Twenty-two semicircular York stone steps led up to the main doors of the West Norfolk Constabulary’s headquarters, St James’ Street, King’s Lynn. St James’ had once been an imposing Victorian edifice, built at the junction of two of the town’s main streets, a bold statement of order amidst chaos. It had been cruelly used by the advent of the motor car, which had left it isolated, beleaguered on a traffic island. The inner ring road swept by on one side, enveloped in a perpetual blue cloud of carbon dioxide, while the street that led into the town centre had been unable to save itself from a long and seedy decline: kebab shops jostled with a brace of burger bars and one of Lynn’s roughest pubs — The Angel, the regulars of which saw the proximity of the police HQ as an incitement to riot. The sun was up and already high enough to penetrate the cool shadows in the old streets. Across the thoroughfare stood Greyfriar’s Tower, a remnant of the abbey which had once stood on the edge of the medieval town. A ruin, restored, it stood at a giddy angle, Lynn’s very own leaning tower.
Shaw savoured the moment of sudden silence as he pushed his way through the revolving doors and into the hush of the main reception area — a high ornate hall with busts of long-dead civic dignitaries in niches beneath a painted dome.
It was 8.15 a.m. A large white sign stood in the middle of the floor marked with an arrow, pointing left, and the words, EAST HILLS INQUIRY. Shaw walked lightly down a marble corridor. There were two doors at the end: one led into a spiral staircase, down into the old basement of the building and the cells; the other — marked with a second East Hills’ sign — into a courtyard, already splashed with sunlight, bouncing off freshly polished squad cars. Shaw noted that the chief constable’s limousine was in its reserved space.
On the far side of the car park stood The Ark, the West Norfolk’s forensic lab and in-house mortuary, converted from a nineteenth-century nonconformist chapel. The original church’s nickname came from its resemblance to Noah’s floating quarters — the box-like deckhouse of the Biblical boat. The only hints that it had been given a new role for the twenty-first century were an aluminium flu, a bristling communications aerial and a set of three new garage ports, currently housing two of the CSI mobile units and a hearse.
The East Hills mass screening had required the addition of three standard Portacabin blocks: one for re- interviews and for all those called to reread their original statements, one for the DNA swab tests, and one for witnesses not amongst those evacuated from East Hills on the day of the murder — the original CID team, the RNLI crew who turned out to help, the harbour master, the local uniformed officers who’d secured and searched East Hills. Each of these would also be asked to reread their original statements. Shaw might have a reputation as a whizz-kid but it was mostly built on being thorough. He had a talent for organization but a genius for not letting it get in the way of inspired detection.
One of the West Norfolk’s mobile canteens was also set up to provide tea and coffee, completing a temporary East Hills ‘village’.
Shaw bounced on his toes as he walked, feeling good. He’d swum that morning as the sun rose, the sea still deep summer warm, his hands rising and falling over his head as he let a rhythmic backstroke take him out to sea. Then he’d run to the Porsche — his measured mile, and clocked six minutes eighteen seconds, a new record. He could still feel his blood coursing, and the burst of endorphins had cleared his mind. It had taken nearly a month to organize the East Hills mass screening, a constant low-level stress that had been difficult to accommodate with his everyday caseload. Now the day was here he felt the thrill of liberation and the freedom which comes from reaching the point of no return. By Monday they’d have their DNA results — and the name of the man who had killed Shane White and had probably helped Marianne Osbourne take her own life with a cyanide pill. A large A-board stood before The Ark with an arrow pointing towards its Gothic double doors.
