As he watched, a Daimler glided into the kerb and the mayor got out, rearranging a chain of silver links around his neck. A photographer stood by the main doors but didn’t bother to take any pictures.
Shaw snapped the map wider. ‘What do you suggest, George — a seance?’
Valentine held his raincoat lapels closer together. ‘We could take Mosse down town, shake him up.’
Shaw shook his head. ‘Yeah. Once we’ve got the warrant, that’s our next move. But forgive my reluctance, because it’s also our last move. He is a solicitor, George. I think he’ll have a response ready. What d’you reckon — a complaint to the chief constable? Police harassment? Two bitter coppers trying to prove a judge was wrong? Warren will have us off the streets in half an hour.’
‘Hey up,’ said Valentine, pushing open the door, hauling himself up out of the Porsche’s bucket seat. A woman had appeared out of the mist, middle-aged but with a jaunty walk, a raincoat failing to conceal a black waitress’s uniform.
‘Georgie,’ she said when she saw Valentine, stepping closer and taking his head in her hands. Shaw looked away, embarrassed by the sudden intimacy.
‘This is my sister Jean,’ said Valentine, looking at Shaw. ‘Jean, DI Shaw.’
He shook her hand. ‘Peter, please, Mrs Walker.’
She looked at him with frank blue eyes. ‘You look just like your dad,’ she said. ‘Uncanny.’ Then she looked at her brother. ‘I told you on the phone …’ She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve only got a moment.’
‘It’s OK — I’m here for lunch. So, nothing lost,’ said Valentine. He wasn’t really looking forward to the meal; he didn’t usually do food in daylight. But he thought there’d be booze — one of those shiny buckets with ice in the middle of the table, stuffed with wine bottles, maybe a good malt. The ticket was a stiff enough price to warrant something decent — Glenfiddich, perhaps.
They followed Jean Walker through a narrow side entrance, down an alley and into a service yard. The medieval elegance of the Shipwrights’ Hall’s facade extended to medieval squalor at the back: food bins overflowing, an outdoor staff toilet giving off a powerful stench of stale urine despite the cold air, and a pile of empty catering-size cans of vegetables, all empty, all rusting.
‘Nice,’ said Shaw.
Jean laughed. ‘I wouldn’t eat here.’ She patted her raincoat. ‘I’ve brought sandwiches. If I was you, Georgie, I’d give it a miss.’
Valentine shrugged. ‘I’ll stick to fluids.’ As he said it, though, he felt the stirrings of real hunger. He hadn’t had a proper Christmas dinner in years. Perhaps he’d look at the turkey after all. Or the soup he’d ordered when he’d bought the ticket — he fancied something hot, nourishing. What had it said on Freddie Fletcher’s menu — Olde Lynn Fish Soup?
She led the way through a fire exit and down a narrow set of stairs to the kitchens. Preparations for lunch, they could see, had been under way for hours. Two cauldrons in brushed aluminium bubbled: sprouts bobbing in one, sliced carrots in the other. A man in stained cook’s whites hauled up an industrial oven door to reveal a line of half a dozen roasting turkeys, the sudden wave of heat reaching them from twenty feet. At a long metal table three women were arranging bread rolls and moulded pats of butter, each bearing the Shipwrights’ crest.
On a set of open gas burners soup simmered in three pots, the scent on the air something fishy, with a bite.
‘I’m serving,’ said Jean, shrugging off the raincoat to reveal the uniform underneath, black with white cuffs, a white ruff. ‘Latest fashion,’ she said, pulling the skirt straight. ‘Like I said — I’ve just got five minutes.’ She took them to a small room set off the kitchen where there was a machine to dispense drinks.
‘I wouldn’t touch that, either,’ she said, sitting, smiling again at Valentine.
‘Just tell Peter what you know, Jean.’
They heard a plate crash to the stone floor outside, the curse that followed greeted with a chorus of cheering.
‘George asked if I remembered Nora Melville’s wake. Sorry — Nora Tilden. It’s just that I grew up with the Melvilles, so it’s difficult to let the name go. I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t glad to see the back of her, frankly. And of course, with the murder, everyone gossiped, everyone wanted to be there, at the wake. Place was heaving. I’d done catering for the Flask at weekends when I was at school — washing up, mainly. So I knew they’d ask. I was in the kitchen most of the night, although we came through a couple of times for a fag and to listen to the choir sing, and once to set up the buffet.
‘Anyway, I was standing there listening when Freddie Fletcher came up. This was by the arch — between the bar and the dining room where the choir was singing. I was at school with Freddie. He knew I worked in the kitchens — I think he thought I knew the family, although to be honest Nora treated everyone like a stranger so I didn’t know anything that wasn’t common knowledge. Freddie had been drinking. He tried a bit of conversation but I could see straight off he wanted something. I let him burble on till he got to it.’
In the kitchen something sizzled in fat.
‘He wanted to know if I could tell him where the black kid lived.’
‘Pat Garrison?’
‘Yes. I had no idea, but I didn’t tell him that. I asked him why he wanted to know. He smirked a bit, said there was something they wanted to give him. A present.’
‘What did you think he meant?’ asked Shaw.
‘Freddie was a cruel kid — the girls always thought he picked on other kids to make sure no one had time to pick on him. When he got older he picked on blacks, him and his mates.’
Shaw just let her go on, because he knew she wanted to tell him. He had a sudden insight into life in South Lynn. A life accompanied by the commentary of neighbours, an endless litany of whispers, just on the edge of hearing.