squad car round to check his address that evening — a flat in the Woodley estate. Neighbours said he hadn’t been seen for a week. Much more worryingly he’d missed three shifts at the lifeboat station, having never missed one in the previous thirteen years. And his nets and pots were still strung out off the north point of East Hills.
Shaw tossed the mobile on to the table, then smiled at Valentine: the full hundred-watt surfer’s smile. ‘Coyle’s done a runner.’
THIRTY-FOUR
Wells’ lifeboat station was at the end of a straight mile of sea wall which led directly out to sea from the town quay. The beach stretched beyond, a vast yellow undulating plain, an early morning August crowd of several hundred reduced to isolated dots. Lifeboat crewman Tug Coyle was still missing. Peterborough CID had contacted his wife who said she had received her monthly support payment from Tug’s solicitor, but there had been no call from her ex-husband, which was rare. The coming Thursday was his regular monthly date with his son. Usually he’d call to fix up time and place: often the town cinema, or the stock-car racing arena, or a fishing trip in summer. Coyle’s car — a battered Vauxhall van — was not outside his flat or beside the lifeboat station.
Shaw put the Porsche in an empty slot marked for RNLI crewman. As soon as he swung open the door he could smell the salt, hear the distinctive shouts of children playing out at the water’s edge. The heat was already building, yesterday’s thunderstorm a distant memory. The air over the modern corrugated iron roof of the lifeboat house buckled in the sun’s rays, an anchored mirage. From the outside the building had all the charm of an MFI out-of-town showroom, painted in corporate shades of grey and orange. But inside the Aran-class boat gleamed. Half a dozen tourists were already up on the walkway which gave a view inside the boat’s hi-tech cabin.
Valentine arrived and spread some A4 sheets on to the flat glass top of a display cabinet containing medals. Ignoring a sign he lit a Silk Cut. They’d talked this through the night before after coffee. If Shaw was right about the killer’s motives then there was a genetic link between the murderer and
‘So far?’ asked Shaw.
‘So far nothing,’ said Valentine, sifting the papers. ‘But Paul seems to know what he’s doing. The whole team’s on it flat out. He says it’ll take twenty-four hours — maybe more. But we’ve set up a fast track too, seeing if we can find a link between our Garry Tyler — the burglar — and Joe Osbourne.’
He held up a head-and-shoulders print of a teenager: cropped hair, belligerent stare. ‘This is Tyler by the way, care of Wells’ nick. Jackie Lau’s going out to see the kid’s mother over lunch. That’s our best bet. Paul talked to Tilly Osbourne and she says she can’t recall any Tyler’s in the family, but hey, they’re not that kind of family and she’s a teenager. Why would she care?’
They climbed a short spiral metal staircase into the mess room. News of a crewman missing had brought several lifeboatmen into the station. Shaw recognized most of the faces. No one had seen Tug Coyle for forty-eight hours. He had been due on a standard watch that morning at six but hadn’t reported in, having missed two shifts the day before, one the day before that. There’d be a disciplinary hearing; if there wasn’t a copper-plated excuse, he might be thrown off the crew.
They asked to see Coyle’s locker and one of the senior crew opened it up: spare boots, gear for the lifeboat, roll-up tin, torch, two heavy RNLI sweaters, two pairs of camouflaged trousers, and a programme for the Norfolk Arena, featuring rally cross and speedway. Valentine took the key, relocked the locker, and asked them to leave it that way.
The deputy coxswain was a man called Petersen, Navy-clean, with eyes that looked as if the sun had bleached the colour out of them. He showed Shaw Coyle’s rota: eight six-hour shifts a week, plus any back-up shifts he could make. Available on call 24/7 except for an eight-hour gap on Thursday afternoons when he took his son out.
‘Broken marriage,’ said Petersen, shrugging.
When asked he said that Coyle was popular but not particularly sociable. They went back downstairs to the boathouse and Petersen nodded at the portrait on the wall of Tug John’s. ‘You know he was his grandson? Difficult act to follow. Didn’t help giving the kid the nickname, did it? Like he was supposed to be right there in the old man’s footsteps. I knew Johns, and frankly I thought he was pretty unpleasant. Kind of skipper in the Navy you’d go a long way to avoid. Bit of a tyrant. You couldn’t tell him anything. If you’ve done it, he’s done it, only he’s done it better. Coyle was better than that. But, you know, if we could see ourselves. .’
The doors of the boathouse were open so they were looking down the ramp at The Cut, the tide flowing out and a yacht sliding past, East Hills on the horizon.
‘There is one thing,’ added Petersen. ‘One of the crew comes from a family in the town that owns one of the huts — way out the end. Tug used to sleep over some nights rather than driving back to Lynn. Illegal, but like nobody’s counting, and there’s plenty that can’t afford the local house prices anymore. Give me a sec I’ll get you the key.’
They stood together out on the sand, not far from a family encamped round a hole full of children. Both their mobile’s buzzed with an identical incoming text. It was Paul Twine up at the incident room: CSI had phoned from The Ark, the lab result on Joe Osbourne’s DNA had arrived. Negative — no match with Sample X. They’d sent a uniformed officer up to the hospital to give Osbourne the good news in person.
‘Negative!’ Valentine held his phone at arm’s length and thought about lobbing it into the sea.
‘How does that work?’ He spat in the sand. ‘Coyle, the ferryman, does a runner, but it’s not Joe Osbourne out on East Hills. So who the fuck was out on the island?’ He looked skywards and his neck cracked. ‘Are we back to Grieve and Roundhay?’ His voice had risen with frustration: ‘And if we’re back to them why the fuck has Coyle pissed off?’
Shaw just stood in the sand, rooted, feet in his own shadow, like he wasn’t going anywhere.
THIRTY-FIVE
To the east the long, graceful curve of the beach huts bled into a shimmering horizon of blue. Shaw and Valentine walked for half a mile but didn’t seem to get any closer to the end. Most of the huts were open. The families in them fell into three groups. The Chelsea-on-Sea set: cooler boxes, literary novels and not to many kids. Then the families from the big camp site and holiday park beyond the pine woods who got a hut as part of their package deal: extended families, noisier, kids playing games, kettles whistling. And then just a few local families. They’d be wrapped up against the sun, dogs about, and perhaps some fishing gear set up to catch the tide as it came in.
Shaw had been walking while looking out to sea so that when the sudden clap of thunder came it was a shock. He spun round, to the land and trees, and saw the black edge of a storm cloud over the pines. As he tried to measure the speed of the cloud, lightning flashed: someone screamed in one of the nearby huts, and then the first fat raindrops fell. He looked back at Valentine, a hundred yards adrift, standing in his raincoat looking up at the charcoal-grey lid of cloud as it slid over the beach. The rain started to crater the sand.
Shaw broke into a jog. Halfway along the line of huts he got to one of the wooden stairways which led back over the dunes into the pinewoods. Beside the bottom step stop a standpipe, dripping into the sand. The next hut, No. 124, Shaw had once hired himself, a favourite spot for Lena and Fran. He stopped, recalling that it was about here on the beach that he usually lost his mobile signal. He checked: the usual six bars had been reduced to one, flickering. Within seconds the rain was an impenetrable screen, like a shower curtain, hiding the woods and then, by
