Death

TWENTY-EIGHT

The village of Creake was drenched in summer holiday sunshine, the shadows crowding back into the woods which encircled the Norfolk-stone cottages. Shaw swung the Porsche past a line of terraced houses and slowed to negotiate the tricky T-junction by the church with its circular tower in flint, and a graveyard spilling over a low wall. The local pub — The Ostrich — was set back, a long medieval range painted white, with black beams and window casements in eggshell blue. Ahead of them they watched a squad car carrying Tilly Osbourne, going up to The Circle to give her statement at the incident room.

Valentine let his eyes slide over the scene outside the pub — half a dozen picnic tables crowded with families, and a garden to the side, packed with lunchtime tourists. He thought, just for a moment, of suggesting an early lunch, brunch, a late coffee break, whatever. But he knew Shaw better than that. Lunch would be c/o the St James’ mobile canteen on the green up at The Circle: a cheese salad, fizzy water.

The brief high Valentine had enjoyed the night before, a result of Jan’s company, and their clandestine visit to the museum, had dissipated. A day of routine enquiries loomed. They’d be down to Morston to check out Holtby’s flat, or back to The Ark for his autopsy, or conducting endless local interviews in a no-doubt doomed attempt to find the location of the elusive wartime dugout and its lethal cyanide pills. Valentine experienced a fleeting moment of despair, realizing how much of his life he spent wishing he was somewhere else. And his early morning interview with the chief constable overshadowed the day, like a bad dream. In contrast, another image didn’t help — DCI Jack Shaw, Peter’s father, walking across a bar with a pint in each hand, sunlight catching the beer in the glasses.

Shaw stopped the car, pulling over sharply into a lane beside a Londis supermarket. ‘Come on, George. I’ll buy you a drink.’ He’d been planning to visit the incident room, brief the team, but his head wasn’t clear. There was a pattern here now — putting aside the original murder of 1994 they had three deaths, a single motive, a rationale. They had a prime suspect — Joe Osbourne — and they had his DNA sample at the lab. Tilly’s belief that her father was innocent sounded to Shaw like wishful thinking. She’d lost her mother — what else did she have to believe in? He wanted to pause, take stock; make sure they were on firm ground before taking the next step.

Valentine hauled himself out of the Porsche, telling himself not to feel good about this; that Shaw was probably planning a dressing down for his DS, and didn’t want to do it up at the incident room.

The bar of The Ostrich was full of dining tables, crowded with plates of scallops, fish in beer batter, and oysters. Shaw bought Valentine a pint of Norfolk Wherry and a fizzy water for himself, with ice and lemon. Then he led the way down a whitewashed corridor and out into the garden.

Shaw made a quick call to St James’ and got through to the control room. The force’s own helicopter was on holiday traffic watch until noon, then back on at five. They could have it for two hours and the thermal-imaging gear was on board. Summer leaf cover markedly reduced the chances of getting a clear image, but it didn’t make it impossible. The Serious Crime Unit would have to make an internal payment to Road Traffic for use of the helicopter — nearly?4,000. So they had a deal.

They watched a peacock strutting its stuff in the beer garden. Shaw had bought nuts and he put three of them out on the table top, spilling the rest in a pile so that they could both pick at them. ‘Three witnesses to East Hills: Marianne Osbourne, Arthur Patch and Paul Holtby.’

Valentine took a nut from the pile.

‘Patch died first, probably,’ said Shaw. ‘Then Osbourne, then Holtby.’ He filled Valentine in on what he’d learnt from Lena’s map of the tides and winds of the North Norfolk coast. So it made sense, especially if their killer was either an inexperienced swimmer, or had panicked, or more likely still, was struggling with a wound.

Valentine took two inches off his pint. He could recognize this moment now, the point in the day which seemed to act as a fulcrum, so that the afternoon would feel better than the morning, the evening better than the afternoon. It wasn’t all to do with the alcohol, although he was well enough insulated against self-pity to know that it helped.

‘The problem,’ said Shaw, ‘is that we appear to be dealing with a singular killer.’ He’d chosen the word well and it pleased them both, he could tell. ‘Singular. He — let’s say he for now, because Sample X is a man, so it’s a decent assumption. He operates in a purely pragmatic way. It’s almost ruthless, but somehow even more bloodless than that.

