A Darker Shade of Blue

SNOW, SNOW, SNOW

Snow drifted, soft, against his face.

Earlier, the wind had whipped each succeeding fall into a virtual blizzard, slicing into him as he stood, barely sheltered, on the edge of the fen.

Now it was this: the snow of fairy tales and dreams.

A pair of swans floated, uncaring, along the shuffled surface of the water, at home in the gathering white.

Malkin checked his watch and continued to stand.

Fifteen minutes later, Fraser’s SUV appeared on the raised strip of road, headlights pale through the mist of falling snow.

Malkin waited until, indicator blinking, the vehicle slowed into the left-hand turn that would take it along a narrow, barely made-up lane to where the new house was in the process of construction, further along the fen.

The main structure was already in place: varying shades of yellow brick at each end and to the rear, the front partly clad in as yet untreated wood. The frames for the large windows that would dominate the upper floor had recently been set. No glass as yet. Ladders leaned against scaffolding, secured with rope. A bucket half-filled and frozen fast. Tarpaulins that flapped in each catch of wind.

Fastidious, Fraser changed soft leather shoes for green Wellingtons and pulled on his sheepskin coat. Lifting back the mesh gates that guarded the site, he moved inside, and, after a few moments, disappeared into the building’s shell.

Snow continued to fall.

Malkin stood no more than forty metres away, all but invisible against the washed-out sky, the shrouded earth.

Cautious, Fraser climbed the ladder to the upper floor and stared out. He’d expected the architect to be already at the site, not limping in late with some excuse about the weather. A bit of snow. February. What else did he expect?

Treading with care across the boards, Fraser eased aside a length of tarpaulin and stepped inside what would be the main room, running almost the entire length of the floor. Views right out across open land, unimpeded as far as the horizon. But not today. He failed to hear Malkin’s foot on the ladder’s bottom rung.

Angry, Fraser pushed back his cuff and double-checked his watch. Damned architect!

Hearing Malkin’s footsteps now, he turned. ‘What sort of time d’you call this?’

Malkin stepped through the space of the open doorway and out of the snow.

‘Who the hell…?’ Fraser began, words fading from his lips.

Malkin smiled.

‘Remember Sharon Peters?’ he said.

For an instant, Fraser saw a tousle-haired girl of eight, playing catch ball up against the wall as she waited for her bus; her face, at the last moment, widening in a scream.

‘You do remember,’ Malkin said, ‘don’t you?’

The pistol was already in his hand.

‘Don’t you?’

Ashen, Fraser stumbled back, began to plead.

For jobs like this Malkin favoured a 9mm Glock 17. Light, plastic, readily disposable. Two shots were usually enough.

Or sometimes one.

At the sound, a solitary crow rose, shaking snowflakes from its wings, and began to circle round.

Blood was beginning to leak, already, from the back of Fraser’s head, staining the untreated wood a dull reddish-brown. Snow swirled into Malkin’s face as he descended the ladder, and with a quick shake of his head he blinked it away.

The train was no more than a third full and he had a table to himself, plenty of room to spread the paper and read. Every once in a while, he looked out at the passing fields, speckled as they were with snow. Hedgerows and rooftops gleamed white in the fresh spring sun.

He read again the account, all too familiar, of a prison suicide: a nineteen-year-old who had hanged himself in his cell. According to his family, the youth had been systematically beaten and bullied during the weeks leading up to his death, and prison staff had turned a blind eye.

‘My son,’ the mother was reported as saying, ‘made complaint after complaint to the governor and the prison officer in charge of his wing, and they did nothing. Nothing. And now they’re as guilty of his death as if they’d knotted the sheet themselves and kicked away the chair.’

Poetic, Malkin thought. A good turn of phrase. He tore the page from the newspaper, folded it neatly once and once again and slipped it into his wallet. One for a rainy day.

When the train pulled into the station, he left the remainder of the newspaper on the seat, pulled on his coat, and walked the length of the platform to the exit, taking his time.

The first thing he saw, stepping into the broad concourse, was a police officer in helmet and body armour, submachine gun held at an angle across his chest, and he was glad that he’d disposed of the Glock before boarding the train. Not that any of this was for him.

Two other officers, similarly armed, stood just outside the station entrance, at the head of the pavement steps. Anti-terrorism, Malkin thought, it had to be. A suspect being brought in that day for trial. Some poor bastard Muslim who’d made the mistake of visiting Afghanistan, or maybe just sent money to the wrong cause. Most likely now he’d be slammed up for a couple of years in Belmarsh or some other top-security hole, then released without charge.

