would be with Shaw and Valentine. They were to be completely candid; any suspicion that they were anything less would result in immediate suspension. If either Shaw or Valentine approached Bobby Mosse during McCain’s investigation they would be suspended and face disciplinary charges which, Max Warren promised Shaw, would result in their dismissal without pension from the West Norfolk Constabulary.
‘That might mean bugger-all to you, Peter, given you’ve got a nice little business to go home to. But you might consider what having no pension would do to George Valentine’s remaining years.’
Which is when the mask finally slipped. ‘That is a door,’ said Warren, pointing a fat finger at the oak-panelled exit from his office. ‘If you break any of these conditions you will walk through it and out of this building. George Valentine will go with you. Either of you transgresses, both will go.’
The good news, Shaw had thought in the lift on the way down, was that Mosse had clearly not made a formal complaint about his unofficial interrogation in the car park at the Westmead. In the three years he had been trying to reopen the case into Jonathan Tessier’s death, that was the first time Mosse had displayed any weakness, any inclination to stay on the back foot. But that didn’t mean he’d miss the obvious next step — which was to leak the bare details of Voyce’s death to the press and sit back while they tore Shaw and Valentine’s careers apart.
Shaw felt utterly impotent. Not only were they unable to take the case forward, they frankly didn’t know how to. Their only slender hopes now lay with Chris Robins’s will and the investigative powers of ‘Chips’ McCain — a man with a reputation for running steamroller investigations of unmitigated thoroughness. Shaw could sympathize with that, but the problem with thorough was that it was also slow. And they were running out of time.
Valentine stood still, letting the snow accumulate on his thin hair. ‘Couldn’t this uniform have just told us what he’s found?’ he asked.
‘Apparently not,’ said Shaw. ‘He needs to show us.’
Shaw tried to lift Valentine’s obvious depression. ‘Twine had news, by the way. Caught me on the way out from Warren’s office,’ he said. Twine had received an e-mail from FBI headquarters at Quantico. They’d sent a field officer from Bismarck out to Hartsville to check out Bea Garrison’s past history. Shaw summarized: ‘The big lie, and the relevant omission, is that it wasn’t Latrell Garrison who set up the drugstore. Yes, there had been a programme for GIs to retrain, but Latrell had flunked out of that in six months. The shop was actually a local store called Garrison’s — a coffee shop, general grocer’s, post office and pharmacy, owned by the family since the twenties. The dispensary had been closed since before the war because they couldn’t entice a qualified pharmacist out to Hartsville. When Latrell ducked out, Bea took his place. She qualified in 1971. In 1973 she took a further course in advanced pharmacy. In 1975 Levi’s opened a clothing factory on the edge of town — population went from 3,000 to 16,000, and the general store boomed. Latrell drank his share of the profits, that much is true. Bea left in 1982, selling up at public auction for $450,000. Twine worked it out — that’s?245,000 at 1982 prices. So she lied to us,’ Shaw said to Valentine, as a car crunched past at ten miles an hour, its driver clearing condensation with a waving gloved hand. ‘In fact she’s lied several times. It turns out she’s a qualified pharmacist, and as such she will have — at the very least — a firm grasp of toxicology.’
‘But other than telling Alby Tilden how much rat poison to put in the cans, what could she do with it?’ asked Valentine. He’d meant to buy a fresh pack of Silk Cut on the walk from his house. His irritation was growing with each nicotine-free minute. ‘Christ, we’ve checked it out. Justina says the poison in the soup was well short of a lethal dose for most people.’ He hauled some air into his lungs. ‘So how do we build a murder charge out of that?’ He looked up at the falling snowflakes. ‘Sir,’ he added.
‘Justina said that, if anything, Venn had less than the average,’ added Shaw, checking his watch. ‘Let’s put Guy Poole and Tom Hadden together — if they’re not talking already. They need to hammer this out — there
Then, as if he’d beamed down through the snow cloud, PC Bright was with them. He was short, broad, with a formless pale face and strikingly small jet-black eyes. He had that particular pallor which comes with working a night shift.
