Death

degrees, the sea. He waited for Valentine and then they trudged on, the beach crowds going in the opposite direction. No. 186 was indeed almost the last in the line, citrus lemon in colour, one of the older huts, so its stilts were shorter, the top step only just above the encroaching sand.

Over the door a brass nameplate read: North View.

Petersen hadn’t given them a key in the end, but a piece of paper with a three-digit code to punch into a small box mounted on the hut. Inside was a key.

Valentine struggled briefly with a salt-rusted padlock, rain dripping from his nose. The first thing they saw when they got the door open was a sleeping bag on the floor. Military issue, good enough for Arctic camping, and set out neatly on a thermal mat. Shaw picked up a pair of discarded trousers — again, combat green.

‘Likes his military kit,’ said Shaw.

It was one of those moments when they were both thinking the same thing. Was Coyle the man Aidan Robinson had spotted on the edge of the woods above Marianne Osbourne's house in the days before she died? But they both knew that didn’t work: Robinson and Coyle were family. If he could spot an army jumper and a military short back-and-sides, he could recognize his own cousin from a hundred yards.

‘It’s cheap. Army Surplus,’ said Valentine. ‘Doubt if it’s a fashion statement.’

There was a locked shutter as well, so Shaw undid it, swinging it down to reveal a window which he unlatched, so that light flooded the interior. Looking seawards he could see a small fishing boat off the beach, a lone sailor bailing water in a kind of unhurried way. Inside the hut were two thermos flasks — again, heavy-duty issue. A cardboard box with Lipton’s on the side contained apples, a sliced loaf, cheese and a bunch of salad onions. There was a newspaper — the Daily Mail — and a thriller, Clive Cussler, and a battery powered camping lantern. The storm cloud was out to sea now, a few miles off shore, and the sun was coming back, brighter than before, but cooler.

‘Coyle won’t get far,’ said Valentine. ‘They never do unless they’ve got a fortune. Disappearing is an expensive business.’

But Shaw didn’t think that was always true. This was a man who could survive on his own. A man who might turn out to be more like his granddad — Tug Johns — than anybody had ever thought.

Shaw leant out of the window and lifted the shutter, sliding in the locks, and was about to close the door when he glanced up above the lintel. There were two snapshots there, which he took down. One was black and white. Two kids in a boat, a man with white hair posed for the picture. ‘Tug Johns and his grandsons,’ said Shaw. ‘Maybe? It’s certainly the grandfather. .’ He looked at the youngsters and was pretty sure the smaller one was Tug Coyle. You could see the man he was going to be — the crablike carapace of shoulders and back, the short powerful build. It was harder to see Aidan Robinson in the other boy — the strange, steel-grey eyes were the same, but the face was much narrower, even feminine, with high cheekbones. Of the belligerent confidence, the stillness, there was no trace.

The other snap was in colour. A teenage boy, posing in front of a smashed-up stock car. Valentine retrieved the picture of Garry Tyler from his raincoat pocket. They had a match: hundred per cent, no doubt.

Valentine snapped the ID picture. ‘Tyler. It’ll be Tug’s ex-wife’s maiden name. It’s the same kid. It’s Coyle’s son.’

THIRTY-SIX

They sat on the steps of North View together, looking out to sea, Valentine holding the picture of Garry Tyler. If Tug Coyle, the ferryman, was his father, then it suggested he was also their killer. But how could he be? He’d brought the Andora Star into East Hills through seawater stained with the victim’s blood. He couldn’t have been in two places at once: on the beach with the murder weapon and in the boat, alone at the helm.

Shaw closed his eyes to rest the muscles, and it was then — robbed of the distraction of sight — that he heard the silence. The sounds of the beach had gone entirely, not just the gentle whisper of the holiday crowd but even the rustling of the pinewoods. He stood to see if a fresh storm cloud was edging over but instead found that about a hundred yards away, along the beach, an almost solid wall of mist was advancing east, drifting along the coast.

‘Fret,’ he said, using the local word.

