‘Freddie’s mum left home when he was a kid, she found herself a new man down at the bus station where she worked. Freddie’s dad never got over it — let the house go to ruin. And the kids — Freddie had a sister — they just ran wild. This was when we was at school, so Freddie would only have been a teenager — just. His sister …’ she searched her memory for the name, ‘Milly — that was it — she was still in junior school. Those days people just stepped in and helped in situations like that — before the council stuck their oar in. An uncle, I think it was, over at West Lynn took them in, but it didn’t last. So the worst happened — they both went into care, and the council split them up. Milly went miles away — can’t remember where; Freddie was fostered in Lynn, but he moved about, nothing permanent. It’s not an excuse, is it, for what he turned out like, but it’s an explanation.’
Perhaps, though not a good enough one, thought Shaw.
‘And for all the talk, d’you know what? Freddie was pretty much all mouth. I don’t know what I thought that night, when he asked about the Garrison kid, but I imagined, I s’pose — that they’d break his windows. Piss through the letterbox. They weren’t the Ku Klux Klan. And the kid was right up himself. I don’t care what colour he was, it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve a thump.’
A woman in a suit appeared at the door. ‘Jean, you’re needed, please. Soup’s going up.’
Jean mouthed a silent ‘cow’ and hauled herself to her feet. She said she’d be serving for twenty minutes, then there’d be a gap before the main course — but she didn’t know anything else that might help. Shaw said he’d wait, because he had a few more questions. Valentine stood, buttoned up his jacket. ‘Right. Lunchtime for me, then. I’ll see what I see.’
Alone, Shaw listened to the staff in the kitchen plating up the soup. He tried to rationalize what they knew about Pat Garrison, and what Jean’s evidence, and that which had come to light at the inquest, told them about his death. Superficially, Shaw thought, the picture was clearer. They had three suspects — Fletcher, Venn and John Joe Murray — all with motives. They could have struck individually or collectively. The person who’d been heard typing at the victim’s flat that night could easily have been one of them. Whoever it was could have taken the key from Pat Garrison’s body, which would account for none being found in the grave, then gone back to his flat to type the notes designed to allay suspicion when he went missing. But Shaw was increasingly unhappy with the emerging picture. Garrison’s own character was as difficult to grasp as the winter fog lying in the streets — twisting, insinuating itself into the alleys and yards of the Old Town. Was he a devoted lover, determined to stay with his new child, the victim of prejudice for his colour, his nationality, his youth, his looks; or was he a cynical womanizer, arrogant and calculating? It was as if all the hatred which seemed to obscure Pat Garrison was obscuring something else as well.
His mobile rang. It was Jacky Lau. In the background he could hear a wind, surf and an engine running.
‘Sir. I’m on Holkham Sands. There’s a club — strictly illegal — they run hot-rod cars on the sands after the tide’s gone out. I know someone who knows someone. They had a meet down here night before last. They ran a few cars, then called it all off because they saw lights in the woods, thought it might be traffic division. They’ve been busted before and they didn’t want a repeat. But I’ve checked with both Burnham and Hunstanton; they had nothing up here after dark.’
‘Who’s with you?’
‘Paul’s got two cars on the way, sir. It won’t be an easy search — it’s got to be ten, fifteen square miles of woodland.’
Shaw told her to start searching where the lights had been seen and work their way outwards, then he cut the line. He knew the spot — a mile west of the nature reserve, a stretch of pine woods where hardly anybody ever went in winter. There was a road in — a forest track, but part metalled. Voyce’s hire car had been dumped two miles away. It wasn’t good news, and the stench of roasting turkey flesh didn’t make him feel any better.
Jean Walker was back. She washed her hands at a grimy sink, then looked at Shaw. ‘You can smoke in here,’ she said. ‘Nobody gives a damn.’
‘Don’t smoke,’ said Shaw.
‘No,’ she said, trying to push a fringe of untidy hair back under her waitress’s cap. ‘You’re not really like Jack at all, are you? Just the looks. He broke a few hearts, too.’
