Once they were moving forward Shaw noticed that Valentine was stood alone, a bottle of beer in one hand, a set of briefing notes in the other. It was a rare sight, but he had a smile on his face, the genuine article. Shaw was reminded of a black and white snap his father used to keep on the sideboard at home: a Christmas party at St James’, DCI Jack Shaw clinking glasses with a young detective with a career in front of him — DI George Valentine.
Valentine came and sat beside him. The journalists were huddled at the other end of the deck, comparing notes, double-checking. Valentine had received a list of the seventy-four people taken off East Hills that hot August evening — a list the press did not have. He scanned down it, then pressed a grubby thumb on one of the names in the ‘P’s. Shaw read the name twice, then took the file to make sure he’d read it right.
FOUR
The sun was setting on The Circle, shadows reaching out from the houses across the parched green, the cedar tree which grew in the midst of the ruins collecting the dusk. Most of the semi-detached bungalows had windows and doors open, trying to capture the night breeze, hoping to let the heat of the day drain out into the dark. The deep blue evening sky was dotted with a single star. Shaw could have spotted the dead woman’s house even if he hadn’t known it: the houses of the dead always looked like that as night fell. The lights blazed: every window lit, and a security light to the side and a SOC lamp out the back, so stark it gilded the distant pine trees on the edge of the wood. It was as if the people left behind needed to keep the darkness away that first night, as if death was going to hang around, looking for fresh pickings. Shaw and Valentine stood looking at No. 5.
‘Hubby at home?’ asked Shaw.
‘Yup. He’s a bit shaky, but he’s OK. Asthma; like I said, stress makes it worse. Worried about the kid, Tilly, so that can’t help. He wanted to join in the search but we said no. Otherwise the scene’s secure,’ he said.
‘And there’s no mistake?’ asked Shaw.
‘Nope. Marianne Osbourne, nee Pritchard, is on our list of the seventy-four people evacuated from East Hills on the day of Shane White’s murder.’ Valentine had got through to the desk at St James’ and double-checked: a DS from Wells had called at No. 5, The Circle, Creake, a week ago with the letter requesting Marianne Osbourne attend St James’ police headquarters, Lynn, to be re-interviewed in connection with the murder inquiry of 1994.
Valentine wasn’t sure what the consequences were of the dead woman’s name being on that list, but he knew what to do. He’d contacted DC Paul Twine on the line at the Metropolitan Police Training College at Hendon. North London. Twine was graduate-entry, smart and well organized, and part of Shaw’s team. He was due back in Lynn overnight. Valentine told him to go straight to force headquarters at St James and organize a mobile incident room to be on the green at The Circle, Creake, by seven the next morning. First job: repeat the door-to-door enquiries, checking for any links with the East Hills murder.
Together, alone, on the grassless green, Shaw and Valentine double-checked they’d covered every base before interviewing Marianne Osbourne’s husband. Each stood on the rim of a six-foot wide imaginary circle, facing each other, but not making eye contact, talking into the warm night air. Valentine’s spot of Marianne Osbourne’s maiden name on the mass screening list had been inspired. Without it they’d have faced the acute embarrassment of discovering the link at St James’ when she failed to show up. They’d have wasted twenty-four hours, maybe more. So Shaw owed his DS a commendation. He took a deep breath, but it didn’t come. ‘So,’ he said instead, ‘what happened?’
‘In ’ninety-four?’ Valentine had got the duty officer in records to read out Marianne Osbourne’s statement on the phone, taken at St James’ on the evening of the East Hills murder. He gave Shaw a smart summary: she was sixteen years old, out of school that year, a trainee hairdresser/beautician with a part-time job selling cosmetics door-to-door. On the statement she’d put the word ‘model’ in the box reserved for occupation. She’d planned to go out to East Hills with a friend on her day off but the friend hadn’t turned up at the quay, so Marianne went alone. She’d been before — again, with the friend. She had a book with her, and she’d only just got into it so she read mostly — on her back, because the previous week she’d done the front. She didn’t notice the lifeguard. She went for a swim early on — about eleven, before the sun was hottest. After that she’d sunbathed until she heard the boat coming back to pick them up. When she looked out to sea she saw the red slick of blood and the floating body, and someone else had screamed at the same moment.
Valentine jiggled something in his trouser pocket. ‘Stevie James, in records, said you’ve only got to see her picture to know the story. Absolute corker, says Stevie, even in a standard black and white police mugshot. Said he’d put his mortgage on her being eighteen. Twine’s first job is to track down the missing girlfriend, ’coz that doesn’t sound right.’
Shaw nodded, watching crows clatter round the ruins, recalling Marianne Osbourne’s cold, pale face.
‘So what’d you reckon?’ asked Shaw, again. ‘What happened on East Hills?’
Valentine nodded several times, as if agreeing with himself before he’d spoken. ‘I reckon she might have gone out on her own but she wasn’t planning on staying on her own. Sixteen — and only
Shaw clasped both hands on top of his head, bracing the muscles in his neck and back. ‘Yeah. Maybe. Maybe not.’ That was one of the most annoying things about George Valentine. He could imagine a crime, then set out to find the evidence which went with it. And ignore the evidence that didn’t go with it.
‘Why go to the beach armed with a knife?’ asked Shaw.
Valentine watched an arrowhead of geese heading towards the coast.
Shaw rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. ‘Unless. . Maybe this isn’t the first time. What if Shane White already had his pictures, but this time he wanted the money? Don’t forget the burglary at his flat. That suggests he’d demanded his money, and that someone knew he had the pictures. So the killer takes the knife to help make the point that White’s not getting his money. Then, like you said, George, we can all do the dots.’
They heard heavy footsteps: cork shoes striding down the path from the dead woman’s house. Dr Justina Kazimeirz, the forces resident pathologist, her white SOC suit fluorescent in the dusk. She’d been on the force nearly a decade after moving to the UK from Poland. She had a reputation for brusqueness bordering on outright rudeness, not helped by the occasional lack of fluency in English.
‘Peter,’ she said, handing Shaw a small forensic evidence bag.
Inside was what looked like an aniseed ball. Slightly larger, perhaps. It was broken open like a tiny egg, weathered — the rubber having perished so that it was marked with a patina of cracks, like the surface of Mars.
‘Is this what killed her?’
‘I think so — the body has only just gone. Tomorrow — ask me tomorrow, for sure. But I guess yes. Lodged in her back teeth — here.’ She pushed her own lip up to reveal the upper left-side molars.
‘One?’
‘Enough, Peter. From the smell there is no doubt.’ She took the bag, unzipped the seal, and held it up to Shaw’s nose. Almonds. The detail he should have lingered over when he first stepped into Marianne Osbourne’s room.
‘Cyanide,’ she said, without any note of distaste. ‘Tom said the tap in the bathroom was dribbling, so I think this woman took one, then she runs to the bed. The poison works fast.’
Valentine stood, lighting a cigarette, trying to relax, sensing one of those rare moments when a crime becomes distinctive, unclassifiable. It was one of the moments that made his life worth living.
‘I still don’t understand,’ said Shaw.
‘A suicide pill,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen such a thing before — a military museum, Crakow. The rubberized exterior is to protect, so it cannot be accident to break it open. They were hidden — sewn into a sock, a lapel.’ She thought about what to say next, struggling with the subtleties of the language. ‘A comfort for these men, that death was at