But that wasn’t why Malkin was here.

He crossed close to a Transit holding as many as ten officers in reserve and descended the cobbled slip road leading to the canal. A short distance along, the high glass and polished stone of the new courthouse was guarded by yet more police.

All it needed, Malkin thought, was a helicopter circling overhead.

He showed his ID and explained his reasons for entry. The case he was interested in was due to conclude today.

A little over two years before, Alan Silver had been woken in the night by the sound of intruders; he had armed himself with the licensed shotgun that he kept close by the bed, gone to the head of the stairs and emptied both barrels into the two youths he surprised below. One took superficial wounds to the arm and neck and was able to turn and run; the other was thrown backwards on to the tiles of the broad hallway, bleeding out, a hole torn in his chest.

Silver phoned emergency services, ambulance and police, but by the time the paramedics arrived, less than ten minutes later, it was too late. Wayne Michaels, seventeen, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Alan Silver — a sometime song-and-dance man and minor celebrity — was both hero and villain. The more righteous of the media spoke of unnecessary force and questioned the rights of any civilians to own firearms at all, while others championed him as a hero. Right-of-centre politicians strutted in reflected glory, crowing about the right of every Englishman to protect house and home, his proverbial castle.

When Silver, described in court as a popular entertainer, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, there was uproar. ‘Is this all a young man’s life is worth?’ demanded the Independent. ‘Jailed for doing what was right!’ denounced the Mail.

Outside the court that day, Wayne Michaels’ father, Earl, sweaty, clinging to his dignity in an ill-fitting suit, was asked how he felt about the verdict. ‘My son is dead,’ he said. ‘Now let justice take its course.’

More recently, Silver’s lawyers had earned the right to appeal; the sentence, they said, was punitive and over-severe. Punitive, Malkin remembered thinking: isn’t that supposed to be the point?

Riding on the back of a popular hysteria about the rising rate of crime they had helped to create, the tabloid press rejoiced in seeing their circulations soar, inviting their readers to text or email in support of the campaign Free Silver Now!

‘If this government,’ proclaimed a Tory peer in the Lords, ‘and this Home Secretary, have not totally lost touch with the people they are supposed to represent, they should act immediately and ensure that the sentence in this case be made to better reflect the nation’s mood.’

Malkin settled into the back of the public gallery in time for the verdict: after due deliberation, and having reconsidered both his previously untarnished reputation and his unstinting work for charity, the judge reduced Alan Silver’s sentence to eighteen months. Taking into account the time he had spent on remand awaiting trial, this meant Silver had little more than two months to serve.

Channel Five were rumoured to have offered him a six-figure contract to host a weekly chat show; a long-forgotten recording of ‘Mama Liked the Roses’, a sentimental country ballad initially made popular by Elvis Presley, had been reissued and was currently number seven in the charts.

As he was led out to the waiting Securicor van, Alan Silver, grey hair trimmed short and wearing his sixty-three years well, was, none too surprisingly, smiling.

Malkin found Michaels’ father staring into the water of the canal, smoking a cigarette.

‘You still think justice should be allowed to take its course?’ Malkin said.

‘Do I fuck!’

Earlier that morning, Will Grayson and his four-year-old son, Jake, had been building a snowman at the back of the house: black stones for the eyes, a carrot for a nose, one of Will’s old caps, the one he’d worn when he was on the police bowling team, snug on the snowman’s head.

Inside, Will could see his wife, Lorraine, through the kitchen window, moving back and forth behind the glass. Pancakes, he wouldn’t have minded betting. Lorraine liked to make pancakes for breakfast those mornings he didn’t have to go in to work; Lorraine well into her eighth month and on maternity leave, the size of her such that their second kid must be almost ready to pop. Baby might come early, the midwife had said.

As Will crouched down and added a few finishing touches to their snowman, Jake sneaked round behind him and caught him with a snowball from close range. Will barely heard the phone through the boy’s shrieks of laughter; didn’t react until he saw Lorraine waving through the window, her knuckles banging on the pane.

Will touched her belly gently with the palm of his hand as he passed. Good luck.

‘Hello?’ he said, picking up the phone. ‘This is Grayson.’

The change in his face told Lorraine all she needed to know and quickly she set to making a flask of coffee; a morning like this, more snow forecast, he would need something to keep out the cold.

Will laced up his boots, pulled on a fleece, took a weatherproof coat from the cupboard beneath the stairs; the first pancake was ready and he ate it with a smudge of maple syrup, licking his fingers before lifting his son into the air and swinging him round, kissing him, then setting him down.