‘First is Patch. That’s completely cold-blooded. But for the bizarre chance of the candle surviving in the bedroom we’d have put that down to a gas explosion. Justina — alerted to the possibility of murder — did the tests. Otherwise we’d have presumed the cause of death as all too plain, given he was reduced to a few pieces of random bone and flesh. Spotting that it was murder was a one in a thousand chance. Then, before the explosion at Patch’s house, there’s Marianne. My guess is this was an assisted suicide, if you like, maybe more than that. But he just walks away from it, except for that kiss on the glass. That’s the only scintilla of emotion. If, and only if, it’s the killer’s kiss. He doesn’t try to make it look any more like suicide than it is; he doesn’t move more pills by the bed, or rearrange the body, or contrive a note. Nothing. He knows we’ll find the cyanide in her system, and he just walks away. And then Holtby, up in the woods, two nights later. The killer lures him into the woods, is my guess, by promising him he can get him through the perimeter wire. He falls into the trap — literally. The cyanide is administered. The killer walks away again — and he’s lucky again, but not quite lucky enough. The fire destroys our crime scene, but not all of the body.’

Valentine flapped his raincoat with his hands in the pockets. ‘The killer could’ve just followed Holtby into the woods — he doesn’t have to be privy to the plan.’

They drank in silence.

‘The key here, George,’ said Shaw, finally, ‘is that he doesn’t really care if we find the cyanide. The priority is the kill — each time. A professional.’

‘A soldier,’ said Valentine. ‘Maybe the bloke Robinson saw above the house on the edge of the woods. It fits. But there’s nothing from the army. Nobody’s gone AWOL. None of the East Hills suspects was military — not even TA.’ Valentine finished his pint and went for refills. He bought Shaw a half of Guinness.

‘I spoke to Tom first thing,’ said Shaw. ‘The forensics aren’t going to help us at any of the three SOCs. We’ve been all over the Osbourne’s bungalow — nothing. Patch’s house is burnt-out. We found Holtby in a pile of ash. It’s not hopeful, is it? Plus the fact we don’t have a single witness sighting for any of the three killings. Arthur Patch’s neighbours saw and heard nothing. Nobody on The Circle appears to have seen anyone approaching No. 5 on the day Marianne died. And no one was seen around the woods Sunday night. ‘Perhaps that’s it,’ he added, suddenly, irrationally, elated. ‘We’re looking for someone who can come and go without being seen.’ He added that to the idea of the professional killer and thought it helped — an outline appearing, like a silhouette on a distant horizon. He looked up to the woods on the hill. ‘So perhaps there is something up in the woods, one of these dugouts.’

Valentine was concentrating on Shaw’s face — the way his eyes had come alive, despite the deep-set sockets which were often in shadow. So he didn’t see the figure approaching and didn’t take any notice until he took a seat at their table. It was the man from The Daily Telegraph, name of Smyth, Shaw recalled. He was in the suit, still, in country green cloth, with upstairs-downstairs glasses and that carefully cultivated air of intellectual distraction.

‘Lionel Smyth,’ he told them. ‘The Daily Telegraph.’ Smiling, he fumbled in the narrow pocket on his waistcoat and produced an embossed card. ‘We meet again.’

‘What’s The Daily Telegraph’s interest in rural Norfolk pubs?’ asked Shaw, trying to think fast and talk slow. If Smyth was here, in Creake, he knew something. The question was how much.

The reporter’s face was benevolence itself. The kind, slightly rheumy eyes, studied Shaw’s face. He wasn’t in a hurry to answer, and Shaw guessed he was calculating how much of the truth to tell. ‘A few days holiday,’ he said. But Shaw could see his iPhone on the table, beside a notebook, and that morning’s copies of most of the national newspapers.

‘Busmen’s holiday?’

‘Well, maybe.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Body in the woods — that’s what the locals tell me. And that gas explosion down in the village. That’s terrible. You survive a world war and then get blown out of your bed one morning for no rhyme or reason.’ He shook his head. ‘Then there’s the woman from up at that hamlet. . The Circle? Suicide. And then you lot putting out a media alert on cyanide pills. Very exotic.’

Shaw tried not to react.

‘Real question is — how does any of all that link up with East Hills.’

Shaw and Valentine locked eyes.

‘Refills?’ asked Smyth, and even Valentine said no. Smyth shrugged, setting his own glass aside. ‘Because by now you must have the results of East Hills — the DNA screening. So you should have your killer. Instead of which, you’re here, in the garden of The Ostrich.’

‘There’s a press conference Thursday — notice is going out later. You doing a story?’ asked Shaw.

Smyth produced what looked like a hip flask from his inside pocket, flipped open a silver cap and extracted a cigar. ‘I wasn’t. It’s The Daily Telegraph — not the National Enquirer. I need confirmation — facts. A statement. A story. So the ball’s in your court.’

Shaw thought it was a nicely judged retreat. But he didn’t believe a word of it. All Smyth had to do was formally ask for confirmation of what he already knew — that there’d been three deaths in this small village in as many days. Shaw could hardly deny what had happened.

