Death Wore White

‘We should do it now,’ said Valentine, standing in the street. The road was flagged with stones, snow lying in the cracks between. ‘Let’s get him into St James’s. It all fits. Holt takes his money as the backstop but Ellis gets cold feet. Holt kills Ellis. Forget how. Nothing else works,’ he added, spitting into the snow. ‘The stress gets him, his ticker packs up, then we turn up and fly him out of the crime scene.’

‘We need the dental records, something solid to put him inside the cab. Tom said mid‐morning. We can wait,’ said Shaw, aware there was a combative edge to Valentine’s voice.

The DS looked at his watch. ‘It’s wasting time,’ he said.

‘No, it’s not,’ said Shaw, angry now. ‘How’d he kill Ellis on Siberia Belt before arriving at the scene himself? Houdini would be proud of that one. How did he strike the lethal blows? Where’s the blood on him? Does the hitch‐hiker exist? Is she an accomplice? How’d she get out of the truck without leaving prints? How many more questions do you need unanswered?’

Shaw felt a pulse in his pocket from his RNLI pager.

Three 7s: the code for the hovercraft.

‘It’s a shout,’ he said, pleased to be offered a route of escape. ‘OK. I’ll text when we’re back on shore. Meantime,

The tyres on the Land Rover screeched as he pulled away. Valentine watched, humming the theme tune from Batman.

Shaw hit the inner ring road at a steady 80 mph. The coast road had been salted and the sudden sunshine had dried it out. He was the last one to the lifeboat house but made the crew as the only pilot, eye injury or no eye injury. He slipped forward into the cabin and checked the systems, redirecting the airflow from the fans down into the flotation skirt, lifting the Flyer over the concrete footings. Shaw cleared his head: tried to forget about John Holt, Harvey Ellis – and George Valentine.

An outbound trawler from Lynn, the Scullion, had spotted figures on Peter Black Sand, the wrong side of Snettisham Scalp, a mile offshore from Ingol Beach. The skipper had reported one adult, two children, possibly another being held or carried. It was a popular spot for digging worms, but a death trap in a rip tide because the long spit of sand held a treacherous secret – its lowest point was where it met the land, the highest point the furthest extent out into the Wash. Even in winter it could entice the unwary too far from the safety of the dunes. The trawler had got within 300 yards before the danger of grounding had made her swing back out to sea.

They had a visual contact within nine minutes.

‘Jesus,’ said the commander, a man named Driscol,

The tide was still three hours off the full but had completely covered Peter Black Sand. The stranded family had been forced away from the coast, back out to the higher ground, but now even that was gone. They stood in the freezing water, footless, an adult holding a child, two other children clutching hands, beside them a large bucket, a deflated sack. The sea around them turned in whirlpools, seagulls picking fish in the shallows.

Shaw hit 60 knots, the noise of the fans deafening despite the ear protectors in the helmets. At 100 yards he throttled back, the note changing, the nose of the Flyer dipping, the craft slewing sideways slightly as the speed dropped and she began to pick up friction from the water surface. The gulls, hoping for a stream of fish guts, began to flock behind them. A sea wind was picking up and miniature waves clipped the forward skirt, spray arching over the crew.

Drifting, Shaw got her to within twenty feet of the man, then cut the down current, so that Flyer floated.

The man, a young father, perhaps thirty, was silent, tears running down his face, which was white with fear. He clutched a child in a papoose to his chest, his lips in its hair. A boy and girl, Shaw guessed five and ten, still held hands, the girl’s jaw juddering with the cold, the boy glassy‐eyed. The navigator jumped clear and put down a sand anchor; the crewman was already wading clear, calling: ‘It’s OK – paddle, just paddle.’

They clambered aboard but as the father swung his leg

The crew got him over the skirt and into the rear cabin, the papoose unclipped. Driscol radioed the station, standing down the inflatable inshore boat, and Shaw lifted the Flyer clear of the water, turning in a wide arc to pass the metal buoy which marked the edge of Black Peter Sands.

Shaw made himself concentrate on the view ahead. He dropped her speed, using sonar and radar as back‐up. Looking shorewards he saw a metal buoy in the foreground, the beach beyond, marked to the north by Gun Hill, to the south by the oyster beds off Gallow Marsh Farm. The farm itself was almost lost in a stand of trees, but he could just see the dilapidated white wooden dove‐cote which had been lit like a beacon that night on Siberia Belt. Lining up the buoy and the dovecote Shaw saw that they marked a channel, a strip of open clear water between the muddled sandbanks, a passage to within a few hundred yards of Ingol Beach. He thought about the farmyard that night, the blizzard clearing to reveal the dovecote, lit a startling acid‐white.

He pushed the microphone of the intercom away from his lips. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s a lighthouse.’