Lorraine leaned forward and hugged him at the door. ‘Be careful when you’re driving home. In case it freezes over.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He kissed her eyes and mouth. ‘And call me if anything, you know, happens.’

She laughed. ‘Go get the bad guys, okay?’

When the car failed to start first time, Will cursed, fearing the worst, but then the engine caught and turned and he was on his way, snaking tyre tracks through a film of fallen snow.

Some thirty minutes and two wrong turnings later, he pulled over into a farm gateway and unfolded the map. Out there in the middle of the fens, a day like this, everything looked the damned same.

It was another ten minutes before he finally arrived, wheels cracking the ice, and slid to a halt behind Helen Walker’s blue VW, last in line behind the three police vehicles parked alongside the fen. There was an ambulance further back, closer to the road.

Helen Walker: how had she got there before him?

‘Afternoon, Will,’ she called sarcastically, leaning over the scaffolding on the upper level of the unfinished house. ‘Good of you to join us.’

Will shot her a finger and began making his way up the ladder.

He and Helen had worked together the best part of three years now, Will, as detective inspector, enjoying the higher rank, but, most of the time, that wasn’t how it worked. It was more as if they were partners, sometimes one would lead, sometimes the other.

‘How’s Lorraine?’ Helen’s first question when he stepped off on to the boards.

‘She’s fine.’

‘The baby?’

‘Kicking for England.’

She laughed at the grin on his face.

‘What have we got?’ Will asked.

Helen stepped aside.

The dead man lay on his back, one arm flung out, the other close to his side, legs splayed. Eyes opened wide. A dark hole at the centre of his forehead. The blood that had pooled out from the exit wound seemed to have frozen fast.

‘Someone found him like this?’

‘Kids. Playing around.’

Will crouched low then stood up straight. ‘We know who he is?’

‘Arthur Fraser.’

‘How do we know that?’

‘Wallet. Inside pocket.’

‘Not robbery then?’

‘Not robbery.’

‘Any idea what he was doing here?’

‘Checking on his new house, apparently. The architect’s name’s on the board below. I gave him a call. He was with a client the other side of Cambridge.’ Helen took a quick look at her watch. ‘Should be here, another thirty minutes or so.’

Will turned back towards the body. ‘He come from round here? Fraser?’

‘Not really. Address the other side of Coventry.’

‘What’s he doing having a house built here?’

‘I asked the architect that. Making a new start, apparently.’

‘Not any more.’

Malkin and Earl Michaels sat at one of a cluster of wooden tables out front of a canal-side pub. None of the other tables was occupied. The snow had held off but there was a wind, driving in from the north-west, though neither man seemed bothered by the cold. Both were drinking blended Scotch, doubles; Malkin nursing his second, Michaels on his third or fourth.

‘How much,’ Michaels asked, ‘always assuming I wanted to go ahead, how much is this going to cost?’

When Malkin told him, he had to ask a second time.

‘That friggin’ much?’

‘That much.’

‘Then you can forget it.’

‘Okay.’ Downing the rest of his drink in one, Malkin got to his feet.

‘No. Hey, hey. Wait a minute. Wait up.’

‘Look,’ Malkin said, ‘no way I want to push you where you don’t want to go.’

‘Come on, it’s not that. You know it’s not that. Nobody wants that

… Nobody wants it more than me. That bastard. I’d like to get hold of that fucking shotgun of his and let him have it myself.’

‘And end up inside doing fifteen to life.’

‘I know, I know.’ Michaels shook his head. He was a heavy man and the weight sat ill upon him, his body lumpen, his face jowly and red.

Malkin sat back down.

‘That sort of money,’ Michaels said. ‘I’d be lucky to earn that in a year. A good year at that.’

Malkin shrugged. ‘You want a job well done…’

‘Listen.’ Leaning in, Michaels took hold of Malkin’s sleeve. ‘I could go down some pub in the Meadows, ask around. Time it takes to have a good shit, there’d be someone willing to do it for a couple of hundred quid.’

‘Yes,’ Malkin said. ‘And ten days after that the police would have him banged up inside and he’d give you up first chance he got. Listen to him, you’d been the one talked him into it, forced him more or less, did everything except pull the trigger.’

Michaels knew he was right.

‘You want another?’ he said, eyeing his empty glass.

Malkin shook his head. ‘Let’s get this sorted first.’

The money,’ Michaels said, ‘I don’t see how…’

‘Borrow it,’ Malkin said. ‘Building society. The bank. Tell them you want to extend. I don’t know. Add on a conservatory. Put in a loft.’

