Death

barman and shoved the change in a RNLI charity box, helping himself to a sticker which he put on his lapel. Then he walked out on to the quayside, a spring tide almost level with the stone blocks of the wharf. High water brought a strange mood over the town, as if the sea was brimming up and might spill over the edge of the land, filling the narrow streets. Valentine sat on the wharf with his back to a low wall, watching the lights come on in the yachts out in the harbour. It was hypnotic, the way the dusk was thickening, as if the air itself was getting heavier. His eyelids drooped.

Waking from sleep a minute later, or a nanosecond, it seemed darker. He was surprised, and always was, by the sudden vibrancy of the colours — like those on the cover of a jigsaw box. The town’s only amusement arcade blazed out into the night: reds, oranges and yellows. The floating pub on the quayside was festooned with white bulbs, the pale purple sky beyond criss-crossed by contrails. In his ten long years of exile out here on the coast this had been his salvation: the evening light, a feeling of peace and a brief glimpse of a life seen in proportion.

The rest of his time in Wells had been a kind of perfect torture. He’d hated the pettiness of small town life, the profound feeling that he’d been banished to the edge of the real world, and that back at St James’ coppers with half his ability were dutifully sitting their DI exams. He’d hated walking into a pub and knowing everyone, and knowing they knew him just as well. And he’d walked into plenty of pubs.

He checked his mobile, rereading a text Shaw had sent DC Twine, with a copy forwarded to him FYI. The dead woman’s brother-in-law, Aidan Robinson, had recalled a detail about the stranger he’d seen behind Marianne Osbourne’s house ten days before she died. A useful snippet; the man he’d seen might have a military connection, as he thought he was wearing a green combat jumper with leather shoulder pads. Twine was to liaise with the Red Caps at Boddington Camp, an army transport depot along the coast near Sheringham, and see if they had anyone reported AWOL or acting suspiciously — such as a last-minute unscheduled demand for leave. Then Twine needed to check the mass screening records and see if any of the men at East Hills on the day of murder were in the military, or ex-military, or Territorial Army. Priority. So that was Paul Twine’s Sunday sorted. Valentine knew why Shaw wanted quick results. If the mystery man was military it gave them a possible source for the cyanide capsule. And something else: an expertise in the art of killing.

Valentine took an inch off his pint and didn’t jump when someone touched him on the shoulder: a woman, leaning over the low wall, already very close, in white fish-and-chip shop overalls, a scrunched up hairnet in one hand.

‘Georgie,’ she said. ‘Long time.’ She laughed once, a single note, like one of the birds calling on the marshes.

It had been. Three years. The day he’d left Wells to go back to force headquarters at Lynn. The little staff canteen at the local nick had been packed, which was something he’d never understood. He’d been unhappy at Wells — despite what he felt today, he’d been beached, like one of the rotting boats in the marsh creeks. But he’d been popular, and he couldn’t even now guess why.

He put his pint down and then realized he didn’t know what to do with his hand. She’d stepped easily over the wall but had turned away, sensing the awkwardness of the moment. Straightening his back against the concrete he didn’t get up, knowing the stoop he’d developed made him look older than he was.

‘Jan,’ he said. ‘God,’ he added, shaking his head.

She was late-forties, early fifties, slim, with short hair which he remembered as dark but was now blonde. She was one of those people whose hair always seems to fall right: the fringe carelessly jagged, but framing the pronounced arc of dark eyebrows. Despite the shapeless overalls he could see her narrow waist, biro marks on the white breast of her top where she’d missed the pocket. She adjusted the length of a trouser leg by pulling at the material at the knee, and then sat down.

‘I’m sorry. .’ he said, holding out the hand now, palm down, by way of apology.

She shook her head quickly so that he wouldn’t go on. She’d been married to DS Peter Clay, Valentine’s partner at Wells for most of his years in the town. Clay had been born in Wells, the son of a boatyard owner who’d gone bankrupt in the fifties. DS Clay had died the year before. Bowel cancer? Maybe. They’d sent flowers from Lynn but he hadn’t signed the card.