Smyth lit the cigar, replacing the silver cap on the fumidor.

Valentine shifted on the bench, thinking how much pleasure it would give him to frogmarch the reporter to the car, slap on a charge — wasting police time, anything, just so they could leave him in a cell at St James’ for half an hour, wipe that fake upper-class smirk off his fat face.

‘OK,’ said Shaw. ‘I can give you what we’ve got. But first — anything you can tell me? You must have picked up plenty of local colour — that’s what they call it, right?’

‘Sure. But like I say — it’s all gossip. This isn’t the only pub in the village,’ he said. Valentine pictured The Royal Oak, a fifties roadhouse, on the edge of a former council estate down past the church. ‘The Oak’s where all the real locals drink ’coz the prices here are pretty much Mayfair standard. And the food — Christ. How hard is it to catch a scallop? Anyway, The Circle’s got a reputation — quite an interesting one, given the strange case of the cyanide pill. Locals reckon the woman — the suicide — was some kind of pervert. Beautiful, lonely, never went out, but did business on the computer. Adds up see, to the rural mind. Husband’s odd too — I heard he pays for his sex down in Lynn. So, happy families all round. Daughter spends all her time up with the weirdos at the wind farm. Was she being knocked off by the bloke they found in the woods? Stands to reason. There’s a tented village up there so clearly it’s sex again, because there’s nothing like six weeks under canvas to get the hormones raging. Locals reckon they run round naked at full moon.’

Smyth laughed to himself, then blew a smoke ring. ‘So that’s it — the fruits of two days on expenses. Anything you can tell me, I could do with it.’

‘One new fact,’ said Shaw. ‘Marianne Osbourne, the woman who died in her bed up at The Circle, was one of the people we took off East Hills in 1994.’ Shaw sipped his Guinness, calculating. ‘And she took a pill. A cyanide pill. Military-issue. We’re trying to trace the source.’

Smyth just sat there, unblinking. ‘Right,’ he said, eventually, stretching out the syllables. ‘And the old bloke in the gas explosion?’

‘We can’t rule out a link. He worked for the council back in ’94 — the car park at Wells, right by where the ferry leaves.’

Smyth pursed his lips, as if producing a soundless whistle. ‘And the body up in the woods?’

‘Too early to say anything, but clearly we’re concerned given how close the three deaths are. What? Half a mile apart. Hell of a coincidence. Give me your mobile number. Anything develops I’ll let you know if I can.’

‘An arrest?’

‘Maybe,’ said Shaw. ‘We’re hopeful.’

This time Valentine offered refills and they all said yes. At the bar he admitted, if only to himself, that Peter Shaw was a good operator under pressure. Valentine guessed he’d given the reporter the East Hills link to wrong-foot the chief constable. Could O’Hare really remove Shaw and Valentine from the inquiry if there was a triple killer at large? This wasn’t an academic cold case anymore. And all of a sudden that?400,000 mass screening bill didn’t look quiet so important up against the fact they had a murderer on the loose. It was a high-risk strategy. But it might work. And the cleverest thing of all was that the reporter had not been given the most important bit of news: that the mass screening had scored a total blank. Cradling three drinks effortlessly in his bony hands Valentine turned from the bar, squeezing through the holiday ‘scrum’ and back out into the garden.

Smyth was already on his mobile, arranging with Shaw to double-check dates, times and names. He cut the line, pushing away his pint. ‘We’ll talk,’ he said, standing, then walked away without looking back.

‘Smarmy bastard,’ offered Valentine when he was out of earshot, looking at the abandoned pint.

‘You’re not wrong,’ said Shaw. ‘But clever. He didn’t ask about the DNA results. Maybe he knows. That’s all we need.’

Valentine’s mobile registered an incoming text. An old colleague at Well’s nick, saying they had something on the Patch case for him: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. First Jan Clay comes up with the link to the museum, now one of his old mates wanted to help. Maybe his years at Wells weren’t all wasted. He showed Shaw the screen message.

Shaw stood, told him to finish his drink, and he’d see him at six down in Wells, outside The Ship. He was going east in the Porsche to Morston: he wanted to see the spot where the young Holtby had once stood, stand there too and imagine a figure wading out of the water that summer’s evening, and a young boy watching from the sand. Then he’d get on the phone and see if they could get Osbourne’s DNA result out of the lab by nightfall.

When Shaw reached the Porsche he could feel the heat radiating from the paintwork. Glancing north, towards the coast, he was startled to see the first storm clouds of the summer, a great billowing mass of cumulus, each one with a heart so black they hinted at purple. On the breeze, thrillingly, he scented rain.