‘You make it sound easy.’

‘It is if you want it to be.’

For several minutes neither man spoke. Whoever had been the centre of all the police attention at the court had been taken in under close guard and now, indeed, there was a helicopter making slow small circles above their heads.

‘That bastard Silver,’ Michaels said. ‘He’s going to make a fucking fortune out of this.’

‘Yes.’

‘Smelling of fucking roses won’t be in it.’

‘That’s true.’

‘All right, all right. But listen, I’m going to need a few days. The cash, you know?’

Malkin laid a hand on his arm. ‘That’s okay. Within reason, take all the time you need. Silver’s not going anywhere quite yet. Meantime, I’ll ask around, make a few plans.’

‘We’ve got a deal, then?’

The skin around Malkin’s grey eyes creased into a smile. ‘We’ve got a deal.’

What was it they said about converts? They were always the strictest adherents to the faith? Since he’d turned away from a thirty-a-day habit two years ago, Will had been that way about smoking. Just about the only thing he found hard to take about Helen was the way her breath smelled when she’d come in from outside, sneaking a cigarette break at the rear of the building. Not so long back he’d given her a tube of extra-strong mints and she’d handed them back, saying they were bad for her teeth.

It was the day after Fraser’s body had been found.

Careful examination of the scene had found little in the way of forensic evidence; no stray hairs or fingerprints, no snatches of fabric snagged by chance on ladder or doorway. A series of footprints, fading in the slow-melting snow, had been traced across two broad fields; at the furthest point, close in against the hedge, there were tyre tracks, faint but clear. A Ford Mondeo with similar patterned tyres, stolen in Peterborough the day previously, was discovered in the car park at Ely station. Whoever had killed Fraser could have had another car waiting or have caught a train. South to Cambridge and London; east towards Norwich, west to Nottingham and beyond.

It was an open book.

‘Fraser,’ Will said. ‘I’ve been doing some checking. Fifty-two years old. Company director. Divorced five years ago. Two kids, both grown up. Firm he was running went under. Picked himself up since then, financially at least, but it seems to have been pretty bad at the time.’

‘That was when the wife left him?’

‘How d’you know she was the one who left?’

Helen touched her fingertips to her temple. ‘Female intuition.’

‘Bollocks!’

‘Excuse me, is that a technical term?’

‘Definitely. And you’re right, she walked away. What with that and the business thing, Fraser seems to have fallen apart for a while, started drinking heavily. Two charges of driving with undue care, another for driving when over the limit. Just under three years ago he lost control behind the wheel, went up on to the kerb and hit this eight-year-old. A girl.’

Pain jolted across Helen’s face. ‘She was…’

Will nodded. ‘She was killed. Not outright. Hung on in hospital for five days more.’

‘What happened to Fraser?’

‘Fined six thousand pounds, banned from driving for eighteen months…’

‘Eighteen months?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And that was it?’

‘Two years inside.’

‘Of which he served half.’

Will nodded. ‘Two-thirds of that in an open prison with passes most weekends.’

‘That’s justice?’

Will shook his head. ‘Not so’s you’d notice.’

Helen drew breath. ‘What time’s the post-mortem?’

‘An hour from now?’

She nodded. ‘My car or yours?’

Malkin showed the appropriate credit card and booked a room at the Holiday Inn under an assumed name. It was a city he knew, though not well, and it was doubtful that anyone there knew him. Average height, average build, he was blessed with one of those faces that were instantly forgettable, save possibly for the eyes.

At the central library he read through the coverage of Silver’s appeal and then the reporting of the original shooting and trial. Aside from Silver’s own faded celebrity, much was made of the delinquent lifestyle of Wayne Michaels and his companion that evening, Jermaine Royal. Both young men had been in trouble with the police since their early teens; both had been excluded, at various times, from school. An accident, one compassionate reporter said of Wayne Michaels, just waiting to happen.

Malkin found a cut-and-paste biography on the shelves. The Fall and Fall of Alan Silver. He took it to one of the tables on the upper floor to read; just himself and a bunch of students beavering away at their laptops, listening to their iPods through headphones.

Silver’s mother had been a chorus girl, his father a third-rate comedian in music hall and a pantomime dame; Alan himself first appeared on stage at the age of six, learning to be his father’s stooge. A photograph showed him in a sailor suit, holding a silver whistle. By the age of seventeen he was doing a summer season at Scarborough, complete with straw hat and cane, Yorkshire’s answer to Fred Astaire. There were spots on popular radio shows, Variety Bandbox and Educating Archie; even some early television, Cafe Continental with Helene Cordet.

