tendons in the ankle. Then I had physio — three times a day, every day. I wasn’t. .’ He struggled to find the word that would take him forward: ‘Recovering. I knew it was over. I’d had this dream, to be like granddad — a countryman. Dad had worked on the land too, farming. But granddad was the real thing. This was his land, just as much as if he’d owned it. He knew every leaf, every rabbit hole. I thought maybe I’d work for one of the big estates or run a small holding, take some game.’
He lifted his leg, repositioned the foot, and set it back on the leaf litter. ‘Ruth said I needed to rethink my life. Find another goal. She was a bit distant — different too. We spent Christmas together but she’d sort of changed, I suppose, and I didn’t think she’d come back again — not for me anyway. I thought it was over.’
He locked eyes and Shaw decided that this was another excuse: that he’d been sure she would dump him, so he had a right to play the field.
‘Ruth’s Dad knew this farmer who’d gone into chicken farming. So I went there. I sit down most of the day at one machine or another. Government’s got quotas for people like me so the firm gets help with the wages. I’ve been there nearly twenty years.’ He shook his head as if his life had been sand, falling through his thick fingers.
‘Marianne came to see me at home one Friday night,’ he said. ‘May — end of May. She said she’d had a letter from Ruth, that she loved being a student, that she’d like to teach, maybe stay up north. She was upset, she said, because it meant she wouldn’t see much of her anymore. Didn’t mention me.
‘We went for a drink down at Wells. Then she said she wanted to swim — she was a bit drunk, a bit out of her head. There was a moon so we walked along the sea wall out to the beach. I couldn’t swim — never could swim — and after the accident it was impossible. I’m a dead weight. But I’d go in the water with Ruth — Marianne knew that. I’d go out as far as I could. The tide was in, filling the pool.’
Shaw knew the spot, at that precise time, under moonlight. The tide washes in round an island of dunes and forms a lagoon. Just five feet deep, sheltered, a giant mirror of unruffled silver.
‘We dumped our clothes in the trees and ran in. When I looked around she wasn’t in the water, she was back on the shoreline, naked, just waiting. So I went back.’
He lit another cigarette and suddenly Shaw knew it was almost dark, the flare of red and orange shockingly bright.
‘She was sorry for me,’ he said.
‘How long did it go on?’
‘Until early summer. Just a few weeks, really. Then Ruth came back. Nothing had changed — it was my Ruth. She wanted to be with me, here. She said she’d teach in Wells, maybe Lynn. We could live here on The Circle, the house I’ve always lived in. Start a family. We got married in ’ninety-five. Mum was still with us then but she died in ’ninety-eight so we had the place to ourselves. Six months later Marianne and Joe hitched up and Ruth said why don’t they come out here? The house next door was up for sale and it was too good a chance to miss. Marianne and I never talked about what had happened. It was like it hadn’t happened.’ He thought about that. ‘Hadn’t happened to us.’ He stood, a dark figure now. ‘Ruth doesn’t know, or Joe. It would kill Ruth.’ There was an edge of belligerence in Robinson’s voice, so it almost sounded like a threat.
‘I can see that,’ said Shaw. He felt like a priest in confession. ‘There’s no reason they should know — ever. I’m interested in who killed Shane White on East Hills. I’m sure Marianne met someone on the island that day. Do you know who it was? Maybe White? He’d been taking pictures of lovers that summer, along the coast. Had he taken a picture of you and Marianne?’
‘No way. We met here, in the woods,’ he said. ‘Never again on the beach. Everyone knew us on the beach.’ And again, the left hand pulled the index finger on the right, this time followed by the right hand pulling the left — a double, plastic click.
‘So you didn’t ask someone to help Marianne out that day, provide a bit of muscle, bit of support, frighten the Aussie off?’
‘No way.’
A cloud of rooks swung in the air, then dropped into the trees.
‘How far’s the fence to the wind farm?’ asked Shaw.
By way of answer Robinson set out to the edge of the clearing, then down a path, still clear and visible despite the dusk. The fence, when they reached it, was nearly eight foot high, steel and wire, with an angled top ridged with razor wire. There was a gate, in iron and mesh, with a keypad padlock.
‘Tilly’s one of the demonstrators, up by the gates?’ asked Shaw, rattling the padlock.
Robinson thought about an answer. ‘Right. She told us. She does press releases, that kind of thing, because it’s something she believes in. She didn’t tell Joe or Marianne. There’s been scuffles, stuff thrown, and Tilly’s got a temper. She thought they’d worry.’
Shaw thought about the demo in London. Clearly, Tilly too had a secret life.
‘But she is serious about the issue — me too,’ said Robinson. ‘People think it’s gonna be a few big turbines but it isn’t like that. To meet the targets they’ll need hundreds. All through these hills. Granddad’s hills.’
They turned back, retracing their steps, the path only just visible now, a pale, sinuous, line ahead. ‘I’ve been up to the demo,’ said Robinson, stopping, massaging the lame leg. ‘I can hold a placard with the best of ’em. And they’re right. It’s all big business — out for a buck. This one’s owned by Yanks. Fencing cuts off the footpath but the council doesn’t seem to mind. Ask me they’ve been given a backhander. I’m proud of Tilly for standing up to ’em.’
They took a fresh path downhill. Shaw found that he had to slow his pace as they descended, and that he could hear the slight rustle of Robinson’s lame foot dragging in the loose forest litter behind him. Just as they left the cool shadow of the trees Shaw stopped abruptly. He’d chosen the spot deliberately so that Robinson would have to come close, because the path here was edged with thorns. He tried to pin him down by looking in his eyes. ‘Do you think Joe could have helped Marianne kill herself?’ It was one of the scenarios which had been worrying him. That the killer of Shane White wasn’t at Marianne Osbourne’s deathbed? That Joe had taken pity on her, and helped her end it all before she faced the ordeal of the being cross-examined about the East Hills murder?
He’d prepared the question and waited patiently for the answer. In the garden below they heard laughter and saw that Ruth and Tilly were now surrounded by candlelight. And Joe was there, beside his daughter, oddly diminished, as if he was a younger child, a little brother, perhaps.
‘I think he wanted to,’ said Robinson. He took a breath. ‘I think he found it tough, seeing her suffer like she did.’ He looked Shaw in his blind eye. ‘They loved each other once,’ he said, elegantly implying that they hadn’t by the time she’d died. ‘But no. I don’t think he could have helped her.’
‘Someone did,’ said Shaw.
Robinson’s jaw set: ‘When they do it with horses — put them down for their own good — they say they
They heard a barn owl hoot, and then, astonishingly, it was there, gliding over the grass, luminescent.
‘I’ve remembered something,’ said Robinson. He took half a dozen steps out into the open grassland. ‘The man — the one I saw here? It’s been in my head that I did recognize him — not him, but a. .’ He searched for the word: ‘A type.’ Again, the shift from right foot to left and back again, nodding to himself in self-encouragement. ‘I thought, at the time, there’s something
TWELVE
Valentine left the Mazda on double yellow lines on the quayside at Wells, a West Norfolk Police pass propped up behind the steering wheel. The bar of The Ship was empty, all the customers out on the quayside or in the whitewashed backyard, enjoying the coolness of the night now the sun had set. He got himself a pint from a silent