‘Sir.’ He stifled a yawn.
He took them down Explorer Street to an alleyway, then cut north and out into the hidden churchyard of All Saints. Here the snow made a blanket for the dead. On one fine civic monument to a long-dead mayor someone had arranged ten cans of Special Brew in bowling-pin formation. The snowfall was so gentle the cans still stood, upright and untouched.
Bright led the way to the church porch. Around them, encircling the churchyard, was a 1960s low-rise block of former council flats.
‘That one there, sir — second floor, with the window open in the bathroom? That’s the mother of the pusher we arrested outside the school, after your tip-off. The woman who said she saw the light in the cemetery is her next-door neighbour. On the other side the flat has a balcony looking down into Explorer Street. I’d read the witness summaries for your case on the murder incident room website, so when I called round to take her down to St James’s to bail her son I took a look. Now, the neighbour said she saw the light in the graveyard over the rooftops. But she couldn’t have, sir — the terraced houses are too high. Third floor — maybe. Second floor — never.’
‘Name?’ Shaw asked.
Valentine beat Bright to it. ‘Jade Moore.’ The DS looked at his shoes, knowing that was a stupid thing to say, because if he knew the name then he’d read the statement, and he’d lived here, in this neighbourhood, all his life, so he should have known that she couldn’t have seen what she said she’d seen.
They let Bright lead the way, into a stairwell then up to the landing.
Jade Moore was in her mid-forties and applying make-up to try to look half that age. She had a job to go to, she was late, she couldn’t spend all day talking to them.
Shaw explained why they were there and asked her to open the metal-framed door to the balcony.
‘It’s snowing,’ she complained. But she got the keys, and the door screeched at the hinges as it swung open.
They all stood at the rail, looking across Explorer Street.
Moore had put a cardigan on, which wiped out all the years she’d clawed back with the make-up.
‘You didn’t see the light in the cemetery at all, did you?’ asked Shaw. ‘You can’t see past the houses from here.’
‘Does it matter?’ she said, looking at them all in turn. ‘There was a light in the cemetery, believe me.’ She lost her temper then, throwing an empty packet of cigarettes over the railing and stomping back into the flat.
They heard voices raised, then she reappeared, towing her daughter. She was in her mid-teens, with pancake make-up, clutching a man’s blue dressing gown and a copy of
‘This is Jilly, she saw the light. All right? When she got in she told me what she’d seen so I rang it in to Jamie — Jamie Driver, my brother-in-law. He’s on traffic but he wants to get into the CID, so he likes any tips. I didn’t want you lot taking Jilly down the nick, that’s all.’
They sat the girl down and asked her to describe what she’d seen. She’d been sitting outside the Lattice House with some of the girls from school, drinking cider. She’d gone into the cemetery with a boy. Her mother nodded at that, grim faced, and Shaw guessed that Jilly had already paid the price for that transgression. ‘We were just sitting talking,’ she said, glaring defiantly at her mother. ‘Round by the cedar trees.’
‘Time?’ said Valentine. ‘Incident report said just after three o’clock — that right?’
‘Two,’ she said. ‘Mum rang then — but like I had to get home, see Gav home too.’
Her mother looked skywards.
‘There’s a gap in the cemetery railings down by the water. Anyone can get in. We heard someone digging — like a spade. And — yeah — a light. But not much ’cos there was a moon.’
‘Tell us about the person who was digging,’ said Shaw.
‘We didn’t see anyone, not really. Like I said, we heard them. We just saw the light, down by the riverside. Near that big stone box — the tomb. Then we got out. Went home.’
Shaw and Valentine swapped glances.
‘How did you see the light, but not the person?’ said Shaw gently, turning to watch the snow fall.
‘She was in the hole. But Gav saw her for a second, just her head.’