Three marriages, but none of them stuck; no children, apparently. A veiled suggestion that he might be gay. In the eighties, he had something of a comeback in the theatre, playing a failed music hall performer in a revival of The Entertainer, the part originally played by Laurence Olivier. Asked how he did it, Silver replied, ‘I just close my eyes and think of my old man.’

Soon after this he was featured on This is Your Lift and had some brief success with ‘Mama Liked the Roses’. Somehow he kept working into his sixties, mostly doing pantomime, trotting out his father’s old routines at the likes of Mansfield and Hunstanton.

Oh, no, it isn’t!

Oh, yes, it is!

He bought an old farmhouse between Newark and Nottingham. Retired, more or less.

Malkin phoned Michaels that evening, wanting to make sure he was still on board; asked a few questions about Wayne’s friends. Something Wayne’s pal, Jermaine, had claimed at the trial, that they’d been out to Silver’s place before and he’d told them come back any time. Did Michaels think there was any truth in that?

Michaels had no bloody idea.

‘Besides,’ Michaels said, ‘what difference if there was?’

None, Malkin told him. None at all.

‘Too bloody right,’ Michaels said. ‘Dead is fucking dead.’

The phone rang and before Will could reach it, Helen had snatched it up. Coat buttoned up against the cold, she had just come in from outside.

‘Lorraine,’ she said, passing the phone swiftly across.

Will’s throat went dry and his stomach performed a double somersault, but all his wife wanted was to remind him to pick up an extra pint of milk on his way home if possible. Will assured her he’d do what he could.

‘No news?’ Helen asked, once he’d set down the phone.

‘No news.’

‘Well, I’ve got something.’

‘You’re not pregnant, too?’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

Will stood back and looked her over. ‘You want to get pregnant?’

‘You’re offering?’

He grinned. It was a good grin, took maybe ten years off his age and he knew it. ‘Not today.’

‘Damn!’ Helen smiled back. She liked flirting with him; it was something they did. Somehow it helped them along; kept them, Helen sometimes thought, from ever getting close to the real thing.

‘You want to tell me your news?’ Will said.

‘You know that expanse of water the other side of Ely? Close to the railway line?’

‘I think so.’

‘These kids were out there the day Fraser was killed. Late morning. They’d taken a makeshift toboggan, thinking the water might have frozen over, but it hadn’t. Just a little at the edges maybe, but that’s all. Not worth taking any risks; near the centre it’s pretty deep.’

Will nodded, waiting, perched on the edge of a desk. She’d get to it in her own time.

‘While they were there, the Nottingham train went through. They didn’t know it was that, but I’ve checked. One of the boys swears he saw someone throwing an object from the window between the carriages. Just for a moment, he thought it looked like a gun.’

‘How old? This kid, how old is he?’

‘Nine? Ten?’

‘You think he’s any way reliable?’

‘According to his mother, he’s not the kind to make things up.’

‘Why’s he only come forward now?’

‘Mentioned it to his mum at the time. She didn’t think anything of it till she saw something about the investigation on the local news.’

‘You know what the boss is going to say. Divers don’t come cheap.’

‘Not even if they’re our divers?’

‘Not even then.’

‘Think you can persuade him?’

‘What else have we got?’

‘So far? Diddly-squat.’

‘Why don’t I tell him that?’

‘Instant Tanning’ read the sign in the window. ‘Manicure, Pedicure’ in similar lettering below. ‘Top Notch Beauty Salon’ above the door. Lisa was sitting on the step outside, pink tunic, sandals, tights, smoking a cigarette.

Malkin crossed towards her and as he came close she glanced up and then away.

‘Busy?’ Malkin said.

She looked at him through an arc of smoke. ‘Takin’ the piss, right?’

By appearance she was a mixture of African-Caribbean and Chinese, but her accent was East Midlands through and through, Notts rather than Derby.

‘Lisa?’

‘Yeah?’

Malkin squatted low on his haunches, face close to hers. ‘You used to know Wayne Michaels.’

‘So what if I did?’

‘I’m sorry. About what happened.’

‘Yeah, well. Been and gone now, i’n’t it?’

‘You’ve moved on.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Good.’

Something about his voice made her feel ill at ease. ‘Look, this place.’ She looked up at the sign. ‘It’s what it says it is, you know. Not one of them massage parlours, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Not at all. It’s just, if you’ve got the time, I thought we could talk a bit about Wayne? Maybe his mate, Jermaine? You were friendly with both of them, weren’t you?’

