remember how he got there. Then he’ll fall to pieces. Doesn’t mean he’s a hard bastard, or that he didn’t love her.’
It was quite a speech, the longest he’d ever heard from Tom Hadden.
Shaw thought about the locked-up locksmiths shop in Wells. When they’d driven past it didn’t look like the dust had been disturbed for a week, let alone a few hours. If he hadn’t gone to work, where had he gone?
‘On the kiss, by the way,’ said Hadden. ‘I couldn’t get any material out of the moisture left on the glass. So no chance of a DNA profile. But, for what it’s worth, I’d say we’re looking at a man’s lips. Adult. Height — if he didn’t bend down, or stand on tiptoe — somewhere between five nine and six foot.’
They walked back out into the evening air, Hadden carrying a cardboard box of files and papers. He put it down on the low front wall. ‘This was on the floor behind the dressing table.’ The CSI man pulled out a manila A4 folder marked: EXAMS. Inside were random certificates: GCSEs, a diploma awarded by Avon for a course on cosmetic science, registration forms for her work at the funeral parlour, an application form — untouched — for a residential course on skin care. Shaw put the file back and picked out another marked CV. With the documents and newspaper cuttings was a plastic see-through holder with a DVD inside marked SHOOTS.
‘Show time,’ said Shaw.
Twine already had a desk in the Warrener’s Lodge, a laptop working on battery. The rest of the team had gone — all except Valentine, who was inputting the team’s mobile numbers to his own phone. Shaw gave Twine the DVD to fire up, while he flicked through the newspaper cuttings in Osbourne’s CV. Most were local — a couple from advertising free sheets with adverts ringed in lipstick. One was for kitchen units and he recognized Marianne Osbourne poised expertly, one hand caressing a fake-marble work surface. There was one shot from a national newspaper —
The caption read: ‘Two new models: curvy Marianne Pritchard, eighteen, test drives the tastiest new car on the road.’
‘Lied about her age,’ said Shaw, passing the cutting to Twine.
The DVD flickered into life on the laptop showing the featureless white contours of a photographer’s studio.
‘Alright sweetheart,’ said a voice off-camera.
Valentine stood, his backbone creaking, and came over to the screen to stand beside Shaw.
Marianne Osbourne walked into the shot, turned, and looked back at the camera. Shaw guessed the stills camera was set next to the video. Her face was extraordinarily blank. Her arms were held awkwardly, her bare feet slightly pigeon-toed, and she looked — maybe — eighteen. Still holding the camera’s eye she slipped the bikini top off, revealing small breasts, but no variation in her lightly tanned skin.
‘No, no, kid.’ A laugh, slightly furred by age or nicotine. ‘Keep your kit on.’
As she fumbled with the strap they heard the voice, but a whisper this time: ‘Jesus.’
The photographer came into shot — middle-aged, pepper-and-salt hair, avuncular. He arranged Marianne lying down, in the pose Shaw had seen in
Alone in the shot, Marianne spoke for the first time. ‘Tell me.’
‘Tell you what, darling?’
‘When you’re taking a shot.’
The blank face stared into the lens.
‘Alright, here we go.’ They heard the whirr of a camera taking multiple shots.
Marianne’s face was transformed. The chin dropped, the eyes looked up, the body tightened slightly so that the skin seemed to attain a sudden surface tension. Then the smile, a hint at first in the eyes, then breaking the lips apart to reveal the small, white, perfect teeth.
‘There ya go,’ said the voice, genuine now, excited.
And then the smile opened, like an orchid in time-lapse photography: a full hundred-watt transmission of what looked like joy.
The photographer came into shot, on his knees, his upper body swinging from left to right as he took his pictures. He got close, and Marianne didn’t register the intrusion into her personal space, just kept the smile tracking the lens. He gave her one of the chocolate cars and she opened her mouth, holding the fragile carapace of the model between her teeth, giggling, then crunching down so that a crumb or two of chocolate fell on her chin and she had to use a finger to push them back between her lips.
The photographer leant back on his haunches, still on his knees, laughing too.
‘Right — some black and whites next. Alright?’
He’d turned away before she answered, clipping a lens cap over his camera, otherwise he would have seen the smile leave her face, falling away like a mask.
ELEVEN
‘Right here?’ asked Shaw, standing in the deep, cool shadow of the edge of the pinewood above The Circle. The field of sunflowers was in gloom, the heads closed now for the night. Below them they could see lights in the Warrener’s House, and spilling from the mobile incident room. Evening noises rose up gently — a radio, a chip pan, a swing creaking. In the Robinsons’ back garden — next to Marianne’s — chickens gossiped, unsettled. The run took up most of the space between the house and the open ground that led to the woods — all, in fact, except for a large woodpile.
Aidan Robinson stood beside him in the shadows, looking down on his house. Even in the half-light it was impossible to ignore his huge hands which hung at his sides, like weapons.
‘Yes. Right here, or close. I was down by the back door so he was a way off, but yes. It looked like he was looking at us, but now, now I think, it could have been the back of Joe’s he was watching — their bedroom.’
Shaw could just see the bedroom window behind which Marianne Osbourne had died, a flash of silver, reflecting a ribbon of red sky. Aidan Robinson had seen the stranger, a rare sight on The Circle, on the Wednesday afternoon at about twelve fifteen — it had to be then, because he’d been doing a long shift at the poultry farm and he always took lunch at noon and it was only five minutes away by car. ‘I need the break,’ he said. ‘I’m inside all day.’ There was something understated about that description which made it sound, to Shaw, like hell. The noise, the heat, the
Shaw walked to the precise spot Robinson had indicated and looked down. He was trying to draw out the moment because he wanted the witness to relive what he’d seen, just in case there was a detail buried in his memory. All they had was a crude outline: a man, possibly fair hair, stood still, then retreating into the wood after two or three minutes. Really? Shaw had pressed him on that point. Did he mean he’d stood still for two or three minutes? Because that’s a very rare thing — to be still. But Aidan Robinson was sure, and even in the few moments he’d been talking to him Shaw could see that this man knew more than enough about stillness. He wondered if he’d learnt the skill: fly-fishing, perhaps, or poaching in the woods, or standing watching the sky with a shotgun broken over his arm. He didn’t think it was a quality you’d pick up in a battery farm.
‘So, just a figure?’ asked Shaw.
The technique required to bring a memory alive had been a key skill Shaw had learnt at Quantico with the FBI, because getting witnesses to remember faces was a subtle, even fragile, thing. Memory recall was not a linear, absolute, process but rather piecemeal, flashes illuminating lost fragments which could be retrieved, then reassembled.
‘A man,’ said Robinson, stepping out of the shadows so that the last of the day’s light lit his face. ‘Sturdy.’ He shook his head, looking about, embarrassed. ‘That’s it. Sorry.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Shaw. And it was, because Robinson had already added to the picture he’d given with the word ‘sturdy’. If Shaw took it gently he might recall more.
