‘What is it — a mile?’ he asked as Shaw stopped, looking along the beach to the house. ‘You must be fit.’
The solicitor’s face was almost completely immobile. A snapshot would have shown a handsome man: Action Man looks, lean, with a good bone structure and taut athletic skin. But in real life the effect was oddly modified by the stillness. Only the eye movements — like the eyes on a Victorian doll — showed that he was alive. He’d kept himself fit and well, because he didn’t look in his forties at all. The hair was still thick and dark, almost decadent.
‘Where’s Jimmy Voyce?’ asked Shaw, determined not to be kept off balance. He’d checked with Jacky Lau earlier and they’d called off the search at Holkham until daybreak — still no sign.
Mosse wore leather gloves, and he took one off to hold in the other.
‘That’s why I’m here. I’ve no real basis for my concerns, but I do have concerns.’
A wind came off the sea and Shaw shivered, the cold cutting through to his skin through the white linen shirt.
‘You’re cold,’ said Mosse, taking a step forward so that they were just six feet apart, pulling a scarf from around his neck and holding it out.
‘Voyce?’ asked Shaw, not moving.
Mosse sighed, as if with disappointment that they couldn’t be friends.
‘Yes. He’s here, in Lynn — did you know?’ Mosse looked at him, and Shaw could see he’d picked his good eye to focus on. ‘We met at Hunstanton the other evening. Anyway, to cut to the chase, he tried to extort some money from me. Threatened me, actually, with violence if I didn’t give him a cheque for?10,000. I said I would consider my response. I dropped him off at his car and drove to see friends at Snettisham — they can confirm that. He left me his mobile number. I’ve sent him a text with my response — I told him I’d go to the police.’
Shaw was thinking fast, trying to see what legal status this conversation would carry in a courtroom. It was informal, not under oath, but he’d have to admit it had taken place. He’d made a tactical error, not pulling Mosse into St James’s. The warrant had come through that evening, but he’d decided to wait one more night. Now Mosse could claim that he’d stepped forward to alert the police.
‘Blackmail?’
Mosse laughed easily. ‘No, no. I’m a just man, Inspector. What could …’ he looked for the word, ‘scum like Jimmy Voyce know about me that would expose me to blackmail?’
Shaw noted the use of ‘just’, not ‘honest’, and wondered what that signified. Perhaps Robert Mosse thought he was the judge of good and evil.
‘No. I had given some financial assistance to Alex Cosyns over the years. I think Alex must have told Jimmy. But Alex was an old friend, and he was in financial trouble. The money was a gift. Jimmy seemed to think he was entitled to some of the same. He said we “went back a long way”. Precise words, Inspector. And he got that wrong, because we don’t go back. I never go back. The Westmead is where I was brought up. I have moved on, but Jimmy couldn’t see that.’
‘He went out to see Chris Robins — at the hospital. Just like you did.’
Mosse pursed his lips, checked his watch.
‘I thought you should know that Voyce threatened me with violence — as I have said — and that he added that if I didn’t pay up he’d go back to New Zealand, but he’d make sure he left us with a reminder that I’d let down an old friend. I wasn’t the only old friend he’d looked up, you see. He’d gone to the Tulleys. He seemed to think they owed him something too — a very dangerous misunderstanding.’
Shaw knew the family: three brothers, a Westmead legend, making decent money from a protection racket which had been running for the best part of thirty years. Violence was the currency in which they dealt — calibrated, cynical injury. They’d never faced a court on a charge of murder, but there was a list of missing persons in the file at St James’s, each one of whom had last been seen in their company. It was clear they had a reliable and efficient method for removing the unwanted.
‘I’ve not heard from him again,’ said Mosse. ‘You should know that. Now you do.’ He squinted along the beach towards the cottage. ‘I have a daughter too,’ he said.
Shaw was shivering badly now, his jaw juddering. ‘I wonder what it was that Chris Robins knew, or had. Maybe I’ll find it.’
Mosse’s face was oddly pale, and Shaw wondered where the usual winter tan had gone. He thought about telling him he’d been called to the reading of Chris Robins’s will, but held back, reminding himself that knowledge was power and that he didn’t need to squander it.
‘You’ve never really considered the possibility that I’m an innocent man, have you?’ said Mosse, the voice quite different — wheedling, and weak. ‘Have you thought about that? About
Mosse took half a step forward, raising an arm. ‘If you continue to misunderstand this then you will pay as your father paid. That is not a threat. It is a fact.’
There was anger in his eyes, Shaw noticed, but the emotion failed to radiate, as if it was acted out rather than felt.
‘I have escaped the Westmead,’ he said, and Shaw thought he detected a hint of a sob in the voice. ‘I have escaped them. I will not go back.’
The security light on the lifeboat house clicked out. In the sudden darkness Shaw swung an arm to trigger it again, but when the light flooded out Mosse was walking away, down to the sea.
27
At nearly midnight George Valentine walked past the house on the corner of Greenland Street. The sign was in the window, so the game was open, the game was on, but he wanted his bed. He walked on, looking at his shoes and the ice on the pavement. He’d spent the last hour with Freddie Fletcher in a room at the intensive care unit at the Queen Victoria. Visitors had come and gone but he hadn’t said a word. The doctors said his body was in shock from the poison he’d ingested, that the dawn would show if he was winning the battle or losing it. Of the other five patients in intensive care brought in from the Shipwrights’ Hall four were recovering fast, one was stable — all those five had come from one table, sponsored by Age Concern, and were aged between eighty-five and ninety.
He stopped outside his house. There was a light on, shining through the fanlight.
It had been seventeen years since his wife had died and in those years he’d never come home to a light. He opened the front door and looked down the short corridor into the kitchen. For a second — which he tried to stretch — he thought it was Julie sitting there, her hands on the table top around a mug, the steam from it hanging in the air like smoke from a gunshot.
‘Georgie,’ said Jean Walker. ‘I’m sorry, kid. I didn’t know how to get you — they give you my message at St James’s?’
Valentine shook his head, walking towards her, concealing as he did so that the shock had made his knees weak, trying to remember when he’d given his sister a key. He put his mobile on the table. He’d switched it to silent when they’d been in the Flask and forgotten to switch it back. The little message symbol flashed.
He felt the pot. ‘What’s up?’ He turned his back to pour himself a cup.
‘Gossip is all it is. But I knew you’d want to know.’ She watched him sit down, the cup in two hands, so she looked away in case his hands shook.
Valentine sipped the tea.
‘First off, there’s a real panic on at the Flask, Georgie, ’cos John Joe’s on walkabout. They didn’t see him overnight. Not the first time, mind you, but before they’ve found him pretty quick — down at the Globe or the Sailing Club.’ She shook her head. ‘Lizzie’s always taken him back. Christ knows where he sleeps when he’s out overnight. But this time there’s no sign of him. Ian was sent out to check the neighbours, round the streets. He said they