Lisa narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re not the police, are you?’

‘Perish the thought.’

‘Not some reporter?’

Malkin shook his head. ‘I used to know Wayne’s father a little, that’s what it is.’

‘Him told you ’bout me, I s’pose, were it?’

‘That’s right.’

Lisa lit a new cigarette from the butt of the last. ‘Got a good twenty minutes till my next, why not?’

There was a pair of divers, borrowed for the occasion from the Lincolnshire force, and they struck lucky within the first hour. Will grateful he could assure his boss there’d be no need for overtime. The weapon was a Glock 17, its bulky stock immediately recognisable. Any serial numbers had, of course, been removed. If they begged and pleaded with the technicians, another twenty-four hours should tell them if it was the gun responsible for Arthur Fraser’s death.

Will and Helen were both parked up at the side of the road, a lay-by off the A10, the Ely to Cambridge road. They were sitting in Will’s car, a faint mist beginning to steam up the insides of the windows.

‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ Will said.

‘Most probably.’ A hint of a smile on Helen’s face.

‘This shooting. Nothing to suggest any kind of fight or quarrel. Nothing personal. Every sign of careful planning: preparation. A single shot to the head with a weapon that’s almost certainly clean. A professional job. It has to be.’

‘Someone hired to make a hit on Fraser?’

‘It looks that way.’

‘Then you have to ask why.’

‘And there’s only one answer,’Will said. ‘Sharon Peters.’

Helen nodded. ‘The family, the parents, we should go and talk to them?’

‘Let’s wait,’ Will said. ‘Till tomorrow. Make sure the ballistics match up.’

‘Okay.’

It was warm inside the car. Their arms close but not touching. An articulated lorry went past close enough to rock them in its slipstream. Still neither one of them made a move to go.

Finally, it was Helen who looked at her watch. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back?’

‘If anything had happened, Lorraine would have called on my mobile.’

‘Even so.’

He left her leaning against the roof of her VW, smoking a cigarette.

When Will arrived home, Lorraine was wandering from room to room, Cowboy Junkies on the stereo, singing quietly along. ‘A Common Disaster’ playing over and over, the track programmed to repeat. To Will, it wasn’t a good omen.

‘Lol?’

‘Huh?’

‘Can we change this?’

‘Change?’

‘The music. Can we…?’

‘I like it.’

Okay, Will thought, go with the flow.

A good few years back, when he and Lorraine had first started going together, she would fetch her little stash from where she kept it upstairs in the bedroom — her dowry, as she called it — and roll them both a joint. Now that he no longer smoked cigarettes and, Will supposed, with this latest promotion, if she ever suggested it, he passed.

Lorraine, he was sure, still partook from time to time, the sweet smell lingering in the corners of the house and in her hair. Maybe, looking at her slight, slow sway, she was stoned right now.

How would that be for the baby, he wondered, if it were so?

Would it make him a cool kid or slightly crazy?

There were some cans of beer in the fridge and he took one and went into the living room and switched on the TV. Lorraine had been vague about dinner, but he thought she was entitled, hormones all over the place like they were. Later he’d phone for a curry or, better still, a Chinese. It was ages since they’d eaten Chinese.

They were in bed before ten thirty, Lorraine set to read a chapter or so of whatever book she had on the go, Will rolling away from her and on to his side, arm raised to shield his eyes from the light.

He must have fallen asleep straight away, because the next thing he knew it was pitch dark and the bed beside him was empty. Lorraine was sitting on the toilet with her nightgown pulled high across her thighs.

‘You all right?’ Anxiety breaking in his voice.

‘Yes. Yes, just woke with this pain.’ She indicated low in her abdomen.

‘But you’re okay? I mean, nothing’s happened?’

‘Nothing’s happened.’

When he bent to kiss her forehead it was damp and seared with sweat. ‘Why don’t you let me get you something? A drink of water? Tea? How about some peppermint tea?’

‘Yes. Peppermint tea. That would be nice.’

He kissed her chastely on the lips and went downstairs.

Back in bed, he found it near impossible to get back to sleep, dozed fitfully and got up finally at five.

Jake was fast off, thumb in his mouth, surrounded by his favourite toys.

Will made coffee and toast and sat at the kitchen table staring out, willing it to get light. At six thirty he gave in and dialled Helen’s number. She answered on the second ring.

‘Not asleep then?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Yesterday,’ Will said, ‘you think I was being overcautious?’

‘In the car?’

‘What I said in the car, yes. About waiting to see if we had a match.’