EAST HILLS INQUIRY
ALL VISITORS PLEASE SIGN IN AT RECEPTION
Inside, Valentine was talking to two women at a desk set in the vestibule of the chapel — a room panelled in mahogany, a simple board listing the ministers from the first incumbent in 1823. Shaw’s DS was perched on the table edge, his face relaxed, in mid-anecdote — some Byzantine story about a DNA sample that got mixed up with some dog food that Shaw had heard him tell before at one of the CID’s ritual parties at the Red House — the St James’ boozer-of-choice. Shaw had noticed that Valentine seemed to be able to relax in female company. Surrounded by men he always maintained a mildly irritable exterior. Shaw’s father had once told him that the tragedy of George Valentine’s life was losing his wife in a car crash. Shaw had tried, but never succeeded, in trying to imagine what she’d been like. It didn’t help that as a child he
Shaw introduced himself to the women. The one he didn’t know in a smart blue Customs amp; Excise uniform introduced herself as Christine Pimm. Shaw might not know her face but he knew all about her — Tom Hadden had sent over her file when they were setting up the mass screening. Christine was twenty-six and worked at Stansted Airport, checking passports. She had three GCSEs, a certificate in advanced hair care and an IQ of 122. Pretty quickly it had become clear she had a genius for her job. In April 2007 she’d recognized a terrorist posing as an academic en route to an international conference at Cambridge University. Sadik al Habib was listed as the US’s sixth most wanted target — the Jack of Spades in the pack. She’d routinely memorized his face from a circular she’d seen a month before he’d stood in front of her, checking his mobile phone. He’d had minor cosmetic surgery, no beard, a pair of heavy black-rimmed glasses and false teeth. But she’d still recognized him.
Shaw shook her hand, realizing that she was one of the few people in the world who shared his own obsession with the human face. The difference was that he’d had to learn his skills while hers appeared innate. She was here for a very simple reason: if the killer really was amongst the men called to the mass screening then there was one high-risk option he could take to evade capture: he could send someone else to give the DNA sample. Christine Pimm’s job was simple: check documents, match faces to documents and be a hundred per cent sure they had the right person on the day.
The other woman was Tom Hadden’s deputy as head of CSI, Dr Elizabeth Price, dressed in a crisp white SOC suit. Dr Price was sixty and would never get the top job, due to a burning lack of ambition and an unhealthy zeal for her real passion in life — teaching promising young pianists how to play Bach. Shaw liked her: she was efficient, cheerful — joyful, even. She was living proof the job didn’t inevitably lead to a cynical world view.
‘So how does this work?’ he asked, accepting a coffee from Dr Price’s thermos flask. She’d brought a little stack of six plastic coffee cups — a typically thoughtful gesture. Shaw had left the on-the-day detail of the DNA sampling to the CSI unit, so he wanted to know what was happening. Hadden had been involved in a similar operation to catch a golf course rapist in Hertfordshire in the nineties. On that occasion they’d taken nearly 12,000 DNA samples before catching the culprit, but catch the culprit they had.
‘Well, it’s pretty simple,’ said Dr Price. ‘As you know each of the seventy-four holidaymakers taken off East Hills in 1994 — those still alive — was visited by the police and invited to attend. Early slots went to locals — those in East Anglia. Most are travelling from London, East Midlands, a family from Scotland. They can all claim for travel expenses. The women are re-interviewed and invited to make new statements if they wish. The men start with Catherine here, who makes sure they are who they say they are. We take a DNA sample. All thirty-five male DNA samples — that’s thirty from today, plus the five taken from close relatives of those who have died — will be taken by courier to the FSS laboratories in Birmingham after lunch, first batch, then late tonight, final batch. A twin set of matching samples will be kept at St James. If a case comes to court it will be these samples, the ones we don’t send to the FSS, which will be tested again and will underpin any conviction. The FSS should complete the whole mass screening in under forty-eight hours — they run a 365-day 24/7 operation. All samples will be checked against the East Hills sample — Sample X, which is already on the National DNA Database and has never triggered a match, so we know our killer hasn’t given a sample before.’
It was a clear and confident summary, thought Shaw, but he knew that if they did get someone into court the first thing any defence lawyer would attack would be the DNA evidence. ‘Matching’ DNA samples involved scientists making judgements on probabilities. It only took a moment of doubt in the witness box to destroy a case. If they did identify their killer through the mass screening they’d still have to provide evidence of opportunity, not to mention motive, but at least they’d have a name, which would give them a fighting chance of getting the rest, and securing
