Death

the man from the local paper.

Shaw studied the distant island. He had come here many times with his father as a child on the little ferry boat that ran out from the quay. Like most of the locals they’d avoided the trip in the high summer because the boat was crowded out with tourists and the ticket prices were steep. They’d gone at the weekend, spring and autumn. Despite the inconvenience — there was no drinking water, no shop, no nothing — it was one of the few places he’d ever seen his father relax. Even as a child he’d understood why, standing, holding his father’s hand, watching the ferry depart. Six hours before it came back. Six hours when the island was theirs. But even back then East Hills had a racy reputation — a kind of insular lover’s lane, with couples disappearing quickly off into the grassy dunes and pine trees as soon as the boat left. Shaw had stumbled on one pair, up in the pines, and the memory still brought the blood to his cheeks. He’d have been ten, maybe a year older, so the tangled naked limbs had made some kind of illicit, thrilling sense. But he didn’t know what to say — just a mumbled apology before running back to his parents. He’d sat, guiltily, feeling like a Peeping Tom who’d been caught out. He’d seen the couple, loose limbed, emerge from the dunes when the boat had come back, sounding a claxon as it bobbed off the floating landing stage, and they’d laughed at him — openly, and he’d felt that sickening adolescent certainty that he was never going to be admitted to the adult world.

But East Hills, like all his childhood haunts, looked smaller now. About six hundred yards long, a narrow ribbon of high dunes cut off from the coast by a deep channel and a persistent and lethal rip tide. Shaw noted the stone pines, the navigation buoy off the point, the pillbox: at an angle now, subsiding into the sand on the distant point. And the small wooden floating dock, beyond which the crowd on the beach was thickest.

He heard a question being asked and realized it was being asked of him. It was the man from The Daily Telegraph: a three-piece suit in a green country cloth. He’d be fifty-five, maybe sixty, radiating a kind, avuncular personality. But Shaw perceived something else beneath the unthreatening exterior. Accents quite that perfect were almost always manufactured. And when he’d got a hip flask out of his leather briefcase Shaw had seen a sheaf of cuttings on the West Norfolk force and its new chief constable, annotated in a neat, pencil, copperplate. So he’d done his homework.

The question he posed was a simple one: why the three day embargo until Monday? It was a good question — sharp, businesslike, despite the attempt to bumble his way through it. He tried to recall the reporter’s name from the briefing sheet he’d sent Valentine. Smyth — that was it, and now he wondered if the ‘y’ was an affectation.

Shaw sipped his iced beer. ‘That’s a good question — and the answer’s coming, I promise.’

Smyth smiled, nodding, but there was nothing jovial about his eyes, which were slate grey.

Osprey’s engine changed its note, the speed dropping, edging into East Hills past swimmers — most of them, despite the summer heat, in wetsuits, bobbing like tadpoles. The sea breeze had picked up once they’d got beyond the sand bar at the mouth of the channel and the breakers drummed on the sands, so that Shaw almost didn’t hear his text alert on the mobile. It was from Inspector Jack Craxton at Wells Police Station.

NO SIGN OF DAUGHTER. Shaw looked at Valentine, who’d got the same text.

‘Trouble, Inspector?’ asked Smyth from The Daily Telegraph, on Shaw’s shoulder.

‘Routine,’ said Shaw.

Osprey dropped anchor fifty yards off the beach. In the late-afternoon sun about sixty people lay on the white sands. The ferry ran just two trips a day: out and back. The last time Shaw had been in Wells with Fran, his daughter, in the early summer last year, he’d checked out the price: twelve pounds. So you got social exclusion as well as spatial. Plus the lack of facilities kept kids and families to a minimum. A woman stood, topless, and waded into the sea, shoulders back.

With the exclusivity of East Hills came one other major benefit on a north-facing coast: the south-facing beach, which attracted serious sun-seekers, dedicated heliophiles. One man stood close to the landing stage, towelling a flat stomach, one foot on a cold box, drinking from a plastic bottle covered in icy condensation.