They were common in summer, especially after storms, when icy rain fell on a warm sea. A fog bank, formed at the margin of sea and land, would condense in a few minutes then hug the coast. Soon they’d be within it and the thought made Shaw shiver because it would be cold in there, and damp, and the rest of the world would recede even further. If silence could have a physical form then this was it.

Shaw closed his eyes and waited for the moment. First he smelt the mist — that acrid, bitter edge to the salty air, and then he felt it, a bristling moisture on his skin. Opening his eyes he found he was enclosed in the whiteness: he could see Valentine and the hut, but nothing else. But almost immediately the fog parted to reveal a view of the sea: a wedge of blue, sun-splashed. There was a boat out there, the one he’d seen earlier, but the sailor on board was motionless now, his hand on a line. The boat, thought Shaw, was in exactly the same spot. ‘That’s it,’ said Shaw. He stood, pointing out to sea. ‘Coyle said he stood off East Hills that day for what — twenty minutes? Well, he wouldn’t have let the boat drift — he’d have put down an anchor. Just like that guy. We thought someone might have swum off the boat, or out to the boat, but maybe it was just Coyle. He could have swum ashore, killed White in the water, and swum back. The boat would still be there. Then ten minutes later he brings the ferry in as the body of his victim drifts along the beach.’

‘Motive?’ asked Valentine, trying to light a Silk Cut with damp fingers.

‘Maybe he’d been caught on film with Marianne Osbourne,’ suggested Shaw. ‘Or — this is better — she’d gone to him for help because White was blackmailing her? Don’t forget he was Aidan’s cousin — she must have known him. And he runs the ferry. So she asks for help and he makes a plan. They know White will be out there. He swims ashore like I said from the Andora Star — a hundred yards, maybe less. White’s not in the water, he’s up in the dunes, lured there by Marianne. He kills White, with maybe Marianne a witness or accomplice. So it’s his DNA on the towel. He’s Sample X.

Then we resurrect the case and send out letters telling everyone we’re going to test all the men taken off East Hills that day. He knows we won’t find a match. Does he think we’ll work out it’s him? Or does he think Marianne will buckle in the interview? She’s rocky, unstable. She thinks she can’t do it, so they talk at the house.

‘The last time he visits — the day before the mass screening — he takes the cyanide pill with him. Where’d he get it? My guess is Tug Johns, his grandfather. Or at least it was in the old man’s stuff — something left in the attic, or maybe one of the dugouts did survive. Old Tug Coyle was a shoe-in for one of these secret units. He’s got all the skills plus leadership. So young Tug brings the pill. It’s a gift for Marianne: a one-way ticket out of a life she can’t face anymore. And he helps her take it. Maybe even makes her take it. Meanwhile there’s a family crisis. His son is hauled in for the identity parade at Wells. Tug knows it’s him. He knows we’ll arrest the kid. The first thing we’ll do is take a DNA swab for the database. And in one step that will take us to Tug Coyle. In this case the match is all we need, George. It’s not like Tug Coyle can claim the forensic evidence is down to an accidental meeting on the beach. He was never on the beach — that’s his story, has been his story for eighteen years. This would prove he lied, and the only verdict a jury would bring in would be guilty. So Arthur Patch has to die to keep young Garry Tyler out of trouble.’ Shaw stood and walked forward in the wet sand, crunching razor shells on the high water mark.

‘And Holtby?’ asked Valentine.

‘There’s a DNA link, there has to be, we just need to find it.’

‘There’s a simpler answer,’ said Valentine. He didn’t really believe in conspiracy, grand theories of crime. He thought criminals were a lower order: not exactly stupid, just subnormal, without the wit to see the outcome of their own actions. So anything that smacked of accident, or cock-up, sounded right to him. ‘It doesn’t have to be DNA, Peter. What if Coyle got the pills from the dugout, and it is up in the pinewoods above The Circle? Maybe Holtby stumbled on something up there, something he couldn’t ignore. It could have got him killed.’

Shaw looked out over the sands, noting how the rain had rubbed them clean of footprints, leaving just a