‘We’re OK,’ she said, and Valentine struggled to remember the details. Two daughters, he thought, grown up and married. ‘I do this afternoons and early evenings,’ she said, tugging at the white chef’s overall. ‘Sit it out at the museum in the mornings at the front desk. Pin money, but it all helps. And there’s a pension from the job.’

The Job. To insiders, always The Job.

Valentine knew the little museum, up an alley off the High Street, half a dozen rooms crammed with smugglers’ memorabilia, old photos and a gallery full of naval paintings including one, in pride of place, of Nelson up at Burnham Thorpe, a painted ship behind him, upon a painted ocean.

She nodded at his pint, took no answer for yes, and went into The Ship. He followed, hauling himself up when she was gone, then watched a silent TV in the bar as she ordered, a televised press conference from Norwich about a missing child. But he wasn’t concentrating. He was thinking about the first time he’d met Jan. He’d got a flat in town above a charity shop and he was looking for a cleaner — someone to do some washing too, iron a few shirts. His partner Pete Clay said his wife would do it. Ten quid a week, every Tuesday. He’d never met her — she had a key — then he’d gone home one morning because he’d left a case file by the telly. She’d been there, ironing by the radio. That was a summer’s day too, and she’d been in shorts and a T-shirt. It was the first time he’d thought to himself how much she must know about him — being in his space, reading detail into the discarded books, the empty bottles, the Christmas cards taking up too little space on the mantelpiece.

‘I could have got that,’ he said, taking the fresh pint.

The barman waved away the crumpled fiver she’d put on the bar top. Back outside they sat together on the top of the wall, like children, kicking their heels.

Valentine recalled that DS Clay had been teetotal, just one of the reasons they’d never been an effective partnership. At least Shaw would take a Guinness: rarely more than one, but it was the one that counted, because you can’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink, because they can’t trust themselves. Valentine was honest enough to admit that was what all alcoholics said, although he didn’t think of himself as an alcoholic. A toper, at worse.

‘Break?’ he asked.

‘Twenty minutes. It’s like World War Three in the bathroom in there. Enough to put you off fish and chips for life.’ She sipped at her cider steadily, like it was doing her some good. Her foot tapped to an imaginary beat.

A tourist boat was unloading at the quayside. Her name was Christine and according to the chalkboard she’d been out to Blakeney Point to see seals and then on to Morston. Twelve pounds for the round trip, five pounds for kids. Little yellow tickets littered the deck as the passengers got out. Two twitchers, sat tight, sitting opposite each other, examining each other at high magnification.

Jan looked at Valentine’s profile — the hatchet, facing out to sea. ‘Pete said they cleared your name, that they’d have to give you the rank back.’

He turned to look at her. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Still on the cornflakes diet?’ she asked, looking out to sea.

She’d have seen the evidence in the flat. A catering-sized box of Kellogg’s, milk delivered to the door on the street, and nothing else in the fridge.

‘Six white shirts,’ she said.

The Christine’s engine burst into life, the skipper getting ready to take her out and moor her to one of the buoys.

‘Nice little earner,’ said Valentine, nodding at the boat.

‘Needs to be. Day after August Bank Holiday this place is deserted. Got to make it while you can. .’

One of the many things which had infuriated him about living in Wells was that, like any small seaside town, there was a kind of low-level conspiracy against visitors. The locals formed an invisible network dedicated to extracting every last pound from anyone who stepped out of a car, got off a bus, or trekked in along the coastal path. Short of charging admission they made sure every day-tripper paid their way. There was an almost religious feel to this collective attitude to strangers to which he’d always been immune. He was always an outsider, he felt, wherever he lived.

‘The boat that goes out to East Hills?’ he asked.

She looked down at her feet, her head hung, as if suddenly disappointed.

‘We’re on the case again,’ he admitted.