Shaw leant on the little capstan house where the skipper of Osprey was now theatrically filling a pipe.‘OK, everything I’m gonna say is in the briefing pack, as I said. So sit back, enjoy the sun and I’ll tell you a story.’He opened a bottle of fizzy water as the sea slapped the hull of the Osprey. ‘In 1994 there were seventy-five people on this beach one Saturday afternoon in August,’ said Shaw. ‘We know it was seventy-five by the way because the boat which ferried them out sold tickets. Still does. One of those tickets went to a young Australian called Shane White; he was twenty, travelling in Europe. He’d picked up a summer job as a lifeguard, employed by the local council. Back home — that’s a small place up the coast from Sydney called Barrie Bay — Shane had been the school swimming champion, and he had all the certificates you needed: life saving, endurance, first aid. It was his job to make sure no one got into trouble out here on East Hills. On the boat he’d have briefed all the tourists, the message clear: it’s a good beach to lie on, you can even have a paddle and a dip, but don’t try to swim out, especially back to land, because the currents are treacherous and when the tide’s running you’d need to be Mark Spitz to have any chance of making it alive. It doesn’t look it, but it’s nearly two thousand yards to safety. A country mile.’

Several of the reporters squinted into the distance.

‘At about four twenty p.m. that afternoon — the return boat was due at four thirty p.m. — Shane White’s body was found floating in the water just over there. .’ Shaw pointed along the beach towards the open sea. ‘He’d been stabbed in the midriff and had lost a lot of blood. The wound was a slash, about eight inches long, delivered by a blade at least five inches long. The woman who found him got help and he was dragged ashore. He died about ten minutes later. The boat which arrived to take everyone off the sands had a radio, and so assistance was called. The RNLI launched and came across the channel. A police launch came out too. Officers took everyone off the beach and back to police headquarters at Lynn — St James’ — to take statements. Shane was a good-looking lad. .’

Shaw nodded to Valentine but he was already on his feet handing out the press briefing packs. The first print in a set of photographs was of the victim. The local paper had done a story that summer when he’d helped save a horse and rider who’d got caught out on the sandbanks beyond Holkham. Shane had swum out while the lifeboat launched. He’d gone out to comfort the rider — a ten-year-old girl who’d got separated from a riding school outing. Shane looked like a lifeguard: two-tone dyed blond hair, muscled, in red and gold shorts marked WDC — Wells District Council. His face was as forgettable as most handsome faces — too symmetrical to be really interesting, like the computer-balanced features of some comic strip hero. The ten-year-old looked mortified and clutched White’s hand without enthusiasm while he held the wrecked bridle of her horse.

‘From the statements we were able to piece together Shane’s last few hours alive on East Hills,’ said Shaw. ‘He’d chatted up a few of the girls on the beach. Subsequent interviews revealed he did that a lot, and didn’t always stop with the chat-up line. At the funeral, which was held at Hunstanton, there were half a dozen heartbroken teenage girls in the congregation. All of them thought they were Shane’s one and only. Anyway, when he wasn’t sorting out the local talent he sat up on the dunes, near the ridge with a pair of binoculars, keeping an eye on the swimmers.’ Shaw glanced to the beach and they all saw a lifeguard sat on a high chair below a single red and yellow flag. ‘About an hour before Shane’s body was found he swam out and dragged a kid back to shore on an inflatable dolphin. There hadn’t been any real danger — the winds were very light — but it was the right thing to do. The kid’s father apologized and offered Shane a beer, which he declined. The next thing we know about Shane is he’s floating in the water leaking blood.

By 6.45 p.m. that evening we had evacuated East Hills. Each person on the beach — all potential suspects — were asked to take with them everything they had brought over from the mainland: towels, picnic baskets, kites, the lot. We took seventy-four people off the beach. Shane’s body went later after the pathologist had finished an examination at the scene. The preliminary cause of death — confirmed at autopsy — was drowning. He’d lost nearly three pints of blood due to the puncture wound. There was also a wound to his eye, possibly caused by a fist, but not a knife. Once we had his corpse off the sands, and his stuff, the beach should have been empty. It looked empty. We let the sniffer dogs lose and they found a spot up in the dunes where there was fresh blood in the sand, and buried in the sand they found something else — again, there’s a picture in your pack.’A threadbare towel, blue and white stripes, bloodstained, in a polythene evidence bag. ‘None of the seventy-four people left alive on East Hills would admit to recognizing this towel,’ said Shaw.

‘And they all had their own towels?’ asked Smyth, from The Daily Telegraph. Again, sharp, businesslike.