Death

sorted out a few complications.’ Shaw let the silence stretch. ‘That would have been on Sunday,’ he added, letting the last word almost trail away.

Smyth asked the final question. The killer question. ‘How many people have died since then?’

Shaw sniffed, shrugged. ‘Three.’

He leant back; the TV cameras switched to O’Hare. The questions began.

O’Hare fought a valiant rearguard action but, on the third time of asking, was forced to confirm that a familial search would have cost less than?7,000. And it had been his decision, and his alone, to ditch the familial check. He didn’t say that Shaw had formally requested such a search but he knew Shaw, or Valentine, would leak that detail to Smyth after the presser was finished. The chief constable tried to bring Shaw back into the discussion, reminding the press that they had a suspect in the cells. But they’d got all they’d get on that story — Shaw had made that clear. So they returned, relentlessly, to the fact that the chief constable’s cost-cutting campaign had resulted in the deaths of three innocent people. Given that reporting restrictions were about to come crashing down on their murder suspect that was going to be the story.

Valentine had his mobile out, texting. He’d got Jan Clay’s number the last time they’d spoken and he thought he’d meet her, if she had the time, for a drink on the quayside at Wells. The whole of St James’ was a non-smoking building, and especially the Norfolk Suite, but he lit up anyway, and no one seemed to mind.

Shaw closed his eyes; aware of being outside himself, looking in. Only one question remained to answer. At the moment of Marianne Osbourne’s death did she change her mind, did she reach out for that startling yellow and black image, the field of sunflower heads. Did she want to live? Shaw suspected she’d asked her lover, the father of her child, to make sure that this was the end — to press down with all his force, violently, so that she would have no choice but to accept death. Only Marianne knew the truth. Shaw would let the question die with her, so that he wouldn’t be tempted to take it home for Lena.

He’d had his phone on silent for the press conference. There was a picture text from his wife. It showed the sea from the stoop: the mist had risen, so this might be the last warm evening of the summer. An entire Indian summer, perhaps, compressed into one sunset. In press conferences he always took his watch off, laying it face down on the desk: so he could see it was 4.08 p.m. High tide was at 6.06 p.m. He’d be in the sea by then. Lying on his back, floating in the warm water, trying to memorize the precise shade of the colour blue that filled his entire vision.