‘You don’t think there’s any doubt?’

‘Has to be some. But, shit, not really, no.’

‘You want to go over there now? Sharon Peters’ parents?’

‘What do you reckon? A couple of hours’ drive? More?’

‘Coventry? This time of the morning maybe less.’

‘I’ll meet you by the Travelodge on the A14. This side of the turn-off for Hemingford Grey.’

‘It’s a deal.’ Will could hear the excitement rising in her voice.

The traffic moving into and out of the city was heavy and it was close to nine before they arrived at the house, a twenties semi-detached in a quiet street with trees, leafless still, at frequent intervals. Cars parked either side.

There was a van immediately outside the house with decorating paraphernalia in the rear, partly covered by a paint-splodged sheet. The man who came to the door was wearing off-white dungarees, speckled red, blue and green.

‘Mr Peters?’

He looked Will and Helen up and down, as if slowly making up his mind. Then he stepped back and held the door wide. ‘You’d best come in. Don’t want everyone knowing our business up and down the street.’

One wall of the room into which he led them was a virtual shrine to Sharon when she’d been alive, photographs almost floor to ceiling.

‘The wife’s out,’ Peters said. ‘Dropping off our other girl at school. Usually goes and does a bit of shopping after that.’

Our other girl, Will was thinking. Of course, to them she’s still alive.

‘You know why we’re here?’ Helen asked.

‘Something to do with that bastard getting shot, I imagine.’

‘You know about it, then?’

‘Not at first, no. One of neighbours come round and told us. Saw it, like, on TV.’

‘And you didn’t know anything about it till then?’

‘Course not, what d’you think?’

‘To be frank, Mr Peters,’ Will said, ‘we think someone paid to have Fraser killed.’

‘You reckon?’ Peters laughed. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what, if they’d come round here asking for a few quid toward it, I’d have shelled out double-quick. What he did to our Sharon, shooting’s too good for him.’ Looking at Will, he narrowed his eyes. ‘Quick was it?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘More’s the sodding pity.’

They talked to him for three-quarters of an hour, pushing and prodding, back and forth over the same ground, but if he had anything to give away, it never showed.

Just as they were on the point of leaving, a key turned in the front door and Mrs Peters stepped through into the hall, shopping bags in both hands. One look at her husband, another at Will and Helen and the bags dropped to the floor. ‘Oh Christ, they know, don’t they? They bloody know.’

Will contacted the local police station and arranged for an interview room to be placed at their disposal. Donald and Lydia Peters were questioned separately and together, always with a lawyer present. After her initial outburst, Lydia would say nothing; Donald, brazening it out, would not say a great deal more. Without an admission, without tangible evidence — letters, emails, recordings of phone calls — their involvement in Fraser’s murder would be difficult to prove. All they had was the wife’s slip of the tongue. They know, dont they? In a court of law, it could have meant anything.

Their one chance was a court order to examine the Peterses’ bank records, turn their finances inside out. If they had, indeed, paid to have Fraser killed, the money would have had to have come from somewhere. Unless they’d been especially careful. Unless it had come from other sources. Family. Friends.

Will knew full well that if he went to the Crown Prosecution Service with what they had now, they’d laugh in his face.

It had taken a little time for Malkin to gain Lisa’s confidence enough for her to take him to see Jermaine. Jermaine having served his time for attempted burglary and been released into the care of his probation officer, one of the conditions that he move away from where he’d been living, steer clear of his former friends. Where Lisa took Malkin was no more than ten miles away, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Jermaine’s gran’s.

Jermaine and Malkin sat in the small front room, the parlour his gran had called it, Lisa and the old lady in the other room, watching TV.

Jermaine was fidgeting constantly, never still.

‘What you said in court,’ Malkin asked, ‘about having been to Silver’s place before, was that true?’

‘Course it was true. No one fuckin’ believed it, though, did they?’

‘You’d both been there? You and Wayne?’

‘Yeah. What’s this all about, anyway? What’s it matter now?’

‘Why were you there, Jermaine?’

‘What d’you mean, why?’

‘I mean Alan Silver’s a has-been in his sixties and you’re what? Seventeen. I wouldn’t have thought you’d got a lot to talk about, a lot of common ground.’

Jermaine’s head swung from side to side. ‘He was all right, you know, not stuck up, not tight. Plenty to drink, yeah? Southern Comfort, that’s what he liked.’

‘And money? He gave you money?’

Now Jermaine was staring at the floor, not wanting to look Malkin in the eye.

‘He gave you money?’ Malkin said again.

