Death

THIRTY-FIVE

To the east the long, graceful curve of the beach huts bled into a shimmering horizon of blue. Shaw and Valentine walked for half a mile but didn’t seem to get any closer to the end. Most of the huts were open. The families in them fell into three groups. The Chelsea-on-Sea set: cooler boxes, literary novels and not to many kids. Then the families from the big camp site and holiday park beyond the pine woods who got a hut as part of their package deal: extended families, noisier, kids playing games, kettles whistling. And then just a few local families. They’d be wrapped up against the sun, dogs about, and perhaps some fishing gear set up to catch the tide as it came in.

Shaw had been walking while looking out to sea so that when the sudden clap of thunder came it was a shock. He spun round, to the land and trees, and saw the black edge of a storm cloud over the pines. As he tried to measure the speed of the cloud, lightning flashed: someone screamed in one of the nearby huts, and then the first fat raindrops fell. He looked back at Valentine, a hundred yards adrift, standing in his raincoat looking up at the charcoal-grey lid of cloud as it slid over the beach. The rain started to crater the sand.

Shaw broke into a jog. Halfway along the line of huts he got to one of the wooden stairways which led back over the dunes into the pinewoods. Beside the bottom step stop a standpipe, dripping into the sand. The next hut, No. 124, Shaw had once hired himself, a favourite spot for Lena and Fran. He stopped, recalling that it was about here on the beach that he usually lost his mobile signal. He checked: the usual six bars had been reduced to one, flickering. Within seconds the rain was an impenetrable screen, like a shower curtain, hiding the woods and then, by degrees, the sea. He waited for Valentine and then they trudged on, the beach crowds going in the opposite direction. No. 186 was indeed almost the last in the line, citrus lemon in colour, one of the older huts, so its stilts were shorter, the top step only just above the encroaching sand.

Over the door a brass nameplate read: North View.

Petersen hadn’t given them a key in the end, but a piece of paper with a three-digit code to punch into a small box mounted on the hut. Inside was a key.

Valentine struggled briefly with a salt-rusted padlock, rain dripping from his nose. The first thing they saw when they got the door open was a sleeping bag on the floor. Military issue, good enough for Arctic camping, and set out neatly on a thermal mat. Shaw picked up a pair of discarded trousers — again, combat green.

‘Likes his military kit,’ said Shaw.

It was one of those moments when they were both thinking the same thing. Was Coyle the man Aidan Robinson had spotted on the edge of the woods above Marianne Osbourne's house in the days before she died? But they both knew that didn’t work: Robinson and Coyle were family. If he could spot an army jumper and a military short back-and-sides, he could recognize his own cousin from a hundred yards.

‘It’s cheap. Army Surplus,’ said Valentine. ‘Doubt if it’s a fashion statement.’

There was a locked shutter as well, so Shaw undid it, swinging it down to reveal a window which he unlatched, so that light flooded the interior. Looking seawards he could see a small fishing boat off the beach, a lone sailor bailing water in a kind of unhurried way. Inside the hut were two thermos flasks — again, heavy-duty issue. A cardboard box with Lipton’s on the side contained apples, a sliced loaf, cheese and a bunch of salad onions. There was a newspaper — the Daily Mail — and a thriller, Clive Cussler, and a battery powered camping lantern. The storm cloud was out to sea now, a few miles off shore, and the sun was coming back, brighter than before, but cooler.

‘Coyle won’t get far,’ said Valentine. ‘They never do unless they’ve got a fortune. Disappearing is an expensive business.’

But Shaw didn’t think that was always true. This was a man who could survive on his own. A man who might turn out to be more like his granddad — Tug Johns — than anybody had ever thought.

Shaw leant out of the window and lifted the shutter, sliding in the locks, and was about to close the door when he glanced up above the lintel. There were two snapshots there, which he took down. One was black and white. Two kids in a boat, a man with white hair posed for the picture. ‘Tug Johns and his grandsons,’ said Shaw. ‘Maybe? It’s certainly the grandfather. .’ He looked at the youngsters and was pretty sure the smaller one was Tug Coyle. You could see the man he was going to be — the crablike carapace of shoulders and back, the short powerful build. It was harder to see Aidan Robinson in the other boy — the strange, steel-grey eyes were the same, but the face was much narrower, even feminine, with high cheekbones. Of the belligerent confidence, the stillness, there was no trace.

The other snap was in colour. A teenage boy, posing in front of a smashed-up stock car. Valentine retrieved the picture of Garry Tyler from his raincoat pocket. They had a match: hundred per cent, no doubt.

Valentine snapped the ID picture. ‘Tyler. It’ll be Tug’s ex-wife’s maiden name. It’s the same kid. It’s Coyle’s son.’