She took a Silk Cut Valentine had left on the table for her, holding it as if it was the first cigarette she’d ever seen. She lit it with her eyes closed, and didn’t open them until she’d expelled the smoke from between her lips.
‘Who were Fletcher’s friends?’ asked Shaw.
‘Will Stokes — he’s dead now, but they were thick as thieves. There was Sam Venn. Like I said, Freddie picked on kids at school and Sam was target number one from the start — but Sam’s a survivor: he’d take anything Freddie dished out, then come running back. In the end they were a bit of a double act. Sam could be cruel too. I guess that was the point for him — making sure someone else was the target. Just like Freddie.’
‘Venn was in with the skinheads?’ asked Shaw, worried at an image that jarred.
‘No. No — after school, they weren’t so close, and Sam was in with the church and everything, and Freddie hardly fitted in there. But in an odd way Freddie was family for Sam — what passed for it, anyway. They all kept in touch, all of his mates did, from school, and there’s some club the boys are still in — they all meet for lunch at the Flask, raise a bit for charity, that kind of thing. Masons without the aprons. They’ll be upstairs now, hitting the bottle.’ She looked skywards. ‘Yeah — family. It was all Sam had, and Freddie. Like I said, Freddie went into care. And Sam’s aunt brought him up — the house is in Palmerston Terrace — and she was in the church, one of Nora’s cronies.’
Shaw had another question ready but there was something about the way Valentine’s sister licked her lips that told him she had something else to say first, but that, being a good woman, she wanted someone to drag it out of her.
‘The church …’ Shaw shook his head, searching. Then he had it. ‘Damn. I meant to ask — that’s right, isn’t it? Venn’s father was in the Elect, we were told that by Abney, the pastor. So where were his parents? Why was he being brought up by an aunt?’
She ground the cigarette under her black shoe.
‘Bit of a local scandal,’ she wriggled slightly in her seat. ‘Surprised George didn’t remember — but he was probably playing cops and robbers with his mates from school.’ She laughed bitterly, as if she too had wanted escape.
‘Thing is, Arthur Venn — Sam’s dad — was a bachelor, in his fifties. Then he discovered sex and along came Sam. Problem was, the woman he discovered sex with was a Venn too — his dead brother’s daughter. Uncle and niece, see? So they threw him out of the church — her too. And boy were they smug when they saw young Sammy.’ She shook her head, still appalled, at the distance of nearly fifty years, at how cruel the righteous could be. ‘It’s cerebral palsy, but you know what these people are like. God’s judgement — the face, the arm. It did for Arthur — and the niece — they left town. Rumour was they shacked up together in London — because they don’t care down there, do they? Anything goes in London. Up here we’re still burning witches. So that left Sam and the aunt. And she was a sour-faced cow as well — same pod as Nora.’
They heard plates being set out in the kitchen.
Shaw let this new image of Sam Venn take shape in his head. ‘Did you know, back in 1982, that Patrice and Lizzie were having an affair?’ he asked.
‘Not till the baby came — then we worked it out pretty damn quick, like everyone else. No, I don’t think people knew — not to talk about, anyway. But that’s different, isn’t it — so maybe they did know. I wasn’t really in the in-crowd back then — marrying a copper tends to put the frost on things. And Don thought the place was worth avoiding. He never drank on the manor — just like your dad, Peter. They’d go out of town — or use the Red House, the coppers’ pub.’
Shaw was rerunning the cine film of the wake in his head. ‘And John Joe Murray — he’d been keen on Lizzie, but she didn’t want to know?’
‘Everyone loved Lizzie,’ she said. ‘John Joe tried his luck — sure. But she could pick and chose, could Lizzie, and she chose not.’
‘Bad blood?’ asked Shaw.
‘No — just the opposite, really. Kind of a joke, you know? They’d play up to it with people around — flirting with each other, turning each other down, making out they’d be meeting up later. It’s just that she didn’t want anyone from here — from the town. She always said she’d marry someone who’d take her away. Knight on a charger — that kind of rubbish.’