‘He gave Wayne money.’ Jermaine’s voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Why did he give Wayne money, Jermaine? Why did he give-’

‘For sucking his cock,’ Jermaine suddenly shouted. ‘Why d’you think?’

Just for an instant, Malkin closed his eyes. ‘And that’s why you went back?’ he said.

‘No. We went back to rip him off, didn’t we? Fucking queer!’

Malkin leaned, almost imperceptibly, forward. ‘Silver’s house,’ he said. ‘If I gave you some paper, paper and a pencil, d’you think you could draw me some kind of plan of the inside?’

‘Look,’ Will called across the office. ‘Take a look at this.’

Helen pushed aside what she was doing and made her way to where Will was sitting at the computer.

‘There, you see. This has been nagging at me and there it is. Two years ago. Lincoln. This man Royston Davies. Nightclub bouncer. Found dead in the back of a taxi. Single bullet through the head. 9mm.’

‘All right,’ Helen said. ‘I see the connection.’

‘Just wait. There’s more.’ Will scrolled down the page. ‘See. That was February. The August before there was a fracas outside the club where Davies was working. Nineteen-year-old youth was struck with something hard enough to put him into hospital. Bottle, baseball bat. Went into a coma and never came out of it.’ Will closed the file. ‘I rang someone I know at Lincoln this morning. Seems Davies was brought in for questioning, quite a few witnesses pointing the finger, but they never got enough to make a case.’

‘Wait, wait. Wait a minute.’ Helen held both hands in front of her, palms out, as if to ward off the idea. ‘What you’re suggesting, unless I’ve got this wrong, what you’re saying, there’s someone out there, some professional assassin, some hitman, specialising in taking out people who’ve killed and got away with it. Is that it?’

‘That’s it exactly.’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Why? Look at it, look at the evidence.’

‘Will, there is no evidence. Not of what you’re saying.’

‘What is it then?’

‘Coincidence.’

‘And if I could show otherwise?’

‘How?’

‘If these weren’t the only two instances, would you believe me then?’

‘You telling me there are more?’

‘I don’t know yet. But I can find out.’

Helen laughed and pushed a hand back through her hair. ‘Tell you what, Will, when you do, let me know.’

He watched her walk, still laughing, back across the room.

Alan Silver’s house was pitched between Colston Bassett and Harby, on the western edge of the Vale of Belvoir. Nice country. Hunting country, when the time was right.

Malkin had driven past it several times, learning the lie of the land. Earlier that evening, the light fading, he had parked close by the canal and made his way across the fields. Now he was there again, close to midnight, tracing a path back between the trees.

Cold, he thought, pausing at a field end to glance up at the sky. Cold enough for snow.

At just about the time Malkin had made his first visit to Alan Silver’s house, Lorraine had been sitting with her feet up on the settee, watching television, one of those chat shows Will abhorred. Richard amp; Judy? Richard amp; Jane?

He was in the other room, leafing through the paper, when she called him.

‘Look. That man who shot the boy trying to burgle him. The one there was all the fuss about, remember?’

Will remembered.

‘He’s on now.’

As Will came into the room a black-and-white image of a young Alan Silver was on the screen. White suit, straw hat and cane.

‘My God!’ said Silver in mock surprise. ‘Was that me? I’d never have known.’

‘But that was how you started?’ said Richard. ‘A bit of a song-and-dance man.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘You don’t suppose,’ said Jane or Judy, ‘you could still do a few steps for us now?’

Sprightly for a man of his years, Silver sprang to his feet and did a little tap dance there and then. Jane or Judy marvelled and the studio audience broke into spontaneous applause.

‘Not bad for sixty-odd,’ Lorraine said.

Will said something non-committal and walked back out of the room.

Alan Silver plumped up his pillows and reached for the glass of water he kept beside the bed. He was tired; his legs ached. The show had gone well, though, he thought. Sparkled, that’s what he’d done. Sparkled. Still smiling, he switched out the bedside light. It wouldn’t take him long to get to sleep tonight.

A short while later he was wide awake.

Something had woken him but what?

A dream? A noise on the stairs?

Imagination, surely?

But no, there it was again.

Silver felt his skin turn cold.

It couldn’t be happening twice.

Carefully, he eased back the heavy covers and rolling on to his stomach, reached beneath the bed.

It wasn’t there. The bloody thing wasn’t there.

The bedroom door swung open and Silver, turning clumsily, jabbed on the light.

‘Looking for something?’ Malkin said, levelling the shotgun towards the centre of the bed.